ARTof GARDENING

Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day

Fri, 16 May 2008 17:04:32 -0400

Garden Ideas and Outdoor Living in Buffalo

Tue, 13 May 2008 16:12:29 -0400

Another great gardening media hit for Buffalo! This time, it’s 75 Lancaster Avenue, the garden of Jim Locke and Annabelle Irey. Garden Ideas and Outdoor Living is a Better Homes & Gardens (BH&G) Special Interest Publication, the current (Summer 08) issue features an eight-page spread on this garden that is a very popular stop on Garden Walk Buffalo. The eight-page spread features tips on getting a lush look in your garden, and taming rambunctious gardens; an illustrated map of their property; and 11 photos of the garden including close-up shots of some of their more unique plantings.
Simply known locally as “Mary’s Garden,” it is one of the most lush gardens on the Walk.  Jim and his first wife, Mary, started the garden. Mary lost her battle with cancer soon after the garden was completed. Annabelle appeared on the scene a couple years later with lots of gardening “baggage,” including lots of annuals, vines, and a family heritage of gardening.
You’ll have to pick up the magazine to read about their collection of vines and their over 200 planters!I bought my copy of the issue at a Barnes & Noble. Jim & Irene found copies at Wegmans, our local grocery store chain. The garden’s most outstanding feature was not even mentioned in the article – Cornelious the basset hound. I’ll probably see him walking Jim & Annabelle later. He’s insistent they get out and walk every day.
Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living is published four times a year by Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Media. It is available by subscription (www.bhg.com/gardenideas) and at newsstands throughout the United States and Canada.
Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living is the oldest special interest gardening publication in America, tracing its history back to 1940. The editor, Luke Miller, is a Western New York native, hailing from Rochester.
Here’s a photo of Toronto photographer Andreas Trauttsmansdorff with Better Homes & Gardens story producer, Donna Talley, taking the photos in the article last July.To come full circle, my very first blog post (here) was about the BH&G photo shoot in this garden. BH&G will also be back this July to shoot two more Buffalo gardens.
Just to show how close our great gardens are to each other, see that dark pink house in the middle of the photo at the top of this page?  The garden of that house (72 Lancaster) was recently featured on the covers of both Garden Gate magazine (Jan/Feb 2008) and People Places Plants (Early Summer 07). Lancaster Avenue is a street of great gardens (did I mention I live on Lancaster?)
Walk through this garden in July! Unlike with most other gardens you see in national gardening magazines, you can actually come and walk through this one. Below is a list of other Buffalo gardens, and the magazines they can be seen in, as well as links to other posts and articles. During Garden Walk Buffalo, you can visit them all!
This past year saw Buffalo gardens and Garden Walk press appear in these national publications:
The San Francisco Chronicle  (1 North Pearl, 44 Massachusetts)
MSN City Guide
Garden Design (Martin House Conservatory)
Garden Gate (755 West Delavan, 39 Granger and a cover photo of 72 Lancaster)
Great Backyard Gardens (415 Summer, 63 Norwood, 2 Union Place and 604 Bird)
Great Gardens, Solutions for Small Spaces (24 Park, 75 Lancaster, 39 Granger)
People Places Plants (24 Park, 415 Summer, 215 Lancaster, 42 Orton and a cover photo of 72 Lancaster!)

DaVinci’s garden

Sat, 10 May 2008 08:00:49 -0400

DaVinci brought with him a little bit of Tuscany when he moved to Clos-Lucé Manor House, Amboise, France, at the end of his life and created this garden. The Mona Lisa hung in this house for a while. It seemed so anachronistic to think DaVinci lived here. I always picture him in Italy doing renaissance-y things for the wealthy. Not in France, in a medieval manor house in the country. Of course, the house is now a museum Leonardo said, “A well filled day gives a good sleep. A well filled life gives a peaceful death.” After only three years here, he died in 1519 and is buried in the Chapelle St. Hubert on the manor grounds.filled with to-scale reproductions of some of his inventions, crated by IBM. Completed with requisite café and gift shop, natch.
After having read the books on secret messages hidden in Da Vinci’s artworks, I wonder if there’s a secret message designed into this garden for us to decipher.
Favorite thing: Knowing I was in rooms where one of the world’s greatest artists, a genius visionary, lived. He died in the bedroom, which is part of the self-guided tour. It gave me chills.
Know any genius gardeners?
Clos-Lucé Manor

The world’s largest fake tree.

