Make Your Own Monster Plant

I've heard of using the plant hormone Gibberellic acid to coax reluctant seeds to germinate, but according to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, it can also be used to induce gigantism in plants. In other words, it can make big plants. Really big plants. Amazing. Now, if only I can use it to create a sequoia-sized Brugmansia...

Hat Tip: Boingboing

Brussels Loves Begonias

Three million begonias is a lot of begonias-enough to make this 300 square yard floral carpet, which brightens downtown Brussels. These are cut flowers, laid down right on top of the cobblestones. One hot, hot sunny day and the whole thing must be toast. Talk about ephemeral art. Belgians have been recreating these vast medieval carpet patterns with begonia bloms for almost 40 years as part of their ongoing efforts to promote interest in and awareness of the flower. Certainly gets my attention.

Hat tip: Martha Cheshire and First Post

Moss Man Needs Your Help

Happy Earth Day! Just because Moss Man is looking out for our planet doesn't mean the rest of us can slack off. We all need to do what we can to defend our environment. And happily, gardening is a great way to do that. So, go plant a tree.

Moss Man is the alter ego of Nashville's J. Paul Moore--gardener and photographer extraordinaire--who took this kooky self portrait (and sent it to me after I pleaded for a few shots from his Moss Man series). Enjoy his great garden slide show; on the opening page of his site, click on portfolio, then gardens. While you're at it, his show on architecture features some terrific gardenesque hardscaping and his scenic nature series reminds us of just how beautiful our home planet can be.

The Felder File

Felder Rushing, one of my favorite horticulturists, is profiled in the New York Times. In it, he talks at length about his slow gardening approach--it's a good way to go. While I disagree with Felder's assertion that a bottle tree has some of the same qualities as a Dale Chihuly sculpture, I'm enamored with the man's practical, common-sensical approach to gardening. And his notion that gardening should be all about experimenting and having fun.

Anyone who keeps a garden in the back of their pick-up truck is likely to have a few other unconventional ideas. I also like, though I may not care to emulate, his wacky sense of garden ornament-brightly painted tire planters, mannequins, pink flamingos, rebar and the like. But his off-the-wall approach is liberating. The secret to a satisfying garden, after all, is following wherever your instincts lead rather than slavishly heeding horticultural conventions. It's an attitude thing. Thus this Felder credo: "Doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it, your neighbors are gonna talk about you ANYWAY."

Furthermore, I'm a devoted listener to Felder's public radio show, "The Gestalt Gardener," which you can also pick up through his website. I borrowed the pictures of bulb-juggling Felder and his garden from Felder's website. Thanks, Felder!

Exploring El Explorador

El Explorador has just got to be one of the kookiest, quirkiest gardens anywhere. Where else are you going to see a papyrus allee? Or a grove of bottle trees? Sited darn near the top of a mountain on the edge of beautiful Boquete, Panama, this sprawling hillside garden almost melts into the surrounding forests. It was built as a spiritual refuge of sorts, a place to freshen your outlook on life, and its zany exuberance just about makes that possible. It's peppered with signs (all in Spanish) bearing uplifting quotations and steeped in a playful kind of tranquility, so a feel-good sensibilty just pervades the place.

For a real uplift, try out the hilltop swing, which--thanks to its way high moorings and long ropes--brings you very, very close to the sensation of flight.

They take a very idiosyncratic approach to container gardening, so say the least.

There are loads of wonderful plant world oddities like this cow's udder (Solanum mammosum).

I always stop to smell--no, not the roses--the brugmansias.

Last, but not least, are the inspiring views over the surrounding countryside. Uplifting indeed.

Botanicalls: When Plants Twitter

Stop worrying how to take care of your plants. Soon, they will be able to tell you what they need.

Shout out: Boing Boing

Umbrella Tree For a Rainy Day

British artist Sam Spenser created this fantasy tree as part of recent exhibit on the color yellow at the Wapping Project in East London. His luminous vision of a plane tree, which materialized near the gallery's entrance, was only part of the fun. A story about the exhibit included intriguing bits about the color yellow ran in the Times (of London, not New York); read reporter Joanna Pitman's take on "Yellow Fever" here. Photo by Jessica Rolland.

Since I'm always on the lookout for new ideas about the pyschological and other aspects of color, I found this part of the story really interesting:

"Yellow is a colour with diverse and often contradictory meanings. It is often associated with warmth and happiness, but in English, “yellow” can be used as slang for cowardice. In Chinese culture, yellow represents royalty (commoners were forbidden from wearing yellow until modern times), while in Arab culture it can mean insincerity. In South Korea it is associated with jealousy, in Christianity with greed and in 19th-century Europe with mental illness.

Van Gogh frequently used yellow in his paintings, which some believe was a result of his suffering from xanthopsia, a condition that causes the sufferer to see everything as if through a yellow filter. Xanthopsia was a side effect of digitalis, which was used to treat epilepsy. Gauguin also used a great deal of yellow in his paintings, particularly in Tahiti, which perhaps reflected the heat."

Shout-out to Dark Roasted Blend.

