Garden Detective

Clark Botanic Garden in Albertson is having its 37th annual plant sale Saturday and Sunday, from 10 am - 4 pm.

They'll be selling floral arrangements, dried flowers, wreaths, mums, ornamental cabbages, pumpkins, perennials, corn stalks, Indian corn, hay bales, bulbs and other seasonal favorites on their grounds at 193 I.U. Willets Road.

The gift shop and cafe will be open as well.

Free admission. Rain or shine.

This just in from Mary Jane Lee of the LIRS:

Meeting to be held Friday, Oct. 10, at the Plainview Old-Bethpage Library at 7 p.m. will include a slide show and lecture on growing old garden roses. Coffee and dessert will be served. All are welcome.

This just in:

The Clark Botanic Garden's 3rd Annual EcoFest will take place Saturday and Sunday, May 3 and 4, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an exploration of the gardens in Albertson, tips and lessons on improving the environment and close-up views of the area’s most interesting wildlife.

The event will feature plants to take home, turtle racing, live music and children's activities.

For more information about EcoFest. visit www.northhempstead.com.

What better way to start the growing season than by walking around Old Wesbury Gardens? The acreage there will inspire you, and if you visit May3-6, you can take advantage of the annual Spring Plant Sale and Gardening Weekend.

Annuals and perennials will be available for sale, and the Garden's horticulturalists and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County master gardeners will be on hand to offer guidance in selecting the right plants for your garden.

Workshops, demonstrations and soil testing will be available throughout the weekend. Call 516-333-0048 for a schedule or visit oldwestburygardens.org.

71 Old Westbury Road, Old Westbury. Admission is $10, $8 for seniors, $5 for children 7-12 and free for for members and children under age 6.

With the temperature hovering around 50 degrees today, I was hoping it would hold up all weekend so I could get out into the garden and prune my shrubs, cut down last year's perennials, ornamental grasses and butterfly bush, and clean out the debris that always magically appears in my beds despite having been cleaned out in late fall. Where did all those leaves come from? They were all raked and bagged when the trees were bare. It happens every year, and I'll never understand it.

Unfortunately, thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow are putting a kink in my plans. Sunday should be clear, but I have 2 problems with Sunday: For one, it'll be about 10 degrees cooler than tomorrow. I was looking forward to actually enjoying toiling in the garden. If it's in the low 40s and I'm cold, I'll be miserable, so I won't do it.

Secondly, I'll be manning the soil testing counter at the Hicks Flower and Garden Show in Westbury until 1 p.m. Sunday. Wet soil can't be tested, so if you plan on coming in, please go outside and dig up your sample now. Be sure to dig down at least 4 inches for an accurate reading.

When I get home, for all my good intentions, I'm more likely to watch "The Crow" or "V for Vendetta," which just came in from Netflix, with my daughter Justine than I am to start digging around on a gray late winter afternoon. I'm dedicated, but I do need some downtime, even if it's just a couple hours a week spent lazying on the couch.

Next week will be better. Once the clocks are adjusted Sunday morning (actually, I find Saturday night preferable) I'll come home from work and the blaring sunlight will make me feel as if I have the whole day ahead of me. Though we're setting the clocks ahead, essentially losing an hour, my glass is half full: I gain an extra hour between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.

When I get home from work, I run out there and water, pull weeds, move plants around and walk across the street to see how things look from there. After about an hour or so, I feed the masses and bond with the family.

How will you spend your extra hour of daylight?

Here's are the photos I promised you. If you can get to Hicks Nurseries in Westbury (100 Jericho Tpke.), this year's show is worth a visit. It runs through March 9.

Wine and Roses

Roses are everywhere in this garden. You’ll see new and old varieties of carpet and knockout roses, some of our most popular and carefree roses. This garden features a sophisticated array of burgundy, pink and silver flowers and foliage. Annuals and perennials will be chosen from plant series named Merlot, Chardonnay and Symphony. Enjoy the song “The Days of Wine and Roses” while taking in this garden.

