Cleveland Botanical Garden Flower Show 2007

Two years ago, when I was in the toddler stage of growing into a bona fide gardener, my mom suggested we go to the Cleveland Botanical Garden Flower Show. I'd never been to a flower show in my life, and with my new hobby obsessiveness at a fever pitch, I more than welcomed the opportunity. I was blown away by the enormity and beauty of all aspects of both the Botanical Gardens and the show, and you know how it is - there's nothing like your first time.

I don't remember what all I purchased there, but the two things that stick in my mind are my 'Sahohime' Tree Peony and my 'Clear Sky' Passiflora, both purchased from the Lowe's Greenhouse (not the national chain) vendor booth. I have both of these yet today; in fact, they are thriving.

This is a great way to start out the active gardening season. It's like going on a Parade of Homes tour - you want to come home and try to implement so many things you saw that you liked for your own gardens.

Several home and garden and flower shows later, and with much more horticultural experience and knowledge under my belt, I didn't expect to be blown away a second time when we attended this year's rendition of the Cleveland Show, but that's just what happened.

The theme for this year's show was "Rhythm & Hues." From the moment we stepped into the ticketing entrance, where giant floral specimens in test tube vases formed the musical notes on the staff...


...all the way through to the theme gardens...

The Cotton Club

The Cotton Club drum fountains - We loved these!


New Orleans Jazz


The Opera Hortensia

... we experienced the presence of music interpreted through plants and flowers in a variety of creative ways.

After viewing the outdoor displays, we went inside the main building and first checked out the specimen judgings. Mom is a horticulture judge, so she views these exhibits a little differently than I do, but neither of us enjoys them any less than the other. Here, the peonies were especially nice, but that may be because it's peony season here now.

It was at this point that I heard from Kim (blackswamp_girl), and learned that we would not be meeting up today as we'd planned. She had a sick puppy and had to take her to the vet. Thankfully, Coco is going to be okay, and while I was disappointed that I didn't get to see Kim, we made plans to get together when she's home in July, home being about twenty minutes from my house! I invited her to come see my garden and she is going to do that, so I look forward to our meeting!

Mom and I ate lunch there, then continued our journey through the show. In this same building, there were floral arrangements that were meant to interpret different aspects of music --

Note that it says at the bottom, "Class titles are open to broad interpretation." Give a floral arranger license to practice their creativity and you get marvelous things like these:



Just outside this building were floral vignettes and a 'dining area' that itself looked good enough to eat.








There were lots of wonderful vendors selling the usual wares that you see at these shows, such as garden decor, hypertufa items, clothing, plants and flowers, jewelry, garden tools, etc. The tents are erected along garden paths and walkways, making the marketplace a very enjoyable place to shop. While I managed to escape the Botanical Garden Gift Shop unscathed, these vendors were another matter.




I bought a dragonfly garden stake, another one that says "GROW," a four foot tall decorative plant support, and a garden plaque. No plants! That task would be saved for the next day, when Mom and I had plans to visit some of the Cleveland area's larger nurseries and garden centers.





Though the show is only held every two years, a trip to the Botanical Gardens themselves are worth at least a yearly visit. Woodland walks as well as the theme gardens are overflowing with natural beauty interspersed with planned displays. You can easily spend the day enjoying what the gardens have to offer.

Herb Garden
























Woodland Walk


Japanese Garden


Wooden figure in Hershey Children's Garden

The Hershey Children's Garden was of special interest to Mom, since she is heavily involved with the creation of the new children's garden in Van Wert.

When we walked into that part of the garden, Amelia was enjoying the fountain on this very hot day and several people were also enjoying her enjoying it. Squeals of delight and splashing around in her birthday suit created much conversation and smiles among the adults, and some of us wished we could do what she was doing. One woman, who shall remain nameless, did not share the wish to 'return to nature' with the rest of us, but it wasn't me!







It was fun to see the child-sized features of the Children's Garden and also to watch the kids partaking of the many opportunities relating to nature.







The Hershey Children's Garden was the first public children's garden in the United States, opening in 1999. It's very much a hands-on place and this part of the CBG alone is worth the price of admission if you have children. As you enter, you will see this quote impressed into the concrete:

"Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, and mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education."

~ Luther Burbank, 1920

For the flower show, the theme in the Children's Garden was "Over the Rainbow," and you could see that theme carried out in many aspects of the garden. I suspect that these colors are present here in abundance even when there isn't a show going on, because of their brightness and cheeriness.

















