by GardenLover | Oct 24, 2012 | Gardens to Drive
Make Haunting Fall Memories
Cemeteries, such as Cincinnati’s Spring Grove, offer a quiet place to savor fall color.
By Michael Leach
Can’t make it to New England — or even a state park — for a fall foliage tour? Not to worry. A free show probably grows in a nearby city park or venerable cemetery.
Cemetery? Sounds scary to some, I suppose, but not me. Among pleasant childhood memories are those of quiet times with my grandmother, mother, sister and aunt in a well-tended, park-like cemetery near the Ohio River.
As we walked slowly from stone to stone, I heard stories about this uncle, that cousin and those family friends. My grandmother occasionally pinched a seed head from the potted plants. She sowed the seeds in her crazy quilt back garden not far from the cemetery.
Not everyone has such memories but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a few using your gardening passion as a guide. Besides the appealing stillness found in most cemeteries, the trees can be award winners.
Two historic cemeteries I occasionally visit boast state champion trees, the largest known specimens. Cemeteries are tree-friendly places with few plagues of urban life to stunt or damage. Seeing a giant makes it easier to understand why some people worship trees.
My favorite cemetery is Spring Grove in Cincinnati. One of the loveliest places I’ve seen, Spring Grove is like a sculpture park. In places it evokes English country estates with its enormous trees, grassy grounds and “follies,” such as a small Greek temple beside a placid pond. Never mind these structures are mausoleums. The names here, such as “Proctor” and “Gamble,” read like a who’s who of Cincinnati.
But most cemeteries offer similar combinations of art, history, genealogy, nature, quiet — and fabulous fall color. Go see for yourself.
by GardenLover | Oct 17, 2012 | Gardens to Drive
Check Out These “Smashing” Pumpkin Events
Circleville Pumpkin Show (Photos by Jack Mader)
By Teresa Woodard
This weekend, the Circleville Pumpkin Show will celebrate all things pumpkin with giant pumpkin weigh-ins, a super-sized pumpkin pie and plenty of pumpkin-flavored foods. This small central Ohio town of 13,000 expects 400,000 visitors for its106th annual pumpkin show, October 17-20.
The show kicks off with a weigh-in among area pumpkin growers vying for a coveted giant pumpkin trophy and perhaps a shot at breaking the world record set earlier this month when a Rhode Island pumpkin grower broke the one-ton mark with his 2,009-pound pumpkin at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts.
Weigh-in at Circleville Pumpkin Show
No doubt, this season’s drought conditions presented challenges for many Midwestern pumpkin growers. A recent story in the Columbus Dispatch reports the drought reduced the number and size of pumpkins in many Ohio patches, but the summer’s abundant sunlight also produced more-attractive pumpkins. And growers who irrigated their crops have both better-looking and bigger pumpkins to offer this year. Two Midwestern states, Illinois and Ohio, are among the country’s top pumpkin-producing states with Illinois ranking #1 as home to Libby-branded pumpkin products and Ohio ranking #3, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
To learn more about giant pumpkins, check out these resources:
by GardenLover | Sep 12, 2012 | Gardens to Drive
By Teresa Woodard
Yes. Gardening is a lot of work – watering, weeding, planting, and trimming, but it’s the gardening joys that make the sweat and dirty fingernails worthwhile. Take inspiration from these three examples. My husband’s 90-year-old grandmother plants an ever-flowering mandevilla vine at her mailbox to bring cheer to the neighbors in her senior community. 
Here, I’ve grown zinnias from seed since I was 10, so I love sharing bouquets of my favorite blooms with others.
And look how this “pothole gardener” is cleverly spreading goodwill in East London.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK0N9aaXRGY]
by GardenLover | Aug 21, 2012 | Gardens to Drive
By Debra Knapke
We have a rule in our house – which I don’t always follow: if I buy a book I must have a place to put it. Libraries are one of our greatest institutions as I can’t buy all the books I want, but I can borrow them and peruse them over a cup of tea.
I just took out two delightful summer fare books, You Bet Your Garden Guide to Growing Great Tomatoes by Mike McGrath and Locally Grown: Portraits of Artisanal Farms from America’s Heartland by Anna Blessing.