Rock and Roll Garden

This multi colored garden will feature plants with names relating to rock and roll including Jethro Tull Coreopsis, Stairway to Heaven Polemonium, Kaleidoscope Abelia, Rosa Yellow Submarine and Salvia Purple Rain. Special lighting effects will help create the mood of the seventies and eighties.

Jack and Jill Garden

The children’s garden contains plants that are named after people. Large alphabet letters will set off the garden theme and children’s music will welcome the youngsters. Activity sheets will be available for children to seek and find all the names that they can. They may even find their own name on a plant they would like to try and grow in their own garden.

Rhapsody of Color

This is the classical music garden, featuring plants with names like Anemone ‘Serenade,’ Snapdragon ‘Madame Butterfly,’ Osteospermum Vanilla Symphony, Syringa Minuet and Symphony and Harmony series of impatiens and pansies. Enjoy the patio and seating area where you can relax and admire the garden or have your picture taken, while listening to light classical music.

Country Hoe Down

Grab your partner and do-se-do to the vegetable garden, built around a barn-like structure. We’re showcasing vegetables that include juicy red tomatoes and plump green peppers as well as herbs and plants such as Heliotrope “Iowa,” Cersis Canadensis ‘Oklahoma,’ and Quince ‘Texas Scarlet.’ The sounds of country music will complete the down-home, welcoming feeling here.

Tropical Heat Wave

This garden showcases the trend towards using tropical flowers in northeastern gardens. Every year, more and more of our growers are developing cold tolerant plants that help you create your own personal paradise in your yard. Hot, fiery colors will be shown here from series of flowers in groupings named Samba, Tango and the like. This will bring you a nice taste of summer in the cold of winter.

If you have photos from the show, send them to me and I'll add them.

UPDATE 3/8/08 10 AM:

Thanks to reader Christine for sending this cute shot: "Anna, mom and dad are enjoying a beautiful day at Hicks Nursery. Our beautiful Anna has transformed herself into a beautiful butterfly."

It's flower show time, not just on Long Island, but in Philadelphia, Atlanta, England.....

Garden shows are as much a sign of spring as crocuses. If you're stuck here, as I am, check out the Hicks Flower and Garden Show (through March 9) and the The New York Botanical Garden Orchid Show (through April 6 in the Bronx, nybg.org. You won't be disappointed with either. However, if you've got some vacation time to burn, check out some of these:

The Philadelphia Flower Show, through March 9, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, theflowershow.com.

The EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival at Walt Disney World, Florida disneyworld.com/flower.

New England Spring Flower Show, March 8-16, Bayside Expo Center. Boston, www.masshort. org/New-England-Spring-FlowerShow.

Chicagoland Flower & Garden Show, March 8-16, Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, chicagoflower.com.

San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, March 12-16, the Cow Palace, gardenshow.com.

Camellia Walks, Middleton Place, Charleston, S.C., Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays through March 29, middletonplace.org.

Virginia Historic Garden Week (75th anniversary with events around the state), April 19-27, vagardenweek.org.

Atlanta Botanical Garden "Orchid Daze, Gargoyles & Grace," through March 30, atlantabotanicalgarden.org.

Atlanta Dogwood Festival, April 4-6, Lenox Square; dogwood.org.

The famed Chelsea Flower Show in London is May 20-24, rhs.org.uk/chelsea/index.html.

Above, Walt Disney World photo, EPCOT Flower and Garden Festival, 2008

I'll be spending the morning working the front booth at the 18th annual Hicks Flower and Garden Show today. I'll also be there Monday morning. Next Sunday morning (3/9), I'll be testing soil at the back booth.

The display gardens at the show are great inspirations for your own gardens, but it's important to remember you won't get all those plants to bloom at once at home. Though it's winter, they'll have spring bulbs blooming next to summer annuals and even fall blossoms. That's the magic of indoor, climate-controlled forced blooming.

