What if everyone adopted a tree, photographed it, cared for it, named it and worked to ensure that it was appreciated? Los Angeles artist Joel Tauber's new show, Sick-Amour, opens at the Susanne Vielmetter Gallery in Culver City, CA in which he showcases a once-forlorn sycamore tree that's stranded amidst a sea of asphalt in the Pasadena Rose Bowl parking lot.

The exhibit includes a documentary film, a video installation and information on Tauber's effort to protect the tree permanently.
"I think of it as a modern, video 'Walden, but not out in the wilderness, out in a parking lot," Tauber tells the Los Angeles Times.

To see a photo of the tree, click here.




Posted by Degen in General

If you need some tough plants for hot humid climates, then look no further than the 2007 winners of Georgia's Gold Medal Plants program. The non-profit group (industry-funded however) has just announced its five top choices for plants that can survive a sticky summer. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

1. Thuja standishii x plicata 'Green Giant'": This fast-growin g evergreen (60' tall x 20' wide) makes a beautiful screen or windbreak. (Sold by Fast Growing Trees)



2. Second choice is the gorgeous yellow Rhododendron 'Admiral Semmes' (Sold by Dodd & Dodd Native Nurseries)



3. Hibiscus coccineus boasts one of the most glorious flowers ever. It needs a lot of water but it's worth it for that blood-red bloom.

(Photo: Petrichor/Flickr)

4. Another fiery red bloomer, Odontonema strictum is a great plant for attracting hummingbirds and butterflies in the late summer and fall. But Dinesh Valke, who took this lovely photo, warns that deer love it.



5. A more hardy version of the fast-growing Asian jasmine, Trachelospermum jasminoides 'Madison'. (Sold by Wayside Gardens)



Posted by Degen in General

Archinect interviews Julia Bargmann of D.I.R.T. (Dump It Right There) Studio, self-professed loudmouth and one of the biggest proponents of remediating industrial landscapes without completing erasing them:

"There are so many people working out there who only show the community a menu of idealized landscapes - they don't even give them a chance to respond to the industrial landscape itself. When I was in Chicago, I asked, 'Have you taken Mayor Daley to see these quarries, basins and landfills?' Revealing these landscapes makes some people incredibly nervous. At the Mayor's Institute, what you hear is: they're ugly, they're blight, degraded, useless. But if you asked the current generation, they might use the word 'cool,'" says Bargmann.

Want to learn more about this type of work? Check out these examples: Dulsberg-Nord Country Park in Germany, William McDonough's plans for the Ford Rouge Plant in Michigan, artist Mel Chin's phytoremediation project, and Bargmann's own designs for Urban Outfitters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (plans pictured below).

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Posted by Degen in Landscape Design

Turf takes some deserved dings this week from two wonderful writers:

"Every fall, we are out there, trying to reattach the face of respectability to our properties and our lives by patching, overseeding or completely redoing the ever-failing lawn. Seeking, in sum, to sustain the unsustainable" -- the Washington Post's Adrian Higgins on alternatives to traditional turf, including a buffalo grass variety called 'Legacy'.

Turf, "an exotic crop ill-adapted to most American climates," is now the "largest irrigated 'crop' in the United States," writes Michelle Nijhuis in the San Francisco Chronicle. Her nicely reasoned piece charts the costs and benefits of lawns in the West and the move toward xeriscape (drought tolerant) gardens.



Still, want to keep all your lawn? The least you can do is wean it off chemicals. Canadian Gardening has the tips to make it happen.

Previously: Having a Lawn and Going Green at the Same Time
No Need to Mow the Fake Lawn
New Books: American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn

Posted by Degen in General

A love of plants roots me in my own garden, but it is also instills in me a rootless wanderlust to see the plants of the world, whether growing in habitat or shining forth in someone else's breathtaking garden.

Crarae Garden in Scotland is the latest to beckon me. "This woodland garden is as famous for its fabulous planting as for its setting, which Roy Lancaster has compared to a gorge in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas," writes Vivian Russell in the Telegraph.

