Paula Hayes Hamptons Lecture: Garden in a Bottle

(Post contributed by guest blogger Cara Greenberg.)

Artist Paula Hayes, Brooklyn-based creator of fantastical landscapes large and small (some so small they can be worn as necklaces), is speaking in the Hamptons this weekend on a wonderful winter subject: terrariums.

Sunday, February 14, 1PM; Madoo Conservancy, 618 Sagg Main St., Sagaponack, N.Y.; For information: 631/537-7440; $25

Hayes, best known for her blob-like silicone planters but also an accomplished designer of quirky gardens for art-world clients, builds delicate horticultural universes, often including crystals, in biomorphically shaped, handblown glass vessels.

Having heard Hayes speak before, I don’t suppose this Sunday’s talk will be a homey how-to on making terrariums as a winter hobby – probably more of an artist’s ramble “questioning the idea of living plants as authored artworks,” as the write-up for the event puts it. But I expect to be inspired, and I have an old pickle jar under the sink and a bag of potting soil all ready to go.

To read more about Paula Hayes’s terrariums and see additional pictures, go to casacara.wordpress.com.

Hot Valentine's Gift: Beautiful, Green and Romantic

by Nicki Collett

This whimsical dish is made from 100% recycled aluminum materials. Cans, yogurt lids and hubcaps are melted down, and after earning the FDA’s stamp of approval, it takes shape and can be delivered to your loved one’s doorstep. “We were so excited to find out about this recycling process,” says Cole. “And this really does make the perfect green gift!” This 8” keepsake dish comes with either pink roses and lisianthus or green ranunculus and lady’s mantle. $85 plus shipping, rebeccacoledesign.com

Lecture: The Organic Garden at Royal Family's Highgrove: by head gardener Debs Goodenough

Says Kate Blumm from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, "I was just given the green light to send around news of this lecture, upcoming in a week, which we’re all terribly excited about. It's not so often that someone so intimately connected with these particularly exquisite (and highly progressive!) gardens comes around!

LEADERS IN SUSTAINABLE HORTICULTURE
Three Decades in the Garden at Highgrove
A lecture by Debs Goodenough, head gardener to 
TRH the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall; Thursday, February 11, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
2nd Floor Conference Center, Auditorium
Goldman Sachs, 32 Old Slip, New York City



Join us as Debs Goodenough tells the story of Highgrove, a 37-acre estate that Prince Charles began to garden organically long before the value of sustainable principles was widely accepted.

Appointed in 2008 to her present position as head gardener at Highgrove, Debs Goodenough has previously coordinated the restoration of the 300-acre Osborne House, the country home of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She has also gardened at Denver Botanic Gardens; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; and Ventnor Botanic Garden on the Isle of Wight.

$9 for BBG members, $15 for nonmembers
Space is limited! Please reserve your seat today.

Purchase Your Tickets

For more information on the event, please call Christopher Shannon at 718-623-7248, or email him at chris.shannon@bbg.org.

The Alhambra's Generalife gardens, reported from Spain

(Contributed by guest blogger Cara Greenberg who is reporting from Spain.)

The fabled Alhambra, last stronghold of the Muslim rulers of Spain, has been on my bucket list for ages. Last week, I finally made it there, and I wasn’t disappointed. High above the modern city of Granada, the 13th century citadel, extraordinarily intact in all its spectacular decorative detail, is surely one of the world’s aesthetic wonders.

A gentle climb away from the three royal palaces is a peaceful area called the Generalife (from the Arabic Jennat al Arif, or ‘Garden of the Architect’), used by the sultans as a cool summer retreat. Surrounded by pools and fountains, the terraced gardens were re-landscaped in the 1920s and ‘30s in formal French style, with topiaried cypresses and myrtle-edged parterres.

I love the look of the paving here on paths and patios, though it’s not comfortable to walk on. Made of river pebbles laid out in patterns -- some scroll-like, others geometric -- it’s a technique you see all over the city of Granada, part of the Muslim decorative legacy.

