Irene Virag's Garden Party

A Gardener's Thoughts on GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

2010-01-05T08:10:00.000-08:00

I’ve always had a thing for George Washington Carver, ever since I did a report on him in the third grade and discovered a kindred spirit – or at least a man who knew what was important in life.

(Photo by Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1906. U.S. Library of Congress)

I mean I was nuts about peanuts and I loved sweet potatoes. George – who talked to plants and grew up to be director of agriculture at the Tuskegee Institute – knew a thing or two about some of my favorite foods.

He invented peanut butter – that would have been enough – as well as developing more than 300 other products from the lowly legume including ink, soap, facial cream and shampoo. On top of all that he also came up with more than 100 products from sweet potatoes and another 60 from pecans.

But it wasn’t until I became a gardener that I really grew to appreciate the man who actually turned down a $100,000-a-year salary – about a million dollars by today’s count – to work for Thomas Edison. George Washington Carver almost single-handedly saved agriculture in The Land of Cotton with his revolutionary method of crop rotation.

It was a simple idea that he actually convinced southern farmers to embrace – give soil depleted by nutrient-guzzling cotton a break by growing nitrogen-producing peanuts that restored the earth.

His method worked so well that before long Dixie was drowning in peanuts. So Carver went back in his lab at Tuskegee and his got-lemons-make-lemonade approach to life gave the world peanut butter -- and linoleum.

And then he discovered that sweet potatoes and pecans could also enrich the soil. So he found ways to turn them into synthetic rubber and postage stamp glue. When he started his research, the peanut wasn't even considered a crop. But he lived long enough to see it give king cotton a run for its money, becoming the Number Two cash crop in the South by 1940.

George Washington Carver -- a slave's son who preached soil conservation and crop rotation and counted Henry Ford, Gandhi, The Crown Prince of Sweden and Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as friends -- died on January 5, 1943 at the age of 78.

And so, I’ll sit down today with the seed catalogs that have been flooding my mailbox and plot out my vegetable garden. I’ll be sure to make plenty of room for my own favorite legumes – peas and beans and edamame – and I’ll remember to rotate my crops so my soil doesn’t wear out.

And then I’ll eat a peanut butter sandwich in George Washington Carver’s honor.

AND THE WINNERS ARE . . .

2010-01-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who entered my "Unplug the Holidays" contest this year. Here are my winners:

First Prize to Leeann Lavin of New Jersey,

who tweaked the holiday color scheme with lime green hypericum berries nestled among rich red roses and carnations.

Leeann also hung her stockings on the arms of silver plant cups filled with roses, carnations and seeded eucalyptus.

But she forgot to take pictures of the table designs she created with kumquats, Peruvian lilies and more hypericum berries surrounded with angel beeswax candles. I would have loved to have seen those.

And the outdoor displays Leeann designed from evergreens, birch branches and pine cones gathered from her yard were buried beneath the snow. You can't get any more natural than that.

Second Prize to Karen Siddiqi of Georgia,who wrote me this lovely note:

I'd like to enter my lampwork glass Christmas ornaments to the "Unplug the Holidays" contest. These really are "unplugged' in the sense that they were made using glass and fire. I'm still a beginner but I'll admit these made me smile not just because I managed to create something with fairly precise detail out of ooey gooey molten glass, but also because they marked the start of the Christmas season for me this year.

I was charmed by the decorations and decided that they not only qualified, but deserved a prize. I checked out Karen's blog, This Little Life of Mine, and found this entry about her handiwork:

"Yesterday, I had a late night inspiration for some ornaments and made these beads. I still have to get the ornament hangers to put on them, but I think they turned out pretty well. They're small -- maybe an inch and a half tall, but they're cute if I do say so myself! I think I'll try to make some today that are a smidge bigger, but I'm not sure if I can accomplish that in my unheated basement with a hothead torch (kind of a beginner's torch...my new one is on order!):"

And now that it's officially 2010, here's to a neater, greener new year.

MY GARDEN RESOLUTIONS

2009-12-31T19:45:00.000-08:00

Should last year's garden be forgot and never brought to mind . . .

Now that would be a sad state of affairs indeed. As for me, I'll toast the blooms of yesterday and pamper my orchids and plan this year's beds and heed this quote from Vita Sackville-West:

"The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing better than they have done before."

And so, here -- in no order of priority -- are my garden resolutions for 2010:

Buy plant labels and use them

Plant more hellebores

Create a "rain garden" in my backyard

Replace the Daphne Carol Mackie I lost years ago and still miss

Repot my orchids

Design a tree and shrub border that includes callicarpa and a Stewartia

Use sunblock religiously

Start vegetable seeds on time

Take more photographs

Build a cold frame for year-round veggies

Set up a rain barrel

Organize my garden tools

Keep up with my garden blog

Plant more alliums

Find the perfect climbing rose for my arbors

Be more conscientious about storing my dahlias

Transform my back-40 into a native plant habitat

Turn my mailbox area into a xeriscape

Weed out the clutter -- in and out of the garden

Stop and smell the roses -- the lilies too

Of course, what's really important is how many of these things I actually accomplish. But I'm a realist -- I make no promises. I'll do the best I can. It's fun just making the list.

I'm sure you have your own resolutions. I'd love to hear them.

THE TRUE MEANING OF WINTER MULCH

2009-12-27T09:19:00.000-08:00

From the questions I’ve been getting, I can tell there’s a lot of confusion about the real reason we mulch in winter. As tempting as it is to think that we’re tucking our cherished perennials under a cozy blanket of mulch to keep them warm through the Big Chill, that’s not the case at all.

Our plants don’t need protection from the cold. After all, the perennials in our gardens are hardy for our winters – that’s why we plant them. They require the period of dormancy that comes with the cold. By the way, it generally takes two or three hard freezes for plants to become fully dormant.

No, what our plants need protection from is the cycle of freezing and thawing that temperature fluctuations bring. These shifts can heave perennials from the ground and expose their roots and crowns to fatal damage when the weather turns cold again. That’s why we actually cover perennials with mulch in winter, unlike in summer when we spread the stuff around plants, but not on them. Summer mulch is another matter. But there’s plenty of time before we have to talk about that.

So, contrary to popular belief and maybe even logic, winter mulch is not intended to insulate plants from the cold. The true meaning of winter mulch is to hold in the cold.

Which is why you shouldn’t put it down too early – if the soil’s not cold, the mulch will only foster fungus and diseases. Besides, voles and mice and other creatures may still be on the lookout for warm winter digs. And if you mulch too soon, you won’t just be providing them with housing, you’ll be providing them with food as well.

And despite last weekend’s storm, you really can’t rely on snow – AKA “the poor man’s mulch” – to take care of things. In our parts, we just don’t get that much of it anymore. I mean, think back to when you were a kid – there was snow on the ground practically all winter long. Now that the white stuff has melted, tuck in any perennials that might have pushed out of the muddy muck. But don’t be fooled, it will get cold again. So cut a few branches off your Christmas tree and lay them over the garden beds. You'll be helping your perennials chill out.

UNPLUG THE HOLIDAYS -- There's Still Time

2009-12-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of the season, I'm extending the deadline for my "Unplug the Holidays" contest. So gather your greens and deck your halls and send me a photo of your favorite homemade decoration. In honor of the new year, the deadline is now January 1, 2010.

You have until midnight to submit your entry. You should include your name, mailing address, email address, daytime phone number, a brief description and the name of the person who created the decoration, if it’s not you. Photos will be posted on my blog.

Send entries to me at irene@irenevirag.com or 1019 Fort Salonga Rd., Suite 10 – #302, Northport, NY 11768.

First prize is an autographed copy of my sold-out book, “Gardening on Long Island with Irene Virag.” Second prize is a copy of "Christmas on Long Island," a collection of 25 postcards featuring holiday-themed photographs.

Have fun.

"UNPLUG THE HOLIDAYS" Contest: Enter A Photo of Your Natural Holiday Decoration

2009-11-29T21:33:00.000-08:00

Nowadays with the economy looking like a tomato attacked by anthracnose or a peony blighted by botrytis, and everyone worrying about winding up in the red, this is more than ever a holiday season for going green.

Or going back to what comes naturally. Like boughs of holly from your own backyard. Or rose hips or pinecones or a handful of juniper instead of more and more lights and over-the-top displays that suck up enough energy to keep a generator going for weeks.

And so, I’m announcing my second annual “Unplug the Holidays” contest. It’s easy to enter. Just make a wreath, create a centerpiece, garland the mantel, adorn the arbor, arrange evergreens – indoors or outdoors, as long as it’s an all-natural, or mostly natural, decoration. It has to be homemade – you can enter a friend’s handiwork but no store-bought designs.

Send me a color photograph and I’ll pick my two favorites. Believe me, it’s not easy. Check my blog from last year to see what caught my fancy. The deadline is Dec. 21. You have until midnight to submit your entry. You should include your name, mailing address, email address, daytime phone number, a brief description and the name of the person who created the decoration, if it’s not you. Photos will be posted on my blog.

Send entries to me at irene@irenevirag.com or 1019 Fort Salonga Rd., Suite 10 – #302, Northport, NY 11768.

Good Luck. And here’s to an unplugged holiday and a greener world.

CELEBRATE ST. FIACRE

2009-08-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

Miracles happen all the time in our gardens – just think about a seed or compost or a hyacinth bulb with its own embryo inside and the food to nourish it. Or the intricate wonder of a passion flower. So you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that we have our very own patron saint.

No it isn’t St. Francis. It’s St. Fiacre.

And today is his feast day.

We don’t make much of a fuss about him in this country, but in Europe – especially in Ireland, where he was born, and in France, where he died – there are hymns and floats and floral displays in his honor.

Which makes sense. As is the case with a lot of gardeners I know, St. Fiacre (pronounced fee-ah-kruh) was an interesting character whose life was tied to the land. He was born in Ireland late in the Sixth Century and could have followed in his father’s footsteps as a tribal chieftain. Instead, he disdained power for peace and entered a monastery on the banks of the Nore in County Kilkenny, where he immersed himself in the pursuit of what seems to me an ideal combination – gardening and the classics.

Fiacre’s fame as an herbalist and healer flourished and soon followers flocked to him. He took off for France in search of solitude and a place to sow. He found both thanks to the Bishop of Meaux, who gave him a quiet spot in the woods where the monk built a hermitage and planted a garden. But the people came and eventually, Fiacre asked the bishop for more land so he could feed the hungry and heal the sick.

As the legend goes, the bishop said Fiacre could have as much land as he could dig up in a single day. The monk prayed for guidance and the next morning all he had to do was drag his spade across the earth. Trees toppled, bushes and briers were uprooted, trenches appeared and stones fell away. Word of the miracle and the monk’s charity spread. Before long, the future saint was nurturing a hospice and monastery and a great garden in what would become Saint-Fiacre in Seine-et-Marne, a small farming village not far from Disneyland Paris.

There are other things you should know about St. Fiacre, who died in 670. It saddens me to report that he was a confirmed misogynist – even though his oratory honored the Virgin Mary. He barred females from his commune after a suspicious woman reported his unorthodox tilling technique as witchcraft. His aversion to women is believed to be the reason he’s also known as the patron saint of victims of venereal disease. Really, I’m not making this up.

And in a fitting twist, centuries later, one of his most ardent followers was Anne of Austria, the Queen of France, who credited his divine intervention with curing her husband, Louis XIII, of a life-threatening illness. In thanksgiving, she made a pilgrimage by foot to his shrine at Meaux in 1641.

Oh, he’s also the patron saint of cabbies because hackney carriages for hire in 17^th century Paris piled their trade from the Hotel Saint-Fiacre. In time, the cabs were called fiacres and the saint had someone else to watch over.

But it's said that the prayerful monk who craved solitude was happiest alone, digging in his garden. I can relate. When it comes to gardening, a little help would be divine.

THE DOG DAYS ARE HERE

2009-07-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

As if the almost 40 days and nights of rain we’ve been enduring haven’t been enough. I mean, the roses are mush, the lilies are drowning, the tomatoes are just sitting there wondering what happened to the sun. And now come the Dog Days of Summer. Which means 40 days of sultry cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof weather.

At least that’s what the ancients believed.

It’s all in the stars, you see. The Dog Star to be exact. That’s the moniker the ancients gave to Sirius, the alpha star in the constellation Canis Major that is actually the brightest star in the night sky. It really dominates the heavens in summer when it rises and sets with our own sun, two hydrogen-fusing hotties travelling together through the daytime sky. The blue-tinged white-hot Dog Star can even be seen with the naked eye in daylight – and if conditions are right, it literally twinkles with bursts of color.

This alignment of the sun and Sirius is known as conjunction, and it is the span of 20 days before and 20 days after the star’s rising that the Romans – who always did have a way with words – called caniculares dies. Ergo, the dog days of summer were born.

Of course the precise dates vary depending on the latitude of the observer and this is complicated even further by an astronomical oddity known as “precession of the equinoxes” – or the drift of the constellations due to the changing tilt of the earth. Which means that sooner or later the dog days of summer – believe it or not –may actually occur in the dead of winter. But that doesn’t seem to frost anyone. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the dog days as July 3 to August 11, and besides, what’s the point of trying to teach an old dog new tricks?

One thing’s for sure – there’s no escape. Unless of course, if you’re my friend Melissa Berman’s dog, Nemo, a mixed breed stray who came home from Tobago with her and spends his days romping in the surf at Montauk. Yes, it is a dog’s life.

(Photo by Melissa Berman)

But for most of us the dog days of summer are more of a bitch than a day at the beach. I guess it’s never easy dealing with climate change. The ancients dreaded the sultry months because they brought disease and discomfort, spoiled food and failed crops. Chaos reigned. “The seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics and phrensies,” according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, published in 1813. It was all due to the Dog Star – so they sacrificed a brown dog to appease the wrath of Sirius. But they better not mess with Nemo.

Given the fact that Sirius is twice the size of our sun and 20 times as luminous, it’s no wonder that the ancients got it in their heads that the combined heat of the two fiery stars was responsible for the scorching temperatures of summer. Heck, the Greeks dubbed the star that we now know to be 8.6 light years away Sirius, after the word seirios, or “scorching” – and in Latin, the name means “the searing one.”

You could say Sirius is the original hot dog. The star has multi-cultural connections to the canine world. The Egyptians named it Sothis after a mighty and feared goddess who heralded the flooding of the Nile and was symbolized by hunting dogs. The Greeks turned the diamond in the sky into a rock star when they sketched their mythology in the heavens with connect-the-dot characters called constellations, turning Sirius into the hunter Orion’s dog.

Orion has his own tale, of course. Suffice it to say that Sirius is up there with him chasing rabbits and bulls and other celestial creatures that I can never quite make out. The Romans recognized Sirius as top dog and crowned his constellation Canis Major or Big Dog. There’s also a Little Dog, and I have to wonder, is there a message in the stars – why aren’t there any cat constellations?

No matter what, Sirius definitely rules. Human luminaries – Homer, Dante, Milton, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Voltaire and Dickens, to name a few – have all paid literary tribute to Sirius. Even J.K. Rowling acknowledged the power of the name with a character named Sirius Black, who escaped from Azkaban by transforming himself into what else – a black dog.

So what’s a gardener to do during the dog days? Maybe take a cue from Nemo and hide in the hydrangeas.

(Photo by Melissa Berman)

When I dug up this old English proverb I knew we’d better run for cover:

Dog days bright and clear

Indicate a happy year;

But when accompanied by rain

For better times our hopes are vain

So just remember what Noel Coward said, only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun – and it’s even worse if it’s raining cats and dogs on a dog day afternoon.

GROWN ON LONG ISLAND -- A SIGN OF THE TIMES

2009-04-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time – before Levittown and the LIE, before strip-malls and McDonald’s and, god help us, McMansions – Long Island and farming were synonymous. It was a time when potatoes covered more than 72,000 acres and cauliflower auctions were common events.

Well, we don’t have to give up the ghosts of times past just yet. The truth is that when it comes to farm-fresh produce, our island still has a lot to offer. I realized this more than ever the other day when I attended a press conference organized by the Long Island Farm Bureau to tout the Island’s billion-dollar agricultural industry and rev up the “Grown on Long Island” and “Pride of New York” campaigns.

Both campaigns promoting the agricultural and horticultural products of our island and our state – everything from apples and eggplants to marigolds and merlot – have been around for quite some time. “Grown on Long Island” started in 1988, which seems like eons ago when you think about how life has changed in the past 21 years. Forget about extra pounds and gray hair, who would have dreamed of iPhones and Twitter and laptops for that matter? Ponder this – in 1988, there were 45 million PCs in use in this country; last year there were more than 264 million. But I digress.

The event was held at Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich, where Michael and Russ Ireland – the brothers who own the place – told me that 99 percent of what they sell is indeed grown on Long Island. And the garden center, which marked its 80th anniversary last year, was in full flower for the spring planting season. It was a giant bouquet of marigolds and geraniums and impatiens as well as other blooms guaranteed to dispel any lingering thoughts of our miserable winter. Not to mention enough vegetables seedlings to fill salad bowls across suburbia.

A refurbished pickup truck from bygone days was loaded with corn and a colorful display of the kind of vegetables that abound in our island’s fertile fields and farm stands added to the scene.

The theme of the day was spelled out in banners and placards:

As you might expect speakers were also in abundance but they were notable in the 80-degree heat for their brevity.

They included New York’s new United States senator, Kirsten Gillibrand -- pictured here with (from left) Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi; Joseph Gergela III of the Long Island Farm Bureau, which represents more than 650 Long Island growers, and New York State Commissioner of Agriculture Patrick Hooker. Michael Ireland (pictured below, left, with Sen. Gillbrand and his brother, Russ) spoke and so did Tom Kullen of King Kullen – the Island’s homegrown supermarket that has the distinction of being America’s first and has been featuring locally grown produce for the past decade. Tom was perhaps the most succinct: “Keep growing it,” he said. “And we’ll keep buying it.”

To me, the message was as elemental as compost. We really do grow a lot of wonderful things and we should reach for them in supermarkets and garden centers and at farm stands and farmers’ markets. Especially gardeners, who by our very nature, dig the earth. We know the unadulterated joy of growing what you eat. In my garden, lettuce and arugula and spinach and beets and carrots border beds that are now filled with hundreds of tulips. But when the tulips fade to memory, I’ll take them out and put in tomatoes and eggplants and zucchini and butternut squash and peppers and Swiss chard and beans. But I’ll turn to my local farmers' market in Northport for the things I don’t grow – like broccoli and cabbage and Brussels sprouts.

On the cusp of the 2009 growing season, the time is right to remind us that “Grown on Long Island” should be more than just a marketing slogan. It should be a lifestyle. I’m not saying we should turn Levittown back into a potato field, but we should support our farmers and flower growers and buy what they produce. And buying local is the easiest way to eat healthy, to have a beautiful and bountiful garden, to boost the economy and help out our beleaguered planet by reducing our carbon footprints. “Grown on Long Island” signs and placards will be sprouting up this season to identify the vegetables and flowers that have Long Island roots.