Biped, B-iPod (Before iPod)

Listening to music while gardening is a lot easier than it used to be. Thanks Apple! Tip 'o the hat to boingboing.

Honey, I Shrunk the Garden!

Calling all photo geeks! The weird and wonderful technique of tiltshifting your photos magically transforms real world scenes into something that looks like a miniature trainset model. It's fun to try with garden scenes, travel shots, or just about anything. This digital re-imagining of an old view-camera technique turns proper perspective on its head. Photographers prized the old, accordionlike camera's shift and tilt controls to correct the problems they encountered when photographing architecture and similar subjects that had to be rendered in perfect perspective.

Tiltshift uses those same techniques and another trick or two to narrow a photo's depth of field, accentuate some of its color, and manipulate the image enough to make the subject look like a miniature. You can tiltshift your own photos here. Not every picture translates well; the best bet is for views taken from above that encompass a large scene with plenty of foreground and background. Close-ups won't work well at all . Anyway, you can get tips about the right kinds of photos to use here, and see some terrific examples here. Tip o' the hat to boingboing.

Hunting Perilous Plants

Garden Ranter Amy Stewart just posted about her new book "Wicked Plants." To promote it she made a comically deadpan video. Enjoy!

Iceman's Back

When I wrote about Ole Man Winter's brief visit to Clatter Valley last week, I knew he'd be back. And I knew he'd mean business. The guy's relentless. But I wasn't expecting him quite so soon. He roared through here on a three-day bender over the weekend, darkening the shortest day of the year and leaving about 16 inches of snow in his wake. The good news is that I think I caught a glimpse of the old coot. I think that's him leering at me from the woodland edge. Gardening 2008 is definitely over.

Three Ways to Wear Plants

Clothes make the man, or so it's been said. But what about plants? The Irish talk about the wearin' of the green, but long before there was any concept of Irish, or really, any concept beyond tribe, fops flaunted foliage and flowers as finery at just about any significant gathering, just as these kids are doing in this set of phenomenal photographs by Hans Silvester taken among the Surma and Mursi tribespeople of Ethiopa's Omo Valley. Loads of these dramatic images are collected in Silvester's book, Natural Fashions.



Anyhooo, I'm thinking that, as far as fashionable foliage goes, this look represents the traditional, having been part of humanity's attire for thousands of years. Foliage and flowers, in fact, were the first kinds of clothing ever worn, and these young men and women have mastered the art of accessorizing.



Let's make the leap from Africa to present-day Paris, where fashion-forward models are strolling the runways in their own little leafy get ups. Actually this dress is the creation of plantsman extraordinaire Patrick Blanc, best known for his remarkable wall gardens gracing buildings all over the world (See examples of his work and read an interview here.) A few years ago, he turned to fashion, and designed a wedding dress, which he called the "Robe Vegetale", for couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. This is definitely a high-end, haute couture approach to wearing plants.



Lastly, there's the fusion approach to the wearin' of the green. This takes us both back and forward in time. Back to the Green Man, the emblematic manifestation of humankind's kinship with the natural world as expressed by dieties and mythic figures linked to agricultural cycles and the plant kingdom. The Green Man has been linked, conceptually at least, to figures such as Osiris, John Barleycorn, Godin, and the Celtic god Viridios, whose name means green man. The Green Man's image-a face emerging from a swirl of leaves and vines, is often depicted on churches and has become a popular garden ornament. Here are several interpretations of the Green Man, including the traditional masklike motif, and a dandefied version painted by Kathleen O'Connell.



Finally, we race back to the future with this post-modern looking Green Man, whose vague sense of unease may reflect a deep seated uncertainty about contemporary humanity's relationship with nature. Or the image (sorry, no idea who created this intriguing photograph, or the drawing-love to credit them if I could) may simply reflect the understandable angst of waking up one morning to discover that you are half plant.

Compost Zombie

It came from the compost, says Indonesian blogger Fendy. This very strange plant, which Fendy says smells like dead fish or a dead rat, clawed its way out of the ground, so to speak, at his garden in Surabaya, on the island of Java. He surmises the fungusy, mushroomlike plant grew from seed laying dormant in some compost he'd spread in the garden. It looks, he writes, like the hand of a zombie trying to dig its way out of the grave, so he dubbed it Zombie Hand. In spite of the stench, Fendy is going to leave the plant in his garden. "Our curiousity however, doesn't let us to remove it, because it may turn out to grow into some interesting plant," he writes. Um, Fendy--it already has. Thanks and a tip o' the hat to Dark Roasted Blend.

Lovely Labyrinths

Go get lost in the fantastic hedge maze and plant labyrinth post over at WebEcoist. But let me warn you--it may take a while to find your way back out. The puzzler pictured is at Longleat in England; its 16,000-plus yews are spread over an acre and a half.