Plants will be available for purchase, as will seed starting supplies and other necessities to jump start the season.

Stop by and say hello if you're in the neighborhood. And bring a soil sample for testing. I know it's cold outside, but it's so important to get a pH reading of your soil before adding any amendments. Pull on a coat and gloves and dig down 4 inches in 3 or 4 different spots of your garden bed or lawn. Then mix all that soil in one ziplock bag (a total of a cup of soil is plenty) and bring it to the desk in the back of the store. I -- or one of my Cornell Cooperative Extension colleagues -- will be happy to test it for you. If you're gathering soil from several different areas on your property, mix 3 or 4 samples from each area into one bag. Just don't mix area (veggie patch, lawn, flower bed) soils together.

Gardens on display during this year's show (I'll post photos next week)

Wine and Roses

Roses are everywhere in this garden. You’ll see new and old varieties of carpet and knockout roses, some of our most popular and carefree roses. This garden features a sophisticated array of burgundy, pink and silver flowers and foliage. Annuals and perennials will be chosen from plant series named Merlot, Chardonnay and Symphony. Enjoy the song “The Days of Wine and Roses” while taking in this garden.

Rock and Roll Garden

This multi colored garden will feature plants with names relating to rock and roll including Jethro Tull Coreopsis, Stairway to Heaven Polemonium, Kaleidoscope Abelia, Rosa Yellow Submarine and Salvia Purple Rain. Special lighting effects will help create the mood of the seventies and eighties.

Jack and Jill Garden

The children’s garden contains plants that are named after people. Large alphabet letters will set off the garden theme and children’s music will welcome the youngsters. Activity sheets will be available for children to seek and find all the names that they can. They may even find their own name on a plant they would like to try and grow in their own garden.

Rhapsody of Color

This is the classical music garden, featuring plants with names like Anemone ‘Serenade,’ Snapdragon ‘Madame Butterfly,’ Osteospermum Vanilla Symphony, Syringa Minuet and Symphony and Harmony series of impatiens and pansies. Enjoy the patio and seating area where you can relax and admire the garden or have your picture taken, while listening to light classical music.

Country Hoe Down

Grab your partner and do-se-do to the vegetable garden, built around a barn-like structure. We’re showcasing vegetables that include juicy red tomatoes and plump green peppers as well as herbs and plants such as Heliotrope “Iowa,” Cersis Canadensis ‘Oklahoma,’ and Quince ‘Texas Scarlet.’ The sounds of country music will complete the down-home, welcoming feeling here.

Tropical Heat Wave

This garden showcases the trend towards using tropical flowers in northeastern gardens. Every year, more and more of our growers are developing cold tolerant plants that help you create your own personal paradise in your yard. Hot, fiery colors will be shown here from series of flowers in groupings named Samba, Tango and the like. This will bring you a nice taste of summer in the cold of winter.

Focus the Nation is the largest teaching event in U.S. history devoted to finding solutions for Global Warming. This Wednesday and Thursday, millions of students at more than 1,500 schools, colleges and universities nationwide will participate in panels and workshops to brainstorm the issue. Here on Long Island, C.W. Post in Brookville, Division Avenue High School in Levittown, Hofstra University in Hempstead and New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury are among the participants. If you know of others, please comment in this space.

Many thanks to Roxanne Zimmer, a member of the steering committee at the College of New Rochelle, who has sent this along:

Dear friends of all things green,

FOCUS THE NATION is the first, country-wide climate change teach-in scheduled for this week, January 30 and 31. Activities include voting for environmental solutions.

Click on the link below and select your preferences. A brief
description of each selection is found on the web page.

http://www.focusthenation.org/chooseyourfuture.php

To see what the rest of nation is doing this week, click on
http://www.focusthenation.org/index.php

If you're in range of New Rochelle, click on www.cnr.edu

NY Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin is our keynote speaker. Events at the College of New Rochelle are free and open to the public, except where noted on the program. Feel free to contact me with questions.