Start by Grace, Lady Campbell in 1912 and part of the National Trust for Scotland since 2002, it includes a National Collection of southern beech (Nothofagus), over 400 varieties of rhododendron, and many large wellingtonias, redwoods, cryptomerias and rare Picea koyamae spruces.

Fall, continues Russell, "is when the garden is at its most glorious. Great swathes of gold and crimson foliage light up the spaces between the dark, brooding conifers, silver eucalypts and evergreen rhododendrons."







Posted by Degen in Gardens To Visit

A 73-year-old Delta Airlines retiree, Alexander Eframo, is the subject of complaints from neighbors for xeriscaping her West Jordan, Utah yard. "West Jordan City officials will not say how many neighborhood complaints and official warnings have been filed against her, only that the list covers a couple pages in her file," writes the Salt Lake Tribune's Glen Warchol.

Ironically, Eframo has been caught in the middle of the city's hypocritical policies. "West Jordan is in conflict with itself. The city promotes water conservation, yet they have ordinances that require large amounts of grass," says State Senator Chris Buttars.

But some locals simply think the problem taht Eframo's xeriscape yard is badly designed. "She's just kind of leaving what is there and planting within it," says David Rice, conservation programs manager for the Jordan Valley Conservancy District.

The message here: If you want to buck the green tide (i.e. lawns), you better do it well.

Posted by Degen in General

Fred Tomaselli--the artist known for putting drug pills in his collage works (he was part of the recent Ecstasy show)--is going a lot more organic in his latest works. His new paintings include pressed leaves from his garden, reports the New York Times (online subscription only).

''I think that's when the work started getting good,'' Mr. Tomaselli said, ''when I started acknowledging the importance of endeavors like gardening. You need to be open to the way your life works and not deny it. It makes the work better.''

He's been a gardening enthusiast most of his life, but admits he got into it by first growing pot. ''Then I started growing tomatoes to hide the pot. Then I started getting into all of these cool vegetables camouflaging the pot. Then I started growing flowers.''

Today, he gardens in a small backyard in Brooklyn that includes two carefully tended fig trees. Leaves from the trees, which were first planted by the home's previous owner in the 1930's, are included in "Migrant Fruit Thugs" (pictured below):


The exhibition of Tomaselli's work is on display now through November 11 at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea, NYC.


Posted by Degen in General

-----Pollinators may be in sharp decline in the United States. The research is clear that North American honeybees are suffering population declines, but butterflies as well as bats (two out of three species in the U.S. are endangered) are also faring poorly. The news has negative implications for agriculture, native vegetation and horticulture. Via Reuters.

-----Scientists have discovered that two types of monkeyflower, red and yellow, are pollinated by different animals: hummingbirds and moths. Too bad the article doesn't make clear if the two monkeyflowers are different species. But the piece is interesting, especially speculation that increasing hummingbird populations (who knew these little guys were on the rise?) will favor one type of monkeyflower over the other.

-----Enterprise Rent-A-Car pledges $50 million over 50 years to replenish national forests to fund tree plantings through the National Arbor Day Foundation.

-----Actor and environmental supporter Leonardo DiCaprio is putting together a reality makeover series, E-Topia, that will show a depressed American town being turned into an eco-friendly community.

----In one corner, an endangered wildflower. In the other, pampered dogs. As the Contra Costa Times reports, dogs owners are upset over plans to close part of an Oakland park in order to protect the Presidio clarkia, C. franciscana, which grows in just two locations in the Bay Area. "It's overkill," said Peter Levy, an Oakland resident who brought his yellow Labrador, Lola, to the area last week to fetch tennis balls. "We should protect endangered species, but aren't parks about recreation for the public?" Actually, overkill would be wiping out a unique species from the planet entirely.



-----Has anyone ever seen a dogwood bloom in the fall? A gardener in North Carolina is scratching her head over her dogwood blooming out of season. A fluke perhaps, but if it's a real genetic mutation, wouldn't it be cool to propagate?

