Spring is a popular time for fairs and sales of all kinds and whenever my busy schedule allows, I always try to catch a few of my favorites.
Yesterday, I attended The New York Botanical Garden's Collectors' Plant Sale and Silent Auction. This event featured hard-to-find trees, shrubs, and plants propagated from NYBG collections, and hand-selected for their rarity, hardiness, and charm. The sale offered something for everyone. It’s a splendid time of year to be at The New York Botanical Garden - not only to enjoy its many fun and interesting events, but to see its stunning horticultural displays. I hope you take the opportunity to visit The NYBG next time you are in the New York City area.
Enjoy these photos.
Everything at The New York Botanical Garden is so meticulously maintained. Located on 250 acres, The NYBG is a living museum, an educational institution, and a plant research and conservation organization. I always enjoy visiting and seeing their stunning displays.
This Collectors’ Plant Sale and Silent Auction event was held at The Lillian and Amy Goldman Stone Mill building. All proceeds from this sale support the Garden’s internationally important programs in horticulture, botanical research, and children’s education – all central to preserving and protecting the world’s flora.
The Garden is an ideal venue for learning about plants and expanding personal botanical collections. The Collectors’ Plant Sale attracted many buyers. Inside, tables are filled with for-sale specimens. NYBG experts were also on-hand to help guests make their selections.
All the plants were grouped together by variety and labeled with its characteristics.
This moth orchid is called Phalaenopsis Star Green Emerald. It features pale-yellow green flowers and a slightly darker lip. These Phalaenopsis orchids are easy-to-grow and are among the most popular for beginning home orchid growers as well as serious collectors.
These are the delicate flowers of Epimedium ‘Raspberry Rhapsody’. I have many Epimediums in my gardens. This one has mauve-rose spurs and pale pink sepals. Its leaves emerge in shades of mahogany-red before turning green in summer.
There were also many plants outside on the back terrace. Some with gorgeous lush foliage and others with colorful blooms.
This is Picea orienetalis ‘Aurea’ – a moderately fast growing, broadly conical, upright selection of Caucasian spruce. It creates an impressive spring show of creamy yellow new growth that darkens to darker green over the course of the season. I loved it.
Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Marian’ is a dwarf variety of Hinoki cypress with a slow-growth rate and an irregular and interesting shape. Branches have fan-twisted shoots and bright-green colored scales in autumn and gold-yellow in winter.
This foliage is from a Thuja plicata ‘Whipcord’ – a dense, multi-stemmed evergreen shrub with finely textured, green foliage, and gracefully arching branches.
These beautiful blooms are from Rhododendron ‘Mrs. Nancy Dimple’ – with its large, showy trusses of rose-pink double flowers. It grows to about four to five feet tall and wide.
And this is Rhododendron x calendulaceum ‘Tangerine Delight’ – full of large showy clusters of fragrant orange and peach colored flowers.
This is Cornus kousa ‘Wolf Eyes’ – a kousa dogwood. It features dramatic foliage with distinct ivory margins. The creamy white flowers are followed by bright red fruits in late summer and then displays leaves in shades of pink and red in autumn.
Leucothoe fontanesiana ‘Silver Run’ has white sprays of tiny bell-shaped flowers that bloom in spring.
In front of the Stone Mill building is another collection of sale items – stunning hard-to-find trees.
During refreshments, CEO and The William C. Steere Sr. President of The New York Botanical Garden, Jennifer Bernstein, took to the podium and welcomed everyone to the sale.
The Lillian and Amy Goldman Stone Mill is very historic. It is the oldest existing tobacco manufacturing building in the United States.
The Stone Mill was built around 1840 right next to the Bronx River to supplement an earlier building of the same function.
The schist, or metamorphic rock, that makes up the building’s walls was quarried locally. Behind the structure is this expansive terrace overlooking the river.
On the left is NYBG‘s curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, Stephen Scanniello, along with Marc Hachadourian, NYBG’s director of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections and the curator of the orchid collection.
It’s always fun to attend events like this one with friends. Here I am with Christopher Spitzmiller, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, and Memrie Lewis.
After plants are purchased, NYBG staff members transport them to the front of the Stone Mill where they can be picked up as guests leave. It is a very well-organized event.
In the end, I purchased several plants including the Picea orientalis ‘Aurea’, Rhododedron ‘Catawbiense Album’, and Rhododendron prinophyllum ‘Marie Hoffman’. I can’t wait to see these flourish at my farm.
