Happy New Year!

The last day of the calendar year has arrived. On this day we reflect on the twelve months that have just passed and look forward to the 365 days ahead. Those of us who love gardens and gardening begin to think about excursions and acquisitions we yearn to make during the new year. 

My garden travel plans? I hope to return to Taiwan and spend more time visiting gardens there.

And in my own garden, my goal is to tame more of the "jungle" by adding more ferns to an area overrun by English ivy. 

I wish for each of you a blessed 2015. What are your garden-related goals and dreams?

A Pocket Full of Rye

Lamb House, Rye, England

June 21, 2003

"Is it hogweed?" an elderly woman asks her friend. 

"I think it's angelica," volunteers a passerby.

Later I hear one of the elderly women tell the only young woman in the garden, "That's angelica with the pom-poms on it, we think."

They settle onto a bench near the wooden arm chair where I sit in the garden at Lamb House. Because I have an assignment to eavesdrop for the fiction workshop I'll be taking with Ann Granger and Angela Arney in a few days, I jot down as much as I can of what I hear. 

The seated women talk of a "loopy" acquaintance who, because she couldn't read, asked a mutual acquaintance read to her a letter from her foster parents. The mutual acquaintance read with great reluctance. The letter detailed how the loopy woman had been locked up under the stairs by her father and beaten by her mother.

"No wonder she's loopy."

The pair leave.

I remain half hidden in the wooden chair. Other garden visitors come and go. A man walks through with a companion. "A series of rooms, isn't it?" he says.

A thirty-ish couple enter the garden and look around. The woman points toward a pom-pom of blossoms and asks, "Is that angelica?"

Climbing roses at Lamb House

What do literary legends Henry James, E.F. Benson, and Rumer Godden have in common?  Each spent time in residence at Lamb House, a brick Georgian located in the town of Rye, in the south of England. 

I first became aware of Lamb House when I read Rumer Godden's memoir A House with Four Walls, in which Godden says "It was at Lamb House that I learned a little about old roses; there was a whole garden of them round a waterlily and goldfish pond where the Garden Room had once stood...." 

Henry James resided at Lamb House from 1897 to 1916. While there he wrote Wings of a Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Ambassadors. 

E. F. Benson is said to have used Lamb House as the basis for Mallards, a fictional home in his humorous Mapp and Lucia novels. I began reading Benson's books soon after the Mapp and Lucia television series aired on PBS in the early 1990s, a time in my life when I needed a good laugh. 

The garden at Lamb House 

In April of 2003 I came upon a listing for Lamb House in the Gardens to Visit Guide, a free booklet packaged with the BBC Gardeners' World magazine I purchased at Glasgow Airport. According to the Guide, the property "features a charming walled garden that boasts a rich variety of plants, including roses, a gum tree and trumpet creeper." I decided to make a day trip to Rye during a trip to London in June of that same year. 

With the house and garden only open two days a week, and only open in the afternoon, I knew I would have to take care in planning my trip. And I did. In spite of issues with the train and a lack of helpfulness from staff members at Charing Cross Station, I managed to get there.

Arriving in Rye before visiting hours at Lamb House, I lunched at Fletchers House Tea Room where the sedate pace of service slowed further as chef and waitstaff hurried to the door to see and photograph a fellow employee passing by with her uniformed groom on the way from their marriage at the city hall. The bride wore a white sari.

About Lamb House, I wrote:  

It isn't quite as grand as I'd expected. The rooms are smaller. The oak paneling is dry and contracted. I'm sitting in the kitchen garden to the side of the house near where the garden room stood before a bomb blast destroyed it in 1940. Behind the house stands an Indian bean tree.

On my way back to the rail station, I stopped by Cinque Ports Pottery and ordered a ceramic house plaque. I am sorry to report that the pottery closed its doors in 2007. How fortunate I am to have this plaque.

Ceramic wall plaque made by Cinque Ports Pottery

Lamb House is a National Trust property. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lamb-house/ 

A Wild and Peaceful Garden

Charleston's historic Unitarian Church

Almost exactly twenty-six years ago I moved to the Lowcountry and embarked on a career in accounting. The first firm I worked for had its offices on King Street in Charleston. An adjacent path ran from King to the cemetery of the Unitarian Church located on Archdale Street. When things got stressful, as they do in the deadline-driven world of accounting, I sometimes headed outside to walk. That's how I first discovered this distinctive churchyard garden. 

Blue plumbago and pink roses

What I love about the Garden of Remembrance is its riotous vegetation. How can I feel guilty about the untidiness of my own garden when here I see the dazzling communion of weeds and cultivated plants?