-----More and more plants are changing hands online through sites such as craigslist, reports Minnesota's Star Tribune. Why didn't they mention the bustling trade in plants that happens on Ebay too?

Posted by Degen in General

The latest on (yuck!) diseases and infestations:

-----England's horse chestnuts are increasingly under attack. 50,000 or more of the country's trees are infected by bleeding canker and many are also blighted by the non-native leaf miner moth.

-----To win the fight against Japanese beetles, it helps to understand the voracious creature's life cycle.

----The USDA has successfully identified the two fungi that are responsible for beech bark disease.

-----First reported in Florida in 2002, pink hibiscus mealybugs continue to munch their way through the state.

-----CNN's Debra Alban gives a handy run-down of tree diseases, including some that mute the vibrant display of fall color.


Posted by Degen in Insects, Diseases, Etc.

It seems impossible to pick only ten great conifers--there are well over a thousand different cultivars--but the Telegraph's Ursula Buchan somehow whittled all the possibilities down to just such a list.

Seedhead doesn't have any quibbles with most of the choices, except for the glaring inclusion of Lawson's cypress, a completely overdone plant.

Picea omorika, Serbian spruce, one of Buchan's faves:

(Photo: Andiba/Flickr)

Note: National Conifer Week took place in the first week of October in the UK and Andrew Fisher Tomlin, chairman of the Society of Garden Designers, created three borders using conifers to promote the event. Click here to see his planting schemes.

Posted by Degen in Plants in Profile

OK, it's a gimmick of an idea for a garden column. How many people are really going to go out and grow all these weird plants just for Halloween? But it's hard not to be just a bit entertained:

-----The Albany Democrat-Herald's Sarah Robertson shivers at the thought of deadman's fingers (Decaisnea fargesii), Miss Wilmott's ghost (Eryngium giganteum) and ghost brambles (Rubus cockburnianus).

Don't get caught in the clutches of Decaisnea:


-----Black and deep red plants add up to a ghoulish container garden for the Houston Chronicle's Kathy Huber, including "silvery-veined, heart-shaped 'Black Velvet' elephant ears; wispy bronze fennel; reddish-gray ornamental kale and cabbage; 'Ace of Spades' sweet potato vine; purplish cordyline and the dark-chocolate Pseuderanthemum kewense." Other plants that provide scare tactics are 'Red Velvet' cockscomb--"a bizarre bloom that resemble a brain"--and bat-face cuphea, Cuphea llavea 'Bat Face' (pic below):


(Available through California's Plant Safari)

-----California's Hollister Free-Lance trembles at thought of ghost gum (Eucalyptus pauciflora) and deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) and suggests keeping a supply of garlic on hand, of course.

Seedhead would love more suggestions from readers for the scariest-looking or ghoulishly-named plants in the world. My top picks would have to be strangler fig and bat flower, Tacca chantrieri (pic below):


(Photo: Glovsky225/Flickr)

Posted by Degen in Plants in Profile

I used to love gooseberry pie when I was a teenager, but you don't see the fruit available that often for sale. Apparently, the plant's susceptability to disease (such as powdery mildew and white pine blister rust) has resulted in laws limiting its production.

But the fruit may become more widely grown, thanks to Ribes uva-crispa 'Jeanne,' a new disease resistant gooseberry. The USDA, which developed the plant, describes it as "a late-ripening, dark red, dessert gooseberry with an unknown mixed European/American gooseberry pedigree." Don't these look delicious?



Note: Grows in zones 3-8 but the taste of the fruit reputedly improves in more northern climes.

Posted by Degen in New Plants

Seedhead takes off to South Africa tomorrow for a six day trip and, while postings will be light, I hope to be able to put up a number of photos of the beautifully exotic flora of the Cape region during the journey.

The Cape region is the most diverse, unique area in the world in terms of plants: "The smallest (90,000 km2) yet most diverse of all the [floristic] kingdoms is the Cape Floral Kingdom . . . In an area less than one quarter the size of California, there are approximately 8,600 species, of which an astounding 5,800, or 68%, are endemic!" writes Michael L. Charters on his Wildflowers of South Africa website.