These sentiments spring from the fertile soil of our island and we should nurture them.

FLOWERY FLAMINGOS BLOOM AT MACY'S

2009-04-04T06:48:00.000-07:00

I'm no ornithologist but I think I spotted a new species of flamingo the other day.

Not the Caribbean flamingos that raise clouds of pink at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, where the largest flock of the stiletto-legged birds live.

And not the plastic species that most people either love of hate. To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand on those mothers of all lawn ornaments, especially since I have three of them in a box in my garage. But that's another story.

No, the six flamingos that stirred my fancy in a greenhouse in Stony Brook were a different breed altogether. I can say with absolute accuracy that they were birds of a different feather. They were made of flowers. Kalanchoe to be exact. You know, the fleshy-leaved succulent that blooms in bouquets of white, pink, scarlet or yellow tubular flowers. It's a perennial in its native Madagascar, but here in the frigid north we nurture it mostly as an easy-care houseplant.

And it’s a good thing they can’t fly because they were getting ready to strike poses in the aisles of Macy’s in Manhattan for the store’s annual flower show, which runs through April 19.

The flowery flamingos are the stars of the show, which is aptly titled “Dream in Color” and features more than a million plants in 11 different gardens as well as the department store’s famous window display – all of it the handiwork of Long Island’s own Ireland Gannon, the design division of Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich.

When I saw the big birds – each of them fashioned from 3,000 separate kalanchoe plants – they were not in an altogether flattering position with their backsides up in the air and their long curved necks and hooked beaks barely a foot from the ground.

Two workers – Raul Estrada and Edgar Garcia – were tucking pretty pink kalanchoes in varying states of bloom into the metal frames that form the skeletons of the faux flamingoes.

It was just a few days from show time. “We’re in high gear now,” said Peter Gustafson, the horticultural grand marshal for Ireland Gannon who was overseeing the installation in the Herald Square store and also directed the forcing of hundreds of trees and shrubs from tree peonies and Exbury azaleas to camellias and Chinese redbuds in the firm’s six greenhouses in Stony Brook. Peter also coordinated the production and delivery of everything from astilbes to orchids from other Long Island growers like Otto Keil in Huntington to nurseries in Florida and Maryland and Canada.

The final phase of the show takes place after hours as more than sixty people work all night for five nights to turn the store into a floral showplace. “The flamingoes are among the last things to go into the city,” Peter said as Edgar and Raul took plants out of 4½-inch plastic pots, stripped the leaves, knocked off most of the soil and plugged each kalanchoe into frames devised by the same Macy's designers and artisans who bring you the emporium’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Four of the local birds will rule along the store’s center aisles and two will reign in a fountain – all of them rising nine feet tall from metal stands. Macy’s calls this a “salute to the plastic lawn flamingo and its impact on American gardens.” A clearly fascinating and controversial subject I’d just as soon leave for another blog.

For the first time, Macy’s is running simultaneous flower shows in other branches throughout the country. And when it came to the bird of praise, all eyes turned to Ireland Gannon, which created instructional videos for crews in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis.

As I left the greenhouses, workers were loading plants into the trucks. Corinthian peach trees, rhododendrons, fringe trees, flowering apricot trees, and 14-foot Okame cherry trees forced in the greenhouse were balled and burlapped and showing pink.

“They should pop for the show,” Peter said of the Okames. And there’s a second set timed to pop seven days from opening day for the second week.

The flamingoes, which were among the last things to leave Stony Brook, were already pretty in various shades of pink. “The question was,” Peter said, “how authentic do you want the color to be? It was a balancing act between the authentic color of a real flamingo versus the color of flamingoes you’d see on a front lawn in New Jersey.”

I’m hoping to make a trek into the city to see the flamingos in full color. You might be interested to know that there are 20-minute guided tours so you can learn more about the flowers that make up the flower show. Call 212-494-4495 for information. And you should keep in mind that Macy's is closed on Easter Sunday, April 12.

As for Peter, it’s back to more flower power. About a week after this year’s extravaganza ends, he’ll be planning the show for 2010.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES FOR STEPHEN SCANNIELLO

2009-02-22T06:42:00.000-08:00

It's only February and 2009 has already been a rosy year for Stephen Scanniello. He’s been named a Great Rosarian of the World – which, unless roses grow on Venus or Neptune, is the highest honor possible in his field – and his newest book blossomed just in time for that annual rose love-in we call Valentine’s Day.

I caught up with Stephen by phone the other day after a whirlwind of parties celebrating his latest achievements. First came a reception at the Huntington Botanical Garden in San Marino, California, where he and his fellow great rosarian honoree Marilyn Wellan, the past president of the American Rose Society, were feted. He'll have to wait till June for the East Coast celebration sponsored by the Manhattan Rose Society. And then came the bouquets for the book – everything from a spread in Martha Stewart Living to a party at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for Stephen and co-author Douglas Brenner.

Their book – “A Rose by Any Name,” aptly subtitled “The Little-Known Lore and Deep-Rooted History of Rose Names” – deserves all the attention. I love seeing garden books that venture beyond the pale of how to pot petunias and make you laugh as well as learn.

For instance, a section called “Bloopers” contains such little-known rose names as ‘Happy Butt’ and ‘Flush o’ Dawn.’ I might grow apricot- pink ‘Happy Butt’ just for the joy of pointing it out to garden visitors. Its name is derived from a dopey joke about a little girl called Gladys who couldn’t quite handle the second syllable of her name. And ‘Flush o’ Dawn’ is really rather poetic – the pink-to-white rose is reminiscent of the sky in early morning. But as the authors point out, those among us who might turn up their noses at bathroom humor “prefer the slightly-tweaked variant ‘Blush o’ Dawn.’”

The empress Josephine – no shrinking violet when it came to naming roses – called a white beauty ‘Cuisse de Nymphe Emue,’ which translates into “thigh of an aroused nymph.” Incidentally, Napoleon also got into the rose act – he allowed rose plants to be shipped across enemy lines for Josphine’s garden at Malmasion.

The book includes chapters on historically-significant roses such as the pure white ‘Cherokee Rose’ descended from the wild flowers that marked the infamous 1,000-mile trek called the “Trail of Tears,” when 17,000 Cherokee Indians were rounded up and forced to march from Georgia to Oklahoma. About 4,000 Cherokee died of hunger and disease along the way. According to legend roses sprung up where teardrops fell, and clumps of the wild white roses still mark the trail.

And there are sidebars on roses named for sports figures like Babe Ruth and Chris Evert, and writers from Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver to Colette and Charles Dickens. There’s even an orange floribunda named ‘Rainer Maria Rilke’ after the German poet, whose fatal illness is thought to have been caused by an infected wound from a rose thorn. And it’s no surprise to learn that Sappho, the ancient Greek poet who declared, “The rose the queen of flowers must be,” has had three roses named after her.

I knew there was a rose named for Barbra Streisand – a large lavender sweet-scented diva – but I didn’t know about ‘Elvis,’ an orange-pink showstopper, or that ‘Jerry Garcia’ is rumored to be on its way.

There are roses named for presidents and first ladies. From ‘President Herbert Hoover’ – a fragrant bloom in shades of orange, pink and yellow that crashed in popularity along with the president when the stock market took a dive – to a rose named for his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who brought the country back from the brink. Of course, it worries me that ‘Happy Days,’ an orange-red rose inspired by FDR’s campaign song “Happy Days Are Here Again,” is now extinct.

I was surprised to learn there’s actually a First Ladies’ Rose Garden on the White House grounds, although none of the roses named for first ladies – like ‘Mrs. Cleveland,’ ‘Pat Nixon’ or ‘Dolly Madison’ – grow there. And the red hybrid tea ‘Ronald Reagan’ is the only rose named for a president that actually grows in the White House Rose Garden. But ‘Mister Lincoln’ – introduced in 1965 to commemorate the centennial of his assassination – stands heads above the rest in any garden. As Stephen and Doug point out, it’s still one of the best red hybrid teas of all time.

The book also contains information on related topics from making rosewater to having a rose named for yourself – a vanity that could cost as much as $15,000. The book’s wealth of detail is a tribute to both Stephen and Doug, who met years ago when Doug was the editor of Garden Design and Stephen was the rosarian at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. They divvied up the research and writing, then Doug the editor, put everything into a unified voice. It took three years to complete and includes photographs from Stephen's own collection and wonderful old lithographs and botanical illustrations.

Here are two of them, courtesy of Algonquin Books: 'Baltimore Belle,' a pale pink climber thought to be named for the young daughter of an ex-alcoholic hatter who became famous in the 1840s for his "silver-tongued" speeches in praise of temperance.

And 'Fantin-Latour,' a fragrant hybrid Bourbon named for the French floral still life painter who reportedly died during a walk among his beloved rosebushes.

I met Stephen years ago when I was a budding garden columnist and he was the hot-shot rosarian who had transformed the BBG’s Cranford Rose Garden into one of the world’s most heralded havens for rose lovers. Our rose-rustling trip to a New Jersey cemetery remains one of my best memories from those days. Stephen drove a handful of fellow rose-geeks in his own van and we even made a stop at his mother’s home. I had a ball sneaking around the cemetery, taking cuttings from the old roses that bloomed along lichen-spotted stones walls and moss-covered statuary. Although I have to admit that the roses I rustled that day and carried home in plastic bags didn’t quite make it in my own garden.

Even back then, the idea for “A Rose By Any Name” was germinating in the garden of Stephen’s mind. It started when he overheard a boy and his father talking in the Cranford Rose Garden. The boy was reading plant labels. “Look, Daddy, this one says ‘Dolly Parton’! . . . Wow! ‘Babe Ruth’ and ‘Santa Claus’! How come their names are on these signs?” Stephen decided that one day he’d tell the stories behind the names of his favorite flower.

“You know, when it comes to roses,” he told me over the phone, “it wasn’t the horticulture – which to tell you the truth, I don’t really love – that got me. It was the stories. It’s always been about the stories.”

In fact, roses weren’t even his thing when he took over the Cranford Rose Garden back in 1984. He was a gardener with a background in biology who had taught inner city kids and worked in the education department at BBG. “I knew how to prune plants but I was clueless about how to prune roses. I was a total rose virgin. I hadn’t even touched a rose before then.”

At least not in a professional sense. But he treasures childhood memories of playing amid the ‘Golden Showers’ in his grandfather’s New Jersey garden and watching his aunt prune a red climber called ‘Blaze’ that was once all the rage. “She covered the cuts with her Love That Red lipstick.”

“There were only 3,000 plants in the Cranford garden back then,” he said. ‘I made some mistakes, but I learned to prune a rose. And what caught my eye were the names. I wanted to know more. That’s what started me on my way to being a rose geek.”

By the time Stephen left the garden 15 seasons later, the garden more than 5,000 roses. He was a full-fledged rose geek – and a master pruner. “I love pruning. I love what pruning does – how the bush responds, how you can shape things.”

Now Stephen creates and tends gardens up and down the East Coast, including his own in Barnegat, N.J. where he lives in an historic house on what he calls “an intensely gardened suburban-size lot.” He’s into growing roses organically instead of drowning them with chemicals. He uses chicken manure and experiments with alfalfa meal and mixes in other flowers so his garden isn’t just a rose garden.

And it’s no surprise that the man who’s president of The Heritage Rose Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of old roses, nurtures mostly heirlooms like ‘Crenshaw Musk,’ a double white-flowered rose that was rediscovered in a cemetery in Virginia. And a few favorite modern varieties too – like Aloha and the very first 'Knock Out' created by last year’s Great Rosarian of the World, Bill Radler.

Oh, and he’s already been out there pruning his 250 or so bushes. I’ll start pruning mine any day now. And I’ll check out the stories behind their names in “A Rose by Any Name.”

Irene Virag Celebrates Valentine's Day

2009-01-28T06:18:00.001-08:00

I'll be speaking at Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich on Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. It's Valentine's Day -- the time for hearts and flowers. I'll be talking about the plants I love and the romantic myths and stories behind my favorites, about the love lives of flowers and my own romance with the garden. The event is free, but reservations are required. Call the nursery at 516-922-5530.

I hope you can join me.

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH IRENE

2008-12-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry to tell you this but you won't see my column in Newsday after Dec. 28. I want you to know it's not my decision -- Newsday is cancelling my contract. There's a possibility I might return in the spring. I hope so. But that will be somebody else's decision not mine.

But as far as you and I are concerned, this doesn't have to mean goodbye. I'll be revamping my blog and revving up my online presence. Click here to visit my website and get on my mailing list for updates about Web-special columns, calendars and much more.

And the Winners Are . . .

2008-12-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

I absolutely loved all the photos submitted in my "Unplug Christmas" contest. It wasn't easy picking a winner. So I picked two -- Celeste Saladino for her five-foot-tall paean to pine cones and Barbara Isralewitz for her grapevine menorah.

Here are their photos again.

Unplug Christmas

2008-12-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

I'd like to thank all of you who sent in photos of the natural decorations you're decking the halls with. Your pictures and notes in response to my column about unplugging Christmas gave me hope for a greener holiday. And I must say, I lit up when I realized my column appeared in the paper's annual celebration of holiday lights. I'll announce my winner on Tuesday. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites.

Mother Nature Does It Best

Pege Chellis sent this in with a note saying she hoped I like it. I do.

A Natural Chanukah

Barbara Isralewitz made a menorah out of a grape vine, pear tree twig, poppy seed cases, pachysandra, Echinacea seed pods, dusty miller and rose of Sharon seed pods.

A Bird in the Wreath

Sandy Spitz's homegrown wreath welcomes visitors.

Here's part of Sandy's note to me: "These projects constitute my holiday decorations...most home grown...all flowers dried by me and painted pinecones, reeds and hydrangeas done by my husband. These decorations go from fall into winter...Although we do not celebrate Christmas, we do celebrate the beauty of nature in all seasons!"

Below are a few more examples of Sandy's handiwork:

Top: Her Thanksgiving arrangement of hydrangeas, strawflowers and pine cones now sits on a rocker on the front porch next to pots of metallic pine cones, staghorn sumac and rosehips with bittersweet.

Middle: A simple spray of greens and berries

Bottom: A pine cone wreath

Who Needs Poinsettias?

Not John Kirincic, whose Christmas cacti are in resplendent bloom just in time for the holidays.

Shape Up for the Holidays

Al Gallo wanted me to know that he transforms cuttings from his garden into grave blankets and uses greens to fill empty summer pots. He spruces up his artificial wreath with holly and hemlock and tucks in pine cones that he gathers when he goes on walks. He also wanted me to know this: "I love to garden and enjoy your column."

Paean to Pine Cones

Celeste Saladino's tree stands just under five feet tall is made mostly of pine cones -- dried artichokes, statice and red velvet bows provide finishing touches. Her wreaths and candle holder below feature walnut shells, acorns and more pine cones. And the table tree is fashioned from sweet gum balls and artifical fruit.

Mr. Bear at Christmas

Wendy Fisher got this carved bear from her son in Vermont several years ago. He stands on her front stoop and Wendy dresses him up in seasonal finery. "All the children who come to the door just love Mr. Bear!" she writes.

Season's Greetings

Elaine Lilli's flowerpots reflect the season with skimmia, red-berried holly, pince cones, gourds and silver dollars spray-painted gold.

Ken Druse Does It Again

2008-12-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

I know what book I'm giving to all my friends for Christmas and Chanukah this year.

"Planthropology" by Ken Druse.

And not just my gardener friends. You don't have to love getting your hands dirty to learn something from this book. There's something fascinating on virtually every page. I spoke to Ken recently for my column and I was struck by how after 17 books, he's still learning and still nurturing his passion for writing about and photographing plants.

And lucky for us, he's still sharing what he sees with gardeners who get it. So here are two tidbits I learned from "Planthropology," along with Ken's lovely photos, used here with the permission of his publisher, Clarkson Potter. His pictures truly are worth a thousand words -- each.

How Many Seeds on the Head of a Sunflower?

The seed heads of a sunflower aren't just a candy store for birds and a visual treat for gardeners. They're a lesson in the mathematical wonder known as the Fabonacci numbers: the amount of seeds in the two opposing arches may be 55 and 89 or 89 and 144 -- but the ratio always works out to 1 to 1.618.

Calling All sieboldii

Magnolia sieboldii Colossus is one the plants named for Phillipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, a 19th century plant explorer who found true love and hundreds of new botanical species in Japan. You can read all about him in "Planthropology."

There's Hosta sieboldii and Clematis sieboldii. And who knows how many others. It would be fun to make a list. Any sieboldii you grow or know about counts. So let's do it.

Mr. Virag's Cucuzz

2008-11-23T05:32:00.001-08:00

Just in case you missed it, here's my column about my husband and his amazing cucuzz. By the way, his real name is Harvey Aronson and he's an accomplished writer, editor, journalist, professor and gardener in his own right. And yet he ever-so-sweetly embraces the moniker of Mr. Virag in the garden world.

Martin Viette's Meadow

2008-06-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

I’m happy to report that the flower fields of Martin Viette Nurseries in East Norwich – once an eye-popping, traffic-stopping tradition – will bloom again. And soon.

That’s because drainage issues that swamped the fields in recent years have finally been resolved. And now, the colorful flower fields are being brought back to mark the 80th year that a nursery bearing Martin Viette’s name has existed on Long Island. Yes, there really was a Martin Viette – and I told the story of the man and the nursery in a recent column. But I only had enough space to mention that plans were in the works to bring back the flower fields.

Let me tell you more now. The fields that stretch along Route 25-A in front of the garden center won’t be flowing with the rivers of irises and peonies and poppies that grew there in Martin’s day. Here's a picture of Martin in a field of Cedar Hill poppies, which he created and named for the Brookville estate of Theodore Havemeyer, the famous lilac breeder, where Martin perfected his hybridizing skills.

And the fields won't be be filled with the daylilies that grew there when Martin's son Andre, a renowned horticulturist and Hemerocallis hybridizer who has his own nursery in Virginia, ran the place. Instead, they’ll be blooming with bee balm and bachelor’s buttons and black-eyed Susans, with calendula and coreopsis and cosmos and California poppies, with tall marigolds and giant sunflowers, with larkspur and red flax and Asclepias curasavica and Tithonia rotundifolia. A 10-acre wildflower meadow designed to attract bees and butterflies and birds – and the attention of humans.

I was out at the nursery recently when more than 150 pounds of wildflower seeds were sown. Cesar Cruz, who has been with the nursery for 14 years, headed the operation with the help of Miguel Bencosme and Felix Trejo.

First they combined the wildflower mix with about 30 pounds of sunflower seeds – Gray Mammoth, the 6-foot giant with big yellow heads that kids love. Then they added clean sand so the seeds didn’t blow away in the wind.

Next they broadcast the seeds onto the tilled field and raked them in so they were only lightly covered with soil – about an eighth to a quarter inch.

