This is an alarming development: Hydrilla, a highly invasive species, has been found in Coventry Lake. Invasives displace native plants and can dramatically alter the environment and food chain.
Boaters, in particular, should be on the lookout for Hydrilla and take steps to prevent it from spreading further.
David Moran has the story: http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-coventry-lake-invasive-species-0926-2-20150925-story.html
Gardens often are replete with mystery, but murder? Well, yes.
In a very entertaining story, The Financial Times reports on a garden at Torre Abbey in Torquay, England, where the various plant species that Agatha Christie used in her murder mysteries to dispatch hapless victims have been assembled. Torquay is a seaside town on the south coast of England where Christie was born and had a vacation home later in life.
From ricin hidden in fig paste sandwiches to digotoxin, derived from the foxglove plant (which Agatha used to bump off Mrs. Boynton in “Appointment With Death”), the Potent Plants Garden, managed by head gardener Ali Marshall, seems like quite a deadly delight.
Click here for the full story.
Photos via the Financial Times, from top: Ali Marshall, Agatha Christie, foxglove.
“After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air.” — Willa Cather, “My Antonia”
If you’re yearning for the intoxicating fragrances that are the very breath of spring, “the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere” that Willa Cather so aptly described, there’s no need to feel discouraged by the mounds of snow that still abound.
The 34th annual Connecticut Flower and Garden Show opens Thursday and runs through Sunday at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, and while the show is not the same as an actual spring day, it does offer a tantalizing preview of springtime to come, which is particularly welcome this time of this year.
The show covers nearly 3 acres and includes 18 professionally designed gardens that cover more than an acre. Yes, these gardens are indoors, but the sights and scents are so pleasing to one’s winter-weary senses.
Nancy DuBrule-Clemente of Natureworks in North Branford said her winter-battered spirits were completely turned around when she started setting up for the show earlier this week. “Huge witch hazel trees forced into perfect bloom, piles of mulch and sod, flowering plants absolutely everywhere — my soul was soothed and I came home singing a joyful song!”
There are more than 300 booths with displays of flowers, plants, garden ornaments, bulbs and seeds, gardening books, patio furniture and more. If you can dig beneath the snow in your yard, bring along a half-cup of soil to the UConn Cooperative Extension’s booth for a free soil test.
I always love the eye-popping creativity of the Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut’s Advanced Flower Show — more than 250 entries that could inspire you to new heights of artistry when arranging a few flowers of your own.
And through the show there will be more than 80 hours of seminars by horticultural, garden design and gardening experts, including:
Mar Jennings on “Creating Casual Luxury in Your Home and Garden”;
Garden photographer and author Ken Druse on “Making More Plants: Propagation” and on “Natural Companions”;
Garden author and photographer Amy Ziffer of Sherman, whose “Shady Lady’s Guide to Northeast Shade Gardening” is an invaluable guide, on “Shade Revealed”;
Roger Swain, former host of “The Victory Garden” on PBS and HGTV’s “People Places & Plants on “Vegetables That I Have Known and You Will Love”;
Bob Buettner, Connecticut Florist of the Year in 2010, on “Floral Arranging”;
Organic gardener, photographer and lecturer Karen Bussolini of South Kent on “40 Great Plants for Connecticut Gardens” and “Gardens in Winter.”
The list of seminar topics goes on and on — “Create and Enhance Wildlife Habitats in Your Surroundings,” “Rain Gardens,” “Daylilies,” “America’s Romance with the English 
Garden,” “Composting and Soil Health,” “Water Gardening Basics,” “Working with Wetlands on Your Property,” “Disease Control in Home Vegetable Gardens,” and many more. For the complete seminar schedule and details about the presenters, Click Here.
The seminars are included in the price of admission, which is $16 for adults, $14 for seniors age 62 and over (Thursday and Friday only); $4 for children age 5 to 12, and free for children under age 5.
Hours are Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Convention Center is at 100 Columbus Blvd.
For more information and details on parking, including free parking, Click Here.
Photos courtesy of Connecticut Flower & Garden Show
I think snow is gorgeous, particularly on a sunny day, and I’m not yet tired of it. But I’m also beginning to yearn for spring.