Thu, 8 May 2008 17:19:44 -0400

Disney only does things in a big way.  This 145’ tall (that’s 13 stories!), 170’ to 50’ wide, artificial tree is the centerpiece and icon of the Animal Kingdom Park, the largest of the Disney parks in Orlando. It is a refitted oil platform, believe it or not, and engineered to withstand hurricane-strength winds. Each branch unit does have an expansion joint to encourage life-like movement. You know, keepin’ it real.
The 103,000 leaves of many colors, and four different shapes & sizes, are made from kyner (polyvinylidene fluoride, the homopolThe tree is engineered from an oil rig platform, they’re pretty sturdy.ymer of 1,1-di-fluoro-ethene (VF2) – THAT sounds environmentally-friendly). The substance is a thermoplastic that is stable in harsh chemical and ultraviolet environments. The leaves were attached by hand onto the more than 8,000 branches. It took 18 months to build.
The design of the 1998 tree is based on Rafiki’s tree in the movie The Lion King. It has 325 different carvings of endangered and extinct animals, created by more than 20 international artists, sculpted into it325 endangered & extinct animals are carved into the trunk, branches and roots.s trunk and painted to look like tree bark. The sculptures are actually quite beautiful. There’s even a hidden Mickey in the tree, although he’s hardly among the endangered.
Legend has it that there were originally 324 animals sculpted into the tree until Dr. Jane Goodall visited and commented that there were no chimpanzees on the tree, so they sculpted one more – of her favorite chimp, David Graybeard.
The cave-like base of the trunk is, appropriately enough, the host of It’s Tough to be a Bug!, a 3D film and interactive, 430-seat stage show, based on the movie A Bug’s Life.
The next largest fake tree in the world has to be the 1971 Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.  Based obviously, on the 1960 movie, Swiss Family Robinson. The banyon tree look-alike “residence” has bedrooms, kitchen, family rooms, library and dining areas and a winding staircase to connect them all, fully-furnished in a cast-away chic elegance style. Any fan of the movie, and come on, who isn’t, will recognize the waterwheel/pully-system for plumbing.
This tree was made of steel and concrete. It is 90’ tall with a canopy diameter of 60’. The “root” support system goes 42’ into the ground. There are 330,000 polythene leaves, attached by hand, on 1,400 branches. This tree does have real spanish moss on it for effect.
The species of tree is listed as Disneyodendron eximus which translates to “out of the ordinary Disney tree.”

Messing with young minds.

Sun, 4 May 2008 23:38:56 -0400

Yes, they do look something like you might find in the Gardening While Intoxicated garden before you hit the dirt, but alas, you’re seeing them as they are – warped classic pedestals and planters. The are a clever nod to the winds coming off Lake Erie. To hallucinogenicly-prone students, these probably appear perfectly straight. They certainly make you do a double take when you see them for the first time.
These way cool planters are in Founder’s Plaza, on the north campus of the State University of Buffalo (UB). The plants in the urns, which seem a bit uninspired in these photos, are intended to change with the seasons.
For the gentle wind doth move Silently, invisibly is the name of the instillation by artist Brian Tolle. The installation is on a two-year loan. It was commissioned by Cleveland Public Art and was most recently displayed for two years in downtown Cleveland. The artist came to Buffalo and actually studied wind patterns in the plaza to site the pieces.

Spring at home

Fri, 2 May 2008 11:04:43 -0400

I’ve spent so much time away, thought I’d add to the cacophony of blogger’s spring garden photos out there.

Buffalo in Garden Design magazine

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:45:02 -0400

In this month’s issue (May ‘08) of Garden Design magazine, the newly restored Frank Lloyd Wright Darwin’s Martin House’s Conservatory gets its due. Written by Amy Stewart of Garden Rant and Dirt fame, the article, according to Amy’s research in to the letters written between Wright & Martin, highlights how pissed Martin was at Wright (my interpretation).
Martin was hoodwinked by Wright... Martin had engaged Wright to design & build a greenhouse to provide plants for the house & property. Instead, Wright designed & built a spectacular conservatory that did not serve the purpose of producing plants for house & garden. It was a showpiece on its own complete with a sculpture of Nike of Samothrace. I posted, back in January, a description of the conservatory here. You’ll have to refer Amy’s article to read the harsh, but unfailingly polite, interchange between the two (egos). The archive of letters between the two are significant and helped tremendously in the restoration of the house.
Martin, a wealthy executive, was miffed, and had someone else build a greenhouse on the property. The house and grounds are now being restored and the greenhouse, since it was not designed by Wright, is not being recreated.
And we’re all better for it...  I’ve walked through it. In defense of Martin, it ain’t no greenhouse for the production of annuals – it’s a mini-cathedral to plants. It’s one of the single most beautiful interior spaces with plants you can imagine. Now that the building is open to the public, we’re all better off for it. If you can make it here for Garden Walk Buffalo, it should be on your list of places you MUST visit.