The sun-loving summer annuals – which by the way, come from Botanical Interests in Colorado – germinated quickly and are up and growing happily. Donna Moramarco, the horticulturist who made it all happen, tells me there should be an explosion of color in the fields by the Fourth of July.

“Cars speed by here on Route 25-A at 50 miles an hour,” she said. “So we created a mix that has a fifty-mile-per-hour WOW factor.”

But do me a favor, slow down just a little bit to enjoy the show.

Here’s a list of what’s growing:
Anethum graveolens – Dill
Asclepias curasavica – Butterfly flower
Calendula officinalis
Centaurea cyanus – Bachelor Buttons
Coreopsis tinctoria
Cosmos bipinnatus – Cosmos Sensation mixed colors
Delphinium ajacis – Larkspur
Eschscholzia californica – California poppy
Linum grandiflorum rubrum – Red Flax
Monarda citriodora – Beebalm
Mammoth Russian/Greystripe Sunflower
Rudbeckia hirta – Black-eyed Susan
Tagetes erecta – Tall Marigold
Tithonia rotundifolia – Torch Flowers

Earth Day

2008-04-22T05:17:00.001-07:00

Celebrate Earth Day by going green in the garden.

Start with the soil. Start with compost. It really is the basis for any good garden.

It's nature's prescription for whatever ails your garden because the truth of the matter is simple: When your soil is healthy, your plants are healthy. So start composting today. It's easy. It's fun. It's cheap. It works. No synthetic fertilizer out there can match the magic of compost. You'll feel like Rumpelstiltsken -- turning raw vegetable scraps into brown gold.

And this planet we call Earth will thank you for it -- not just today but everyday.

Read my column about the joys of compost for advice and inspiration.

Great American Gardener

2008-03-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's nice to be recognized for what you do. And so it was a real kick to learn that the American Horticultural Society named me a "Great American Gardener" as the recipient of the B.Y. Morrison Communication Award.

It's usually hard for me to toot my own horn but quitely honestly I can play a fanfare on this one. You can visit my website -- just click on "Kudos" -- and read all about it.

Click on Spring

2008-03-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, so spring is official as of 5:58 this morning. But if you're like me and you can't wait till it looks and feels like the real thing, just click here. It may look like a black space but keep clicking -- all over the place -- and see what happens.

Happy Spring!

Fooling Mother Nature in Philly

2008-03-02T16:00:00.000-08:00

So here I am jazzing it up at the 179th Philadelphia Flower Show. I thought I’d post a quick blog before the saints come marching in. I’m invoking the saints because the show was inspired by the aura of New Orleans – at least that’s what the press releases say – and it’s entitled “Jazz It Up.” Besides, when the saints come, I’m not sure they’d let me in that number.

I brought pen, pad, laptop and camera. But it wasn’t until I had to put in a new memory card that I realized I’d forgotten the cord I need to download the images. It was a lot easier when all you needed was a portable typewriter.

The show tries to reflect the joyful spirit of the French Quarter with ferns dripping from faux balconies. But it’s not quite the same. You have to be there. I was there just before Mardi Gras and indeed there were plenty of ferns and ivy but the brightest blossoms on the balconies were girls going wild. If I have any real criticism of the show, it’s that there is nothing to remind me of Katrina. Plenty of sadness still permeates the devastated neighborhoods of New Orleans.

Nevertheless, the show is very pretty, as usual, and it’s worth seeing. Some people don’t like the idea of fooling Mother Nature with forced flowers. I’ve always been one of them, but I’m coming around. It does warm the spirit to see rhododendrons and roses and clematis and calla lilies in full bloom on a blustery March day.

I especially like the way the designers sprinkled the motifs of music and Mardi Gras through many of the gardens. For instance, a saxophone moonlighting as a flower vase for orange tulips. Mardi Gras beads hanging from crabapple trees. A waterfall cascading from the frame of an old upright piano. Clematis climbing up a pole fashioned from trumpets and trombones. A bed of red and white carnations arranged in the shape of a guitar.

I’ll leave you on that note. In my next post I’ll tell you more about the flowers that caught my eye. And, if all goes well, I’ll even show you what they look like.

Valentine to Planet Earth

2008-02-14T09:03:00.000-08:00

You might be too late to order fair trade roses for your true love this Valentine’s Day, but if you’re a gardener – or just someone who loves the good earth – it’s not too late to learn abut Fair Trade certified flowers.

Fair Trade flowers come with a special label that lets you know they were grown under socially, environmentally and economically sustainable conditions. In these climatically challenged times, that’s a relief for a lot of us. In fact, a study by the Hartman Group found that 73 percent of American consumers believe their purchases have a significant impact on society, and they’re actually willing to pay a 10 percent premium for sustainable products. So far it’s been mostly things like coffee and chocolate.

But now flower growers are catching on. So far more than 30 growers in Ecuador, Colombia and Africa – yes, your pretty little bouquet probably flew half-way around the world to get to your grandmother on her birthday or your true love on Valentine’s Day – have signed on. Those growers represent more than one billion flower stems. When you see the Fair Trade Certified label you’ll know that the flower farms comply with rules about pesticide use, water conservation and wastewater treatment. And that their workers wear protective gear when handling chemicals and receive fair wages, child care and other benefits.

I first learned about Fair Trade flowers when I read Amy Stewart’s book, “Flower Confidential: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly in the Business of Flowers.” Click here to read my interview with her – and look for her piece on this topic in the debut issue of OrganicStyle.com.

According to TransFair USA, an independent nonprofit that certifies Fair Trade products in this county, you can order these eco-friendly blooms online from samsclub.com and 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. More retailers – and flower farms – are sure to follow since sales of Fair Trade Certified products are already a $730 million annual business.

So when you say it with flowers, make sure you’re saying something that matters. Make everyday Valentine’s Day for Planet Earth.

You Gotta Love New Orleans

2008-02-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Super Tuesday?

Giants Tuesday?

Fat Tuesday?

I choose Fat Tuesday as my reason to celebrate today. I just got back from New Orleans and my head and my heart are still there.

Coffee so good it made me forget my Starbucks addiction.

Beignets at Cafe du Monde with powdered sugar piled to the sky.

Dixieland jazz at Preservation Hall . . .

and impromptu parades.

King cake and gumbo and fried catfish po-boys. . . Katrina's scars. . .

and Bourbon Street shenanigans.
I was in the Big Easy for a national board meeting of the Garden Writers Association and I had to get back for the start of the class I teach with my husband in Narrative Journalism at Stony Brook University. So I'm only there today in spirit. I've just finished writing a column about my infatuation with a lacecap hydrangea I saw on Royal Street and giant banana plants and ancient wisterias in hidden courtyards and the ivy and aspargus ferns dripping along with Mardi Gras beads from balconies in the French Quarter.

Here are a few more sights that caught my eye. You gotta love New Orleans.

Beautiful Vegetables

2008-01-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

I wrote in today's column about some of the tempting vegetable seeds in the catalogs that are still arriving in the mail. But there's never enough space in a newspaper, especially for photos. So I thought I'd share some pictures that might continue to whet your appetite -- and mine.

Like this beauty shot of Thompson & Morgan's new Mini Belle peppers:

I'd love to see this collection of cauliflower in my garden, also from Thompson & Morgan: I'm juicing every morning now -- thanks to my nutrition-conscious stepson who gave his father and me a cutting-edge juicer for Christmas. Suddenly I can't get enough organic carrots. I'm sure I'll be planting plenty of these purple-skinned Dragon carrots from Gardens Alive! And beets are even better in the juicer. Of course, I still love them roasted and boiled. Touchstone Gold beets are one of the new varieties being showcased by the National Garden Bureau this year:

Of course, my salad bowl won't go empty. Lettuce still reigns in my garden. I like the idea of this perfect-for-one Mini Green iceberg from Thompson & Morgan:But Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed Lettuce from Territorial Seed wins the award for best name. I'll have to let you know how it tastes.Although Flashy Trout's Back isn't bad-looking either: And I've never understood why more people don't get excited about radishes. Maybe Red Meat from Territorial Seeds will change the lowly radish's image: Let me know what's catching your eye. If you haven't gotten your favorite catalog yet, visit the Mailorder Gardening Association Web site, where you'll find links to many seed companies. And check back here for my upcoming report on the tomatoes that have me drooling.

(photos courtesy of Thompson & Morgan, Gardens Alive!, National Garden Bureau, Territorial Seed)

Keep Kalanchoe Kicking; Chill out with Cyclamen

2008-01-11T17:21:00.000-08:00

Finally, the holidays are over. I took down the tree. I packed away the nutcrackers. I ate the last of the panatone and the Christmas cookies.

And I've already managed to break at least three of my New Year's resolutions -- I haven't been to the gym yet, I haven't weeded out my bulging files and okay, you can tell by the date on this posting that I haven't been blogging 24/7.

But there's always tomorrow. Besides, these are personal resolutions, not garden ones. The garden resolutions are easier to keep because they're actually fun -- like buy more plants, order more bulbs. Things like that. Hey, I'm even working on my vegetable seed order -- I'll be telling you what's been tempting me in an upcoming column.

The resolution I'm talking about today is keeping my kalanchoes and cyclamens alive. I've given up on poinsettias -- to me they're the impatiens of the holiday season. Does anyone really bother to keep them going until they turn red next Christmas? I know it's possible; I've done it. I tell people how to do it. But my question is, why? To me, it's like starting impatiens from seeds. What's the point?

But kalanchoes and cyclamens, well, these I can understand. I wrote a column recently rhapsodizing about the pure white kalanchoes and cyclamens that graced my home during the holiday season. I thought I'd tell you how I'm keeping them happy.

Treating Kalanchoe Right
Kalanchoes like bright sunlight, well-drained soil and daytime temperatures in the 70s – although they won’t complain if you turn the thermostat down to 55 at night. I won't either. I like sleeping in a cool room, too. Water with tepid water but let plants partially dry out before watering again. Hey, there's a lesson here -- don't eat if you're not hungry. And like cyclamens, kalanchoes shouldn’t soak – something to remember if your plant is showing off in a decorative pot that doesn’t have a drainage hole. You don’t have to fertilize kalanchoes now but nourish with an all-purpose houseplant food monthly starting in late spring. Let them summer outdoors and bring them in when night temperatures dip to 40 degrees. Then keep them in the dark for 14 hours every night for two weeks, giving them moderate daytime light. They should bloom about six weeks later.

Staying Cool with Cyclamen
Cyclamens grow from a flat corm that’s part of their root system and actually pokes out of the soil. This adds to their charm as well as their challenge. Never water the corm directly. Instead, place the plant in a saucer of water for five minutes. The soil should be dry so the plant quickly absorbs moisture. Don’t let it sit in water, otherwise it will rot. Cyclamens like night temperatures of 50 degrees; daytime temperatures between 60 and 65 keep them blooming longer. Pull gently on the stem to remove both the faded flower and the stem. Bright light for at least three hours keeps your cyclamen happy, so does a drink of houseplant fertilizer at half strength once a month in winter and every other week in spring and fall. Let the leaves die back naturally in summer, but don’t let the corm dry out. When new sprouts appear in fall, give the plant more water.

HO HO HO

2007-12-24T18:10:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas

Hope Santa brings you

something for the garden . . .

Paging Linnaeus

2007-11-09T09:35:00.000-08:00

I saw a famous old book last night. It’s so old and so famous that it’s in a glass case in a windowless room at the top floor of an imposing building on the grounds of one of the world’s great meccas for people who love growing things.

The book itself is rare in every sense. It consists of only seven large-sized folio leaves bound with the pages folded vertically because the author found it easier to handle that way. It’s worth half-a-million dollars and oh yes, it changed scientific history. It was published almost 272 years ago, in December of 1735, by a Swedish minister’s son who grew up to be a naturalist and teacher with an ego as big as the plant and animal kingdoms he became famous for categorizing.

I’m talking about Systema Naturae by Carl Linnaeus – one of the most famous books in science by one of history’s true characters. A man who brought sex into botany and who is being celebrated around the globe this year on the tercentenary of his birth. There are only 43 known first editions of Systema Naturae in the world. And the one on display in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden is special because it’s the author’s personal, annotated copy. How could I not want to see it?

Okay, okay, I know that for gardeners everywhere who struggle with botanical Latin, the work that introduced the world to Linnaeus’ controversial sexual system of classifying plants and gave rise to his two-part naming convention for all living things may not seem like something to celebrate. But it is.

After all, Linnaeus simplified things. Before he introduced binomial nomenclature, plants were described according to a tongue-twisting system developed by Aristotle, which tacked a stream of distinguishing characteristics onto a plant’s genus name. If you think Convolvulus althaeoides is a mouthful for the vine commonly called morning glory, how about Convolvulus foliis palmatis cordatis sericeis, lobis repandis, pedunculis bifloris? That’s how it was B.L. – Before Linnaeus.

I wrote a column about all of this back in May to mark the 300th anniversary of his birth. But last night, standing in front of Linnaeus’ own copy of Systema Naturae, I was struck by the magnitude of it all. By the passage of time and the depth of the human mind. By the power of a single book.

Swedish diplomats and Linnaeus scholars attended the program in the library last night. And there were Power Point presentations and lectures by entomologist Edward O. Wilson and Katarina Andreasen, an evolutionary biologist with Uppsala University in Sweden, where Linnaeus taught. Linnaeus would have thought Wilson’s description of him – “The Great Man” – was only fitting.

But it was the book I’d come to see. The one that was discovered in 1977 to be Linnaeus’ own copy and is housed in the Hagstromer Medico-Historical Library in Stockholm. Linnaeus made corrections and notations in ink on the pages. In fact, he corrected a misspelling on a famous illustration that appeared in only five known copies of Systema Naturae. The illustration by Georg Dionysius Ehret, one of the great botanical painters of the 18th century, depicts the 24 classes of Linnaeus’ Sexual System for Plants – with the stamens and pistils colored by hand. Linnaeus changed the letter “I” in SISTEMATE to a “Y.”

He was, clearly, a man who wanted – and usually got – things his own way. I’m sure Linnaeus loved his family and his work, but I think he loved himself most of all. Robbin Moran, a fern expert at NYBG who is a Linnaeus buff, showed me an allegorical frontispiece for a 1737 folio written by the man known as the Father of Taxonomy. It shows Mother Earth at the center, with the god Apollo by her side stomping on a dragon that represents ignorance. If you look closely, the buff and almost bare body of Apollo has the unmistakable features of the young Carl Linnaeus. And this was centuries before PhotoShop.

The Baroque artwork also glorifies Linnaeus’ many achievements. I didn’t know that he invented the centigrade thermometer to use in his greenhouses and was the first European to coax a banana plant into bloom. He sent the fruit to the king and queen of Sweden, who were the only people in that country to taste a banana until after World War 2. Linnaeus traveled to Lappland, where he studied plants and minerals, and came home with a traditional costume and drum that he wore when he lectured about his adventures.

Carl Linnaeus was 28 years old when he wrote Systema Naturae. I suspect he figured he was destined for greatness. He was made a nobleman at the age of 54 and became known as Carl von Linne –which is how he’s known in his homeland. As a renowned and charismatic professor, he sent students whom he called his “apostles” across the globe in search of plants. And he led excursions of as many as 300 into the countryside, returning to the sounds of kettle drums and hunting horns and crowds shouting “Long Live Linnaeus.” He ate it up.

In her talk, Katarina said that at the end of his life, Linnaeus was senile and couldn’t remember his own name – or the names of his beloved plants. But he wrote them all down. And we remember.

Systema Naturae is on display at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden until Nov. 10, with guided tours and lectures.

Photos of Systema Naturae are courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden

Photos of Carl Linnaeus are copyright KVA, courtesy of Linnaeus2007

Filling in the Blanks on Bulbs

2007-11-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all my Smithtown, NY readers who emailed to let me know that half my column was missing from Sunday's Newsday. I'm told it was due to a production error, and that the entire column will be reprinted in the Nov. 11 edition. In the meantime, it's on my website. Just click here to read it.

And here's how to contact the bulb companies I mention:
Brent and Becky's Bulbs:
7900 Daffodil Lane
Gloucester, VA 23061
877-661-2852

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800-622-9997

Going for the Gold

2007-10-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

I don't usually blow my own horn when it comes to awards, but I can't help telling you about this one. It makes me very happy because it comes from my peers. At the Garden Writers Association convention in Oklahoma City recently, I won the organization's Gold Award for best newsapaper garden writing in the country. If you'd like to read my winning column -- one that was close to my heart -- click here.

Slugs in Love -- Not for the Squeamish

2007-09-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

A lot of you were intrigued by yesterday’s column. Based on the volume of emails and the comments of readers I ran into in the outside world, I thought you might want to see more photos of the goings on I witnessed on the screen door of my bedroom. In the interest of satisfying your scientific curiosity, here they are, along with the column.

At first glance, it looked like a giant leaf. Maybe that was because I had just woken and my eyes weren’t fully open. It clung to the screen outside the sliding glass door of my bedroom.

I took a closer look and … well, before I go any further, I should issue a warning: The following is s-rated, intended for mature gardeners able to deal with earthy matters concerning slime, sex and –ugh, feh and yuck! – slugs.

To return to the narrative, the leaf was animate, consisting of two of the gastropods known as slugs. I’m no slugologist but I’m pretty sure they were great gray slugs as opposed to, say, banana slugs or red slugs. They were huge with dark spots running like stripes along their gray-brown bodies.

As I stared at them, I remembered a passage by one of my favorite garden writers, Celia Thaxter, who wrote: “It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description, repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.” The slug does just that – munching at will with tiny tooth-like protrusions on its tongue called radula. It even eats other slugs – when they’re dead.

The only mistake Celia made was referring to the slug as “he,” which I’ll explain shortly. At first the slime buckets on my screen stretched side by side, then they gradually curled together, one above the other.

By the time I woke my husband up, they had entwined themselves around each other while they dangled from a thin string that looks like, and is, mucus. If you’re a slug, mucous is very important – it keeps you from drying out, allows you to wriggle safely over sharp objects and offers protection against predatorswho have difficulty dealing with it and helps species like great gray slugs from sliding down vertical surfaces.

My husband, who has an instinct for these things, did a double-take. “They’re getting it on,” he said, except he was a little less delicate. I had suspected as much but didn’t want to think about slugs in love. Or even in lust. I don’t say this out of prudery, but because I don’t want to feel any tender mercies about these all-consuming plant-eaters.

Anyway, there they were twisting and dangling. Now – and don’t say I didn’t warn you – things got a little kinky.
Slugs are hermaphrodites, they have both male and female reproductive organs.

And spurred by scientific curiosity, my husband and I watched as the mating pair extruded their genetalia, wrapped them around one another, and exchanged sperm in a poof of blue.

Soon they retracted everything and hung from the thinning cord. I have since learned that some slugs take part in a practice called apophalliation, in which one does a Loreena Bobbit on the other – thus forcing it to remain totally female for the rest of its days. And yes, some slugs can fertilize themselves.