I've heard this said before and yet I still don't know if I'll believe it until I see it. Can't wait to pile on some exclamation points myself.

A baboon in the country's fynbos region:

(Photo: Cleita via Flickr)

Posted by Degen in General

For a shrub with brilliant fall color, try fothergilla, a genus in the witch hazel family with just two species, F. major and F. gardenii.

"After blooming fragrant ivory bottlebrushlike flowers in April and May, and growing beautiful shiny, dark-green foliage in the summer, they top that off with vivid autumn color. In addition, they are resistant to most diseases," writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Anita Joggerst.

Fothergilla 'Mount Airy', a selection with particularly good fall color:

(Photo: Kiddharma via Flickr)

Posted by Degen in Plants in Profile

It's always so inspiring to read about someone working hard to save plants from being lost. Scott Kunst, the rare bulb specialist behind Old House Gardens, "wanted to be a paleontologist" as a kid, writes Newsday's Irene Virag. But he ended up doing something not so far off.

"I feel like that's what I'm doing now . . . sifting through the dirt for forgotten things," says Kunst, whose mail order bulb supplier sells some bulbs that date back to the Middle Ages.

For a quick look at some other recommended Old House varieties--they only ship into early November--check out this Ann Lovejoy column from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Among her picks are 'Red Velvet' lily, copper-gold-orange 'Prinses Irene' tulip, and white 'L'Innocence' hyacinth.

Gladiolus byzantinus, Old House Gardens's bulb of the fall:

(Photo: van+s via Flickr)


Posted by Degen in Nurseries to Know

-----Australia's drought brings on a bucket shortage, as gardeners madly try to retain water any way they can.

-----Alex Baulkwill has been appointed the new Show Manager of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, happening next May 22-26. Via icangarden.

-----Toronto's green roof program isn't taking off as quickly as hoped.

-----It's been dubbed Arborgeddon. The all-things-green website Treehugger documents the recent early snow storm that turned Buffalo into the "City of Fallen Branches."

-----Irony of ironies: The proposed Prairie Parkway in Illinois is called a threat to prairie land. Via Citizens Against the Sprawlway.

-----The Columbian's Erik Robinson finds something nice to say about tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima). The question is: why?

Tree of Heaven (an invasive species on five continents):

(Photo: Dawn D via Flickr)

Posted by Degen in General

Seedhead used to be so ridiculously obsessed with architectural plants and exotics. Now I'm warming to composites, including asters.

The Telegraph's Ursula Buchan selects six of the best asters, including Aster ericoides 'Golden Spray', "a welcome change in hue, having heads of small, white flowers, tinged with pink, with conspicuous central golden discs."


(Propagated by Ontario wholesale grower Centre Commons Perennials.)

Want something beyond one writer's personal plant picks? Delaware's Mount Cuba Center, a nonprofit dedicated to Appalachian Piedmont natives, did a three-year study to identify the best native asters out of 56 tested, reports Virginia A. Smith in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The winner: Aster laevis 'Bluebird' or smooth aster (pic below): "big cones of rich violet-blue flowers and bright gold centers. It's a tall beauty, pest-free and vigorous."


(Part of the new American Beauties native plants collection.)

And here's a bit of nomenclature madness -- North American asters are no longer technically asters but have been reclassified into at least ten new genera -- which almost no one will ever remember.

Posted by Degen in Plants in Profile

Reading about ornamental plants that become invaders always gives Seedhead a sinking feeling. The tide seems impossible to stem, the natural areas too vulnerable. And, according to the Washington Post's Adrian Higgins, some plants may turn out to be pests only after a decade or more, much longer (I assume) than the typical trial period to test for invasiveness.

What's the latest surprise problem plant? The goldenrain tree, Koelreuteria paniculata (pictured below) -- "around for years" and "suddenly become a problem."