McGrath’s book on tomatoes is perfect for the beginner gardener. There are portraits of individual tomatoes and a list of “Top Tomatoes” that will get your mouth-watering for these popular heirlooms. All aspects of tomato culture are covered in easy-to-digest prose. The sidebars cover related issues such as soil prep, tomato cage specifications and how to figure out when and how much to water. Plus, there are many small tidbits of information that all gardeners know after years of trial and error (isn’t that what gardening is all about?) If you’ve been waiting for a compact and informative how-to on tomatoes, this is it.
In Anna Blessing’s book, I embarked on an armchair journey of family farms that supply many restaurants in Chicago with fresh, locally grown and raised food. The recipes alone attracted me as I flipped through this book in the library. But I was also fascinated in the stories of the farmers who have committed to growing fruits, vegetables and herbs and raising animals in a respectful, responsible and sustainable way. I have written down some of the recipes and noted some of the restaurants for our next trip to Chicago. This time we will know where to eat.
by GardenLover | Jul 24, 2012 | Gardens to Drive
Clearwood (Pilea pumila)
By Michael Leach
Without a bit of fanfare, at least one North American native plant is retaking ground covered by that odious invader — garlic mustard.
Clearweed, Pilea pumila, which grows throughout the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., has evolved resistance to garlic mustard and is striking back. Garlic mustard succeeds so well because it produces sinigrin, a chemical that kills fungi needed by native plants to extract nutrients from the soil. This chemical warfare gives garlic mustard an enormous advantage.
Garlic mustard
I learned about this encouraging development from a periodic news wrap up from the Garden Writers Association. A story about the University of Georgia study appears in the American Nurseryman http://www.amerinursery.com/blog-2957.aspx.
The article quotes Richard Lankau, the study’s author: “The implications of this study are encouraging because they show that the native plants aren’t taking this invasion lying down.” He adds, “If you were to take a longer view … exotic species could become integrated into their communities in a way that is less problematic for the natives.”
Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, it turns out some native plants are take-over thugs, too. In a recent Ohio State University Extension newsletter I read about the enchantingly beautiful American lotus. I saw some flowering along a Virginia roadside recently and was instantly captivated.
The native lotus is listed as “threatened” in Michigan and “endangered” in Pennsylvania and New Jersey — but it’s banned in Connecticut and included on the state’s invasive plant list.
Go figure. Nothing is 100 percent when it comes to plants.
by GardenLover | Jul 20, 2012 | Gardens to Drive
Pierce’s Park in Baltimore, Maryland
By Teresa WoodardOn a recent family getaway to Baltimore, Md., I was reminded of the appeal of public children’s gardens for kids of all ages. Even our teens loved the willow tunnel at Pierce’s Park near the city’s inner harbor. Here’s a list of favorite children’s gardens to explore in the Midwest:
- Bookworm Gardens (Sheboygan, Wisc.) — Literary ties with an alphabet flower garden, a Secret Garden, a Hansel and Gretel style cottage, a Peter Rabbit vegetable garden, a sunflower house and a Magic Treehouse.
- Children’s Discovery Garden at Wegerzyn Gardens (Dayton, Ohio) — Don’t miss the new maze by willow sculptor Patrick Dougherty.
- Children’s Garden at Morton Arboretum (Lisle, Ill.) — Secret streams, colossal acorns for climbing, and giant tree root slides and more to play and explore the natural world.
- Frederick Meijer Gardens (Grand Rapids, Mich.) — A sensory garden, a Great Lakes garden, a fossil filled rock quarry, a labyrinth and a wetlands with a kid-sized beaver dam.
- Garfield Park Children’s Garden (Indianapolis, Ind.) — Colorfully painted tractor tires as raised beds, fun scarecrows and other clever ideas for vegetable gardening with kids.
Garfield Park Children’s Gardens, Indianapolis, Ind.
- Hershey Children’s Garden at Cleveland Botanical Gardens (Cleveland, Ohio) — A scrounger garden, cave, dwarf forests, worm bins, tree house and sensory-filled herb garden.
- Schnuck Children’s Garden at Missouri Botanical Gardens (St. Louis, Mo.) — History comes to life with a limestone cave, a steamboat and a Midwestern prairie village.
- The Sisters’ Garden at Inniswood Metro Gardens (Westerville, Ohio) — A lovely blend of natural and constructed garden places.
- Smiley Park Children’s Park (Van Wert, Ind. ) — A Master gardeners’ project with a butterfly garden.
- Topiary Park (Columbus, Ohio) — A topiary interpretation of George Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on t