Any gardener who gets down in the dirt is privy to the intimate details of pistils and stamens, of pollination and reproduction. As well as the goings-on of feathered and four-footed creatures. Amorous squirrels chase each other up and down trees and along fences throughout the spring, birds nest and rabbits carry on like, well, rabbits. As long-time readers know, swans have mated against my glass front door and snapping turtles have laid eggs in my yard.

But nothing could have prepared me for the great gray slugs engaged on my bedroom screen.

As their slimy cord stretched, my tale became something of a morality play. Pretty soon, they would fall, push off and produce eggs – hundreds of them. My husband and I often carry spiders and crickets out of the house and are currently refraining from cutting the grass around a colony of ground-nesting bees. When safeguards fail, we share our lettuce with rabbits and our squash with squirrels. Our garden as well as our lawn is organic.

But when it comes to slugs, there is a consideration that is both personal and cosmic. Would we turn hundreds of slugs loose upon our yard and the world? You bet your sweet patootie we wouldn’t. I’ve corresponded and talked to people who dispatch slugs – often in the dead of night – with knives, scissors, homemade spears, sharp spades, ammonia, salt, vinegar and beer. Or who trap them and throw them into the middle of the road and let motorists do the rest. I even read about someone who stabs slugs with a screwdriver. And a fellow who came to install central air-conditioning recently told us about a friend who swallowed a slug to win a $50 bet.

We did nothing like that. We gave the slugs a choice. We put a bowl of beer beneath them. They didn’t absolutely have to fall into it. If they had any sense, they’d swing left or right and miss it.

Most gardeners would agree that my story has a happy ending. They fell right in.

Remembering Judy Zuk

2007-09-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of weeks ago, I spent a lovely summer day at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, enthralled by the water lilies and the roses and the crape myrtles. I’m so glad I did.

Today I learned that Judith D. Zuk – who led the garden with grace and elegance for more than 15 years – died over the weekend.

Judy was my sister in the sorority no one wants to pledge – the sisterhood of women scarred by breast cancer. And she was my friend in the way all gardeners are friends – connected by our love of the earth between our fingers, by our wonder at a sprouting seed and the miracle of the bulbs.

I met Judy my first week on the job as Newsday’s garden columnist. When it came to horticulture, I was as green as a tree leafing out in spring. But the president of BBG walked around the garden with me. That’s the way she was. And from that moment, I never missed a chance to visit.

Judy called me when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And a few years later, I called her when she was diagnosed. My scars healed. Hers didn’t – her cancer metastasized and eventually claimed her life at the age of 55.

But not her spirit. You can see it and feel it in the 52-acre public garden where she cultivated her passion for plants. Where under her watchful eye, innovative programs took root – such as Brooklyn GreenBridge, a community-based effort that teaches composting and conservation and shares seeds and bulbs throughout the borough, and Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment, a themed public high school that weaves academic subjects and environmental issues. And where gardens in every nook and cranny were restored and enhanced – the Children’s Garden, which is the oldest in the nation, and the Lily Pool, the Fragrance Garden, the Cranford Rose Garden and the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden.

And where the magnolia garden was named for her when she retired in 2005. Judy loved magnolias and the plaza in front of the Administration Building blooms in spring with the magnificent flowers of 17 different varieties.

One of them is Magnolia x Judy Zuk. Its golden yellow blossom touched at the base with a hint of plum was created at BBG and named for the woman who was the fifth president in the garden’s 100-year history.

I thought about Judy when I walked through the magnolia plaza on my recent visit. I promised her I’d come again in the spring when her favorite flower is in bloom.

As it turns out, I'll be at the garden before then. I'll be there for her memorial service on September 23.

Photo credits:
*Portrait of Judith Zuk by The Lindner Studio, courtesy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden

*Magnolia x Judy Zuk by Patrick Cullina, courtesy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden

*Judith D. Zuk Magnolia Plaza by Leeann Lavin, courtesy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden

A Rose for England's Rose

2007-08-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

In case you’ve been vacationing on Mars this summer or simply haven’t noticed the flood of magazine covers and TV specials, Friday marks the 10th anniversary of Princess Di’s death. If you were an admirer of the People’s Princess, perhaps you’re already the proud owner of a commemorative plate or collectible coin, perhaps you’ve bought a copy of her tiara or a thimble featuring her likeness. Maybe you’ve snatched up one of the limited-edition resin figurines of Diana the fashionista striking a pose in a replica of the strapless blue silk chiffon gown she wore to the Cannes Film Festival in 1987.

Or maybe not.

If you’re a gardener and a Dianaphile, you don’t have to choose between crass and corny. You can choose a sweetly scented ivory rose blushed with pink. As you might expect, it’s called Diana, Princess of Wales. And it’s as graceful and elegant as the woman who was eulogized in song by Elton John as “England’s Rose.”

This rose is actually a re-introduction of a best-selling hybrid tea that Jackson & Perkins first came out with in 1998. Like the one-time princess it was named for, Diana the rose was a hit from the start, with sales of more than 475,000 in this country. And like its namesake, it has a purpose that goes beyond just looking good -- although it certainly is beautiful with full and fragrant 35-petaled flowers on stately stems lush with dark green foliage. Jackson & Perkins donates 10 percent of all sales -- more than half a million dollars so far -- to The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund to help finance charities that were dear to the People's Princess. Actually, the Jackson & Perkins Diana rose -- it's available in a one-gallon container for fall planting or bareroot for the spring -- is one of a only handful of licensed products approved by the fund.

So how do you honor the memory of a real-life princess whose beauty thrived among the thorns, and who reminds us even a decade after her death, that fairy tales don't always come true?

If you're a gardener, plant a rose.

(Photo courtesy of Jackson & Perkins)

What's Bigger Than A Honda CRX?

2007-08-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

Answer: A mountain of mulch.

When 20 yards of gorgeous shredded bark mulch was dumped on my driveway awhile back, it all but swallowed my little 19-year-old CRX.

I love the look and smell and feel of new mulch. Of course, all this stuff is now where it should be -- in the beds and borders of my yard. When I was out weeding the other day, it reminded me of why mulch is the elixir of the garden.

Actually, there weren't that many weeds to pull -- mulch smothers what I think of as the dust bunnies of the garden. And when I grabbed a little locust seedling that was hiding among the dahlias, it's taproot gave with hardly a tug. Usually, I need a trowel to dig the pesky invaders out.

Mulch also helps your soil retain moisture so you don't have to wage a daily battle with hoses. And it cools the earth in summer. Which brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves -- over-zealous gardeners and especially landscapers who mulch in May. The plants are barely in the ground and they're up to their necks shivering in shredded bark or cocoa hulls. You want to let the soil warm up before you mulch. I'll remind you about it next spring.

My central air conditioning died just as the days of crushing heat arrived. I'll still waiting for the new system to be installed. I'm wilting. But my flowers and vegetables aren't. Maybe I should go sit in the mulch.

A Truly Black Dahlia

2007-06-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

Ginger Clack of Mrytle Creek, Oregon was in her garden about five years ago when a pretty little black flower waved at her. "It just waved at me," she says. "My heart was racing. I waved back."

It was a hell of a hello.

Black flowers are rare in nature -- and the reason is simple. Flowers weren't put on earth to look good in a vase or to create nice combinations in our gardens or to make silly humans smile or to say 'I love you' or 'I'm sorry' or 'Happy Birthday' or any other sentiment. Flowers exist simply to attract pollinators to a plant. It's all about sex. Survival of the species is what matters. And black blooms, it seems, are not a turn on to buzzing bees and other pollinating insects. They prefer red and yellow and white.

But humans keep trying to create black flowers. What is it that makes us want what we can't have? Why do we have to one up Mother Nature? Of course, when it comes to black flowers, mostly all we've done is come close. I mean Basil St. John has been on the trail of black orchids since 1945. And in 1850, Alexandre Dumas wrote The Black Tulip about one man's obsession with an elusive flower. Actually, Queen of Night, introduced in 1940, remains the standard for black tulips -- even though it's more mahogany than midnight.

It's the same with other flowers. Iris Superstition is really dark purple and Dracula's Shadow is deep violet. Hemerocallis Starling is more maroon than black. Fritillaria persica is burgundy. Chocolate cosmos is chocolate. Rosa Black Magic is often billed as the deepest darkest red rose ever. A black hyacinth named Midnight Mystique took the Chelsea Flower Show by storm two years ago, but even its Dutch hybridizer was quoted in The Guardian as saying "it's impossible to create a truly black flower -- there will always be a touch of purple or magenta."

Which brings me back to Ginger Clack. Ginger claims she has what looks to be the first black dahlia. "We've had lots of dark purples and reds that are close," she told me over the phone. "But this one -- we've been showing it and they think this is the closest there's ever been to true black. It's so dark you can't see it against a black cloth."

She sent me the pictures to prove it.

She knew it was special the minute she saw it waving to her. "The bees did the work and it just showed up -- a small single black flower that wowed me." She nurtured that original seedling -- gathering seeds in the fall and overwintering them, then growing and watching and evaluating the next generation and the next. "It's always exciting when you see something special," she said. "One out of a thousand dahlias might be a good one."

Ginger knows her dahlias. She and her husband Ronald have been growing and hybridizing them for more than 25 years at Clack's Dahlia Patch, their 200-acre hay and timber farm, where just over an acre is devoted to their favorite flower. They've introduced about 20 varieties, including this mini cactus dahlia in shades of pink and yellow that they named Shea's Rainbow after their granddaughter. "But we cut back this year," she said. "We're down to 3,500 dahlias. I'm 65, my husband is 69. We grow them all ourselves."

Right now they're concentrating on cultivating their black dahlia so they'll have between 80 and 100 to sell in the fall. Ginger named it Ebony Star -- "because that's what it is."

"The really good news is that it has to have sun," she said. "It gets even darker when it grows in the sun, which is very unusual. And we can take the black gene and get the big dahlias and the doubles. I'm just so happy about it. Of course, if I came up with a blue one that would really be something. There's no blue gene in the dahlia world. I haven't even tried for it. But this black dahlia is special. It's big news. It's a real event in the dahlia world."

Photos courtesy of Ginger Clack

A Little Bit of Heaven

2007-06-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

I spent a little time in peony heaven recently and I'm so glad I did. Actually, it's a 7-acre wonderland of sun-dappled terraced hillsides in Thomaston, Connecticut, where Kasha and David Furman nurture hundreds of tree peonies. I tell their story and the story of their nursery, Cricket Hill Garden, in my column.

I was enchanted by the woody deciduous shrubs that the Chinese have revered for more than 2,000 years and that plant explorers brought back to Europe in the 1700s. Just take a look at Coral Terrace and I'm sure you'll understand.
I'll be adding a few tree peonies to my garden in the fall, which is the perfect time for planting since that's when they're dormant. Take care of your tree peony and it will reward you with true beauty. In time, one plant will perfume your spring garden with 50 or more colorful 8-inch flowers.

Make sure it has plenty of room to reach its potential – most tree peonies mature into four-by-four-foot woody shrubs with deep roots. Depending on the variety, some grow into 10-foot-tall superstars, although that might take 100 years or so. Plant it in dappled shade so flowers last longer. Kasha and David place charming handpainted umbrellas in the garden to protect the blooms. Good drainage is essential – a raised bed or slope is the perfect place. Which is why David and Kasha bought their gently sloping property in the Litchfield Hills and why they dug the peony beds three feet deep, then filled in with wood chips and other organic matter. You'll also want to make sure your tree peony is at least eight feet from large trees so it doesn’t have to compete for water and nutrients.

Unlike other garden divas, tree peonies don’t require a lot of fuss. It's hard to believe that flowers this gorgeous demand so little.

But it's true. Protect them during their first winter with a blanket of mulch, and water during the growing season if conditions are dry. Once established, tree peonies are drought tolerant. Feed plants every couple of weeks with liquid fish-seaweed fertilizer. Kasha and David also like a rock powder amendment called Azomite that replenishes the soil with 67 minerals.

When the flower show ends, deadhead faded blooms so young plants don’t put their energy into making seeds. Around the first frost, remove leaves but don’t cut the woody stems. You wouldn’t want to lose a single bloom.

After a day at Cricket Hill Garden, I can hardly wait to grow my own tree peonies. Here are two of my favorites -- Snow Lotus and Yang Gui Fei Wearing a Crown of Kingfisher Feathers.

What a Croc

2007-06-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

George Bush in Crocs?

I may be forced to toss my sunflower-yellow Crocs in the compost pile. Okay, I know they're not biodegradable -- but you get my drift.

Still, President Bush in Crocs -- with socks. OMG, as the kids say. This photo from Getty Images is not a pretty picture.

I'm not surprised that he's wearing the most boring shade of Crcos I've ever seen. And the socks -- it's a footwear faux pas of the greatest magnitude. But then again, why not since he's spent so much time with his foot in his mouth.

Maybe now we can officially call him George "What a Croc" Bush.

Bloggers, of course, are having a lot of fun with this one, but most of all I like what Manolo the shoe blogger has to say.

Tell me what you think.

"Otherwise Normal People" -- An Interview with Aurelia C. Scott

2007-06-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading an entertaining book titled “Otherwise Normal People” by Aurelia C. Scott. The subtitle is even more to the point – “Inside the Obsessive and Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening.”

Aurelia describes a surgeon who convinces roses to open by warming them with his wife’s hair dryer and a lawyer who “chastises underperforming floribundas with a sharp shovel.” She guides us through this alternate universe where truckers and chemists and race car drivers and butchers and anesthesiologists plant and prune and primp and pamper their prickly darlings in pursuit of awards and trophies and a place in the court of honor at the National Rose Show. It’s a book about love and passion and the never-ending allure of the Queen of Flowers.

I caught up by phone with the first-time author from Maine during her West Coast book tour. (photo by Robin Krug)

So what is it about the rose that makes people beserk?
The rose can be so many things – a tiny mini or a great puff with 100 petals. It’s the only flower you can fill an entire garden with – and it won’t be boring. Some of the scents are quite head-spinning. All this on a plant that can make us bleed. Roses are the perfect combination of danger and beauty.

Of all the roseaholics you’ve met, who’s your favorite character?
I fell in love with each person as I met and wrote about them. But I remain head-over-heels in love with Clarence Rhodes – who is famous in Portland, Maine, where I live, for his car-stopping roses – because of his infectious joy and the way he laughs with such obvious pleasure when he talks about them. When I asked if I could come by and see his roses, he said, ‘Sure.’ And that started me on my way with this book.

What’s the wackiest thing you’ve seen someone do to a rose?
It has to be the rosarian in the Carolinas who protects tender canes from impending frost by slipping PVC pipes over each and every stem. Every rose, and he has a lot of them, looks like it’s sprouting multiple pipes.

The book is dedicated to your husband and “to the memory of the women who gave me roses” – your mother and grandmother. Tell me a little about them.
My grandmother wore rose-scented perfume. She lived in apartments but she always had bouquets of roses. My mother had a rose garden in Massachusetts where I grew up. She made potpourri from the petals. Roses were a symbol of romance and sophistication to her. She died while I was writing the book.

People who grow exhibition roses seem to be an ingenious lot. Who wins the Rube Goldberg Award for the wildest invention?
Clarence Rhodes for his rose-bloom protector made from empty two-liter plastic juice bottles. Clarence also created an extra-long wand that squirts upward and he’s training sparrows to eat Japanese beetles off his roses.
(Here’s how Aurelia describes the bloom protector in her book:
“He cuts off the bottom of a bottle and wires it into position like a hat over the uncapped top; then he glues a clamp to the bottle’s base. To use the bloom protector, you drive a pole into the soil near a flower . . . clamp the bloom protector to the pole and slide it into place . . . The hatlike top keeps moisture and ultraviolet light off the bloom, and the open bottom ensures air circulation.)

How did the title come to you?
My editor and I were experimenting with titles. We wanted to use the words “rose” and “obsession.” One day she was telling someone what the book was about and she said, “the thing is, in the rest of their lives these are otherwise normal people.” We had our title.

In the book, you admit that you only grow two rose plants. Is the heat on you to grow more?
Well, I have seven now. I was thumbing through a rose catalog the other day and by the time I got to the last page I realized I’d checked off 26 that I really wanted. But I’m not yet someone who’s gone from one plant to 600.

What’s your favorite rose these days?
Gemini, it’s a hybrid tea bred by Keith Zary of Jackson & Perkins. One of the people in the book describes it as a real show rose as well as a good garden rose. And I love Louise Odier, an Old Garden Rose. She’s a big lovely soft pink shrub and she’s incredibly scented. I keep trying to pin her to the fence but she doesn’t like it. I should pay more attention to what the plant is telling me instead of trying to be in charge.

Do you squish Japanese beetles by hand?
When I first heard about that I thought, I could never, it’s too gross. But one day I went out and saw a Japanese beetle on my roses. I was undone with fury and grabbed it and squashed it hard between my fingers. It crunches when you do that. It’s oddly satisfying, you know.

There’s a chapter where you talk about the fungicides and insecticides exhibitors use in their pursuit of the perfect rose. How do you really feel about the chemicals?
I’m an organic gardener. And when it comes to my roses I don’t mind what one grower calls “a pretty good scattering of yellow leaves.” In my heart I was prepared to disapprove of the chemicals they use. But I must say that most of the exhibitors I met use chemicals wisely and with knowledge and care – and as sparingly as possible.

Your book is filled with stories of love and passion. Do you have a favorite love story?
The story of Dr. Satish Prabhu and his wife Vijaya. Because he captured her heart with roses and because he was so desperate for roses after not having a place to grow them when he came to America that when he and his wife finally bought a house, he ordered the entire Jackson & Perkins catalog. Literally. On the flip side of that, there are stories of people who lost love because of roses. But usually they found it again with someone who shared their obsession. A woman on Long Island, Louise Coleman, even wrote articles with titles like “How to Grow Roses Together and Stay Married.” Her husband died but she believes he’s still with her in the rose garden, guiding her. It’s her way of honoring his memory.

Will you ever look at Q-tips the same again?
Never. Q-tips are used to gentle tight rose petals apart. Actually, I love watching people groom roses – they use shoe mitts to buff foliage, nail clippers to cut off thorns, crinkly scissors to shear off the dry edges of leaves, artist’s brushes to arrange petals in a perfect spiral. Amazing.

What do you grow in your garden besides roses?
I live in downtown Portland, Maine, on about an eighth of acre with a view of Casco Bay so we get a stiff east wind. I love scented plants – I grow lavender and sweet clethra. I have tall grasses; I like variegated ones as long as they don’t spread. I grow shrub and standard hydrangeas. We got rid of the last patch of lawn last year and replaced it with creeping thyme you can walk on and spreading Dianthus Zing Rose, which is dark scarlet and low-growing. And I have four raised vegetable beds where I grow tomatoes, Japanese eggplants, arugula and ball-shaped lemon-flavored cucumbers – things that are hard to find in stores.

