Category: garden design

Bloom Day in May: Mugongo

Cindy at enclos*ure9 Comments

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My parents were visiting us last week, and we took an overnight trip to the north of Rwanda. We made a stop at Mugongo, the former home and plantation of long-time American resident Roz Carr, who founded Imbabazi Orphanage in 1994, reworking her old farm buildings.

You can read about Roz’s life in Rwanda, from 1949 to 2006, here.

The long English-style flower borders looked particularly colorful as we near the end of the rainy season. Among the many plants blooming were calla lilies, hybrid tea roses, crocosmias, cannas, calendulas, fuchsias, violets, ageratum, hydrangeas, borage, sedum, Santa Barbara and Shasta daisies, azaleas, irises, dahlias, begonias, and day lilies.

It is a credit to Roz’s good strong design and to the continuing dedication of the gardeners she trained that the garden is still so beautiful, almost eight years after her death.

Click here for more information about the Imbabazi Foundation and how to visit the Mugongo garden.

You can scroll through more (and larger) photos by clicking on ‘Continue reading’ below and then on any of the thumbnail images.

Thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day (the 15th day of every month). Continue reading “Bloom Day in May: Mugongo” →

Vintage landscape: New Orleans

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Vintage landscape/enclos*ure: Ursuline Convent, New Orleans, Library of Congress“Doorway and courtyard of the Ursuline Convent, New Orleans,” between 1920 and 1926, by Arnold Genthe, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Old Ursuline Convent was completed in 1753 in a French Colonial style.  It may be one of the oldest buildings in the Mississippi Valley. It was a convent only until the 1820s, however, when the nuns turned it over to the Bishop of New Orleans and moved to a larger place in Treme.

At the time of this photo, the building was a rectory for the adjoining church of St. Mary’s, the home parish for the area’s many Italian immigrants.  Today, it is part of the Catholic Cultural Heritage Center of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Vintage landscape: woodland teahouse

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Japanese teahouse, Library of Congress“Tea house in a woodland, Itsuku-Shima, Japan,” between 1890 and 1923, photographer unknown, via the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The garden may be on Itsukushima Island (now called Miyajima).

I’m sorry there was no Sunday porch two days ago; there was also no weekend internet service in our house.

What carols, like the blazon of a king,
Fill all the dawn with wonder?
Oh, hush,
It is the thrush,
In the deep and woody glen!

— Edwin Markham, from “A Lyric of the Dawn“

Vintage landscape: Meridian Hill Park

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Orpheus with his lute made trees. . .*

Vintage landscape/enclos*ure: Meridian Hill Park, D.C., 1976, via Library of CongressThe Linden Walk, Meridian Hill Park,* Washington, D.C., August 1976, by Jack Boucher for an Historical American Buildings Survey (HABS), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

This HABS has photos from 1976 and 1985. The report, which contains a very detailed description and history of the park’s design, was completed in 1987.

Unfortunately, the report notes that the linden trees shown above had to be cut down between 1976 and 1985 because they were threatening the 16th St. retaining wall (on the right side). They were replaced quickly, however, as you can see here.

The HABS report summarizes the importance of Meridian Hill Park this way:

One of the first public parks in the United States to be designed as a formal park, generally considered to be in the continental tradition, rather than in the “natural” mode associated with the English park; Meridian Hill Park was constructed [from about 1914 to 1936]. . . . Under the guidance of the Commission of Fine Arts, the park benefited from the finest criticism of the day. The technologically innovative use of exposed aggregate concrete provided a facsimile of the stone and mosaic masonry traditionally employed in the Italian Garden. The Park represents an effort in a democratic society to match the major European city park.

Today, the last Friday in April, is Arbor Day in many states in the U.S. The day was established to encourage people to plant and care for trees.

The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,
Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.

— Howard Nemerov, from “Learning the Trees“

*Meridian Hill Park is bounded by Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Euclid and W Streets, N.W.  The quote above the photo is by William Shakespeare, from Henry VIII.

Life in gardens: more pink

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Pink carnations via George Eastman Hse. on flickr“Girl with carnations,” ca. 1915, an autochrome by Charles C. Zoller, via George Eastman House Collection on flickr.

Zoller was an American from Rochester, New York, who worked in the first decades of the 20th century. The George Eastman House holds almost 4,000 of his autochrome plates.

Another wonderful photo of (April 1945) pink is here.