About Ellen Park
Ellen Park has been gardening ever since she discovered playing in the dirt was more fun than digging in the sandbox. In her blog, Road Trips for Gardeners, she covers the world looking for plant-centric events, flower shows, great gardens and places to see the best things growing.
Recent Posts by Ellen Park
Pink Roses Are A’ Blooming in Indiana
April 28, 2012 by Ellen Park
Our intrepid photographer was stunned to find pink roses blooming in mid-April in Indianapolis, Indiana. She captured these blossoms in front of the Grand Hall at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Have you visited any rose gardens lately?
Arbor Day Celebration Events in Nebraska, Utah, Tennessee & Illinois
April 26, 2012 by Ellen Park
As the epicenter of Arbor Day celebrations, Nebraska City, Nebraska, celebrates with an entire weekend of festivities. The 140th annual fest takes place April 27 through 29, 2012. Look for free trees, commemorative tree plantings and a plant sale amid all the fun of a community festival.
Nebraska City was the home of J. Sterling Morton, who (with Robert Furnas, Nebraska governor), founded the Arbor Day celebration. According to Nebraska Studies, the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture adopted Morton’s resolution to create Arbor Day in 1872: a day set aside to plant trees. It was estimated that more than one million trees were planted in Nebraska on the first Arbor Day.
Now a national observance, Arbor Day is celebrated officially on April 22, Morton’s birthday.
J. Sterling’s son, Joy Morton (founder of the Morton Salt Company) created the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois in 1922. The 1,700-acre Arboretum has over 4,300 different species of trees, shrubs and other woody plants from around the globe.
The Morton Arboretum also celebrates Arbor Day with a full weekend of activities April 27 through 29, 2012.
Red Butte Garden, Utah’s Botanical Garden and Arboretum, celebrates Arbor Day April 27, 2012, with free admission from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the garden, 300 Wakara Way, Salt Lake City, Utah. There will be exploration stations throughout the garden, and visitors can take home a tree to plant in their own yards.
Arbor Day activities in Nashville, Tennessee, take place April 28, 2012, at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, 1200 Forrest Park Drive, Nashville, Tennessee.
Cheekwood, a certified Level IV arboretum, has more than 120 identified species of trees. On Arbor Day, there will be guided tours, art activities and demonstrations. In addition, each of the first 100 people through the gates will receive a free sapling.
There’s lots of information on trees at the Arbor Day Foundation.
(Photo courtesy of Morton Arboretum)
Georgia’s New Art in Bloom Event
April 19, 2012 by Ellen Park
If you happen to be in Georgia, you have a unique opportunity to catch a brand new event. Art in Bloom debuts at the LaGrange Art Museum, 112 Lafayette Parkway, LaGrange, Georgia, April 20 and 21, 2012.
The inaugural event is a celebration of fresh floral arrangements and fine art highlighting floral designer Margot Shaw, whose work will be on view next to the works of the art which inspired them.
For more information on the town, check out the LaGrange-Troup County Chamber of Commerce website.
(Photo of LaGrange’s Lafayette Square © Susan McKee)
Spring Bulb Show & Competition in Salt Lake City Utah
April 15, 2012 by Ellen Park
If you’re traveling with potted spring bulbs, bring ‘em along to the spring bulb show and competition set for April 21 and 22, 2012, at Red Butte Gardens at the University of Utah, 300 Wakara Way, Salt Lake City, Utah.
An unusual competition, this one requires no registration. Just bring flowering bulbs: narcissi, hyacinths, tulips, and minor bulbs such as galanthus, crocus, muscari, iris reticulata.
However, even if you just want to see other people’s flowers, if you’re wandering Utah this weekend, plan a stop. It’s part of the spring Bulbs & Blooms display, continuing through May 13, 2012. The garden includes 324,000 blooming bulbs: 170,000 daffodils plus a variety of mini bulbs such as crocus and iris.
Hours are 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. each day. Admission is $8 for adults and $6 for children and seniors.
For a look at the show, check this video.
Oregon’s Hood River Valley Blossom Festival
April 12, 2012 by Ellen Park
April brings a blanket of white to the orchards and hills of the Hood River Valley in Oregon. No, it’s not late spring snow, it’s the 58th annual Hood River Valley Blossom Festival.
Celebrating the annual explosion of blossoms in local orchards, the festival runs on the three weekends between April 14 and 29, 2012, with a host of special events and a self-guided tour of the Hood River Valley Fruit Loop, including more than 30 fruit stands, wineries, flower farms and U-pick stops.
Start in Hood River (map), and take a tour of the 35-mile loop in your car or on your bike. Check out the blueberry patches, cherry, apple and pear orchards and lavender and chestnut farms. Stop and sip wine, or check out the goods at a local fiber farm. Craft and quilt shows, pancake breakfasts, a pansy party, a grange blossom dinner and wine and beer tastings are all part of the fun.