Full Frontal

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:00:34 -0400

Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop: Front-Yard Gardens Click here for more blog posts on front gardens.I think a front yard is much like a living room of a house. Not the family room where you hung out and could leave a mess, but the living room your parents had with the uncomfortable, stuffy furniture and artwork you never liked. The living room that was kept immaculate all the time, but rarely ever used. It seemed the “formal” living room was designed to show off to guests the fanciest Bright, contrasty colors attract attention
Photo © Don Zinteckfurniture, oldest antiques, finest art and most tasteful decor. The front yard garden is sort of that – showing off to your neighbors and passers-by your best stuff.
The purpose is different It’s not as though you’d lay out for a tan, barbecue some flesh or put your hot tub in the front yard, that’s all for the back yard - which, for our purposes here, we’ll equate with a recroom. More and more I have heard tell of folks planting vegetables in their front yard. I can’t imagine that. We’ve had flowers stolen from our front yard, I can’t imagine what would happen if we had food out there.
You might spend time in your front garden if you had an inviting front porch. We don’t. Most houses in Buffalo do and much activities surround them – eating, drinking, entertaining, garden magazine & newspaper reading, playing with the Not shown here: the garden goes up the house in the form of baskets on either side of the door and in the second-floor window boxes. I’m considering a window box in the small third floor attic window - but should I put some fake greenery up there? I’ll never water up there. What would you do?kids and, here in Buffalo, sportswatching. There’s one street here in Buffalo that will remain nameless (Irving!) that has tiny back yards and everyone ends up on their generous-sized front porches. That’s how Wine Wednesdays started (and the Thursday morning Irving Street hangovers).
But the front yard, more often, is a showpiece They are vibrant colorful gardens that My little Kuekenhof.scream, “look at me.” That’s what mine does anyway. The majority of my bulbs are out there because we see them more, since, in the Spring, it’s too cold to sit out back. If they weren’t out front, we’d never see them. I did eliminate all the grass out front – less time spent showing the neighbors my skill as a cord-cutter with an electric mower.
It’s inviting... I’ve incorporated brick paths into my front yard. I’ve looked out my second-floor office window to see toddlers (unfamiliar to me) walking in circles around and around the paths. I’ve had a The view from my office window. Brick paths are a curiously-strong attraction for kids. You’d think I put in a labyrinth for kids.summer school art class park themselves out front to draw the garden. I did have solar lights out there to make it more inviting at night. That lasted about two days. Apparently it’s TOO inviting for petty burglars in need of illumination.

“@%ﬁ*6!£§%€%#”

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:21:29 -0400

Yup, that’s one of those plastic-made-from-precious-fossil-fuels-never-to-decompose-for-all-of-eternity grocery bags snagged andFriggin’ plastic bag. blowing in the wind on my lightning lightning rod.  How the hell it got up there, I have no idea. I do know that it is at the top of my turret. Which means the pitch of the roof is VERY steep. Which means I’ll have to hire someone willing and able to go up there (three stories) and take it off. I don’t even have a ladder tall enough to get me onto this section of the roof.
One more reason to ban the damn things. You’d never find a reusable canvas tote stuck up there.
The lightning rod itself is not really a lightning rod.  It is not grounded. After much research by myself and an electrician I consulted, we came to the same conclusion that it wasn’t worth grounding. There are municipal rules and standards for grounding lThis is the day it was installed, I’ll never forget it, 9:30 a.m. the morning of Garden Walk, 2006. Minutes before thousands of people were expected to come through for the weekend.ightning rods, which are archaic, impractical and expensive. There are also proposed regulations, that are now just suggestions, that are modernized, slightly less expensive but not mandatory. There are also multiple studies out there about the ineffectiveness of lightning rods, grounded or not. Basically what the studies I read said was, that, if your house is struck by lightening, you’re screwed, wether your rod is grounded or don’t have a rod. The house has been here since 1897 and hasn’t been hit yet, so I’m not so concerned.
It is garden art, a finial/ornament (way) above the garden if an inspector comes by.  It was designed by sculptor Mark Griffis and myself. Mark built it, but he let me draw the shape of the lightning myself on a sheet of metal. It was installed by pro contractor extraordinaire, Ed, seen on the roof, where I won’t go, in the photo above.
Do you have a lightning rod, ornament or finial on the top of your house?

