Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is the 15th of every month. To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens today, check out May Dreams Gardens.
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Filed under African gardens, garden design, landscape, nature, our garden, plants, Rwandan gardens
The Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy is in the midst of a campaign to win $75,000 from the “Partners in Preservation” $1 million giveaway in the Washington, D.C., metro area. The giveaway is sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.
You can vote for the DO Park HERE* every day through midnight on May 10.
(And voting enters you in a contest to win a three-night stay at a Marriott hotel.)
Dumbarton Oaks Park (not to be confused with the adjacent Dumbarton Oaks Gardens) is one of the masterworks of landscape architect Beatrix Farrand.
In 1928, she composed the park as a series of paths and meadows along a small tributary of Rock Creek and had them planted out with drifts of native and exotic wildflowers, bulbs, and woodland shrubs. Eighteen waterfall dams, two arbors, and several benches and footbridges were built in the rustic Arts and Crafts style.
Even with many years’ damage, the artistry of Farrand’s stonework shines through.
Sadly, the 27-acre park has suffered greatly from lack of sufficient resources since 1940, when it was turned over to the National Park Service. However, in 2010, the Conservancy was formed to restore the park to its former glory by raising money and fielding teams of volunteer “weed warriors.”
Beatrix Farrand was America’s first female professional landscape architect and one of eleven founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Participants at a recent conference on her work lauded her as a “scientific-minded experimenter, an early proponent of native plants, a leader in ‘pre-ecological design,’ an expert in stormwater management, and a flexible and innovative designer who mastered numerous styles,”reported The Dirt, the blog of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Please vote and spread the word! The $75,000 will repair the park’s stonework at the east falls dam and viewing platform.
*The first time you go to the site, don’t click ‘vote’ right away. Go to ‘log in’ and register. Then, you’ll receive an e-mail asking you to confirm your address. Then you can log in and vote. It takes a couple of minutes, but you’ll be able to vote in seconds for the next five days. (You must be a legal resident of the U.S. to be eligible to win the free stay in a Marriot hotel.)
Flowering pear trees in midtown Manhattan, New York City, April 2013.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning. . . .
– William Wordsworth, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802“
When we arrived back in Washington, D.C., in the first week of April, I enjoyed the flowers of the tulip magnolias. They were practically the only blooms in the still wintery landscape.
Although I believe what I was calling ‘tulip’ magnolias were really saucer magnolias (Magnolia x soulangeana), which are a hybrid of tulip or Mulan magnolia (M. liliiflora) and Yulan magnolia (M. denudata).
At DACOR-Bacon House, about two blocks west of the White House, I took a lot of photos of two magnolia trees that are planted at the tops of retaining walls, so that the lower blooms are right at eye level.
One of the best places in Washington to enjoy this tree blooming (or leafed out and casting shade) is the Moongate Garden of the Smithsonian’s Enid A. Haupt Garden.
And that Washington flower, the pink magnolia tree, blooms now
In little yards, its trunk a smoky gray. And soon the hybrid azaleas,
So much too much, will follow, and the tender lilac. . . .
– James Schuyler, “Hymn to Life“
Filed under American gardens, nature, plants, poetry, Washington, D.C., gardens
Our garden, April 22, 2013.
The seeds are probably from the pictured Pyrethrum daisies (pictured), which may be feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium).
Filed under African gardens, nature, our garden, plants, Rwandan gardens, working in the garden
