Color on Victoria Embankment

One of my favorite gardenesque gardens is on London’s Victoria Embankment between Waterloo Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridge.  With my office on this street I had an excuse to walk through this garden often and was never disappointed. 

Victoria Embankment is one of London’s busiest streets; it follows the Thames river.  This garden is easy to miss, with only a few gates leading to the long but narrow space off of Victoria Embankment.  The edges are soft with trees and shrubs planted organically; paved paths divide the narrow garden in half.   A high brick wall shelters the garden from the gritty, noisy street to the south and the busy Embankment tube stop that sits at one end of the garden.  In the garden, the contrast in the sound level is most dramatic and welcome.

Opened in 1865 with a design by Joseph Bazelgette, the garden provides a series of rectangular garden beds that change year round.  The photos above from spring show designs typical of the gardenesque style.  Notice how the planting scheme amplifies the beauty of the individual plant specimens.  It doesn't try to arrange them as them might appear in nature. 

This garden provides great ideas for combining colors.

See other gardenesque examples here.

Orchid lovers wanted

I am sitting here on a snowy Wisconsin winter day appreciating the blooms on a Phalaenopsis (Moth) orchid that a friend gave me last week and a fresh shoot emerging from an Oncidium Hilo Gold orchid that my dad gave me over Thanksgiving.  These amazing plants remind me of an escape I made to Singapore’s Botanic Garden.  Singapore lies almost directly on the equator.  As a result it has no seasons.  Temperatures are almost always 80° F (28° C) and it gets 92” of rain every year.  For comparison, England, the “perfect” gardening climate, averages 34” of rain and average temperatures of around 50° F (10° C).

In terms of weather, be careful what you wish for.  I spent quite a bit of time in Singapore for business and learned that most people there neither have nor want a garden. It’s just too hot and humid all the time to either enjoy gardening or to sit outside for more than ten minutes. When I did break away from an air-conditioned conference room to the Botanic Garden to charge up on sunshine and warmth, I was uncomfortably drenched within 15 minutes.  Humidity is regularly over 90%.  I am told that your body gets used to it, and that visitors like me sweat more than locals do.

For the orchid lover, the National Orchid Garden boasts the largest display of orchids with over 600 species and has dedicated spaces for hot sun, shade, and cold.  It is an embarrassment of riches with so many orchids in their prime.  Looking closely, many are in individual pots covered in mulch so that when they are spent, they can be rushed back to the greenhouse for R&R, replaced by a fresh compatriot.  There is never a bad time to visit this garden. The hoop pergola covered with blooming oncidiums is stunningly over the top.

As with many botanic gardens, Singapore’s is a marriage of a picturesque frame – curving paths, naturalistic lakes, clusters of trees - and the gardenesque style – where the beauty of individual plants is celebrated. 

Gardenesque was advanced by John Claudius Loudon who wrote Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton, Esq.  in 1840.  In it he explained, “the aim of the gardenesque is to add to the acknowledged charms of the [picturesque], all those which the sciences of gardening and botany, in their present advanced state, are capable of producing…. According to the gardenesque school, … all trees and shrubs planted are arranged… as may best display the natural form and habit of each…”

 

For those of us trying to grow our own orchids, check out "My first orchid reblooms: from Margaret Roach's blog Away to Garden for practical, straight-forward advice. 

The American Orchid Society also has wonderful resources.  Warning, orchids can be addictive.

Tulipmania

It's tulip planting season!  Tulips, native to south eastern Europe and the middle East, have been refined over the last 400 years by the Dutch.  This is no where more evident than in a special garden, Keukenhof which was originally part of a 15th century castle. The name translates to mean "the kitchen garden". Though quite a bit bigger than the name suggests, it claims to be the largest flower garden in the world at 79 acres.  It is built around a picturesque garden installed in 1850's with curved paths, a naturalistic lake, and clusters of mature trees.  Unlike a traditional picturesque garden designed to mimic ideal nature, this one is dedicated to showing off roughly 7 million tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths in line with the gardenesque style.  This garden is full of show stopping combinations.  It's open only a few weeks each year.  In the meantime, happy planting!