So this caught my eye:
Garden expert and author P. Allen Smith has details on how to put it together, and it sounds surprisingly easy. Click here.
Former Courant colleague Bill Daley of the Chicago Tribune takes a look at lucky bamboo, a fortuitous plant for the Chinese New Year, which arrives this Thursday, Feb. 19, and other food and flowers that are ripe with symbolism for the holiday.
Turns out lucky bamboo isn’t bamboo at all: www.courant.com/sc-home-0209-garden-lucky-bamboo-20150204-story.html
Lucky bamboo resembles bamboo but is in the Dracaena family. It’s sold in many shapes and with various numbers of stalks. The plant pictured here has eight stalks, a number that symbolizes wealth and prosperity in Chinese culture. (Photo via ML Harris, Iconica)
Attention, rose enthusiasts: David Austin Roses, the renowned Shropshire, England, rose hybridizer, has five new English roses for Spring 2014. Each is a repeat bloomer.
The company also is now making the lineup of its new roses available in North America just two seasons after they’re introduced in Britain, which is speedier than in years past.
Here are the five new beauties:
The salmon blossoms of ‘Boscobel’ change with age to a rich, deep pink. A Leander hybrid, its flowers start as red buds that open to blooms with an estimated 78 petals per flower.
(And an interesting note on the name: Boscobel is famed as the place where King Charles II hid in an oak tree when Cromwell’s soldiers were pursuing him during the English Civil War in 1651; it’s not far from Austin’s nursery.)
‘Tranquility,’ a Musk hybrid, has buds that “are lightly brushed with red and yellow” and open to petals of pure white, with about 110 petals per flower. The rose apparently has a light apple fragrance, and the plant is nearly thornless.
Deeply crimson ‘Heathcliff,’ named, of course, for the complicated and romantic character in Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights,” is an Old Rose hybrid with large double flowers of rosette shape. The plant has shiny deep green leaves.
‘The Lark Ascending,’ named for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ sublime piece of music, is another Musk hybrid. The flowers with loosely cupped petals — just 22 each — are a soft pale apricot that lightens over time. Its tall, airy growth makes this rose suitable in a mixed perennial border or among flowering shrubs.
And finally, ‘Royal Jubilee,’ at left
and at top, is an Alba hybrid in a luscious deep pink. Introduced in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the large, semi-double flowers have broad inward-curving petals, about 35 each, known as a chalice shape. The blooms have a fruity fragrance and the plants have very few thorns. Its wiry stems help ‘Royal Jubilee’ fit in easily with other plants in a border.
Austin senior rosarian Michael Marriott says the right time to plant bare root roses is when the ground is no longer frozen but “but still cool and pliable.” The cool soil helps bare root roses establish strong roots. Optimal daytime temperatures should be 40 to 60 degrees, before days routinely top 70 degrees.
That means this is about the right time to order.
The complete 120-page “David Austin Handbook of Roses 2014” is available free and is packed with roses, as well as information on classification and what kind of roses to plant in various sites.
To request a handbook, go to www.davidaustinroses.com, email US@davidaustinroses, call 800-328-8893
800-328-8893 or write David Austin Roses Ltd., 15059 State Highway 64 West, Tyler, Texas 75704.
Call me old-fashioned, but I love choosing stationery and note cards, penning hand-written letters and notes, and embellishing them with a beautiful postage stamp.
I collected stamps as a kid, and they’ve never lost their appeal.
The stamps the U.S. Postal Service just issued are beauties: a quartet of indoor winter flowers — amaryllis, cyclamen, paperwhites and Christmas cactus — that are Forever stamps.
Artist William Low reportedly photographed the flowers at their peak, then created digital paintings of them.
I’m no longer a philatelist (I just collect stamps to share as I use them), but if you are, you can get first-day-of-issue postmarks and covers through usps.com/shop or by calling 800-782-6724800-782-6724.
You also can try the Post Office, but I might just try to corner the market and hoard them for this year’s Christmas cards.
Forget about that pessimistic, unreliable groundhog. The surest sign that spring is just about here is the annual Connecticut Flower & Garden Show, which runs through Sunday at the Convention Center in Hartford.
After so much snow, the fragrance of flowers and mulch is intoxicating. Booth after booth — there are more than 300 — offer ideas and information for your “Backyard Paradise,” as this year’s show is titled. And there are numerous seminars from gardening experts.