Lilies mingle with weeds

In 1989 Hurricane Hugo overwhelmed Charleston. Its winds removed the roof from one of the two buildings that housed the accounting firm. The roofer got to work quickly, but not until after photographs were taken to document the extent of damage. I remember seeing the pictures during those first terrible days when the whole world seemed to have turned upside down, a time when armed members of the National Guard roamed the streets and a nearby restaurant cooked chicken outside on a grill because electricity hadn't yet been restored. How ludicrous it all seemed. Those photographs captured an unusual view: in the foreground, file cabinets stood in the roofless attic; in the background, blue sky and the tower of the Unitarian Church dominated.

Garden of Remembrance

Most often when I think of this church, I think of its cemetery garden. I think of the gift of serenity -- of being allowed a chance to calm down before returning to a less-than-peaceful world. 

Canna lily

For more information about the Garden of Remembrance, visit the  Unitarian Church of Charleston's website:

http://www.charlestonuu.org/GetInvolved/Activities/EdenKeepersChurchyard/tabid/132/Default.aspx

The Cupola House Gardens Revisited

Thursday as I drove along US Highway 17 through North Carolina I began to taste Thanksgiving flavors a week early. I wasn't actually eating anything. The leaf color, though, so thoroughly autumn, brought to mind the flavors of turkey gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie. I could almost smell the cinnamon and nutmeg seasoning in the imaginary dessert. I salivated as I drove past leaves the color of butterscotch and persimmon.  

The Cupola House

Detouring from Highway 17, I headed to the Cupola House in Edenton, the location of the colonial revival gardens I first visited and photographed in May. Mrs. Torres at Emilio's General Store & Take Away on South Broad Street told me I was in luck - the garden volunteers had just finished weeding the previous day.   

These pink roses might seem to belong to spring or summer

According to the Cupola House Gardens brochure "Donald Parker, a landscape architect with Colonial Williamsburg, designed these gardens based roughly on the second of C.J. Sauthier's 1769 maps of Edenton."  

Cyclamen emerge amongst autumn leaves 

Claude Joseph Sauthier, a native of Strasbourg, France, trained in surveying, architecture, and landscape gardening, and was brought to North Carolina by Governor Tryon. In an essay entitled "People and Plants: North Carolina's Garden History Revisited" (British and American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Robert P. Maccubbin and Peter Martin, 1984, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia), author John Flowers writes "Some have suggested that the garden plots that appear in most of [the] town plans were used merely to decorate the maps...But Sauthier was too careful a draftsman and accurate surveyor to ornament his work so casually." 

Yellow - an expected color for autumn flowers

Not all of the plants placed, in accordance with Parker's design, at the Cupola House Gardens survived. Over the years garden volunteers have made changes as necessary to the landscape with a pleasing result.

A ginko tree with bright yellow leaves grows beside the house and next to Broad Street

The herb garden with pomegranate trees in the background

My Garden Update
Some species of insect that loves tomatoes also feasted on the skin of my pomegranates this year. Better luck next year, perhaps?

The leaves on my dogwood trees never turn such a vibrant red but where I live we don't usually have a cold snap before the leaves have dropped. (Crape myrtle tree on the left, dogwoods center and right.)

To learn more about Edenton's Cupola House, visit the website:  www.cupolahouse.org

Wandering through Butterfly Gardens

An aging Gulf Fritillary rests on a zinnia
Cypress Gardens in Berkeley County, South Carolina

Here's where I admit that I'm not a great butterfly photographer. Even if I had a more professional camera and a high quality macro lens, I wouldn't be a great butterfly photographer. These most beautiful of insects habitually flit away before I can focus or, if I'm lucky enough to focus, they take off just as I depress the shutter. Countless times I end up with a blur of motion smeared across the frame. Also, often when butterflies are out feeding, the sun is bearing down, creating too much contrast, bleaching color from blossoms and leaves. Such difficulties don't stop me from trying, yet for every decent butterfly photograph I've ever taken, there must be at least half a dozen that are embarrassingly inadequate. 

These days I use digital cameras and don't have to worry about the cost of each attempt. Back when I used a film camera, an SLR, I once dedicated an entire roll of film to trying to capture the various species of butterflies on the family farm in Northeastern North Carolina. The results? Costly and disheartening. 

 Blue Triangle butterfly visits an Ice Plant during the summer

on Rokko Island, Kobe, Japan

During my only summer visit to Japan, I never did manage to satisfactorily capture the Blue Triangle butterfly on a memory card. The one above is sadly out of focus.

