Botanical Gardens: Conservancy of Flowers

My aunt and I visited the Conservancy of Flowers in Golden Gate Park a few years ago. We saw the dinosaur exhibit – complete with the whimsical dinosaur head punching its way through the roof of the conservatory. The collection is housed in a wonderful, Victorian greenhouse structure that is painted white to provide diffused lighting for the plants.

The conservatory is devoted to subtropical plants of highlands (cool) and lowlands (hot). The building has several distinct areas, including those for special exhibits, potted plants, and aquatic plants, as well as areas for plants of the highlands and lowlands.
 

Entrance to the Conservancy of Flowers in Golden Gate Park

Subtropical potted plants

The plants are well marked with informative signs, making it easy for the botany lover to learn more about new or favorite plants.

Signage also provides interesting information about the plants or ethnobotany

I was especially enamored to see plants for some of the spices we have learned about as part of our holiday cooking series, including ginger, vanilla, and nutmeg; and the giant water lily pads that can support a small animal, or person.

The aquatic plants are especially appealing

A plant sale is held every fall and spring, and the web site list the plants that are currently in bloom.

Cardamom, also used in cooking	Orchids growing midcanapy
Lotus flower	Carnivorous plants

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I recommend this conservatory for finding out more about subtropical plants. The building and the collection brings to mind the Victorian era, when everyone was mad to classify and collect plants. The madness continues – maybe in a different way. Now we want to learn more, to conserve what we have, and to learn all the lessons we can before it is too late.

 

Address: Golden Gate Park; 100 John F. Kennedy Drive; San Francisco, CA 94118 Web Site: http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/ Golden Gate Park Map (scroll down): http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/visit/directions/ For other botanical collections in the San Francisco Bay Area see: http://www.edenbythebay.blogspot.com/2015/02/botanical-collections-of-bay-area.html

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Summer Movies 2015: Roses for the Garden

In this program, Penelope Hobhouse visits gardens that feature heirloom roses;  and interviews the English rosarian, David Austin, who cross bred old and new roses to create rose shrubs that bloom more than once. He gives a brief history of the fall and rise of heirloom roses in England, centering on Graham Stuart Thomas, who is credited with helping to save old roses from extinction.

Hobhouse starts in her own garden in Bettiscombe, where she incorporates roses in her design. Her garden is small, so she uses vertical climbers, which provide accents without taking up space. She also uses roses as shrubs and hedges with other plants, which she calls companion planting.

Next Hobhouse visits the water garden at Mottisfont Abbey, an old monastery in Hampshire. In the 1970s, Graham Stuart Thomas incorporated roses from his collection into the walled garden of the Abbey. From the garden you glimpse the countryside over the wall, and old roses inside the wall. The old apple trees in the orchard serve as trellises for climbers. Hobhouse interviews garden writer, Patrick Taylor, at Mottisfont about old roses.

Lastly, Hobhouse visits Lower Hall in Worfield, a private garden that also grows old, heirloom roses. Lower Hall is a large, timber-framed farmhouse from the mid-16th century, with a four-acre garden developed in 1965. The garden is walled, and includes a stream. Hobhouse interviews garden designer, nurseryman, and writer, John Scarman, who points out several ancient roses and indicates they are growing in similar conditions as they were grown 7000 years ago. 

I love the innovative use of roses in these gardens. There is not a "rose bed" in sight; instead, roses are integrated into the garden design. Sometimes the roses take center stage with their blooms, other times of the year they take a back seat to their companion plants. Some are used as hedges and bushes. Climbing and rambling roses are integrated with other plantings, running up a wall or over an embankment in a flow of fragrant flowers. Old roses only bloom once, but they continue to produce new clusters of buds, sometimes blooming all through the summer months.

Summer Movies 2015: Visions of Nature

In another program, Penelope Hobhouse visits three naturalistic gardens. Naturalistic gardens emulate nature, but are "edited" to appear that way. Naturalistic gardening emerged as part of the landscape movement, which was a reaction to the highly manicured, resource-intensive, formal gardens of the Renaissance.

 

In England Hobhouse visits the iconic Stourhead, designed in the 1700s for the wealthy Henry Hoare family. A lake is the centerpiece of the garden; trails meanders through the woods and lake side, giving wonderful views of nature, buildings, a grotto, bridges, and so forth.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Hobhouse visits Winterthur Garden's March Walk in Delaware, USA. Winterthur was designed in 1839 by Antoine Bidermann and Evelina du Pont, and named after the Bidermann ancestral town of Winterthur. They both had a passion for gardening, and flowers, as did subsequent generations of their family. The garden is formally landscaped closer to the house, and then becomes a wild garden away from the house. The woods are an important part of the garden design.

She also visits the native plant woodland, Pierce Woods, at Longwood Garden in Pennsylvania, USA. The garden showcases the most ornamental characteristics of the eastern deciduous forest, and incorporates both indigenous and exotic plants. The garden has interest throughout the year.

I love the ideas behind the naturalistic gardens - gardens that appear as though they are wild, but in reality are planned and managed.