Studio G has a nice post today about a rooftop garden in New York City with some turned-up decking. It made me remember this 2007 photo, which I took in front of the city hall in Paris.
Category: garden design
A-s-c-l-e-p-i-a—
I walked by the White House a few weeks ago to look through the fence at the famous vegetable garden. Then I took a further look around and realized that all of the ornamental beds and pots on public view, on all sides of the house, were planted out in red wax begonias.
Just wax begonias combined with dusty miller.
And I thought, “seriously?”
I know they’re tough and look neat and give reliable color and my feet were hurting from too much walking, but how dull.
The kitchen garden looked fine and huge kudos, but next year, would it not also be educational for D.C. schoolchildren to learn to spell ‘Asclepias tuberosa‘ — as they tuck them in around the fountains with maybe some native switchgrass and goldenrod* — or even the family to which it belongs, ‘Apocynaceae‘ (formerly thought to be ‘Asclepiadaceae‘), and its subfamily, ‘Asclepiadoideae.’
Or maybe just the word ‘perennial,’ which I have to let spellcheck fix every time I write it.
* and even some scarlet rose mallow (Hibiscus c-o-c-c-i-n-e-u-s), which was planted at the Old Executive Office Building and looked great. (Addendum: I’m now thinking it could have been this.)
Glimpsed in Brussels
. . . these oversized flower pots near the Brussels Central railway station, a couple of weeks ago.
A little more Bloomsbury
I didn’t make it to the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens on this trip*, but the British Museum was (and is, til November 25th) holding an exhibit, “North American Landscape: Kew at the British Museum” on its West Lawn. Admission is free.
The website, here, has a video of the installation and a slideshow of the plants featured.
I loved these flower finials atop a rather stately iron gate on Montague Street, not far from the British Museum.
Looking on Google’s satellite image for the street, the gates seem to be the entrance to a large shared garden on the inside of the entire block.
More steps, Washington, D.C.
Here’s another steps/ramp (driveway) combination that I snapped during our recent travels — at the back of DACOR Bacon House, an historic former residence a couple of blocks from the White House in Washington, D.C.
I like the mix of old brick and pebbly concrete.
BELOW: In front of a D.C. office building, I also spotted this nice solution to those sharp planting bed corners that are always bare dirt because people cut across them.
enclos*ure 