Roxanne Zimmer, Ph.D.
Focus the Nation Steering Committee
College of New Rochelle
rzimmer@cnr.edu
(914) 654-5577

Photos from the EPCOT Flower & Garden Show

My entire family has abandoned me for sunnier climes. My sister and her family relocated to Florida in 1990, and my parents followed a few years later. Though John probably would jump at the opportunity to escape the rat race, there are too many things about New York that I couldn’t possibly leave behind. So every year, usually in February, we pile into the mini van and drive the 20 or so grueling hours through eight states – with an obligatory stop at a Cracker Barrel restaurant – to the Sunshine State.

This year, I timed the annual pilgrimage to coincide with the 14th Annual EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival, a Disney treat that has eluded me in the past because it doesn’t usually coincide with school vacations. Because of the extraordinary number of guests that visit EPCOT solely for the festival, it has been extended to 60 days with the extension tacked on to the beginning of the event and just in time to overlap with our region’s Spring Break.

I hooked up with Eric Darden, the Festival’s horticultural manager, and Heather Wills-Browne, horticultural manager of Walt Disney World Nurseries, Tuesday afternoon for a preview tour of some pretty intense horticulture. I think it’s obvious to any visitor to any WDW theme park, property or event, that the company mantra is probably something like, “Quality or Bust.” Everything from the most luxurious resort down to the humblest snack stand is first rate. The attention to detail is breathtaking, and the EPCOT festival is no exception.

Nearly a full year in the planning, creative renderings for the displays were done last June and then structural engineers set to work creating the topiaries, which weigh between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds apiece. Fabrication happened in September or October, and just last night some 30 workers – electricians, irrigation specialists, gardeners, crane operators and others – set the festival’s focal point in place just inside the EPCOT entry gate.

Beginning on April 5 and until the festival ends on June 3, visitors to EPCOT will be greeted by the realistic pirate ship with multi-hued Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Tinker Bell topiaries on board. And the largest character topiary this year is Pirate Goofy, standing 14 feet tall.

Because the event has begun earlier than usual this year, Disney gardeners have had the opportunity – and the necessity – to experiment with cooler season plants. The vibrant violas, however, won’t be long lived; they will have to be replaced by warmer season plants in two or three weeks.

There are other ‘firsts’ to behold at the festival this year, too. Temporary playgrounds throughout the park are among the first-ever installations anywhere of the revolutionary EVOS play systems. While most jungle gyms are structured, EVOS encourages creative play. You’ll likely be seeing them pop up in school playgrounds over the next few years.
Minnie’s Magnificent Butterfly Garden is enclosed in a revolutionary “Aluminette” fabric. The screening, invented in Israel, allows only the sun’s “good” rays to penetrate, while filtering out harmful ones. The 500 butterflies in the house would be lethargic from the heat and wouldn’t flutter about without it. My guess is that with temperatures being unseasonably warm, even for Florida, visitors wouldn't do much fluttering about without it, either. Immediately upon entering the screen room, I noticed a welcome temperature drop of about ten degrees.

“This is the best time of year to bring kids to EPCOT,” Darden said. “If your kids are four to five years old, they need a place to run around. The play areas are nice and shady.” While kids might need to run around, parents, to be sure, will need to rest. I noticed each play area has mercy benches for mom and dad.

