by Keri Byrum | Dec 28, 2015 | Garden Visits |
What is “Winter Interest” in the garden? This may seem like a foreign concept if you live in Florida, but for the rest of the country this is a very real challenge. How do you keep your garden and landscape looking good when covered in snow? I’ve just come back to Orlando after spending time with my family in Iowa and we were lucky to have a few inches of snow on Christmas eve. Big fat snowflakes kind of snow. It was awesome. As the snow fell I started itching to get outside and get some photos of this beautiful scene. I know I had a better grasp on this at some time, but I seem to have forgotten which plants are really delightful to see with a fresh layer of snow on top. … Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Dec 14, 2015 | Garden Visits |
Over the Thanksgiving week I had the pleasure of attending the Grand Illumination event at Lewis Ginter Botanic Gardens and see their holiday season “H2Whoa” light display. Now it seems that I only get to visit this great garden during the last week of November, which is unfortunate because I am quite sure they have beautiful gardens during the summer months! Either way I am not going to complain about getting to see a fantastic public garden with my best friends. We arrived the night of the Grand Illumination event about an hour before it got dark so we were able to run around and try to see as much of the gardens as possible. For a midwesterner living in Florida, I had a blast seeing all of the fall color and changing leaves.… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Dec 7, 2015 | Garden Visits |
During a recent trip to Savannah I managed to convince Mike that we needed to visit the Coastal Georgia Botanical Garden at the Historic Bamboo Farm. I won’t lie, part of the intrigue for me was the “Historic Bamboo Farm” part of this title (for more on my love for bamboo you can read here and here). To visit the Coastal Georgia Botanical Garden from Savannah takes about 30 minutes by car. We visited in late November, well after most of the annuals had peaked but just late enough that the camellias were in full bloom. Unsure of what we would discover, I did some researching on their website and found the following about the history of the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens: “The Bamboo Farm was deeded to the University of Georgia in 1983 for use as an education and research center.… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Dec 1, 2015 | Small Spaces |
Ugh. The dreaded sidewalk strip between the road and the walkway. Otherwise known as the “stupid strip,” the “hell strip” or even the “zone of death.” Okay, I made up zone of death, but maybe it is fitting? This pitiful area is usually not a gardener’s friend. In my case our sidewalk strip is 22″ wide. What in the world are you supposed to grow in here? Not turfgrass, most likely weeds, maybe some mulch? This sidewalk strip has brought so much dismay to gardeners and homeowners that it even has its own book! Author Evelyn Hadden recently wrote, “Hellstrip Gardening: Create a Paradise between the Sidewalk and the Curb.” The description of the book reads “The hellstrip — the space between a street and a public sidewalk, also known as a tree park, boulevard, meridian, and planting strip — is finally getting the attention it deserves!”… Read Full...