Another Garden Walk Garden in the National Press

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:37:24 -0400

Another Buffalo garden gets featured in a national gardening magazine. This time, 39 Granger Place, the front and back yard of architect Carol Siracuse & interior designer Tom Palamuso, is covered in the May/June 2008 issue of Garden Gate Magazine.
The article, by Garden Gate associate editor Jim Childs, is about the purpose and design of front yard gardens vs. backyard gardens. Photos in the article are by Garden Gate senior photographer David C. McClure.
What you’ll get from the six-page spread. Through the use of seven photos and two illustrated maps across the six-page spread, the writer points out design tips to create energetic and Front garden is colorful & lively - and hard to miss. © D. Zinteck, Photographics 2welcoming front yards that change throughout the season as well as highlighting design ideas in Carol & Tom’s backyard that make it a private, comfortable urban retreat.
Features of their garden include a wisteria-covered pergola for dining, a waterfall and small pond (although I saw Carol in church last Sunday and she said part of the waterfall wall fell this past the winter, Tom was working on repairing it – don’t tell Garden Gate!), a potting bench, curved paths of bluestone pavers, view-obscuring plantings for privacy and curb-side gardens for the neighborhood’s enjoyment.
Backyard intrigues with many corners to turn and multiple ares to entertain/dine/read.  © D. Zinteck, Photographics 2What you won’t get from the Garden Gate article. Carol & Tom met after each had lost a spouse. The process of planning and creating this garden happened when they started as friends and lasted through their courtship. In Carol’s words, “Together we have created a wonderful restful backyard city garden sanctuary, and a flourishing, colorful, ever-changing front yard garden painting/sculpture for all who pass to watch and enjoy through the seasons. We have also created a relationship. The garden as relationship. The garden as love.” Gardening together is a great way to learn about a partner – likes and dislikes, the way they think, the way they work. Carol says, “The garden room became the fabric for our growing affection.” How sexy is THAT?
A garden as a story. Tom designed & built a chic, urban waterfall & pond inset in the bluestone-paved patio – not attempting to create a faux rural-pond that would look out of place in their city setting.  © D. Zinteck, Photographics 2 I like to think of every garden as a personal story of its Their garden was the basis of the watercolor artwork on the 2007 Garden Walk Buffalo poster. Watercolor by Dana Jenkins.  Poster design by Sue Hough,gardener. Carol & Tom’s I will now think of forever as representing their relationship, growing and changing each year. Its design is how they came to know each other. Its maintaining they do as a couple.
There’s almost 300 other stories Carol & Tom’s garden has been on the Garden Walk for years and they are ardent supporters of the Walk. They have a wonderful, well-thought-out garden that is welcoming and unique to them. There are almost 300 other stories to visit during the two days of Garden Walk Buffalo.
What’s your garden’s story?

I am a published garden writer. As of today.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:10:25 -0400

In the current issue of People Places Plants, the Magazine for Northeast Gardeners (Spring 2008), I have my first published article written for a magazine. I now fully expect all rights and privileges, pomp and circumstance awarded to professional garden writers – you know, like full health benefits, with dental, and such.
The article itself, titled “Communicating Horticulturally,” is based on a handout I provide to guests to my garden during Garden Walk Buffalo. I won’t publish the whole article here, but it starts off like this:
Communicating Horticulturally  For centuries, plants have had special meanings attached to them. Of course, they’re just plants, and they’re only interested in communicating to pollinators. But still, you should read this first before you give that bouquet of tuberose or cornflower to the wrong person...
And then it goes on, obviously, to list flowers and the meanings we humans have given them over the years. By the way, tuberose is the flower of dangerous pleasure; cornflower represents celibacy. Don’t confuse the two.
You’ll have to buy the magazine to read the rest and the other great articles written by the other great writers - they only choose the best writers apparently.
In all seriousness, there is a very poignant article by Paul Tukey about Elisabeth Swain, wife of former Victory Garden host for 15 years, Roger Swain (the guy in the red suspenders). Elisabeth passed away in February, after a quick battle with cancer. Roger was part of HGTV’s People Places Plants TV series with Paul Tukey, publisher of People Places Plants, the magazine.
Elisabeth was a former dean at Harvard, retiring only seven years ago, and one of the producers of the HGTV television show. One of their three sons lives here in Buffalo. The Swains sat in the pew in front of me in church for an Easter service two years ago. I never got up the nerve to introduce myself – I didn’t think church was the right place to intrude and push Garden Walk Buffalo to them, although I would have loved to have met them both.
Back to me – isn’t there some kind revelry for my first published article? Does Kathy Purdy perform something like a knighting ceremony, but with a shovel? Does Jodi Delong write a proclamation/decree/poem/song? Is there an initiation ceremony held by Yvonne Cunnington? At the very least, can Susan Harris do a hippie-chick dance? (I’ve met Susan and I know she’ll do that at the drop of a hat for anyone, who asks, so it’s not so special.) Who alerts the Garden Writers Association?

