Think Global, Garden Local

Friday, January 15, 2016

Garden trends for 2016

-"Slow flowers"-locally-grown flowers
-Locally grown food-farm to table in movement
-Urban parklets
-Increasing use of succulents and drought-tolerant plants
-increasing focus on foliage, especially plants displaying changing fall colors
-Greater appreciation of subtle colors, all white and one color gardens
-Gardening in containers with increasing use of edibles (including berries) & succulents
-More interest in treating pots as a small-scale landscape including terrariums, living walls,...
-Vertical gardening
-Layered, living landscapes with combinations as trees, shrubs, perennials & grasses as advocated by Doug Tallamy
-Natives species used increasingly used in landscape design for their form, foliage, flower and wildlife attracting qualities.
-Pollinator gardening
-Manageable maintenance with carefully chosen plants naturalistic, relaxed, loose planting style
-Sustainable features integrated with design for highly functioning landscapes responding to the topography and architecture with appropriate appealing plant choices in scale with the garden.
-Interest in increasing function of landscapes with plants that attract pollinators, urban homesteading, growing food, keeping chickens, beekeeping, vegetable beds, growing herbs, composting, harvesting rain,..
-Protection & conservation of resources
-Efforts to improve health of topsoil
-Makers lifestyle-engaging in hands-on projects
-Use of technology for help with plants
-NaTECHture to engage kids with gardening, health & fitness
-Welltality-focusing on the health benefits of plants
-Increased use organic lawn products and decreased use of potentially harmful garden chemicals for safety of pets, children, and environment
-Increasing use of firepits
-Painted arbors, fences & houses-dark green or dark blue instead of white, brown, or gray (following popularity of black houses & fences in Europe)
-Increased interest in lighting schemes such as colored lights for a holiday theme or favorite sports team colors to light up the landscape for a big game night.
-Gnomes

Monday, August 10, 2015

Green Bay Botanical Garden in mid-August

One of the newest additons to the Green Bay Botanical Garden is the Conifer Garden. In spring of 2013, 83 tons of limestone boulders were brought in from quarries surrounding Northeast Wisconsin in preparation for the installation of dwarf conifers, low growing evergreens that typically grow to less than the size of their parent plants. The design is intended to showcase the conifers not so much as a “collection”, but rather as they would be integrated into a well-designed home garden. Perennials, chosen to provide the maximum beauty for color and form for visitors strolling through the garden, were installed in the spring of 2014. They will be relocated as the conifers grow and reach their mature size.

View from the top of the conifer garden
where water bubbles from a stone fountain
down into a pondless basin of stones.

English cottage style garden

Bee skep is hidden here

A colorful late-summer floral display

A lovely display of seasonal flowers
floating in a ceramic pot

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Floral displays on Mackinac Island

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.

-Elizabeth Murray

Upon exiting the ferryon Mackinac Island, visitors are greeted with colorful flower baskets hanging from lamp posts up and down the Main Street.

Lilac hanging baskets at the Lilac Tree Hotel

Porters gather bags from the ferry to transport to your hotel. A quick walk or carriage ride takes you by residences and hotels with window boxes, hanging pots, containers, garden beds overflowing with cheerful floral displays.