I'm sure there were many aspects of the Flower Show that we missed, including the various seminars, but we still were quite happy having made the 200-mile trip and we'll undoubtedly attend the next show in 2009.

Next up: The Cleveland Garden Center Tour...

Pseudo-Gardening

I actually looked forward to this day, where I would rise earlier than normal, gather up a few clothes and my mom, and take off for points east. The last few weeks have been quite satisfying in the garden, but very exhausting as well, and we need a break. Me, from planting, hauling and spreading mulch, and watering every day because we haven't had rain in weeks. Romie needs a break from me.

Bless his loving heart, he has been the biggest help in the garden, and we could not have the lush loveliness we do without the things he does. He takes directions from me, so I try to give them in as sweet a manner as possible, though he would probably beg to differ at times. What goes on in my head comes out my mouth in quite a different manner sometimes. But that's what great about being married for nearly 32 years to your best friend - you understand each other and forgive when it's necessary. You're a team.

But back to the break...Mom came at 7:00 a.m. and we loaded up the van and headed for the Cleveland Botanical Garden Flower Show. It's held every two years at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens and today was opening day. It was a gorgeous day, and hot, hot, hot. Lower 90s and by the end of the day, we were both sunburned a bit.

I'm posting this from our hotel room in Solon, Ohio, and though it's only 9:48 p.m., I can barely keep my eyes open. So, while I hate to keep you in suspense about the garden show, my purchases, and whether or not I got to meet blackswamp_girl, I have no choice. We are going nursery hopping tomorrow, and we need our rest so we have plenty of energy for another fun day of pseudo-gardening.

Roses Scent the Noses

I used to not really care for roses. They looked nice in other people's gardens, but they didn't have that wow factor for me. You know - when you see something in another garden or at the nursery and think to yourself (or even out loud), "I gotta have me some of that!"

Then I saw 'Hot Cocoa™.' And 'Chihuly®.' And I knew I couldn't leave the nursery without them. I wasn't even sure where I was going to put them, I just knew I had to have them for my very own. They didn't disappoint me either. All summer last year, they gave me the most gorgeous blooms, one after another.

I had three roses already in the flower beds where I put them, but they'd never really amounted to a whole lot. I suppose they did, considering what they looked like when I first bought them from Direct Gardening (mistake - live and learn) several years ago. I think I paid something like a dollar apiece for 'Senior Prom,' 'Pompeii,' and 'Sutter's Gold.' Can't beat the price, but they were so small when they got here, I wondered if they were indeed roses. I couldn't hardly tell. And they've never really done all that well, with the exception of 'Senior Prom.' So I moved them to the new garden we had dug the year before and 'Hot Cocoa™' and 'Chihuly' took their places.

Shortly after buying these, I noticed 'Diana, Princess of Wales™' in the Jackson & Perkins catalog. Oooooooh, pretty. Really pretty. Being disappointed by ordering roses through the mail previously, I wanted to find this one locally, and I finally found it at Stuckey's Greenhouse in Fort Wayne. I brought it home, planted it somewhat near 'Hot Cocoa' and 'Chihuly,' and now I was officially a rose lover. I never would have thought...

'Diana, Princess of Wales™'

Later last summer, I went on a local garden tour in Van Wert, and the last stop on the tour was a garden that had oodles of roses. Most of them didn't impress me all that much, but 'Disneyland' just reached right in and grabbed my heart. I filed away the name for future reference and this year, when Jackson & Perkins had a special on some English Roses, I succumbed and bought a group of six for $45 and added 'Disneyland' to my order. Our new deck project presented me with a great location for most of these.

Last year, when Beining's Nursery opened for the season, they gave away free shrub roses to each early shopper. Mom and I went over to see what new things they had in stock, and of course, to get our free roses. We're always on the lookout for cheap or free plants. We came home with, among other things, free 'Nearly Wild' rose bushes that they'd had left from last year. They had a serious case of powdery mildew, but this was gotten under control quite easily by pruning back hard. Starting out early in the season was an advantage in eliminating this problem. Mom decided she didn't want hers, so I ended up with two of them.

I'm not sure how this happened, but after one of our weekly trips to Walmart, we were unloading the van and oh! Look there! A rose! 'Double Delight' had hitched a ride home with us.