Spring in Keukenhof

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:42:11 -0400

When they say it is the most beautiful spring garden in the world, they’re probably correct (although it seems that would need a disclaimer, most of us think OUR gardens are the most beautiful in spring). They also claim it’s the most photographed place in the world. That’s just as hard to prove. But when they say they have millions of bulbs in flower, THAT I believe.
It’s acre after acre of this sort of display. And that’s just outside. Inside the buildings are acres more!We took a bike & barge cruise through the Netherlands last week. We did a 20k bike ride into Keukenhof from the barge (most other days we biked 50k on the dikes & over canals from Amsterdam to Brugges, Belgium).The famous Keukenhoff Windmill
We’d been to Keukenhof before, eight years ago, so we sort of knew what to expect. We were a bit early for many of the bulbs to be in bloom, but the early bloomers - daffodils, hyacinths, grape hyacinths and early-blooming tulips, in addition to the forced bulbs inside the pavilions, more than made up for any tulips that hadn’t shown up yet.
The advantage the gardeners have here is the massive amount of blooms they get to plant. It’s one thing to plant my two dozen daffodils in my postage-stamp sized garden, it’s another to have hundreds of thousands of daffodils to plant (and the staff to get them planted).
Keukenhoff, in Lisse, Holland (not far from Amsterdam at all) is only open three months of the year, which is unfortunate, as the (mostly) English-style gardens, even without bulbs, are stunning. The sculpture throughout the park is something to behold, as are the other temporary displays they have scattered in the park, and inside the buildings. Keukenhof is in its 59th year of showing off its bulbs, originally starting in the 15th century as the herb garden for a nearby castle.
To see the rest of my Keukenhof photos, visit here.
For an interactive tour of the park from their website, visit here.Wish I had the space (and staff) to carry this off.

32,000 tomatoes from one plant. And that’s not the record.

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 17:27:44 -0400

Whilst touring Disney’s Land pavilion at EPCOT, I took the “Behind the Seeds” tour of the greenhouses. One of the more impressive of the plants being grown was this single tomato “tree” with tens of thousands of tomatoes growing on it. The guide did tell us that this particular plant came from seeds attained from China. And she told us the record at Disney was 36,000 tomatoes from one tree – but that was not the world record. That was held by a grower in China.
These are grown with hydroponics, using a substrate for root growth, but being constantly fed mineral nutrient solutions, rather than depend on soil. The guide gave each of us on the tour a tomato to taste. They tasted like, well, like tomatoes. The greatest advantage to growing hydroponically is not quality, or even space saving, it’s the increased rate of growth that makes it worthwhile. The tomatoes harvested here in the greenhouses get used at the restaurants throughout Disney World.

Chateau de Chaumont rock garden

Wed, 2 Apr 2008 08:00:37 -0400

International Garden Festival, Chateau de Chaumont No comment.
To see my original post about the Chaumont Garden Festival, visit here.

Cherries Jubilee!

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:11:11 -0400

Went down to Washington for a quick visit to see the cherry blossoms in person for the first time. It was really the first week that they start to bloom (official start date of the National Cherry Blossom Festival is Sunday, April 29), so many of the trees had a dark pink blush to them. It seems as though there’s a huge variety of cherry trees around, which I didn’t expect, and a few are in bloom now, but in another couple weeks, it should be smashing! The 3,000 trees were a gift from the mayor of Tokyo in 1921.
Favorite thing: The look & feel of the pale pink blossoms against the regal white marble of the Jefferson Memorial.