So is there a national rose show in your future?
Well, I’m speaking at the Spring Nationals in St. Paul, Minnesota later this month. But I think it will be awhile before I exhibit any roses there. Maybe one day I’ll try a local show. The people I wrote about don’t understand why I’m trying to resist.

Peonies and Ants, A Beautiful Friendship

2007-05-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

My peonies are getting ready for their moment in the sun – and I can hardly wait. But before the flowers come, the ants arrive. And they’re here in full force.

Every spring, I get as many questions about ants on peonies as I get ants on my peonies. In other words, lots of them.

But it’s an old wives tale that peonies need ants to bloom. Ants don’t pollinate peonies – and they don’t “unglue” the flower petals like generations of gardeners believed. It’s a charming notion and it’s true that the ants are lapping up the sticky nectar produced by the leaf-like structures that cover the buds. But the blooms would open even if the ants weren’t there.

The thing to remember is that the invading armies of ants don’t hurt the plants. In fact, they actually protect the swelling buds from other less-benign soft-bodied pests. I was talking about all this the other day with David and Kasha Furman when I visited them at Cricket Hill Garden, their lovely tree peony nursery in Thomaston, Connecticut, for an upcoming column. They call their place Peony Heaven so I figured they'd have something to say about the ant-peony phenomenon. And David did. He said the ants feed the nectar to aphids, which are like "domesticated animals." Then, he said, the ants "milk the aphids" and feed the substance to their queen. So whatever you do, please don’t try to wipe out the ants with toxic pesticides.

And be patient – the ants that came marching in will soon go marching out. In the meantime, enjoy your peonies. If you’re cutting bouquets from your garden in the coming weeks, try holding the flower upside down and gently shaking out the ants so you don’t bring them inside. Or submerge the entire cut bloom upside down in a bucket of water for about five minutes to drive out the ants.

Happy Birthday, Carl Linnaeus

2007-05-18T02:39:00.000-07:00

This week's birthday boy is Carl Linnaeus -- who came up with the binomial system for naming plants. It's his 300th on Wednesday and botanists across the globe are celebrating it from the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx to his native Sweden and even Japan.

As you know, each plant gets two official Latin names -- the first denoting genus, the second signifying species. Before that plant names were a linguistic gobbledygook. I explain this in my column on him in Sunday's Newsday, but thought I'd tell you a little more about his racier side. Or at least the side that made some goody-goodies gasp.

In his time, Linnaeus was, to some degree , X-rated. He came along at a time when plant life was deemed as pure as the Disney channel. The prevailing approach had been set centuries before by Aristotle who decided that because plants stayed in one spot they couldn't possibly have sex. In his personal life, Linnaeus was a devout Lutheran and by our standards something of a sexist. Listen, he didn't want his daughters to learn French because he thought it would ruin them for housekeeping. And when it came to human behavior, he had no patience with promiscuity.

But where plants were concerned, it was another matter. He knew a lot was going on in garden beds and he wasn't afraid to say so.

The Swedish pastor's son set up a new system of classifying flowers -- he did it according to the number of their male stamens and female pistils. His fellow scientists probably applauded Linnaeus' insistence that the stamens were more important than the pistils, but most of them were turned off by his use of human terms to describe plant behavior. He likened the anthers to testes, the pollen to sperm, and the stigma to the vulva. And he went so far as to compare a plant's style to a woman's vagina. In those days, you didn't go around giving monologues about vaginas. My heavens, botany was considered so pristine that it was even thought of as a fit subject for women.

He even talked about polygamy and incest -- describing flowers with multiple stamens as possessisng "twenty males or more in the same bed as the female." This was wild stuff, causing one of his critics to wonder "Who would have thought that bluebells, lilies and onions could be up to such immorality?"

For more about Linnaeus, you can check out my column.

(photo credit: Krafft, 1774; copyright KVA)

Listen to Me

2007-05-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

If you'd like to learn about disease-resistant roses, drought-tolerant plants or amazing annuals, check out the slide shows I narrated to complement my column in Newsday about master gardeners.

The master gardener's programs in Nassau and Suffolk are run by the county branches of Cornell Cooperative Extension. To find out about extension programs elsewhere, click here.

For Newsday Subscribers

2007-05-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Come by and say hello.

I'll be speaking at Newsday in Melville on Wednesday, May 9, at 7 p.m.

My talk is called "Life Lessons from the Garden," but what's in a title? I suspect it will be fairly free-ranging and you can ask me all the questions you want.

Visit newsdayinsider.com for free tickets.

Join Me

2007-05-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

As those of you who read my Newsday column know, I'm a breast cancer survivor. I'm a 10-year survivor. And as both a journalist and a person who's faced the disease that is every woman's fear, I know just how important up-to-date information is.

That's why I'm privileged to be the moderator of the Adelphi Breast Cancer Program's "Ask the Experts" panel on May 8 at 7 p.m. The panel includes four specialists who will discuss the latest trends in treatment.

The forum is free and takes place in the ballroom of the University Center at Adelphi in Garden City, NY. Call 516-877-4325 for information.

Applause for Auriculas

2007-04-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

I went to a theater opening at the New York Botanical Garden the other day. I saw English nobility, elegant flowers, a silent plant auction, a sale of antique garden furniture and a gallery of expensively-dressed people.

It’s true. I never saw so many silver-haired men in blazers or lacquered women with rail-thin legs. Most of them were getting gracefully about in high heels I couldn’t have taken a step in. No one seemed to mind the raw weather. Even in my raincoat, I got a chill.

I felt like Ugly Betty at a fashion shoot. And it didn’t help when my husband – in his haste to get at the smoked salmon – swept a glass of champagne off the hors d’oeuvre table in the auction tent with the sleeve of his raincoat. It was even worse when a blazer with an English accent kicked the pieces of glass under the table.

But the theater opening was fun. Actually, the theater itself was a wooden structure created by Christianson Lee Studios with swags of faux-painted Trompe l’oeil drapery that looked like velvet – even the gold balls and tassels seemed to glisten in the fading daylight.

It was an impressive setting for the stars of the show – Auricula primroses in terra cotta Long Tom pots arranged on three tiered shelves under a proscenium arch. They’ll be on display till May 13.

Auriculas aren’t the little yellow-eyed ground-hugging English primroses we all rush out to buy as a first sign of spring. These velvety beauties on pencil-thick stems came into being in the 16th century when the delicate yellow Primula auricula was crossed with red and blue-flowered Primula hirsute. The result was a kaleidoscope of stunning patterns and color combinations.

To protect the exquisite blooms from wind and rain, Auricula fanciers in France and Belgium started displaying the potted primroses on shelves in shallow, open-fronted boxes. Flemish weavers brought the plants to England in the 17th century – and the rest, as they say, is history. The English went crazy for the blooms and, by the 19th century, the curtain went up on the glory days of the Auricula Theater.

The Auricula Theater at The New York Botanical Garden is as English as you can get. It was designed by the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury, who was in attendance to cut the yellow ribbon. Her credentials are, to say the least, impeccable. Lady Salisbury has blue blood and a green thumb. She’s known as a gardener’s gardener who restored 45 acres of the gardens at Hatfield, the family seat that dates back to the Jacobean era and was the childhood home of Elizabeth I. As you might expect, it includes an Auricula Theater.

Lady Salisbury, a slender, elegant woman with a polka-dotted navy blue dress, a flouncy white collar, a pearl necklace and an accent of pure Queen’s English – I’m not talking about the borough – held court in front of the auriculas. “Lovely,” she said. “Just as I imagined it.”

Before Lady Salisbury cut the ribbon, I sat on a bench next to the theater, which in the herb garden where the boxwood parterres were laid out by Penelope Hobhouse. A hawk circled high above the limousines arriving for the auction a short walk away. Amelanchier and blue stock were in bloom along with the willow leaf pear. And common primroses and blue-flowered Himalayan primroses were flowering.

“These are those very special primroses,” a tweedy passerby whispered to her husband. “Very nice. Very, very nice.” Then she spotted the white-gloved servers pouring champagne a few feet away. “I want a drink now. I’m freezing.”

A woman in a red swing coat and black Jimmy Choo’s was unsure of what she was looking at as she surveyed the auriculas. “Are they real?” she wondered out loud. After admiring the flowers, she turned to a companion. “Let’s get to the auction before we miss the good stuff,” she said.

The silent auction featured such plants as Chinese sweetshrub, fragrant snowbell and a new ruffled red daylily that came with naming rights. The antiques sale included botanical prints and rare books and stone fountains and marble statuary and moss-covered urns. I saw a lovely faux bois bench that I could have snapped up for just a little more than $11,000.

“Anything you want,” my husband said.

That’s when we hit the hors d’ouerve table.

Winning Roses

2007-04-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

If you're a rose, winning the All-America Rose Selections award is like winning the Miss America title -- except you don't have to put up with Donald Trump. The AARS medal means you've got both style and substance. The 2007 winners include a new Knock Out shrub rose by Bill Radler -- this one is Rainbow Knock Out -- as well as a white wonder named Moondance and a golden beauty called Strike It Rich. Here they are:

Rainbow Knock Out Class: Landscape Shrub Rose
Shape: Round and bushy
Foliage: Dark green with a sheen
Hardiness: Zone 4 with a mulch blanket in winter
Flowers: 2-inch, 5-petaled coral pink blooms with yellow centers
Special Talents: Resists black spot, powdery mildew and rust; blooms all season, showing off colorful hips in late fall
Introduced by: The Conard Pyle Co.

Moondance

Class: Floribunda

Shape: Tall, upright and well-branched

Foliage: Glossy dark green

Hardiness: Zone 4 with winter protection

Flowers:Oval-shaped buds give way to big, 3 1/2-inch creamy white 25-petaled blooms

Special Talents: Disease resistant; spicy scent
Introduced by: Jackson & Perkins

Strike It Rich Class: Grandiflora
Shape: Bushy and upstanding
Foliage: Dark green leaves with red stems
Hardiness: Zone 4 with a winter blanket
Flowers: Elegantly pointed buds open into showy 30-petaled flowers in shades of gold, orange and red
Special Talents: Disease resistant; strong spicy fragrance; long-lived flowers perfect for bouquets
Introduced by: Weeks Roses

And here's a sneak peek at one of the winners for 2008, when All-America Rose Selections celebrates its 70th anniversary:

Mardi Gras

Class: Floribunda

Shape: Well-branched, hedge-like

Foliage: Dark semi-glossy green

Hardiness: Zone 5

Flowers: 4-inch yellow-orange blossoms turn pink

Special Talents: Disease resistant, easy to grow, super floriferous, peppery scent, grows into a hedge

Introduced by: Jackson & Perkins

Going for a Knock Out

2007-04-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

So many of you wrote me asking where you could find Knock Out roses after I did a column about these disease-resistant, low-maintenance beauties and Bill Radler, the man who created them.

Whether you're looking for the original red Knock Out (pictured here) that was an All-America Rose Selections winner in 2000 or any of its pretty siblings -- Double Knock Out, Pink Knock Out, Pink Double Knock Out, Blushing Knock Out and Rainbow Knock Out -- just click here to find a nursery in your area.

photo courtesy of AARS

What's Blooming?

2007-03-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Here's what's blooming in my garden.

Snowdrops
Galanthus nivalis

Crocus
Iris reticulata

Witch hazel
Hamamelis x intermedia
Arnold Promise

Tell me what's blooming in your garden.

Orchidelirium

2007-03-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

I stopped in at the New York Botanical Garden's orchid show recently and I'm still having orchidelirium. You can read about the did-you-ever-see-a-dream-blooming display in my Newsday column on Sunday, but the show featured everything from blue vandas to yellow cymbidiums and, well, thousands of blooms in all.

And they all seem at home amid the tropical environs of the great glass palace known as the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. I don't know if I have a favorite but the one that fascinated me most during my visit was the Darwin's Star orchid.

The orchid itself would be a star by any name but the flower's connection to the man it's named for -- Charles Darwin, of course -- is an added attraction.

The star-shaped bloom is a pure white stunner with 11-inch nectar spurs. Very dramatic-looking, as you can see. When Darwin first studied the flower, he hypothesized that there had to be a moth equipped with a pip of a proboscis -- at least one long enough to get at the pollen and help keep the species, Angraecum sesquipedale -- going.

He got a lot of flak and ridicule but the originator of the origin of species was used to that. And 40 years later, the very insect -- an exotic and nocturnal hawkmoth with a nose for noodling -- was indeed discovered.

If there's a moral to the story, it may just be -- Don't mess with Charles Darwin.

Scenes from the Flower Show

2007-03-08T19:14:00.000-08:00

At 8 in the morning, the floor of the Philadelphia Flower Show is virtually empty. You could get close enough to actually read plant labels. You could take a picture without getting a stranger’s head or elbow in the shot. You could make out the clover design of the knot garden fashioned from flowers and colored glass in one of the main displays. You could stick your nose into a Dawn viburnum and inhale spring on a frigid day when snow swirled along the city streets.

It’s one of the perks of being a garden writer – you get to sneak in before the crowds arrive. That’s what I did on my last day at the show. Here’s some of what I saw:

**A tall woman in a red sweatshirt named Arlene Flick watering pots of Stephanotis floribunda and Coprosma – just two of the hundreds of plants on display in an area nicknamed the Hort-court.

This is the section where perfectly groomed potted specimens are judged throughout the show – where 50-year-old clivias are in killer bloom, where azaleas clipped into pink clouds are photographed by amazed and amused tourists, where hairy cacti no bigger than your thumb and weirdly gnarled euphorbias sport blue ribbons that reaffirm the truth behind the old adage that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

“I’m just watering, not feeding,” Arlene said when I asked what was in the 9-gallon tank she was wheeling around. Arlene is a volunteer with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which produces the show, and a member of a four-person crew that comes in at 6 a.m. three times during the week-long run.
“It used to be that people would water their own exhibits,” the retired horticulturist from Delaware County said. “But strangely, plants would get knocked down, flowers would be picked, all manner of things would happen. Twenty years ago someone asked me if I’d mind watering. I said, ‘Sure.’ I say ‘sure’ every year.” I just like watering.”

**The living wall and arch at the show entrance.

An impressive tapestry of color and texture fashioned from blue lobelia, pink cascading diascia, creeping dichondra, an epiphytic cactus known as Rhipsalis and a very cool succulent called Echeveria Topsy Turvy with grayish silver rosettes. All of it forced into bloom and placed in the wall by John Story and Diane Weiner of Meadowbrook Farm.

**Gairdin an Oir – a garden of gold by Stoney Bank Nurseries – shining with yellow roses, coreopsis, rudbeckias, Echinacea Sunrise, heucheras, gold-leaved hostas, and Spirea Gold Flame – not to mention junipers with names like Gold Star and Old Gold, and golden dawn redwood Gold Rush. It was enough to make you believe there was a pot of gold in the garden.

**Michael Petrie of J. Franklin Styer Nurseries hanging out with his dinosaurs before hoards of Homo sapiens rushed his best-of-show landscape.

“They were in Jurassic Park,” he said of the full-sized cast creatures lurking amid the greenery around a pond made even more mysterious with ultrasonic foggers.

Actually, the dinosaurs were created by Don Lessem – AKA “Dino” Don – and were used in promotional tours for the 1993 movie. They’ve been standing around his yard in Media, Pennsylvania ever since. Michael stopped by to visit one day and was inspired to put the creatures in the flower show spotlight.

“We created the garden around the dinosaurs,” he said. “There are 350 pots of Phormium alone in the exhibit. We used a gingko tree because they were around when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The exhibits are always a work in progress and I’m never really sure how it’s all going to turn out. It usually works.”

Which is something of an understatement since Michael has won best-in-show six times in the past 11 years. This year his exhibit also was honored for “excellence in use of forced plants” and as “most distinctive in show.”

He’s already thinking about next year when the show theme will be Jazz It Up. “I have a concept,” he said. “It will be minimalist and contemporary – and it will involve only three plants and four colors.”

I'll see you there.

Sprites at the Show

2007-03-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

Sure, and I almost convinced myself the wee people were about at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Their laundry was drying on a clothesline. Their blue and red front doors and their windows were wide open, the lights inside twinkling like Lilliputian lanterns. Tiny milk bottles stood near the stoops and flower pots brimming with blooms nestled in carpets of moss. Their little houses were fashioned from twigs and bark and moss and carved into tree trunks or fallen logs. One storybook cottage with lace curtains teetered like something out of Lemony Snicket, another resembled a wooden teapot.

Welcome to The Ealain Wood – the enchanted place sprites and nymphs and faeries call home. Where the forest floor glistens with Irish-bred daffodils and dappled “sunlight” kisses rhododendrons and ferns and lindens and smoke trees. Where massive faux trees made of muslin reach to the rafters and if you’re lucky you’ll hear the sound of a harp or a flute and perhaps the whisper of gossamer wings as the magical creatures flit about so quickly that they’re imperceptible to mere humans.

I tried to capture them on camera, but all I got were these shots of their homes.

Jurassic Isle

2007-03-04T21:09:00.000-08:00

What with the theme of this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show being called “Legends of Ireland,” it makes sense that the best-of-show award went to an exhibit that featured full-sized but ersatz dinosaurs. Not.

Or maybe it wasn’t that far-fetched at all. Dinosaurs roamed everywhere else in the primordial past so they must have made Ireland their stomping grounds, too, before the meteor hit. And when I tunneled through the crowd to get close to the winning landscape – called Plant-O-Saurus and created by Michael Petrie of the J. Franklin Styer Nurseries – the award seemed even more reasonable.

The exhibit was typical of the Concordville, Pennsylvania firm’s reputation for imagination – I still remember the brightly painted giant truck tires that were focal points in its display at the first Philly show I attended almost a decade ago. And it was certainly in keeping with the spirit of the Emerald Isle – replete with mist rising from a mysterious woodland bog shaded by dark evergreens and surrounded by Irish moss. Reality is often perception and even the monkey puzzle trees and the towering King Tut papyrus and the giant banana trees seemed at home.

The foliage and flowers might have charmed even the most unruly triceratops and T-rex. Like the Acanthus spinosus, commonly known as spiny bear’s breeches (photo at left), and the Crytomeria japonica Cristata with otherworldly foliage (at right).

I loved the drifts of green and white Alocasia Polly and Phormium Maori Sunrise punctuated by orange rhododendrons and bromeliads as well as

white hellebores and the exotic purple flowers and

red stems of Aechmea Del Mar (at right). The huge leaves of Gunnera unfurled along the misty banks, where lights brightened and dimmed at intervals to reveal the lost world.

Whether these plant combinations made any kind of botanical sense didn’t seem to matter. It was magic.

What could be more Irish?

A Rare Treat

2007-03-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

“Are you Jacques?” I asked.

“Yes,” the tall man standing near the Jacqu e s Amand exhibit at the Philadelphia Flower Show answered.

Actually, as he explained later, he’s John Jacques Amand. There was just something about the way he was looking at the tapestry of bulbs that singled him out from the rest of the on-lookers. It was almost affectionate. And I liked his British accent. So I plunged right in and asked him how he got into the bulb business.