(Photos: Tim Waters via Flickr)

Posted by Degen in Invasives

Some lovely thoughts on seedheads, the tough, ingenious, often weird-looking pods and such that hold all the promise of gardening: "This time of year, beauty comes in shades of brown - paper-bag brown, golden brown, chocolate brown, inky brown - and with spikes and horns and a skeletal feel," writes Virginia A. Smith in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The following gave me a chuckle too. Seedheads, continues Smith, often exist to protect from predation: "It's been referred to as a kind of cold war between plants and creatures that eat seeds," says agronomy teacher Steve De Broux. "It's a constant struggle."


(Allium seedhead photo: Xerones via Flickr)

Previously -- New Books: Seedheads in the Garden

Posted by Degen in General

Growing your own apples is one of the few ways to experience the incredible, wide range there is to this wonderful fruit. In Victorian England, according to the the Times Online, the number of apple varieties numbered 6,000. Today, thousands have gone extinct, but efforts are underway to preserve them.

-----October 21, this Saturday, is National Apple Day in the UK sponsored by the group Common Ground, which works to save imperiled orchards, promotes tastings and even crowns a longest peel winner every year.



-----To get an idea of the amazing diversity of apples, visit the website of the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in the UK, which contains over 2,300 varieties of apples and is "thought to be the most comprehensive authenticated collection of varieties in the world."

-----For more on apple festivals in England, as well as info on choosing an apple tree to plant (early versus late, eating versus cooking), check out this article from the Scotsman.

-----This engaging profile of apple rescuer Lee Calhoun is a great read too. At age 72, he's working hard to preserve some of the South's rarest apples.

Calhoun "has driven hundreds of back roads looking for old apple trees, researched, identified and catalogued them, grafted, planted, written a book called Old Southern Apples and inspired and helped others to find and save older varieties. He's also donated and planted 400 varieties of heritage apples at the state's Horne Creek Living Historical Farm north of Winston-Salem, where they should be preserved forever," writes the Herald Sun's Beth Velliquette.

Many of his varieties are currently available through the North Carolina nursery, Century Farm Orchards.

-----Lastly, if you live in the colder zones in Canada or elsewhere, here's a helpful list of lesser known varieties that are super hardy (to zone 3), including Wealthy, Wolf River and Yellow Transparent.

Previously: Press Cuttings -- "A direct descendant of the tree under which Isaac Newton sat" grows at MIT
Previously: Press Cuttings -- Low Allergy Apple developed

Posted by Degen in Edibles

The curious but admirable trend of garden enthusiasts planting up unsightly public spaces in the dead of night continues to grow in the UK, reports This is Hertfordshire.

"I could have gone through all the red tape and got permission but I just decided to go ahead and do it. Sometimes actions speak louder than words," says Richard Reynolds, 29, who is "among a growing cult of green-fingered horticulturalists who stealthily tidy up neglected public spaces by night."

The police have questioned him a few times: "On one occasion I was reported because somebody thought I was stealing plants, another time I was suspected of making fertiliser bombs and I was questioned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act."

If you really want to start your day with a smile, go to the group's website. guerillagardening.org, where you can get tips for guerilla gardening and look at photos of "actions" from around the globe.

One of the group's latest forays:


UPDATE: Guerilla gardening makes its way to Richmond, Virginia for some night time planting last Friday the 13th.

Previously on Seedhead: Gardeners Without Borders
Press Cuttings: The Washington Post picks up on the guerilla gardening story.

Posted by Degen in General

-----A Japanese tea garden in California has just celebrated its 100th anniversary, and concurrently, Yoshimi Shibata, a second-generation (Nisei) flower grower whose parents started the garden, has published a memoir, Across Two Worlds: Memoirs of a Nisei Flower Grower.

"A garden is like a human being," writes Shibata of the Mt. Eden Nursery Tea Garden. "It will respond to whatever interest you put into it. It grows and matures as time goes on. ... As a Nisei, I am neither fully Japanese or fully American. I am a hybrid and so is my garden."