There are other things for mom and dad at the festival, too. The Flower Power concert series will feature thrice-daily shows by stars from the 60s and 70s such as Paul Revere and the Raiders, Herman’s Hermits, Davy Jones, The S.O.S. Band, The Guess Who and Tony Orlando. On Mother’s Day, each mom will receive a flower. And the Art of Outdoor Living Garden offers lots of inspiration for creating an upscale outdoor living area. Every Weekend, visitors will have the opportunity to learn from the pros by attending the Great American Gardeners Series. Paul James of HGTV’s “Gardening by the Yard” will appear April 5-8. Other garden personalities to appear include Patricia Lanza, author of “Lasagna Gardening,” TV and radio personality Gary Alan and renowned wilderness photographer Clyde Butcher. My invitation to appear must have gotten lost in the mail. I’ll be sure to update Disney with my proper mailing address for future events, as I’m sure they’re disappointed.

Throughout the festival (and no doubt in my place) Disney experts will be on hand to share tips and secrets that you can use in your own garden.

I give a lot of credit to the gardeners, who not only worked hard but worked smart, using creative touches throughout the displays like palm fiber for Beauty and her Beast’s hair, dried statice to decorate Pirate Mickey’s black flag, and an air plant called tillandsia to cover Tinker Bell’s wings. Other plant materials used to create and define features of the topiaries include pink and red begonias, dusty miller, palm seeds, ficus and lichen.

After touring the park, which is dressed up with 300,000 bedding plants, 70 topiaries (including the revolving royal couple Cinderella and Prince Charming,) and 30 MILLION blooms in total, I had to wonder where it all would go after all the hoopla has faded. Secretly conspiring to do some dumpster diving, I inquired about the fate of those gorgeous plants at the end of the festival. “They all get composted,” Wills-Browne told me with a straight face. Oh well, most of them wouldn’t grow well on Long Island anyway.

Roll up your sleeves and get ready for digging season. This weekend, Hicks Nurseries in Westbury will kick off its 17th annual Spring Flower & Garden Show, which promises inspiration, education and expert advice.

Thousands of folks visit the show each year to learn about new plants and horticultural techniques, and to gawk at the display gardens and borrow ideas for their own.

I was treated to an inside glimpse of the construction process. Watching the conversion of this warehouse-like space into a magical wonderland fills me with optimism about the mess of a blank canvas posing as my front yard. Since you're with me, you get a sneak peak, too.

The Enchanted Royal Garden

Plants with royal names take center stage in this display garden -- my favorite -- complete with castle and moat.

Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary 2, Royal Highness and Prince roses share center stage with other throne-worthy entries, such as Princess spirea, the Queen series of cleomes, Palace Blue lobelia, Royal nemesia, Royal ferns, Gypsy Queen hyacinth and Ice King daffodils.

Fire & Water Garden
One side of this garden -- the "fire" side -- utilizes "hot" colors. Marigolds, ranunculus, snapdragons, and yellow and red twig dogwoods in shades of red, orange and yellow make for a dramatic effect. In contrast, the "water" side demonstrates the use of "cool" blue tones with cascading water, lobelia, veronica, salvia and hydrangeas. The whole scene is reminiscent of Heat Miser and his brother, Snow Miser, from the 1974 classic TV Christmas special, "The Year Without a Santa Claus."

Below, on the left, are some shots of the fire garden in progress. The photo on the right is the most recent.

The cool side of the Fire & Water garden, in progress:

Pretty in Pink
Everything in this delicate-yet-vibrant garden is pink in honor of those whose lives have been affected by breast cancer. Tulips, pansies, bleeding hearts, roses, rhododendrons and coral bells surround a living pink ribbon topiary of polka dot pink splash hypoestes. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of plants with a pink hang tag will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Where the Wild Things Grow
This children's garden comprises plants named after animals. Large wooden animal cutouts compliment the theme. Spider plants, elephant ears, snake plants, dogwood trees, butterfly bushes, hens and chicks, and lambs ears are among the highlights of this vignette. Check out the transformation below:

Hicks visual merchandising manager Nelson Demarest adds color to a butterfly and a giraffe for the display:

This year's show runs from March 9 - 18. Admission is free. For a rundown of free seminars that will be held during the 10-day event, visit the Hicks Web site.