“My father was in bulbs,” he said. “I was dragged up in it.” But he was laughing. He could afford to. Jacques Amand of Westport, Connecticut and the United Kingdom is famous for rare and beautiful bulbs. Like the almost architecturally structured plants with fat sturdy stalks and white-striped leaves with curled edges that towered over minitature daffodils and yellow crocuses on the other side of the exhibit.

“Ah, the Drancunculus vulgaris,” he said. “Before long, it’s big red flowers will unfurl.” The dramatic Drancunculus, pictured at left, were just one of hundreds of knockout varieties of bulbs in the exhibit – everything from John’s personal favorite – Erythronium Pagoda, also known as dog's tooth violet, with yellow flowers that look like, well, a pagoda to wonderfully scented hyacinths and yellow muscari.

Not to mention species tulips (Tulipa ancilla is pictured here with spiky Rip Van Winkle daffodils) and lilies to die for. Just look at this shot of Triumphator.

The selection of Arisaema on display was both different and delightful. “They’re fascinating plants – some are only two inches tall, some like tortuosum get to be six feet,” he said.

The one in front of me was well on its way -- with a purple-edged olive green spathe and mottled snakeskin-like stems. The forcing process for these Jack-in-the-pulpit cousins and all the other bulbs in the exhibit began in England last fall, then the bulbs were shipped to the U.S. for planting in mid-December. And now they’re in the spotlight in a convention center in Philadelphia.

Clearly, there’s more to say about the extravaganza blooming this week at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The theme is “Legends of Ireland.” It’s enough to make Irish eyes smile – and mine too. Sure and I’ll be telling you more.

Searching for Flowers

2007-02-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

With Valentine's Day upon us, it's no surprise that flowers are on our minds. And Yahoo! Buzz -- which sifts through the millions of searches that the curious, the confused and the computer-dependent among us make on any given day -- has issued a list of flowers getting the most action on the Web.

Here's the Top 20, followed by the traditional sentiment associated with each bloom. In the lexicon of flowers, apparently Calla lilies, Gerbera daisies and Star Gazer lilies have no special meanings. Anyone out there want to speak for them? Send me your thoughts.

Top Searched Flowers on Yahoo!
Rose (Love)
Orchid (A Belle)
Iris (My Compliments)
Calla Lily (?)
Sunflower (Pure thoughts)
Amaryllis (Splendid beauty)
Tulip (Declaration of love)
Carnation (Pride and beauty)
Hydrangea (Heartfelt)
Bird of Paradise (Joyfulness)
Chrysanthemum (Fidelity)
Daffodil (Chivalry)
Tiger Lily (I dare you to love me)
Anthurium (Hospitality)
Peony (Bashful)
Lilac (Youthful innocence)
Gerbera Daisy (?)
Anemone (Anticipation)
Aster (Patience)
Stargazer Lily (?)

Behind the Bouquets

2007-02-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

As Valentine's Day approaches, author Amy Stewart wants you to know a thing or two about the bouquets you give and get. Her new book "Flower Confidential" hits the stores this week and let me tell you, it will give you a lot to think about. Accurately subtitled “The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers” this consummately-reported book about the cut-flower trade is a quintessential must read for flower lovers.

Read my interview with Amy to learn about her adventures as she traveled the world in search of the story behind the flowers. And check out her blog. In the meantime, here are some of the fascinating things you'll learn from "Flower Confidential":

*Cut flowers are a $40 billion worldwide industry.
*Americans spend about $6.2 billion on approximately 4 billion cut flowers a year. That's about 10 million stems every day.
*Per capita spending on cut flowers is about $25 in this country. The Swiss top the list, spending more than $100 per person.
*About 2.9 billion stems or 78 percent of all cut flowers sold in America are imported, most of them from Columbia and Ecuador.
*Works in Ecuadorian flower farms make about $150 a month -- less than four cents for every rose sold.
*Americans buy 180 million roses -- most of them red -- for Valentine's Day.
*During the two weeks before Valentine's Day almost 15 million stems of Latin American flowers will arrive every day at Miami International Airport.
*More than one third of orders will be placed on Feb. 13 and another 22 percent will be called in on Valentine's Day.

Take that last item as a reminder to place your order. And do the planet a favor, ask for flowers that are certified as eco-friendly. It's something you'll be hearing more about in the future as the push for certification grows. And it's something you'll truly appreciate after reading Amy's book.

Here are some of the florists featured in "Flower Confidential."
*Organic Bouquet: Purveyors of organic blooms to buy online or by phone. 877-899-2468.
*b brooks fine flowers: A network of speciality florists. 888-346-3356
*Flowers of the World: A cutting-edge Manhattan shop. 800-582-0428

What's Wrong With These Pictures?

2007-01-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

It's Lovely Weather For Daffodils . . .

June In January?

2007-01-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

It was bound to happen – what with the temperature inching toward 70 all week. My daffodils bloomed. Rijnveld’s Early Sensation and Tete-a-tete in bright and beautiful splashes of springtime yellow in the front and backyards.

I know I’m not alone. A lot of you have been emailing me your reports of crocuses and forsythia opening and quince and cherry trees flowering and lacecap hydrangeas with buds swelling by the minute. It’s freaky. Heck, the New York Botanical Garden reports that the candytuft and Spirea thunbergii are in bloom.

So what’s a gardener to do?

Enjoy the show.

But to set the record straight, the forsythia you’re seeing probably isn’t forsythia at all. It’s winter jasmine. Mine started blooming well before Christmas. Its season is now and if you don’t grow this cascading evergreen shrub with little buttery yellow flowers, you might want to consider planting it. In most winters it’s the first shot of yellow in my yard until the witch hazel shows up.

And the cherry trees that are doing their thing right now aren’t the pretty-in-pink Kwansan variety that soften suburbia in May. They aren’t the famous Yashino cherry trees that have been coloring the nation’s capital since they were given to us by Japan in 1912. In fact, horticulturists in Washington, D.C. have been trying to allay fears that the current – and totally expected – show of so-called “autumn-flowering” cherries won’t hurt the annual springtime show of Yoshinos.

But to get back to my daffodils, and perhaps yours. First of all, my friend David Caras of the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center tells me there’s nothing you can do. So really, calm down. Even if it gets cold again – and you should count on that – the bulbs themselves won’t be hurt. The bulbs will just slow down again because they only bloom with the encouragement of warmth and moisture. Don’t worry – any foliage that sprouted will survive.

Of course, the buds will get blasted by the cold. Depending on how far along they were when that happens, this spring’s flowers might be ruined or if you're lucky, the petals may simply have some brown edges. And if your daffodils are in glorious bloom right now, well, just figure spring has sprung.

The one thing you shouldn’t do is mulch. All that will do is hold in the warmth and promote the growth of nasty things like fungus and insect pests.

Which may be the real legacy of these balmy days.

So is it global warming? Is it El Nino? Is it Mother Nature giving us a wake up call? Is it time to buy a hybrid car and turn off the lights? I just saw "An Inconvenient Truth" so my answer is maybe.

What's IN, What's OUT

2007-01-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

Traditionally, the New Year is a time for trend-spotting. What’s in and what’s out. Where we’ll be living and vacationing. What we’ll be eating and wearing and watching and otherwise doing with our hard-earned dollars. Well, gardens are no exceptions. But it takes an expert to go out on a limb – or at least a stem. My trend-spotter of choice is Suzi McCoy whose Pennsylvania-based Garden Media Group is always ahead of the botanical curve. Here’s her list with my two cents thrown in.

Outdoor Living is IN. Indoor Living is OUT.
I’m all for outdoor living. When I bought a new patio set a couple of summers ago I made sure the market umbrella and chair cushions were just the right shade of green so they didn’t clash with my just-painted house. I haven’t gone so far as to add a chandelier or working kitchen but I do have a leaky outdoor shower and my container plantings complement the color scheme.

Escape Gardens are IN. Everyday Gardens are OUT.
Which means that even if you can’t get the time off to fly to Turks and Cacos you can turn your garden into a tropical haven. Just add some banana plants or cannas or bougainvillea or hibiscus. Suzi suggests the Bahama Bay hibiscus collection featuring varieties in 12 colors that bloom from spring through fall. I’ll check them out this season. And for added inspiration, you should take a trip to the tropical garden at Farmingdale State University.

Streamlined Gardens are IN. Shabby Chic Gardens are OUT.
Down with kitsch and cute. When it comes to pots and plants, sleek and sophisticated will rule. Let’s hope.

Eco-Chic Gardens are IN. Chemical-Needy Gardens are OUT.
I’m a breast cancer survivor. Need I say more? Of course, my garden is organic.

Small Space Gardens are IN. Colossal Landscapes are OUT.
Everybody keeps talking about down-sizing and scaling back. But all I see in my neighborhood are monster houses swallowing the land. But in the garden, small is indeed BIG. Plant hybridizers make it easy with everything from tomatoes to roses that are just right for growing in containers. Even clematis has been brought down to size, thanks to Raymond Evison, who introduced his line of Patio Clematis a few years ago.

Larger-than-Life Accents are IN. Peek-a-Boo Accessories are OUT.
If small gardens are in, does it make sense to super-size the plants and pots?

Foliage is IN. Flowers-only are OUT.
Bring on the elephant ears and ornamental grasses. Suzi is touting Simply Beautiful’s Isolepis cernua Live Wire coming this spring.

Multi-tasking Gardens are IN. Time-consuming Gardens are OUT.
If you ask me multi-tasking is time-coming. It will be the downfall of civilization. On the other hand, if you can get a plant to do a little extra in the garden, well, that’s a good thing. So let your ruffle-leafed lettuce double as an edging plant in your perennial border and use chili peppers to spice up your containers.

Fancy Plants are IN. Basic Plants are OUT.
Suzi says to forget about classic cars and vintage wines. Luxury plants may be the next big collectible. I’m happy with my Toyota and I don’t down anything stronger than Starbucks triple lattes. She says to keep an eye out for plants like Deinanthe bifida Pink Kii.

Designer Veggies are IN. Store-Bought Veggies are OUT.
I’m not sure the world is ready for a Donna Karan tomato or a Ralph Lauren eggplant. But specialty vegetables like purple potatoes and chocolate peppers are certainly in vogue. Suzi likes the mild-flavored White Satin carrot from The Cook’s Garden and the Napa Tomato, a sweet-tasting grape variety from W.Atleee Burpee.

Masses of Color are IN. Colorless Masses are OUT.
What’s to argue?

24-hour Gardens are IN. Day-only Gardens are OUT.
It’s a nice thought but I sleep during the night. Of course, I do have moon flowers.

In or out, up or down, it’s up to you. Whatever trends you embrace, just keep gardening.

A Gardener's Resolutions

2006-12-31T13:51:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season to make resolutions. I know, I know – what’s the point. You’ll only lose the list, they’ll be forgotten by tomorrow, who cares anyway. I care. Besides, I’m not talking about losing weight or getting organized. I’m talking about what really matters – keeping up with my garden. So here are this gardener's resolutions for 2007. I'd love to hear yours.

Do more with dahlias.
Plant a tree and shrub border, include Callicarpa and a Stewartia.
Turn my “mailbox” garden into a xeriscape.
Buy plant labels and use them.
Use sunblock religiously.
Replace the Daphne Carol Mackie I lost.
Plant more hellebores and colchicums.
Design new rose beds.
Paint the garden fence.
Start vegetable seeds on time.
Weed out old seed catalogs and garden books.
Keep up with my blog.
Repot my orchids.
Stop and smell the roses. The lilies too.

Deck the Halls -- With Plants

2006-12-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you're decking the halls with plants for the Christmas season. Red and green are the traditional colors of the yuletide and plants from poinsettias to Christmas cactus not only suit the motif but liven up the festivites. Plants are gifts that keep giving. They deserve some TLC. Here are some guidelines to keep them happy beyond the holidays.

Pamper Poinsettias

This holiday classic needs bright light, with a minimum of three to four hours of direct sun every day. Keep it in a room with daytime temperatures ranging from 68 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit; a night temperature of about 55 helps the plant retain its color. Don’t let it dry out, but don’t saturate it either. Water when the soil surface feels dry. By the way, if the pot is wrapped in foil, remove it or punch a hole in the bottom so excess water doesn’t accumulate. Enjoy your poinsettia for as long as you can, then do what most gardeners, myself included, do. Say goodbye to the holiday season and let the plant enrich the compost pile.

However, if you want to take a chance on making your poinsettia merry and bright for next Christmas, here’s what you have to do:

In late spring, when there’s no possibility of frost, move the plant outside. Trim to shape it, then place it in indirect sun until it gets used to being outdoors. After a few weeks, it’s ok to move the poinsettia to a sunny spot. Once a month, feed it an all purpose 20-20-20 fertilizer, mixing a half teaspoon to one gallon of water. Cut back the stems again in early July so the plant stays full and bushy. Bring it inside around Labor Day.

This is when things get tricky. From the first day of fall through Thanksgiving, put the plant in complete darkness for 14 hours every night. And I mean complete darkness. Not in a room with a night light or one where the full moon shines through sheer curtains. Put it in a closet or in a box that doesn’t have cut-out hand holds. But there’s no need to be obsessive and put it in a box in a closet, because every day you’ll have to pull the poinsettia out of the dark on schedule and place it in bright natural light for 10 hours. This regimen is what forces the green brachts – the botanical term for the colorful “petals” that are actually modified leaves – to turn red. The real flowers are the yellow berry-like centers. During this time, water and fertilize as usual.

On Thanksgiving, let the poinsettia out of the closet – just make sure it gets six hours of direct sun every day. Contrary to popular belief, poinsettias are not poisonous to humans or animals. The sap can irritate your skin, however, so wear gloves when you’re pruning.

Enjoy Amaryllis
These easy-to-grow bulbs with their big stunning flowers on tall sturdy stems deserve a place under the tree as gifts and on the table as decorations. And you don’t have to kiss them goodbye when the flowers fade. Amaryllis are happiest with three to four hours of direct sun a day so an east-or-west-facing window is the perfect spot. Like poinsettias, they like temperatures of about 75 degrees in the day and around 55 degrees at night. Make sure the soil dries out between watering – as with most bulbs, an Amaryllis may rot if it sits in too much water. During the winter, feed it a diluted solution of all purpose fertilizer once a month. In spring and summer, fertilize every two weeks or so. And you should move the potted bulbs outside in summer as long as you give it a lightly shaded spot. In late August, curtail watering, then stop altogether until the foliage dies back. Remove the bulb from the soil and store it in a cool, dry place where it can rest until mid to late October. Then repot it in light, well-draining potting soil. Watering is like an alarm clock going off. As soon as you start, the bulb wakes and is on its blooming way.

Coddle Christmas Cactus
If you take care of your Christmas cactus it can live for decades and reward you with countless flowers. Place it in a north-facing or east-facing window away from cold drafts and heat. Water when the soil feels dry and feed it every two weeks with half-strength balanced fertilizer after the flowers fade. But real success depends on how you treat it during the plant’s downtime. A touch of cold helps the plant to flower, so make sure it’s outdoors from early fall to just before frost. It needs to be kept dry, unfertilized and at a temperature of about 55 degrees to set buds. Once buds appear, night temperatures of 60 to 70 degrees and day temperatures of 70 degrees or higher are fine. When the plant is flowering, temperatures of 60 to 65 degrees will keep it going.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

2006-12-15T23:17:00.000-08:00

As it turns out, I won't be able to sing "The 12 Days of Christmas" at the Long Island Horticultural Society meeting on Sunday. Instead, I'll be watching my step-daughter receive her master's degree. I think her straight A's are extra impressive because she's only 52 years old. Anyway, I hope you attend the get-together at Planting Fields Arboretum and have a great time. The meeting starts at 1 p.m. and includes two lectures. The sing-a-long starts around 3 p.m. I'll be there in spirit.

And to get you ready here are my lyrics -- as tweaked by the society:

On the Twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me

Twelve baskets hanging

Eleven edgers edging

Ten chimes a-chiming

Nine sprinklers sprinkling

Eight rakes a-raking

Seven mowers mowing

Six weeders weeding

Five compost heaps

Four yards of mulch

Three sharp shears

Two bags of bulbs

And a poinsettia in a pear tree.

How Menorahs Took Root

2006-12-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah and if you'd like to know about the connection between the menorah and the garden, here's my recent Newsday column on the subject.

Happy Hanukkah.

"You shall make a lampstand of pure gold ... Six branches shall issue from its sides ... On one branch there shall be ... cups shaped like almond-blossoms, each with calyx and petals ... for all six branches." - Exodus 25:31-33

In a conventional sense, neither my husband nor I is religious, but we both believe in the golden rule and growing things. We're both gardeners. I'm Protestant by birth, my husband is Jewish. And we both cling to the traditions of our childhoods.

At Christmas, we sing carols and decorate a tree, but we put a bow on the top, and a dreidel or two add to the ornaments. At Hanukkah, we say the prayers and take turns lighting the menorah and give each other funny presents. I make Hanukkah bags for my grown stepchildren, and it is a family joke that everybody always gets dental floss and a toothbrush from Irene. It's true. What's wrong with dental hygiene?

Anyway, with my being related to Hanukkah through marriage and with my husband and I being practicing gardeners, I was beguiled by a passing mention in one of my horticulture books that menorahs may have been modeled on one of my favorite plants -- the salvia. I love salvias and my husband. And the holidays are almost here. It was pure serendipity but I wanted to know more about the salvia-Hanukkah connection.

I Googled. I read. I researched. I got sidetracked by Leo Rosten's "The Joys of Yiddish," or at least by a brief addendum to his description of Hanukkah. "I have it on indisputable authority," he wrote, "that in Scarsdale during a school celebration of Christmas, one of the children sang the carol as: 'God rest ye, Jerry Mandelbaum.'" Obviously, Jerry Mandelbaum had nothing to do with the affinity between salvias and menorahs but Aileen Novick of Jericho did. I found Aileen, a former national director of Hadassah, in a letter she wrote 10 years ago to The New York Times that commented on an article about salvias.

In the letter, Aileen told about the relationship between the flower and the candelabrum and said research to this end had been done by the late Professor Ephraim Hareuveni of Israel and his son, Nogah, who established what is now a 625-acre reserve called Neot Kedumim, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where biblical flora and fauna flourish in their native habitats.

"In Exodus all the terms used in the description of the menorah are botanical," Aileen explained when I called her. "This gave impetus to the notion that maybe there was something growing at the time that provided inspiration for the menorah. Ephraim Hareuveni found the salvia growing wild on Mount Moriah, where Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed. He projected that this is what the biblical menorah was based on -- the straight central stalk and branches on either side that curve up with a cup like a menorah. The resemblance is uncanny."

Mazel tov. I had found the right trail and it led straight to Neot Kedumim, where almond trees and olive groves abound and where cyclamens grow and several varieties of salvia bloom between March and May, between the holidays of Purim and Shavuot. It was around Shavuot that the holy Torah was given to the Jewish people as they journeyed to freedom.