On the way out, I also got a couple Iris pseudata ‘Yarai’. When in bloom, this iris has gorgeous soft peach flowers with deep purple veining. This specimen is a Japanese cross between Iris pseudocorus and Iris ensata. These will look so pretty in my flower garden.
It was a very enjoyable evening at The New York Botanical Garden – please visit the NYBG when you can and check out its web site for upcoming events.
My long and winding pergola is putting on such a colorful and gorgeous display - all the spring flowers are just spectacular this time of year.
Soon after I bought my Bedford, New York farm, I built a long pergola along the carriage road leading up to my home specifically for clematis. Over the years, I've added lots of bulbs and perennials that bloom at different times throughout the season. Right now, the Camassia and alliums are covering the area in an eye-catching palette of purple and blue - it's just stunning.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
It’s amazing what a difference a few weeks make in a spring garden. This is the pergola garden on April 22nd. It’s green and new growth is just beginning – everything around the farm is showing signs of life once again.
One week later on April 28, the foliage of many of the flowers has emerged. This pergola starts across from my perennial flower cutting garden and runs along one side of the carriage road leading to my Winter House. The uprights for this pergola are antique granite posts from China – originally used as grape supports in a valley that was going to be dammed and flooded to create a reservoir.
This is the garden yesterday – filled with varying hues of purple and blue – it’s breathtaking.
This palette of colors is a big favorite at the farm – it grows more colorful and vibrant every year. In a few weeks, this border shall transform once again and feature lovely shades of orange.
The most prominent plant right now is the Camassia – it’s blooming profusely and so beautifully.
Camassia leichtlinii caerulea forms clusters of linear strappy foliage around upright racemes.
Camassia is a genus of plants in the asparagus family native to Canada and the United States. It is best grown in moist, fertile soil, and full sun.
Camassia also comes in this lighter shade of blue. Both the lighter and darker shades look so good growing together in this garden.
On this, one can see the six-petaled, two-inch, star-shaped flowers.
The flower stalks stand 24 to 30 inches tall and display dozens of florets that open from the bottom up.
Camassia is also known as camas, wild hyacinth, Indian hyacinth, and quamash. The bulbs are winter hardy in zones 4 to 8 and both the plant and the bulbs are resistant to deer and rodents.
In the garden, Camassia blooms in late spring, after the daffodils and just before the peonies and other early summer perennials. Camassia is incredibly valuable since it naturalizes well when left undisturbed in a good spot.
Alliums are often overlooked as one of the best bulbs for constant color throughout the seasons. They come in oval, spherical, or globular flower shapes, blooming in magnificent colors atop tall stems.
An allium flower head is a cluster of individual florets and the flower color may be purple, white, yellow, pink, or blue.
Alliums require full sunlight, and rich, well-draining, and neutral pH soil. This is Allium ‘Ambassador’ – among the tallest and longest blooming. It is intensely purple with tightly compacted globes that may bloom for up to five weeks.
This is Allium aflatunense ‘Purple Sensation’, with four to five inch wide violet-purple globes.
Alliums are rabbit-resistant, rodent-resistant, and deer-resistant, but adored by bees, butterflies, and pollinators. They look so beautiful dotting this border.
Spanish Bluebells, Hyacinthoides, are unfussy members of the lily family, and native to Spain and Portugal. They are pretty, inexpensive, and good for cutting – they add such a nice touch of blue.
The boxwood are growing wonderfully every year. There are more than 300 boxwood shrubs planted here. These boxwood shrubs were grown from small saplings nurtured in one area of my vegetable garden next to my chicken coops. They’ve grown so much since we planted them five years ago.
Behind the pergola and across the “soccer field,” where my grandson, Truman, loves to play whenever he visits, are six matched standard weeping hornbeams, Carpinus betulus ‘Pendula’. Weeping hornbeams can grow to be about 50-feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 40-feet. These are very rare and precious trees and I am so happy they continue to grow well here.
I am so proud of this pergola garden. It is among the first one sees when they arrive at the farm, and some of it can also be viewed from my terrace parterre outside my Winter House kitchen. I am looking forward to watching it transform once again later this summer. What flowers are blooming where you live? Share your comments in the section below.
Spring is the perfect time of year for dining al fresco with good friends.