Chrissie's Cool Dragon

My friend the indefatigable gardener Chrissie D'Esopo is always full of surprises. I don't think she ever sleeps. I can't believe how much she gets done each day. Her ever-expanding gardens are always weed-free, immaculate and edged crisply as fresh-pressed pants. All that in spite of the fact that she kicks off each season by singlehandedly planting 20,000--yes, 20,000--annuals and 500 containers. Then she has to water the pots every day, and they are ALL OVER her garden. But she still has time to concoct and complete new projects. Like this topiary dragon, a mossy monster guarding the side of her house. It's been lurking there for a few years, and looks better each summer. Chrissie's been threatening to make a one-of-a-kind water feature--a life-size topiary elephant rearing up on its hind legs and spouting water from its trunk. Can't wait to see that one.

Cuckoo for Kiku--More From NYBG

I recently bemoaned the thought that there was no word to express the transitory beauty so familiar to gardeners. Turns out there is one, Hanami, a Japanese expression for the pastime of flower viewing, a celebration of both the transience of life and the beauty of a single moment. The Japanese are famous for their reverence of cherry blossoms, and they have a similar expression of Hanami late in the season, when the chrysanthemums bloom.

Chrysanthemums occupies a special place in the Japanese psyche: a stylized version of the flower serves as the Emperor's royal seal and to outsiders the seat of Japanese power has long been referred to as the Chrysanthemum Throne. As tends to happen in Japan, the object of veneration becomes the center of ritualistic, almost cultish devotion. And so it has gone with the chrysanthemum. That now culminates in their annual "Festival of Happiness" a celebration of things mum. The New York Botanical Garden recently hosted a special exhibit called Kiku (KEE-koo), to show us what it's all about.

The Japanese bring a near fetishistic fervor to mums and train the plants to do things I'd never dreamed possible. At some point, this kind of pursuit becomes less about the plant and more about the practitioners of the arcane art devoted idealizing the mum. These things are coddled and coaxed There are several different disciplines, At top is Shino-tsukuri, Driving Rain, in which two plants are placed side by side in pot, then pinched and tweaked until they produce 27 flowering branches-no more, no less-whose height is adjusted, just so, to create the slanted circle of pinwheeled flowers. As is customary, they are displayed in their own little bamboo and douglas fir shelter, protected by curtains of imperial purple and a sash tied in a ceremonial knot.

My favorite form, and the most striking visually, was Ozukuri, Thousand Bloom. A single plant is pinched until it produces 5 strong growing shoots, which are in turn manipulated, staked, trellised and otherwise manhandled to within an inch of their life until they produce an exquisite dome-shaped cloud of flowers, each one precisely placed within the overall composition. These things are huge, nearly 4 feet across. It takes 11 months and whole team of gardeners to create one of these tour-re-force mums. The plants even have names. We're looking at Friendship, boasting 229 flowers.

The silliest display was the Ogiku, Single Flower. These are the lollipops of the mum world. Gardeners diligently train a single stem--pinching off all shoots and buds save one, so as to produce... one single flower. But it's a big one. The one we're looking at here is larger than a softball. Plants are then displayed in formation, lined up in ranks, like soldiers.

Winner of the windowbox award would have to go to the form known as Kengai, Cascade, in which plants are tickled and pinched to produce a multitude of side shoots which are in turn trained through a wire mesh frame and tied into place. After 10 months, buds begin forming and the frame is lowered into a cascading position. Plants-which are usually raised in pots-are then moved into an Uwaya, the traditional bamboo display shelter that protects these delicate creations from the elements

I found it exhausting just looking at these amazing specimens of...what?...the gardener's art. A friend who's visited Japan about this time of year said the country is virtually overrun with these creations, that they are everywhere, by the thousands, or even tens of thousands. Must be quite a sight.

Silly Squirrels

Every fall, the squirrels around Clatter Valley go kind of, well, nuts. Their frenzied foraging has them leaping at the bird feeders, scrabbling at seeds, and darting thither and yon. Their ongoing game of tree tag reaches for new heights of ferocity too. But, strange as the local squirrels may seem, they cannot compare with some of their crazier cousins.

Zarcero's Zany Topiary

Though they haven't always been the focus of my travels, I've seen a fair number of interesting gardens and inspiring natural places in the US and abroad. Seems as if it might be fun to share some of them. In that spirit, let's go to the fantastical topiaries of Zarcero, Costa Rica. This pretty little mile-high mountain town, a couple hour's drive from San Jose, is best known for its main square, the Parque Francisco Alvarado, where Evangelisto Blanco wields what must be some of the most well-worn pruning shears on the planet. He has spent decades coaxing all kinds of Dr. Seussical fantasies from the cypress trees that adorn the square in front of the Iglesia San Rafael.

Tireless Evangelisto singlehandedly sculpted everything from dancing people and animals to dinosaurs to a dramatic arched promenade.

Bulbous Blast from the Past

Though I usually stick to the three-times-as-deep, and three-times-the width-apart rule of thumb for bulb planting, I got a kick out of this retro chart. No idea who King Nitrohumus is, but he looks like a royally good gardener. For a blast-from-the-past bulb narrative, check out the rest of this deeply dated comic book from 1956. It's about creating curb appeal with bulbs in a uniquely retro, keeping-up-with-the Joneses way.