But language barriers and telephone problems thwarted my quest. Finally, I was referred back to the United States -- to Paula Tobenfeld of Potomac, Md., an East Rockaway native who is president of the American Friends of Neot Kedumim. She told me she is not much of a gardener but I think she is one in spirit.

More than 40 varieties of salvia grow in Israel and several thrive at the reserve. The ones that most resemble the menorah are Salvia dominica, Salvia hierosolymitana Boiss and Salvia palaestina Bentham. "If you see a picture of any of these three, you will be struck at how much it looks like a menorah. Each has a central stem and opposing side branches -- some have three on each side, some four."

Hanukkah, "The Festival of Lights," marks the rededication of the temple in Jerusalem after Judah Maccabee and his brave guerrillas defeated the Syrian invaders. And the miracle of the oil in the lamp that was only supposed to last for a single day but instead gave light for eight days. That is why the Hanukkah menorah has eight branches. Actually, Paula explained, it is called a Hanukkiah. "The Hanukkiah is a representation of a menorah."

In those days, the candleholders were filled with olive oil. Neot Kedumim is a themed preserve where a wedding trail in the dale of the Song of Songs is bordered with Hawthorne apples and pomegranates and tulips and narcissi. Where date palms rise in the Valley of Jericho and where salvia, the "moriah plant," grows on the Hill of the Menorah amid olive groves.

"When the wind blows in an olive grove, the silvery underside of the foliage flips over like in a wave," Paula said. "The effect is that of the trees giving off their own light. Now you have the fragrance of the salvia plant and the light of the olive tree. Whenever there is mention in the Torah of incense being burned in the Temple, there is also a mention of light. Light and fragrance, they are mentioned together in the Torah. These things don't escape our sages."

They don't. And when we light the menorah later this week and the candles flicker in their cups and blaze up like salvias bursting into bloom, I will think of the Moriah plants and the olive trees and the miracle of the light that lasted for eight days.

Write to Irene Virag at 1019 Fort Salonga Rd., Suite 10, #302, Northport, NY 11768
or email irenevirag@optonline.net.

Paris Hilton Poinsettias?

2006-12-12T07:23:00.000-08:00

Today is National Poinsettia Day. I wonder what Joel Roberts Poinsett would make of what’s happened to the tall, weedy red shrub he spotted growing wild in Taxco, Mexico in December of 1828. I remember being in Taxco more than a few years ago and all I saw were jewelry shops.

Never mind that Poinsett was a skilled politician and the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Never mind that he would go on to be a secretary of war and a founder of a museum that would become the Smithsonian Institution. Poinsett was an amateur horticulturist, so he did what any gardener would do – he stopped to snip a cutting. He sent it to his plantation in South Carolina and a year later the fiery plant was a blazing success at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s exposition. The rest, as they say, is history.

Poinsett died on Dec. 12, 1951 and Congress later decided to honor him and the plant he discovered with their very own day.

A lot has happened to poinsettias since then. But I’m not talking about all the work hybridizers have been doing – concocting dozens of shades of red or introducing pink and white and lemon and apricot and marbled cultivars. Or creating variegated foliage and tweaking the shape of the leaves and making bigger bracts – that’s what the colorful “petals” are called – and ruffled bracts and crinkled bracts. Forget all that.

Today, I’m talking about the gussied-up poinsettia impersonators I saw at Hicks Nurseries here on Long Island. Poinsettias with bracts of blue and purple and orange and yellow – and even weirdly mottled ones. Poinsettias that shine and shimmer with silver and gold and pink glitter. Poinsettias that have been dyed and sprayed and shined like a Las Vegas showgirl. There’s even one that’s been dolled up with iridescent pink glitter. Walt Dworkin in the Hicks greenhouse department nicknamed it the Paris Hilton Poinsettia. Guess what? Customers snapped it up like paparazzi going after the real Paris Hilton, who – come to think of it – is no slouch herself when it comes to glam and glitter.

I should mention that the spray-on dyes and glue are specially formulated by Fred C. Gloeckner, a commercial horticultural supplier in upstate New York, so the plants can still breathe. How thoughtful.

So give yourself – or someone you love – a poinsettia today. As for me, I’m sticking with red. Hey, I don’t wear makeup – why should my poinsettias?

Let me know what you think of the floral floozies that seem to be this season’s rage.

Irresistible Amaryllis

2006-12-09T17:16:00.000-08:00

I don’t know about you but I love amaryllis. Don’t worry if you didn’t pot one up to bloom for Christmas. You can plant them anytime. I usually stagger my planting every couple of weeks through January so I have waves of flowers to brighten dreary winter days. One year, I had so many flowers I made bouquets when the blooms got too heavy and the stems flopped over. It was like having an indoor cutting garden. And they lasted a long time in the vase – about two weeks.

These days there are so many varieties of amaryllis, which technically speaking is a cousin of the true amaryllis, a South African native named Amaryllis belladonna. What we know and love as amaryllis is actually a plant called Hippeastrum, pronounced hip-ee-ay-strum. But what’s in a name?

This year, I’m giving bare amaryllis bulbs as holiday hostess gifts and stocking stuffers. And I’m expanding my repertoire with miniature Gracilis varieties like Papillio and double-flowered ones like Blossom Peacock and trumpet types that look like little Easter lilies. I especially like Pink Floyd. And I’m having a real thing with the new Cybister amaryllis. Talk about exotic. These South American hybrids have long spidery petals and come in luscious colors. My favorites are dark coral star-shaped La Paz with green and white highlights (pictured at left) and greenish white Emerald with red streaks.

My friend Sally Ferguson with the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center tells me I don’t even have to bother with staggered plantings. That’s because not all amaryllis varieties flower within the same timeframe – they each have their own natural bloom time. It’s just that their schedules aren’t as precise as say tulips or daffodils. So if you know that some varieties will flower in four to six weeks while others won’t do their thing for as many as 12 weeks, you can plant them all at one time and sit back and wait for the show.

Here, courtesy of Sally, are bloom times of the more predictable varieties.

Early-Season Varieties take 5 to 8 weeks to bloom
*Single-flowered: Orange Sovereign, Lucky Strike, Apple Blossom, Minerva, Roma, Vera, Mount Blanc
*Double-flowered: Lady Jane, Mary Lou, Aphrodite, Pasadena
*Miniature Gracillis varieties: Donau, Scarlet Baby, Giraffe, Amoretta, Pamela

Mid-Season Varieties take 7 to 10 weeks to bloom
*Single-flowered: Red Lion, Lemon Lime, Liberty, Royal Velvet, Hercules, Wonderland, Picotee
*Double-flowered: Double Record, Unique, Blossom Peacock, White Peacock
*Cybister varieties: Emerald, Ruby Meyer
*Miniature Gracilis varieties: Papillio
*Trumpet varieties: Pink Floyd

Late-Season Varieties take 9 to 12 weeks to bloom
*Single-flowered: Las Vegas, Clown, Piquant, Toronto, Vlammenspel, Happy Memory, Charisma
*Double-flowered: Promise, Dancing Queen, Flaming Peacock, Andes
*Cybister varieties: La Paz, Chico
*Trumpet varieties: Amputo, Misty

Down&Dirty with Amaryllis
Plant amaryllis in a pot just barely bigger than the bulb itself. Fill with soil to the bulb’s “shoulders,” where the bulb tapers inward, leaving the upper shoulders and neck exposed. If you’re planting more than one amaryllis in the same pot, choose a broad container and place bulbs shoulder to shoulder.

Water well, then sparingly until growth is underway. Place the pot in bright light and when the stem shows, keep the soil moist but not soggy. When flowers open, move the pot out of direct sunlight and away from heaters. Like poinsettias, they like temperatures of about 75 degrees in the day and around 55 degrees at night. Feed monthly with balanced liquid fertilizer.

And you don’t have to kiss them goodbye when the flowers fade. Cut down the stalk and enjoy amaryllis as a foliage houseplant. In the summer, move the potted bulbs to a lightly shaded spot outside. Fertilize every two weeks or so. In late August, curtail watering, then stop altogether until the foliage dies back. Remove the bulb from the soil and store it in a cool, dry place where it can rest until mid to late October. Then repot it in light, well-draining potting soil. Watering is like an alarm clock going off. As soon as you start, the bulb wakes and is on its blooming way again.

All Aboard the Holiday Express

2006-11-18T13:38:00.001-08:00

The holiday train show at the New York Botanical Garden isn’t just a miniature extravaganza for railroad enthusiasts – it’s also made for gardeners. It knocks me out that each and every one of the more than 140 replicas of New York City landmarks nestled amid the greenery along the tracks is fashioned from berries and gourds and pine cones and seeds and other plant parts.

It’s amazing but true. I was at the garden the other day reveling in a new exhibit called “Buried Treasures: The Nature and Art of Bulbs” – you can read about it in my Newsday column on Dec. 3 – and I had just enough time to go over to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory to catch the man who creates the magic.

The trains were chugging, the lights were twinkling and Paul Busse was attending to the finishing touches – making sure all 17 trains were running properly along the 1,300 feet of track that traverses five of the galleries in the Victorian glasshouse.

They were gliding merrily past a Rockefeller Center made of hickory bark and nigella seeds and a Prometheus composed of tree fungus, eucalyptus leaves and acorn caps. Past a Saks Fifth Avenue with balconies of screwbeam mesquite and doors with juniper berry handles, and a Radio City Music Hall with a marquee of tinted radish and catalpa seeds.

“This is so cool,” Paul said as he showed off the cinnamon-stick scrollwork on the balconies of a 5-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide replica of the mansion that William Andrews Clark – a copper magnate and one-term senator from Montana – put up in the early 1900s. “It was one of the last over-the-top private homes built in the city,” Paul said of the 110-room, six-story residence that required 14 tons of coal a day to heat.

Although it took three months to construct, not 12 years like the Beaux-Arts original that once stood at Fifth Avenue and 77th Street, Paul’s miniature version was no small accomplishment. The Clark house, with elm bark corner stones and dentil molding fashioned from long-needled pines, is one of five elaborate homes that Paul created for this year’s show. He calls them “Magical Missing Mansions” because none remained part of the cityscape for more than 60 years.

“I like to have something new every year,” he told me. “And I like to mix things up so if you’ve seen the show before, you’re still surprised and delighted. It’s the season for that.”

With his soft gray hair and beard and his striped suspenders, Paul – a 57-year-old landscape architect with a thing for trains who’s been doing the show for 15 years – looks like someone who could conjure a little holiday magic. He even has elves – a crew of 15 that increases to 25 during the 10 or so days it takes to set up the show. And as you might expect, he has a workshop but it’s on 12 acres in Kentucky – not the North Pole.

Paul works his wonders with sycamore bark and south magnolia leaves and pepper berries and Siberian iris seed pods, with pomegranates and red twig dogwood and grapevine tendrils and walnut shells and honeysuckle stems. “We use a lot of honeysuckle,” he said. “It makes a nice column. It’s very invasive so we pull it out and put it to good use.”

As we walk through the Lilliputian city where the lions in front of the New York public library have manes made of wheat shafts and tails of Harry Lauder’s walking stick, where the fans in the stands of The House that Ruth Built are actually potpourri and the flags on the roof are red oak leaves, Paul talks about how he makes it all happen.

“I study photographs of buildings. I don’t create replicas but everything is in proportion. I capture what I remember, the feeling of the building – the gargoyles, the chimneys, the over-the-top cornices, stuff like that. I’m not necessarily counting windows. I work directly on waterproof signboard. Everything gets hot-glued on it, then soaked in urethane. When I was a kid I would take all the Christmas packages and turn them into houses and create a little village. So I guess all this makes sense.”

It takes a man with Santa in his soul to chose sugar pine cone scales as stand-ins for the Art Deco details on the roof of the Chrysler Building or simulate the sculpture of Mercury, Hercules and Minerva atop Grand Central Terminal with dried strawflowers, arborvitae and yarrow. It takes Paul Busse to make a dried monarch flower and a pomegranate look just like the flaming torch held high by the Statue of Liberty – who is decked out in robes of palm fronds.

Visit the New York Botanical Garden and see for yourself.

Let's Raise A Glass To Paperwhites

2006-11-01T09:16:00.000-08:00

I’ve never been one to advocate hard liquor, but when it comes to paperwhites it’s another matter. It turns out that the way to keep them from flopping over is to get them to fall off the wagon.

It all started when Bill Miller, a professor of horticulture at Cornell and the director of the university’s Flowerbulb Research Program, decided to check out a report about a gardener who doused paperwhites – Narcissus tazetta – with gin and water and in so doing stunted their growth. The pickled paperwhites were fragrant and floriferous – but they didn’t grow tall enough to flop over.

Intrigued, Miller went to work. Here’s what he discovered: Give these long-stemmed, small-flowered narcissi a nip and they’ll grow one-third to one-half shorter. He thinks it’s because the alcohol makes it harder for the bulbs to absorb water. It’s stress that stunts the stems and leaves but not the flowers.

But you have to mix the cocktail just right. As with humans, when it comes to alcohol, moderation matters. Miller’s recipe calls for a four to six percent alcohol solution – higher than 10 percent and your narcissi go from tipsy to wasted. To get the right brew from a 40-percent distilled spirit, just add one part booze to seven parts water. Apparently, paperwhites aren’t too particular about their poison – it doesn’t have to be gin. Vodka, whiskey, rum, tequila and schnapps will do as well. Even rubbing alcohol works – although you’ll need to mix one part alcohol with 10 parts water. But forget about beer and wine. The sugar will make your paperwhites keel over – permanently.

I’m going to try it when I start potting up my paperwhites over the next couple of weeks. Miller suggests planting as usual, but once the roots are growing and the green shoot is about two inches tall, pour off the water and start serving cocktails.

I’ve always preferred my paperwhites on the rocks anyway – pebbles that is. I line a shallow cobalt blue glass bowl that I got on a trip to Mexico with a two-inch to three-inch layer of smooth gray and white pebbles. The bulbs don’t need much room – you can plant a single bulb in a goblet or compote dish. By the way, you should buy plump heavy bulbs because bigger bulbs will send up a couple of flowering stems. I fit up to 10 bulbs in my bowl. Just remember, they like to be close together but not touching. Oh, yea, and the pointy end goes up.

Add enough water to cover the bottoms. Put the potted paperwhites in a cool, well-lit spot until the emerging shoots grow a few inches tall. Then move them to a warm, sunny location – and break open the booze.

In about a month, you too should be intoxicated – with the heady perfume of paperwhites.

Cheers.

Autumn Riffs

2006-10-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

The weather was crazy this gardening season but all’s forgiven now. The world is sharp and crisp and nice things are happening.

I looked out my kitchen window the other day and spotted the red-tailed hawk I blogged about recently when I fumbled with my camera and tried in vain to snap his picture as he perched on a garden arbor. This time he was swooping around the backyard. I could only hope he was treating himself to some of the mice and voles that use my place as a co-op. I’ve gone up in cherry-pickers to watch red-tailed hawks in their nests but they’re at their most majestic in flight.

Yesterday, I spotted a praying mantis on a mound of chrysanthemums in the garden and this time the camera was at hand. In fact, she posed for me – she looked right at me in the sunshine and her eyes were like green spotlights. If the hawk seemed like a he, I had no trouble anthropomorphizing the mantis as a female. I kind of like the way the female mantis puts the male of her species in his place. Nobody dares try any of that weaker sex baloney when it comes to praying mantises.

By the way, the chrysanthemums speak up for autumn just the way they’re supposed to. They replaced the Italian white sunflowers in two of my beds that were done in by tropical storm Ernesto. They’re pink and creamy white and they look like giant ice-cream cones. It bugs me when elitists sneer at chrysanthemums – please don’t call them mums – as too common and put them down the way they put down impatiens. That’s nonsense. In the garden, there’s room for all kinds of flowers.

As the earth cools, flower colors intensify. That’s especially true for my morning glories. They keep getting bigger and bluer. They’re living poems.

Not that I’m outside all the time. It is getting colder and I’ve just had the wood stove cleaned to make ready for those days when I curl up by the fire with a crisp apple – we have an orchard nearby – and a good book. I wanted to tell you about two new books for garden and nature lovers.

One is the American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Perennials, edited by Graham Rice, a Brit who spends much of his time in the colonies. He and his wife, garden photographer judywhite, have a place in Pennsylvania, where Graham nurtures woodland plants and watches a black bear that invades his yard. Unlike a lot of encyclopedias, it’s written in understandable English instead of botanical-speak and doesn’t have a glossary because it doesn’t need one. And the photos are excellent and none of them are of the postage-stamp variety that often appear in garden encyclopedias.

The other book is a tribute to the protected places of North Carolina’s Piedmont Land Conservancy. Published by the conservancy and appropriately titled “Forever These Lands,” it features photographs by Virginia Weiler, a friend of mine. The land comes gently alive in pictures of trees mirrored in the streams they border, of hills in the russet-light of autumn, of farms and fields, and of plants and people and woodland creatures.

In the meantime, here’s to autumn.

Bulb Basics

2006-10-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

Bulbs are little miracles. You put a small non-descript brown thing in a hole in the ground, cover it with dirt and wait for spring. And lo and behold, you're almost never disappointed. It's an act of faith, a trust in nature. And now is the time to get it all in motion.

If you can dig a hole, you can plant a bulb. That said, there are a few basics to keep in mind.

Inspect bulbs before planting. Give a good squeeze to make sure they're firm. Don't worry if there are small nicks or loose or missing tunics, which is what the bulb's papery covering is called. But dump any that are deeply scarred, mushy or moldy.

Take mail-order bulbs out of the box or crate and store them in a dry, well-ventilated area. But remember, you can't tell a yellow tulip from a pink double by looking at the bulb, so don't take them out of their labeled mesh bags until planting day.

Plant after the first frost but before the ground freezes. November is prime time. Once bulbs make roots, they shouldn't freeze.

Choose a well-drained site. Soggy soil can cause bulbs to develop fungal diseases and rot so avoid areas where puddles collect. And remember, daffodils need about 6 to 8 hours of sun even after the flowers fade. The foliage uses sunlight to replenish the bulb for the following spring. So plant in sunny beds and at the edges of woodlands. And don’t cut, tie or bend the foliage after the flowers peter out – let leaves yellow and flop over before removing them.

Plant large bulbs like tulips and daffodils eight inches deep and small bulbs like crocuses and grape hyacinths five inches deep. You don't need a ruler. My friend Sally Ferguson, director of the Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center, offers this handy helper: Use your own hand as a measuring tool. Generally speaking it's about 7 to 8 inches from your wrist to the tip of your middle finger, and about 5-and-a-half inches from the crook at the base of your thumb to the tip of your index finger. The length of the last joint of the thumb should be between 1 to 2 inches. I measured my hand -- Sally's rule of thumb works.

Plant the pointy side of the bulb up. If there's any doubt, plant the bulb on its side.