At some point last year, I also bought 'About Face™' from Park's and it came with a free 'Memorial Day.' Hmmmm.....for someone who didn't really care for roses, I sure had a bunch of them, and I was loving them all.


Roses come with their own special set of issues, and that's why every time I bought one, Romie would say, "I don't like roses. They're too much trouble." Their reputation always precedes them and our expectations are high. Perfect foliage, breathtaking flowers, intoxicating scents. Powdery mildew, black spot, Japanese Beetles. Not a whole lot you can do about the Japanese Beetles, but following a couple of good rose practices helps eliminate the other two.

• Don't water at night and don't get water on the foliage. If they sit with water on them through the cooler nights, this gives fungus and other diseases a chance to take hold. My mom has a drip system installed in the ground in her rose garden for watering. Roses do like their water and it's best to water at the base early in the day.

• Powdery mildew looks just like that - a whitish powder on the leaves. If it gets started on any of my roses, I cut them back to healthy foliage and treat with an Ortho product. Where the roses are planted is sometimes the reason they have this. Good air circulation helps prevent powdery mildew from getting started.

I have not had a big problem with Japanese Beetles, and never had any until last year. It seemed they preferred the yellow roses over any of the others. Each morning during late summer, I would check my roses for them and if I found any, I would pick them off, bring them into the house and run them down the garbage disposal. Using traps just attracts more, and if you kill them in the garden, the scent that's produced will also attract them. Some people just throw them in a container of soapy water, which kills them, but I find it easier to do it my way.

'Memorial Day'

I learned how to properly plant roses last summer, too. Of course, I had done it wrongly years before, with those first roses. Since I'd moved those, I could plant them correctly, so maybe they'll improve over time now. In our zone, we need to plant the bud union or 'knot' about two to three inches below the surface. This helps protect it from our harsh winters. They love organic material, so I added a humus and manure mixture (purchased by the bag quite cheaply at Walmart) to the soil in the hole and mixed well, along with a small amount of Schultz Rose and Plant Food. I watered them in well before totally filling the hole and watered again once planting was completed. Then I put a couple inches of shredded bark mulch around the base.

Roses need at least six hours of direct sunlight per day, so mine are on the unshaded east side of the house or out in the open sun. I'll feed them monthly through August, when I'll stop fertilizing for the year, and I won't prune them much after that, either. I learned that we have about 18 inches of winter die-back, so there needs to be at least that much left standing by the time winter gets here.

One of my miniature roses

Last week, I decided to dig out my 'China Town' tulips. I've had them for two springs now and each year, I have been disappointed in how they look. They took up a fair amount of space behind three miniature roses that I've had forever, so I needed to find something that would take their place. How about a large rose?

I went to The Greenhouse Effect near Antwerp, because they've always got great roses and that's where I had purchased 'Hot Cocoa' and 'Chihuly.' I walked up and down the rows of large and fabulous and fragrant and colorful beauties they had and tried to narrow it down to just one that would fit my spot. Back in the corner, I found 'Topsy Turvy™' and knew it was The One.

'Topsy Turvy™'

Topsy Turvy™ is a Floribunda, and a cross of Betty Boop and Countess Celeste. If you remember, Betty Boop was on my list of roses that I wanted back in January. That must be why this one caught my eye. It's scarlet red with a creamy white reverse, and the petals open up in a swirly fashion. The identification tag says it's a 'little bouquet machine' and it already looks like it.

I got home, dug out the tulips, and prepared the hole for planting my new acquisition. As I kept walking back and forth from the planting site and the garage, I kept getting a whiff of a familiar scent. I identified it as Eternity by Calvin Klein. I do wear this on occasion, and I thought maybe I'd worn my shirt before and had also worn Eternity while wearing the shirt. I even sniffed the front of my shirt to possibly confirm this. No, that wasn't it. I finally realized it was Topsy Turvy™! Now that was just all the better. It's one of my favorite scents and now it was going in my garden!

So there you have it. I am now a rose person. I couldn't help it, it just happened.


Final tally:

• Senior Prom
• Sutter's Gold
• Pompeii
• Hot Cocoa™
• Chihuly®
• Diana, Princess of Wales™
• About Face™
• Memorial Day
• Nearly Wild
  
• Double Delight
  
• Crown Princess Margareta
• Falstaff
• Glamis Castle
• Golden Celebration
• Jubilee Celebration
• Abraham Darby®
• Disneyland
• Topsy Turvy™