But occasionally I manage a shot I'm pleased with. This one that I took of a Gulf Fritillary last week, with a new point and shoot camera, rivals any I've taken with an SLR or DSLR over the years. A tad bit too much sun perhaps, but....

Gulf Fritillary sipping nectar from a lantana in my front yard

So what plants attract butterflies? 

Butterflies need both host plants and nectar plants. The preferred host varies by species. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed. Some of the skippers use oak trees as hosts. Others use wisteria, members of the pea family, amaranth, cockscomb, or hollyhocks. Some swallowtails use Queen Anne's Lace and related plants. Others use magnolias. Many of the sulphurs prefer legumes as hosts. Gulf Fritillary prefer passion vines. (Perhaps this explains why I see so many Gulf Fritillaries in my yard - each year caterpillars devour the leaves of my passion flower.)

As with host plants, different butterfly species have different preferences for nectar. Here's what I'm seeing in my own garden: The Gulf Fritillaries sip nectar from any one of the three varieties of lantana I grow. Until the last blooms dropped from my red cannas earlier this month, the Cloudless Sulphur could be seen feeding there regularly, holding their wings together, flattening themselves in such a way that they appeared like bright yellow leaves. The Long-tailed Skippers seem equally happy with zinnia that's growing in a flower bed or lantana or the pot of Sceavola I bought last week.

A long-tailed skipper feeds on Sceavola in my front yard

Just over a week ago I served as a garden docent during the Charleston Horticultural Society's Gardens for Gardeners Tour. The gardens on display during the tour included those of a luxury hotel, The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island.

I regret to report that I have no photographs of The Jasmine Porch butterfly garden at The Sanctuary. When I stopped by on my way to the house to which I had been assigned, I was in a hurry and the sun shown brilliantly. In short, I forgot to pull out my camera. As I recall, the plantings included lantana and various other popular plants that attract butterflies in the South during autumn. What I clearly remember is recognizing a single Ixora coccinea. I recognized this plant because I had recently discovered it on the clearance rack at my favorite local nursery, Abide-A-While, and bought two of these jungle geraniums for my own garden. 

Ixora coccinea aka jungle geranium

Close up of Ixora coccinea

According to an informational sheet provided by The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island during the tour, the landscaping crew removed nearly all existing plant material from the butterfly garden at the beginning of this year and supplemented the soil with cotton burr compost and other amendments. Each plant in the new design is a known butterfly host or nectar plant. 

The Kiawah Island garden is a work in progress. During the year , due to problems with aphids and mealy bugs, the crew removed coreopsis. They also removed agapanthus because it attracted deer.

Red Admiral in Scotland's Inverewe Gardens
To see a larger version of this photograph follow the link:
http://gardenvisitor.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-week-in-inverewe-gardens.html

Inspired by viewing The Sanctuary's butterfly garden, I took a field trip to Berkeley County, South Carolina's Cypress Gardens this past Thursday to visit the butterfly house and garden there. This time I remembered to pull out my camera. 

Gulf Fritillary on Bird of Paradise inside the Butterfly House at Cypress Gardens

Butterfly Garden outside the Butterfly House at Cypress Gardens

The Butterfly House was staffed by two friendly and knowledgeable volunteers. In addition to butterflies, and host and nectar plants for the butterflies, the building housed a glass beehive, a wood duck, a painted bunting, several red-eyed doves, several small quail, and a pair of turtles. 

Emerging from the chrysalis
Butterfly House at Cypress Gardens

This Julia butterfly blends in
Butterfly House, Cypress Gardens

Cloudless Sulphur on azalea on an October day
Cypress Gardens

Gulf Fritillary on pink zinnia at Cypress Gardens

Long-tailed skipper on camellia
Cypress Gardens

Gulf Fritillary feeding on asters at Cypress Gardens 

Cloudless Sulphur on pink zinnia

Cypress Gardens

Inside the Butterfly House at Cypress Gardens

A Long-tailed Skipper waiting for a turn at a cosmos

Cypress Gardens

Cloudless Sulphur tucked inside a hibiscus blossom
 Butterfly House at Cypress Gardens

Monarch on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina during autumn migration

Author Mary Alice Monroe, who often addresses environmental issues in the novels she writes, has written about Monarch migration in The Butterfly's Daughter. Not only did she raise awareness of the Monarch's diminishing habitat, but during a book launch event she gave milkweed seed to readers to help combat that loss. Monarch butterflies also appear in Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver's new novel, which deals with climate change.