Plant in bunches or drifts -- don't plant in rows. Try combining daffodils with daylilies; the emerging Hemerocallis foliage will hide the bulb’s withering leaves and carry your garden into summer.

Top-dress with an organic bulb fertilizer or a slow-release formula after planting. Don’t put fertilizer in the planting hole – it could burn emerging roots. And don’t use bone meal – it attracts rodents and dogs and does nothing for the bulb.

Water after planting but don't mulch until the ground freezes. Once the big chill arrives, cover the bulb beds with a layer of pine needles or well-chopped pine bark or boughs from your Christmas tree.

There's still time to buy or order bulbs. Here are some of my favorite sources:

Van Bourgondien: 800-622-9997
Brent and Becky's Bulbs: 877-661-2852
Old House Gardens: 734-995-1486
White Flower Farm: 800-503-9624

Think Pink

2006-10-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, I fought a wild seed that invaded my body. My garden was a source of solace throughout my struggle. As a breast cancer survivor, I thought I'd tell you about a chance to help fight the disease that is every woman's fear and, in a small way, help your garden at the same time.

During October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Smith & Hawken is offering a pink Haws watering can, with part of the proceeds going to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The enamel watering can has removable brass roses and costs $50.

Brown leather gardening gloves with reinforced fingertips and a pink ribbon embroidered on the wristband costs $29. A pink tool apron with four pockets and an adjustable belt strap costs $20.

I figure that when it comes to fighting breast cancer, every little bit helps. And while I'm talking about breast cancer, if you or someone you know needs good advice, the place to contact is the Adelphi New York Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline and Support Program.

Morning Magic

2006-09-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

I woke up early this morning and as I stumbled through the living room on my way to the kitchen to turn on the coffee machine, I glanced out the window at the garden. The morning glories on the arbor took my breath away. Heavenly Blue -- they couldn't have a better name. The morning mist made the garden seem like Shangri-La, with the frothy clouds of white roses on the fence and the muted shades of the hydrangeas that transform the bushes into giant dried flower arrangments at this time of year.

And then, out of nowhere, a red-tailed hawk flew in and landed on the arbor. I stood and watched him surveying my garden. I wondered what he was seeing. I thought about the chipmunks that devour my lilies and the bunnies that got to eat as much of my lettuce this season as I did. I figured the hawk was about to have breakfast.

But then he turned around and faced my living room window. He smoothed his feathers and settled into the billows of blue morning glories. "Stay there," I whispered. "Don't move."

I ran for my camera. The orange light was flashing -- the battery was low.

I'll take a picture anyway, I thought. But the scene was too far away for my zoom. And the window was so dirty. Why hadn't I noticed? Why hadn't I charged the camera battery yesterday like I said I was going to.

"Don't fly away." Why was I whispering?

I'll go outside and inch close enough to shot the picture. Maybe I'll be lucky and the hawk will stay for its close up. Maybe I'll be lucky and there will be enough juice in the battery for just one picture.

I tiptoed to the door and turned the latch. "Shhh," I said. But the door sounded like thunder when I unlocked it. The hawk flew away.

I went back inside and plugged the battery into its recharger. I made a cup of coffee and drank it while looking out the window. "Come back," I whispered.

I wrote a note to call the window-washer.

An Advertisement for Myself

2006-09-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

I know I'm tooting my own horn but I thought those of you who write me lovely letters telling me how you enjoy my column might like to know that I won two Silver Awards of Achievement from the Garden Writers Association. They made up for the tornado that hit the hotel we were staying in for the group's national convention in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago. You can find both winning columns on my Web site. One is about a garden born of a man's faith. The other is about the horticulturist who nurtures the annuals that color all of Long Island's state parks.

Hydrangea How-To

2006-09-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

I devoted my column in today's Newsday to answering readers' questions. But there's never enough space on the printed page. So I thought I'd use my blog to answer a few more.

A lot of you are worried about your hydrangeas. Sue Cavanaugh of Northport has a 5-year-old variegated lacecap that has never bloomed. She reports that it gets mid-to-late afternoon sun and grows beautiful leaves but no blossoms. “I have tried cutting it back in the fall,” she writes, “another year I left it and did no trimming.” Either way, no flowers.

Roberta Schwartz’s hydrangeas grow robust in hot mid-day sun as well but they, too, are flower-less. “I don’t fertilize them because I believe that will just make them larger,” she writes in her email.

Roberta is right, of course. Fertilizers promote growth, not necessarily flowering and if there’s a lot of nitrogen in the soil you may never see a bloom. So a good place to start is with a pH test. You can contact your local Cooperative Extension office – they’re a gardener’s best friend, especially in times of trouble.

So what is it about hydrangeas that causes such anxiety? We certainly can’t live without them – at least I can't. But how do we live with them? In all my years as a garden columnist, I get more questions about hydrangeas than any other plant. I don’t have all the answers but there are some things I can tell you. They prefer morning or early afternoon sun and dappled – not deep – shade when the day gets really bright. Watering is critical when they're flowering and when they set their buds in July and August. Hydrangeas like moist, well-drained, humus-rich soil. So make sure you put them in the right spot. By the way, September is the perfect time for planting.

You have to know what kind of hydrangeas you have if you want to get the most out of them. Lacecaps and mopheads shouldn’t be cut back too often and especially not in fall. That's because they flower on year-old growth and older wood. Dead branches can be removed in spring. Or you can prune right after bloom-time to shape the plant. Make sure you cut back to strong, fat flower buds. A good way to keep your Hydrangea macrophylla looking good is to prune out one-third of the older stems as well as any that are twisted or turning inward where they won't be able to develop properly. New shoots will grow and the additional light and air will turn the bush into a bouquet.

As they age, hydrangeas can become a mass of weak scraggly stems that produce fewer and fewer flowers -- especially if you haven't kept up with routine pruning. That's when they might need an overhaul. You can rejuvenate your hydrangea by cutting it down to about six inches from the ground in late winter. The jobs requires sharp long-handled loppers, nerves of steel and a little faith -- you’ll be sacrificing flowers but it's a necessary sacrifice.

Oakleaf hydrangeas burst into bloom on the previous season’s growth and don’t need regular pruning. What a relief. But it’s okay to thin weak wood in the spring or after the shrub flowers. Peegees do their thing on new wood so you can prune hard in early spring before growth begins.

As for pink versus blue flowers. It's true that pink blossoms indicate alkaline soil while blue blooms signify acidic conditions. But to me, it hardly seems worth the trouble of amending your soil to just change the color of a flower. Besides, I like it when the blooms turn maroon and brown in fall and the bush becomes like a giant dried floral arrangment.

Regardless of their hue, I think hydrangeas are heavenly.

Rose Hell

2006-08-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley for the Garden Writers' Association convention Friday and before I knew it, I was in Hotel Hell.

My husband and I were in our room at the Radisson watching TV. Our room was called a "themed suite." It was small, dark and windowless and if there was a theme it could have been called "Decorator's Nightmare." We weren't very happy to begin with because one of our bags had disappeared from the hotel's luggage room while we were waiting for our themed suite to be ready. Suddenly, the TV went dead, the ceiling rumbled, the walls shook. The lights went out. We opened the door and found hallway ceiling tiles falling and a torrent of water gushing down. We weren't in the penthouse -- we were on the first floor. Other guests were rushing out of their rooms. "It's raining on my bed," a woman yelled.

A tornado had hit the Brandywine Valley. I kid you not. Maybe it was the tornado that was supposed to hit the Bronx.

Except for the hallways and the lobby, the lights were out. The water was out. Afterwards, we learned that falling roof tiles had totaled a car in the parking lot. We decided to go to sleep. But without air conditioning, we woke up an hour later gasping. So we took our pillows and joined the people camping out in the lobby, where the door was open to the breeze and bottles of cold water were distributed. Garden writers are a resourceful bunch, and I had to admire a woman who was walking around with a miner's light shining from her forehead. A Baptist convention was also taking place at the hotel and I have to say that the Baptists were taking it in stride. "This is terrible," one man said to a companion. He paused momentarily and added, "but we're blessed."

By morning, the water was was running again -- in the bathroom that is -- and the electricity was back on. I can't say I felt blessed. But after two hours of sleep on a couch in the lobby, and the assurance that my husband and I would be moved to a different room without a them, I got on a bus with other garden writers from across the U.S. and Canada to the trial gardens of Conard-Pyle, one of the largest rose breeders in the world.

And suddenly, I was in Rose Hell.

This time, I didn't mind. It was hell for the roses -- not for us. We treked into a dusty field on the 375-acre facility to see what it takes for roses to get the Conard-Pyle seal of approval and make it into your garden and mine.

"Welcome to rose hell," said a charmingFrenchman named Jacques Ferare, who sounded like Maurice Chevalier. I thought that any minute he would break out into song. Instead he told us, "It's like boot camp for roses. We're known for plant abuse. We don't irrigate or spray, we may or may not trim. It's less than benign neglect, which is the way most Americans garden."

Long rows of more than 500 varieties of shrub roses -- identified only by numbers -- sat baking in the August sun. "We put them out here and leave them out here," Jacques said. "Then for three years, we just watch what happens."

This is what happens: Sun and drought fry them. Blackspot stains them. Japanese beetles attack them. I've never seen so many Japanese beetles as I saw on the yellow flowers of rose #034096. "If a rose can survive here," Jacques said, "it can survive anywhere." He was impressed by the beetles. "They were very bad this year. I can't ever remember still seeing Japanese beetles in August."

One rose that survived beautifully was Rainbow Knock Out, a hot number these days that was hybridized by Bill Radler of Wisconsin. Bill was at Conard-Pyle too. He hit the horticultural jackpot a few years ago when he created Knock Out, a cherry-red beauty. "I knew when a neighbor who never liked any of my roses finally complimented me that I was on to something," he said.

Rainbow Knock Out just won the All-America Rose Selections award for 2007. It's a coral pink rose with a yellow base that's impervious to black spot. Bill is working on Honey Knock Out, a yellow-white rose to be introduced next year. "I'm still working to get everything right," he told me.

By late afternoon, we were back in the hotel. I should tell you that the staff at the front desk showed grace under pressure during the storm. My husband and I couldn't wait to get into our new room, which has electricity, running water, a large window and a working john.

It seems like heaven.

Hit Me, Hit Me -- I'm on the Web

2006-08-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody. This is a big day for me. My Web site -- www.irenevirag.com -- makes its debut today, which is an amazing thing for a still-uncertain voyager in the electronic world.

Hit me, hit me -- I'll love it.

And please let me know what you think. If you want to be nice that's okay, but above all be honest.

Calling All Daylily Lovers

2006-08-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote a column about daylilies a few weeks ago and judging from the letters and emails I received there's a horde of Hemerocallis lovers out there. So I have good news for everyone who wanted to know where's the best place to buy daylilies. It's at Farmingdale State University on Route 110 in Farmingdale this Saturday, Aug. 19, at the Long Island Daylily Society's annual sale from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

I tell you this with confidence after spending the afternoon at Melanie Vassallo's house, where society members were busy cleaning, dividing, labelling and packaging hundreds of freshly unearthed daylilies. People started dropping off plants Tuesday and the volunteer assembly line will be cranking right up to sale time.

Melanie organized the American Hemerocallis Society's national convention on Long Island last month and says it was super. She tells me there should be at least 1,000 plants for sale. Everything from large-flowered varieties and miniatures to doubles and spiders. Red daylilies and pink daylilies and purple and melon and orange daylilies. Ruffled daylilies and double-flowered daylilies. Some of the varieties I saw being labelled were tangerine South Seas and red-tipped Spindazzle and violet-eyed Frandeen and pink Denali. And Holiday Song, which blends pink, coral and red and was hybridized by Long Island's own George Rasmussen, who won the President's Cup at the convention for one of his creations.

All the plants come straight from members' gardens so you know they're just right for our area and healthy as well. And they'll be bargain-priced -- no plant will cost more than $20.

A word of warning if you've never been to a daylily society sale. Expect a crowd. But don't expect to see flowering plants in nursery pots. Bloom-time is over. That's why the plants have been dug up and divided. What you'll see are clumps of roots with a couple of inches of trimmed foliage in plastic bags.

And don't be fooled -- foliage isn't the focus. Melanie gets to the root of the matter: "Given the choice of more top or more roots, go for the roots. The foliage will regrow." She suggests looking for divisions with two fans of growth coming from one root system. "On Long Island, daylilies grow two-to-one," she says, "so your plant with two fans will grow to have four."

And don't dilly dally over your new daylilies. If you can't plant right away, they'll be okay in a bucket of water for a few days. If you have daylilies of your own to divide, make sure you get digging before the end of September. You want to give your new plants plenty of time to get comfortable before winter's chill blows in.

Oh yes, expect to have fun at the sale. Society members will conduct a clinic with lots of hints about growing Hemerocallis. And if you see me there looking for bargains, please say hi. It's always nice to meet another daylily lover.

A Titan Arum By Any Name Would Still Stink

2006-08-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

Opinions varied. Some people said they smelled a rat -- a dead one. Others likened the odor to bad meat. One woman opted for strong cheese. As far as my olfactory senses were concerned, someone forgot to take out the garbage.

I'm talking of course about the world's stinkiest plant -- Amorphophallus titanum, or the titan arum, a cousin of calla lilies, philodendrons and skunk cabbage. It's also known as the corpse plant, but the horticulture staff of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has a much nicer name for it -- it may be a real stinker, but they call it "Baby."

I just came back from visiting Baby at the garden, where it is drawing crowds of gawkers and sniffers as well as photographers, TV camera crews and day campers equipped with crayons and sketch pads. We were there because the tropical oddity is in bloom, the first flowering of a titan arum in New York since 1939. All I can say is that my experience was a real gas.

Baby is quite imposing -- with a lime green lower spathe that opened to show a ribbed and ruffled purplish-red collar. Out of that rose a towering pale yellow spadix, or spike. From soil level to tip, the whole thing measures 66-and-a-half inches tall. All I can say is that the last part of the genus name Amorphophallus sums it up.

The basketball-sized corm from which it sprang weighed 45 pounds. Baby was planted 10 years ago at the garden and took that long to grow to its present eminence and bloom. Now, protected by roping and security guards, it holds court in a beautiful Seibert & Rice terra cotta pot.

When I was up close with my nose just inches away, I felt slightly nauseous. But for the most part, the smell wasn't overpowering. Like one bystander said, "We're New Yorkers, we're used to bad smells."

Baby was at its odoriferous worst in the wee hours when nobody was there except for plant propagator Alessandro Chiari, who showed up at 4:30 in the morning. He had to actually stick his face inside the spathe to photograph and measure the vertical band of yellow dots that are the female flowers to make sure they were ready to be pollinated. "The odor came in waves," he said. He put on a respirator mask. "It smelled rotten, totally rotten. The yellow part was oozing, like it was sweating. It really stunk."

I watched Alessandro and Patrick Cullina, vice president of horticulture and Mark Fisher, curator of the Tropical Pavilion pollinate Baby. First came the pollination of the female flowers -- in the wild, carrion beetles and sweat bees do the deed. Actually, that's why the titan arum stinks -- the scent an unmistakable signal to its insect pollinators. In Baby's case, the pollen came from a titan arum that bloomed recently at Virginia Tech and was Fed-exed to Brooklyn. Sort of a botanical in vitro procedure. Today's operation took mere minutes and involved a couple of camel-hair brushes doused with the Virginia pollen that were attached to a long white stick. The crowd applauded as Alessandro made the match.

Tomorrow, he turns his attention to the male flowers. "It's like the male and female live in the same house," he said, "but, well, one's ready now and the other isn't, if you know what I mean. They're not exactly on the same page." He'll cut a section of spathe and collect the sticky pollen from the male flowers with a spatula. This pollen will be stored and made available to botanical gardens hoping to propagate other titans.

If today's human intervention succeeds, a column of red seeds will appear. In any case, Baby will collapse. The giant spadix will wither and the plant will die down into a vegetative crown.

And no one knows when -- or if -- the titan arum will rise again to smell in Brooklyn. As for me, I left the garden secure in the knowledge that I had sniffed the world's stinkiest plant.

A Smell Grows In Brooklyn

2006-08-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

I'm on the scent of the world's stinkiest plant. I'll be at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden tomorrow to catch a whiff of Amorphophallus titanum, AKA the corpse plant, which is blooming this week.

So check back here tomorrow for my report. And in the meantime, take a look at what's happening in Brooklyn.

The Fall and Rise of the Sunflowers

2006-08-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

This spring out of concern for my husband's back we converted two of our vegetable beds to flowers. Sunflowers, to be exact. I saw the variety known as Italian White in one of my favorite catalogues and it looked great. I wanted to go subtle -- no mammoth sun-faces on gargantuan stalks.

I admit that I wasn't wild about what came up -- little flowers that hung their heads on skinny stalks. But then the rains came and kept coming. When the rain finally stopped what I saw was far worse -- little flowers on skinny stalks sprawled in the mud. I came within an inch of pulling them all out. Maybe dahlias, I was thinking. But my stubborn streak prevailed. By the end of the day, the fallen flowers were all staked up.

And then the hot days came and kept coming. The sunflowers never wilted. When I turn into the driveway, I can see them standing tall inside the green picket fence. They look terrific. Sometimes, you just gotta believe.

Some Like It Hot

2006-08-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

I was out and about the other day in the 100-degree heat and I could feel my own temperature rising. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I was driving my beat-up un-airconditioned black Honda CRX. It had to do with the sprinklers I saw on lawn after lawn, some of them watering the driveway or the sidewalk, even the street.

Come on guys. When the globe is warming and the world around us is wilting, why is a green lawn still a badge of honor? It's time to give the lawn a break. Let it rest. Let it turn a nice shade of beige. It's called going dormant and it's what turf grass does naturally when the growing gets tough. You're better off letting the lawn nap a while than giving it a spritz now and then to perk it up. Believe it. Besides, a splash from the hose or a spray from the sprinkler won't be enough to keep the green green grass of home very green -- nature will take care of that when things cool down. But in the meantime, it will do wonders for the weeds. And what good is that?

So here's my word for the day -- Xeriscape. It's derived from the Greek word Xeros, meaning dry, and it's pronounced as if the first letter were a "z." The idea of xeriscaping, which started as a water conservation measure in Colorado in the early 1980s, is to garden with plants that get along with little more moisture than what comes from the heavens.

There are more of them out there than you might think. Some annuals and perennials you may be familiar with like nasturtiums and hens-and-chicks and black-eyed Susans and Echinacea purpurea (both shown above in my garden) and Gaillardia and yarrow. And some you may not know like gomphrena and tithonia and melampodium and Echinops and Agastache -- my favorite variety is Tutti-Fruitti -- and Acanthus and sea holly and Russain sage.

Of course, all plants need to be watered until they're safely established in their new digs. With perennials and trees and shrubs that could take a year or two. The results are worth the wait.

I'm making my wish list now. It's later than you think. Next month we'll be heading into prime perennial planting season. We need all the water we can save.