The garden, pictured below, is not open to the public but it should be:


-----A little look at taxonomy from the Croydon Guardian, which lists a few of the monotypic plant families that exist, including Garryaceae, Nelumbonaceae and Paeoniaceae. "I find these families quite fascinating; the plants within them must be so unlike any other type of plant that even the most assiduous botanist can find no links between them and those in other families," writes Sue Tasker.

-----Fall leaf color in trees is still somewhat of a mystery to scientists, reports the AP. The process by which yellow and orange colors are revealed in the fall has long been understood--diminishing chlorophyll allows yellow and orange carotenoiod pigments that are already in the leaf shine through--but the arrival of the color red is more perplexing. It "comes from anthocyanins, which unlike carotenoids, are only produced in the fall." Scientists still aren't sure why "a tree put its energy toward making new ruddy anthocyanins, just when the leaf is about to fall off" but they speculate it may be a way to deal with stress.

Posted by Degen in General

Do people that grow and market plants owe anything to the habitats where the plants originally grew?

Even if they don't ethically owe something, can't we imagine a day when wholesalers and growers are an integral part of the fight to help protect the ecosystems of mother stock around the world?

The latest story to touch on this controversial topic comes from Tanzania, where a campaign has been mounted against agribusiness giant Syngenta. The company is accused of profiting from a hybrid that naturally occurs in the country. The campaign claims that Syngenta, in its search to produce and market a true trailing Impatiens, is unfairly profiting from the country's natural patrimony.

"With great fanfare in April last year Syngenta launched the Spellbound Busy Lizzie. The company claimed that 'after many years of research' it had produced a Busy Lizzie that ?can achieve, at maturity, trails of 70cm (about 28 ins) masses of large flowers throughout the summer until the first frost,'" writes the Observer's Anthony Barnett. "It was a great commercial success and more varieties have been launched."

"But behind the marketing glitz and talk of magical creatures, an analysis of the British patent taken out by Syngenta for its new floral ?invention? reveals that Spellbound?s magical secret comes from a rare African plant, the Impatiens usambarensis. This grows in the unique ecological habitat of the Usambara mountain range in Tanzania, just south of Mount Kilimanjaro. In its patent Syngenta describes this plant as having 'no commercial significance'. Despite admitting that such hybrids happened naturally in Tanzania, Syngenta claimed that it had invented the new plant, and the British authorities granted the company a patent in February 2004," continues Barnett.

One of the groups on the forefront of fighting biopiracy is the international development agency ActionAid.

The plant at the center of the controversy, Impatiens 'Spellbound':


Posted by Degen in General

Here are a couple more great columns on selecting bulbs:

-----Pacific Northwest garden expert Mary Robson gives her list of bulbs that will grow and multiply through the years. "I've grown all the varieties listed here, and they persist!" she promises.

Among her picks are Crocus 'Golden Bunch', Narcissus 'Quail' and 'Flower Record', Tulips 'Pink Impression' and Single Late 'Menton', and a number of alliums.

The subtle 'Menton' tulip:

(Sold by Dutch Gardens.)

-----Don't want to follow the pack out there scattering bulbs for a ravishing spring display? Then consider a trove of autumn-flowering bulbs. Ursula Buchan, in the Telegraph, gives her list of the best bulbs for fall bloom, such Zephyranthes candida, "the only reliably hardy zephyranthes" (in the UK at least) and Crocus banaticus, "the so-called iris-flowered crocus."

Posted by Degen in General

Interested in epimediums, those surprisingly drought tolerant groundcovers with the elegant little heart-shaped leaves? Plant explorer Darrell Probst's Garden Vision nursery in Hubbardston, Massachusetts offers more than 170 species and varieties of the shade loving plants.

The spidery flower of E. x 'Baoxing Mist', a Garden Vision variety:


Trivia byte: Of the 44 species or so of epimedium, at least 36 have been discovered since 1975 (according to Flora: A Gardener's Encyclopedia.)

Posted by Degen in Nurseries to Know