Saturday hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For details:www.ctflowershow.com.
The Federated Garden Clubs of Connecticut’s juried show also is inspirational, with designs that have rhythm, movement balance, intriguing textural contrasts and some playfulness.
This medley in chartreuse (right), including papyrus, carnations, hydrangea, spider mums, lily grass, bells of Ireland, variegated aspidistra, amaranthus and steel grass, is by Amber Pratt of the Garden Club of Kensington.
Carolyn Bernard of the Garden Club of Madison (above left) plays around with the idea of apples and oranges in this whimsical tabletop display, which also includes Brussels sprouts, asparagus and spray roses.
The dynamic swirl of birds of paradise with monstera, apidistra and sabal palm (left) is by Barbara Deysson of the Shippan Point Garden Club.
The artful drama of this design (right) by Cathy Ritch of the Long Hill Garden Club in Trumbull includes anthurium in and under water in a glass globe, accented with wire mesh and blue swirls.
Duane Luster of the Country Gardeners of Glastonbury garden club combines heliconia with philodendron, bamboo, fasciated (fantail) willow and red maple (left).
Juried flower show photos by Nancy Schoeffler
Rice paper butterfly from Magic Wings, a Massachusetts butterfly conservatory. Photo by John Woike | The Hartford Courant.
Master Gardener Application Deadline Extended
Just about every truly serious gardener I’ve met in Connecticut is a Master Gardener; it’s a credential I aspire to and hope one day to find the time to attain. It takes serious commitment.
The UConn Extension System’s 2014 Master Gardener program, which begins the first week of January, provides horticultural and environmental training to people who want to expand their gardening know-how and share it with the public through volunteer activities.
The program includes more than 100 hours of classroom work — in 14 all-day class sessions once a week — covering botany, plant pathology, entomology, integrated pest management, herbaceous and woody ornamentals, edibles, turf grass, invasive plants and diagnostic techniques. Classes can be taken at the Bartlett Arboretum in Stamford, or at the County Extension Centers in Norwich, Torrington, Hamden or Vernon.
Students also do supervised research — on identifying insects and plants, diagnosing plant diseases and providing recommendations — and participate in community outreach projects, such as community gardens, educational booths at Earth Day events and county fairs, and working with the Connecticut Invasive Plant Group. In all, it involves about 60 hours of volunteer work.
The fee is $415, and partial scholarships may be available, depending on need.
The deadline for postmarking applications has been extended to Nov. 8. Details about the program and the application form are available at the Home and Garden Education Center’s website at www.ladybug.uconn.edu and at County Extension Center offices.
Photo: Bartlett Arboretum
Kevin Wilcox of Silver Spring Nursery in Bloomfield will present a workshop on plants for fall and winter interest, along with tips for their care, Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 7 p.m. at the office of the Connecticut Horticultural Society, 2433 Main St., Rocky Hill.
“We will discuss the various features for fall and winter interest, such as colorful foliage, exfoliating bark and flowers,” Wilcox says, and a slide show will accompany his talk.
The fee is $10 for members of the horticultural society, $15 for others. To register, call the horticultural society at 860-529-8713.
Photos, from top: Callicarpa bodnieri var. giraldi ‘Profusion,’ a Japanese species of Beautyberry that Wilcox says grows best with some afternoon shade. Photo via Kevin Wilcox | Silver Spring Nursery.
The color change in the leaves of Oxydendrum arboretum, or Sourwood Tree. This native tree grows to around 20 to 30 feet high and is a member of the heath and heather family, just like rhododendron and mountain laurel. Photo via Kevin Wilcox | Silver Spring Nursery.
Ilex verticillata ‘Sparkleberry,’ or the Winterberry Holly, is a deciduous holly with stunning red berries. Photo via Kevin Wilcox | Silver Spring Nursery.
Showy ornamental grasses such as fountain grass (Pennisetum Alopecuroides) add graceful interest to a garden in winter. File photo by CLOE POISSON | The Hartford Courant
The fiery red stems of red twig dogwood stand out in any winter landscape. Unlike most shrubs, it is at its best after its leaves fall. File photo by RICHARD MESSINA | The Hartford Courant