For more information about Cypress Gardens, visit their website:

http://www.cypressgardens.info/

Laying eggs? Gulf Fritillary inside the Butterfly House at South Carolina's Cypress Gardens

The Botanics: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The Palm House at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Some gardens include such a wonderful array of horticultural delights that I can't help but envy those who are fortunate enough to live close by and able to visit often. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is one of these places. 

Feathery beauty

My first attempt to visit the Botanics, as the gardens are called, was in 2008 during my first trip to Edinburgh. It was late August and, due to the Festival, accommodations in Edinburgh were nearly impossible to come by. I found lodging at the University's Pollock Halls on the opposite side of the city. In the center of the city, work on the tram line had disrupted normal bus routes. Although employees at the Tourist Information Centre on Princes Street did their best to help me determine where to wait for a bus that would take me to the Botanics, somehow I ended up standing on the wrong side of the square and missed the designated bus. 

A dreary wet day such as that August Sunday morning does not portray a city at its best. I would not have guessed then that I would, in time, come to admire Scotland's capital. Nonetheless, as I waited for the next bus, I enjoyed looking at flowers cultivated in beds along the square. 

I did not make it to the Royal Botanic Gardens that day. A bus heading toward Roslyn Chapel (think of The DaVinci Code) stopped to pick up passengers and I hopped aboard.  The next day I took the train from Waverly Station to Inverness, having missed an opportunity to visit the Botanics.

White-berried rowan, a native of China

Close up of white-berried rowan

In September of 2010 while volunteering at the Inverewe Gardens Thistle Camp in the Highlands, a fellow volunteer, who lives near the Botanics in Edinburgh encouraged me to visit the gardens during my one day in the city. She assured me that a walk there from my hotel on Princes Street would be doable. I decided to go. There were other things I wanted to see that day as well as the gardens. By the time I arrived at the entrance to the Botanics, it was mid afternoon. I saw less of the gardens than I would have preferred and enough to know I wanted to return. 

I especially loved the herbaceous borders and kitchen garden areas situated between dense hedges, beyond a tall hedge that is more than twenty-three feet high and more than one hundred years old. 

Some of the notable trees growing on the grounds made me wish I had more space to nurture trees at home. One I admired: the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucaria).

Visitors wander through the gardens on a cold Sunday in late April

I didn't return to Edinburgh again until April of this year.  Rain threatened on my first day in the city, a Friday. I was staying in a small hotel located in the house that Kenneth Grahame, author of Wind in the Willows, lived during a brief period of his childhood. I spent all of Friday walking around Edinburgh, stopping in at places, such as the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Poetry Library, I'd not been to before. By late afternoon the sun had emerged from behind the clouds, but I was on the wrong side of the city and I needed to freshen up before meeting a friend for dinner. The next day I was heading into the Highlands for the weeklong Balmacara Thistle Camp. The visit to the Botanics would have to wait until I returned to Edinburgh at the end of the week.   

In a bed beyond the tall hedge

Also, beyond the hedge

Based on the frequently pleasant weather we had that week in the west of Scotland, I imagined this late April Sunday would be a lovely day in Edinburgh. It was not. Clouds pressed down. Temperatures dropped. In the morning I dawdled while shopping in House of Fraser department store and then, in order to explore parts of the city I'd not seen before, I took a longer than necessary walking route to the Botanics. 

In cold weather batteries exhaust quickly. Before I reached the Botanics, the batteries inside my camera had weakened to the point of uselessness. Inside the Botanics gift shop, as I inquired about the availability of batteries, the shopping bag I carried  slipped from my hand and landed on the hard floor. Crack! Fortunately only one of the eggcups I'd bought in House of Fraser broke. A gift shop employee offered to wrap the seven survivors more securely and I accepted her kindness. 
  

Before venturing back out into the cold, I ate a lunch of warm and delicious butternut squash and spinach gnocchi at the John Hope Gateway Restaurant. Sitting there, I watched people strolling through the gardens, stopping here and there to inspect a flower or read from an information panel.

Crocuses and other potted plants

After loading the fresh batteries into my camera, I headed outside where I spent at most twenty minutes browsing before the cold got to me and I returned to the warmth of my hotel room.

Perhaps on my next trip to Edinburgh I'll allow myself the luxury of an entire day at the Botanics so that I'll have plenty of time to see the interiors of the various glass houses and the Queen Mother's Memorial Garden and to revisit favorite areas and take the guided tour and.... 

A lovely place to sit for an hour

To learn more about the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, visit their website:

http://www.rbge.org.uk/