Last weekend, after a most delightful and successful morning at the Trade Secrets Rare Plant and Garden Antiques Sale in Lakeville, Connecticut, we drove to a tranquil town in New York State, where we enjoyed a lovely lunch at the weekend home of friend and colleague, Patsy Pollack. It has become a tradition to go to Patsy’s after Trade Secrets. This year, she served a delicious buffet of Moroccan-inspired dishes. On the way to her charming home, we stopped at Christopher Spitzmiller's Clove Brook Farm to see his gardens.
Enjoy these photos.
Here I am on the porch at Clove Brook Farm, the gorgeous home of my friends Christopher Spitzmiller and Anthony Bellomo. All the topiaries and potted plants surround the chairs and chaise longues.
Here’s a stunning view of the Clove Brook Farm pond where Christopher’s geese love to visit.
Here is one of several staghorn ferns hanging on the porch wall. Staghorn ferns also go by elkhorn fern and antelope ears. Each one has antler-like foliage as well as a flat, basal leaf. The flat leaves are infertile and turn brown and papery with age.
Lead stag heads atop stately pillars watch over the entrance to the property.
Patsy’s New York State weekend cottage is nestled among tall trees and lots of green foliage. It is always so relaxing to come here. There are several quaint seating areas on the property, including this unique faux bois bench at the edge of Patsy’s shade garden.
Just inside off the terrace is this inviting enclosed porch filled with many of Patsy’s “finds.”
Across from the main house is a charming garden shed. The walking paths are covered with quarter-inch round stone – a beautiful ground cover for the bold green of the boxwood. The wisteria on top of Patsy’s shed is just beginning to flower. Wisteria is a genus of flowering plants in the pea family, Fabaceae, that includes 10-species of woody climbing vines.
The ferns are doing so well this year – look how beautiful they are in this area near the garden shed. Planting multiples of one plant in a section of a garden can look so stunning and dramatic.
Patsy’s Japanese viburnum is blooming so beautifully. This bush blooms profusely in mid- to late spring, with white flowers held in flat-topped clusters reaching about four inches wide. On many varieties these clusters contain showy, five-petaled infertile flowers that surround small fertile flowers.
Lamium ‘Beacon Silver’ is a semi-evergreen perennial commonly called spotted deadnettle. It is an herbaceous plant with a low-growing, mat-forming, and spreading habit of heart-shaped, silvery leaves with narrow green edges.
Polygonatum, also known as King Solomon’s-seal or Solomon’s seal, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae. This plant reaches 12 inches to several feet in height, blooming in April through June with white bell-shaped blossoms below attractive, arching stems. Flowers become bluish black berries in late summer and the ribbed foliage turns a golden yellow in autumn.
On the expansive wrap around porch is a very inviting space with a large, comfortable sectional for cool summer evening chats.
On a rustic wooden table on the other side of the porch is this vase of lilacs – it adds just the right amount of color. All the lilacs are blooming so wonderfully this season. I hope you saw my recent blog on the lilac allee at my farm.
On the terrace – more seating for gathering and talking before lunch.
Lunch was served buffet style. Tan and gray plates are stacked and placed at the end of the table – everyone was very hungry after walking and shopping at Trade Secrets.
Refreshing ice cold drinks are served outside. This day was unusually warm and humid.
This is couscous with herbs and cherry tomatoes – a perfect accompaniment to our barbecued chicken and beef kebabs.
This is watermelon and feta with fresh vegetables.
All our plates were filled, and then filled again. Here is my plate with a large pita bread, tzatziki, meat kebabs, and couscous. Also on the skewers – grilled grapes, inspired by recipes from Chef Yotam Ottolenghi. Everything was so flavorful.
A whimsical stone squirrel sits nearby. Patsy has been collecting stone garden pieces for many years. Stone garden pieces are very alluring in any outdoor space. In areas where temperatures dip below freezing in winter, it’s a good idea to turn containers over to drain or bring them indoors. A winter freeze can crack or crumble any kind of stone.
Soon after lunch, the table was set for dessert. These are glasses for the “affogato al caffe” – an Italian coffee-based dessert made with a scoop of vanilla ice cream “drowned” in a shot of espresso.
And look at these homemade blueberry loaves. There was enough for everyone to have a big slice.
This stone bench sat nearby. Flanking it are more of Patsy’s beautiiful stone vessels. It was a wonderful lunch and a refreshing afternoon – thank you so much, Patsy.
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