At the moment, the Generalife gardens look “a bit dull,” our guide kept apologizing. In May, he told us, there’s an explosion of roses that lasts through November. The greenest section in winter is the pool court, where sunken gardens in the Islamic style contain lavender, thyme and other herbs, irises, and pomegranates…

To read more about the Alhambra and Generalife and see more pictures, go to casacara.wordpress.com.

Go Now! Sunday is last day to see Brooklyn Botanic Garden photography exhibit: "Then and Now"

This Sunday, January 31, is the last day to catch the exhibit of “now” images by Antonio Rosario of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden inspired by “then” images, taken by the garden's official photographer Louis Buhle during the early years of the garden, celebrating its hundredth anniversary. So who is photographer Antonio Rosario and why is his work being exhibited at the BBG? Rosario explains:

The short story is that some time in late 2007, early 2008, BBG found a picture of mine on Flickr which they wanted to use for their annual report. A little later in 2008, I got a call from the BBG saying they were looking for a new photographer to shoot their calendar for 2010, the BBG's centennial year. The theme was a "Then & Now" where I'd try to get some of the same images that had been shot long ago in the BBG's history. I shot over the course of a year and they published the twelve shots for their 2010 calendar. Since I shot so many images during the year, the BBG thought it would be a great idea to put the rest of the images into a show in their gallery space. I printed my 22 images and I also printed the 22 historical images which helped inspire me.

Japanese gardens in South Florida / Seagate Hotel and Spa

I’m just back from a quick trip to South Florida where I had the pleasure of visiting the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach while staying a few nights at the luxurious new Seagate Hotel and Spa on Delray’s revitalized Atlantic Avenue. While the gardens spread over 16 acres were the major draw for me, the cultural immersion of the Morikami as a whole — including an art museum, cultural library, café, exquisite gift shop and even an authentic teahouse — is incredibly satisfying. Especially in the context of being in South Florida where, let’s face it, one doesn’t automatically think “Japanese.” In fact, I believe that the regional Japanese population is less than one percent.

But that wasn’t always so. The thirty-some year-old park is named for George Morikami who donated the land to Palm Beach County in the 1970s and honors the Yamato Colony, a Japanese farming settlement of the early 1900s, of which Morikami had been a member. Interestingly, I had just learned of the Colony’s place in local history and connection to Henry Flagler the night before while on a narrated yacht cruise aboard the Lady Atlantic on the Intracoastal Waterway.

The Morikami itself is spread over 200 acres, but without question, the 16-acre “Roji-en: Gardens of the Drops of Dew,” designed by Hoichi Kurisu, are the focal point. A one-mile path around Morikami Pond meanders through six different gardens inspired by different historical periods and styles of Japanese gardening. The Journal of Japanese Gardening recognizes Roji-en as one of the top 10 Japanese gardens in Europe, North America and Australia.

A blogger in Seville

(Contributed by guest blogger Cara Greenberg who is reporting from Spain.)

Ahhhh, Seville…city of Roman arches and Moorish tiles, churches and towers and labyrinthine streets. I’m in love with everything about colorful, civilized Seville, especially the street trees laden with oranges. It’s harvest time now; the city will ship them off to Britain, where they’ll be made into marmalade.

No matter that it’s mid-winter and 40 degrees, The cheerful orange trees are everywhere: in courtyard gardens glimpsed through iron gates as you thread your way through impossibly narrow streets, and in the exquisite, elaborate walled gardens that spread out behind the Real Alcazar, onetime palace of Muslim kings, which I visited yesterday.

In its 14^th century heyday, the Real Alcazar’s gardens were sunken, according to our guide, so the royals could pick fruit without having to stretch. Centuries later, under Christian rulers, the gardens were re-done in formal Renaissance style, and so they mostly remain, divided into myrtle-edged beds filled with acanthus, agapanthus, jacaranda, elephant ear, magnolia, philadelphus, pittosporum and more, punctuated here and there by soaring date palms and columnar cypresses. But there are also strong elements of characteristic Iberian garden design: patios, terraces, and arcades edged with brilliantly colored tiles, with archways and iron grilles in the walls between each section offering glimpses of what’s to come, and drawing you in and on…

To read more about Seville’s gardens and see more pictures, go to casacara.wordpress.com.