(Photo courtesy of Hood River County Chamber of Commerce)
Nasturtiums and More in Boston at the Isabella Gardner Museum
April 12, 2012 by Ellen Park
Every April, 15- to 20-foot-long cascades of blossoming nasturtium vines are draped from the third floor balconies of the Courtyard at the Isabella Gardner Museum, 280 The Fenway, Boston, Massachusetts.
This tradition began during Isabella Gardner’s time, coinciding with the opening of the museum the week before Easter. Nasturtium vines, Tropaeolum majus, are grown from seed sown in late summer and are cultivated in the museum’s greenhouses through the winter in preparation for the spring display. The vines require continuous care to ensure their dramatic length. The day the nasturtiums are brought to the courtyard, as many as ten workers are required to hang them from the balconies.
In the courtyard garden below, azaleas, blue cinereria, ivory and cream daffodils, and Cymbidium orchids are placed against a background of green ferns, palms, tree ferns and Norfolk pines. The lemon and orange shades of Clivia miniata are complimented by Abutilon stiratum (flowering maple) flanking the steps and the statues. This is an experience for the senses.
The Clivia shown in the courtyard are very large old plants. The orange Clivia minata have been in the Gardner collection for over 40 years. The newer yellow-flowered specimens came from the nursery collection of Allen Haskell in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Yellow evergreen azaleas were coveted when August Kehr, a legendary plant hybridizer from North Carolina began his search for a hybrid. His first success was named informally Kehr’s ‘Unfinished Yellow’.
Isabella Gardner was an avid plant lover, and nasturtiums were one of her favorite flowers. They were grown at her greenhouses at Green Hill, her husband’s family estate in Brookline, as well as at her summer home in Beverly.
She first hung the nasturtiums from the balconies of the courtyard in preparation for a public viewing of the museum the week before Easter, and it soon became an annual tradition.
The timing of the display usually coincides with Gardner’s birthday on April 14.
The display was memorialized by the artist Arthur Pope in a painting from 1919 entitled “Nasturtiums at Fenway Court,” which now hangs on the first floor of the museum in the Macknight Room.
Gardner expressed her desire that only the orange-colored varieties be displayed in the museum, as she felt that color best complemented the pink walls of the courtyard.
(Photo courtesy of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)
Indiana: Old City Well Field Becomes Public Art-Filled Garden
April 12, 2012 by Ellen Park
Elkhart County Convention & Visitors Bureau
A small non-profit organization in Elkhart, Indiana has transformed the city’s well field, a water and hydraulic energy source since the mid-1800s, into a public, art-filled botanic garden. Wellfield Botanic Gardens, six blocks north of downtown Elkhart, encompasses 36 acres including 18 acres of water. It still serves as the city’s largest source of drinking water.
“The seed was planted when members of the Elkhart Rotary Club agreed to fund a master plan to create a botanic garden in the city’s urban center as a fitting tribute to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Rotary International taking place in 2005,” says Wellfield Botanic Gardens Executive Director, Eric Amt.
Now seven years later, this project boasts six themed gardens (with more than a dozen still planned); eight bronze, copper and steel sculptures crafted by noted artists plus event spaces. A Visitors Center is being built, and a Horticultural Center is planned to cooperatively work with the City’s Public Works’ mandate and the site’s natural attributes.
“Most public gardens are affiliated with a foundation, estate, as part of a municipality or attached to an institution; Wellfield is one of only a handful of public gardens supported by donations and modest admission fees,” says Amt. He adds that all the money donated so far has basically come from the Elkhart area. That in itself is remarkable considering that Elkhart is perceived as the white-hot center of the recession. Amt observes that there seems to be a community-wide hunger for a spiritual sense of place like the Gardens.
Themed events also generate interest and support for Wellfield. Two major public events are planned this year. Tulips & Tunes, an outdoor living marketplace combined with music, food and a display of 15,000 tulips takes place throughout the Gardens on May 5, 2012. Taste of the Gardens, a Gardens-wide event showcasing the works of regional artists and talents of area chefs and local musicians happens August 25, 2012.
Amt is enthusiastic about the future and says that if the same level of passion continues Wellfield Botanic Gardens can be one of the finest gardens in the Midwest within the next twenty years. You believe him when he affirms, “We’re just beginning!”
by Jackie Hughes
Royal Greenhouses in Belgium
April 10, 2012 by Ellen Park
It’s time to plan that trip to Belgium. The Royal Greenhouses will be open to the public from April 15, 2012, through May 8, 2012.
This is your only chance this year to get inside The Greenhouses in Laeken, Belgium — an Art Nouveau masterpiece that’s among the largest greenhouses in the world.
Designed by architect Alphonse Balat, with the help of his student Victor Horta, for King Leopold II, the greenhouses feature around 30 pavilions and a spectacular winter garden under a huge dome.
The site is open to the public just three weeks each year, making any visit just that bit more special. People go there as much for the beautiful architecture as the remarkable quality of the botanical collections. The tropical and subtropical plants include some of the world’s rarest camellias.
(Photo courtesy of Visit Flanders)
