Garden Art Sale promotion begins!

Looks like it's gonna' have to happen now. No turning back. The Buffalo-style Garden Art Sale committee is leader Barbara Maze (longtime Allentown Art Festival committee member), Allison Malikowski, Kathy Guest Shadrack, Mike Shadrack, Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy representative Laura Genco and myself. We've been working hard to first GET vendors, and now plotting and planning to make this event successful through marketing, planning a good vendor experience and a great visitor experience.

The event is free, there will be 22 (or so) vendors, a Plant Society Avenue of 10 area plant societies, master gardeners and the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens (bring questions!), the WNY Hosta Society Accredited Hosta Show, a Chinese Auction of items contributed by the Plant Societies, and all this is going on at the same time, and in the same footprint of the Parkside Garden Tour.

Below is a list of vendors. Will we see you there?

Steps and Stones (Ann Briely)
Garden pots & planters made of hypertufa

Ten Thousand Villages (Kim Burg)
Bird houses, garden pots, art pieces

ArtofGardening.org (Jim Charlier)
Copper wall hangings, wine bottle torch kits, hypertufa planters, necklaces

Buffalosmark (Carol Conwell)
Floral note cards, natural stone coasters, Misc handmade items

Restored Photo & Design (Barbara Crocker)
Digital art photos-flowers, gardens, Floral earrings

Lorraine's Concrete Leaves (Lorraine Cummings)
Concrete bird baths, small toadstools

Creative Copper Wire (David Cyr)
Handcrafted garden items of copper and art glass

Blessings by Nature (Paula D’Amico)
Natural, one of a kind, bouquet of Herbs in glassed vessels

Linda Dugan (Linda Dugan)
Leaf impression hypertufa, hand painted bird baths


Joel Falkowski
Wood carvings out of cotton wood bark

Darlene Gray
Garden photography

Patti Harris
Totems made of foundry wood & metal

Clear Light Studio (Donna Ioviero)
Sculptures, bird baths, fountains, enamel flowers

Aremel Soaps (Robin Lenhard)
Handcrafted soaps – floral & herbal, Gardener’s soaps

Rusted Grain (Megan McNally)
Garden Furniture using reclaimed wood

Pottery by Regina (Regina Rexford)
Raku pottery

Gary Wiglusz
Bird Feeders made of steel rings and etched glass

Urban Roots Community Garden Center
Hand blown glass flowers, solar spirals

Artisan Sheds (Lynn Weber)
Wooden garden obelisks & planters

Creations by Heather Gillette (Heather Whitney)
Recondition hand painted glass items

The most beautiful garden...

Possibly the most beautiful garden I've ever visited belongs to the Jasmin & Peter Gentling of Asheville, NC. Among other owners, the home was once owned by William Jennings Bryan and President Herbert Hoover's son - Herbert slept here while president!

Hard to capture the house fully,
being surrounded by so much lushness.

It is a terraced mountainside garden just minutes away from downtown Asheville, but it felt more like a mountain retreat where you'd go on retreat to get away from civilization. It was stunning - and I've seen a lot of gardens in my time - probably more than your average bear. (there were no bear sightings, despite the warning that there are a mom and two cubs that enjoy the garden too)

Two dawn redwoods start to form a canopy and frame the view of Asheville below.  The detail all around, from major to minor, was incredible. The trees were all selected for their texture and colors and juxtaposed with each other, eventually blending into the surrounding forest. You get all that from looking up.

Hypertufa heaven and stuff

The hypertufa pots are curing well. If I get a chance I may make a few more, but this is basically what I know I'll have by the time of the Buffalo-style Garden Art Sale on June 24. They are sitting out in the (hopeful) rain to help leech the lime from the portland cement mix.

I have no idea on price do you have any ideas? I've been looking at garden centers (mostly in Asheville, NC so far) and only saw similar planters that were planted nice and professionally, and were over $200. I was thinking the smallest of the small around $5, and the largest around $50. The one to the left was very nice. Even had a dwarf conifer. It was $225. I'd really have had to have my act together to offer planted hypertufa pots.

Last year, I posted photos of this amaryllis bulb I'd received as a gift from my niece. For winter '10, it was all huge-mongous leaves and no flower. Many commenters on Facebook suggested planting it in the ground, letting it rest and then starting it again. I did and here's the result - little leaves and huge-mongous flowers - four of them. And the scent is intoxicating. I figure it's only one more day before my asthmatic wife tells me it has to go outside. There are pluses and minuses to having a wife that can't be around flowers for long.

The H. Mike Shadrack hosta, a hosta named after local hosta book author extraordinaire Mike Shadrack, is doing well and happy where he's planted. He's a colorful hosta. And he'll be a big boy!

The Wamboldtopia Garden Dragon

This past weekend I attended a garden bloggers meet-up, "Spring Fling 2012" in Asheville, NC. It was three full days (with 85 other garden bloggers) of touring gardens from the impeccable and productive to the visually masterful and curated to Wamboldtopia, which defies description. Located on Wambold Street, the garden belongs to an artist, Damaris, and a stone mason, Ricki, that thinks he's a pirate. More posts on the garden and skeleton-oriented masonry in the future, I promise.

Garden Walk Buffalo wins travel & tourism award

Garden Walk Buffalo, the largest (and dare I say best!) garden tour in the country received an award from Visit Buffalo Niagara (VBN) as the "2011 Tourism Initiative of the Year" at the second annual Beacon Awards, honoring excellence in the Buffalo Niagara travel and tourism industry, with more than 400 tourism professionals in attendance.

The award was offered with the following comments from VBN:

Two fountains, a tiny patio and a disco ball...

This was the weekend for small projects. And mowing dandelions.

I made a dozen or more hypertufa pots, semi-installed my homemade copper coral bell (huchera) fountain, semi-installed a fish head fountain, planted a few more huchera, planted up one of the hypertufa planters with a miniature flagstone patio and plants, and created a "disco" ball for the garden.

A walk around Carmel, CA

If you told me I could live anywhere in the U.S., money being no object, I'd probably say Carmel California without hesitation. It is possibly the most charming community I've ever visited - storybook cottages and the gardens to match.

A Frank Lloyd Wright bowl planter.

There seems to be many more McMansions jamming their way between the pretty seaside cottages, but even those are of unique designs and made of stone, brick and sturdier finishes than you'd expect anywhere else. It's pretty exclusive, as you would expect - being almost part of Pebble Beach, the scenic 17-Mile Drive toll road, the toniest town in California, and with Clint Eastwood being your ex-mayor.

We visited Carmel about 20 years ago and were itching to get back, just to walk around the trendy shopping district of art studios, antique stores, restaurants, and design shops. We wanted to show our daughter (a Frank Lloyd Wright fan) the Wright beach house (shown above). And I wanted to photograph just some of the gardens. What I have here are not even the best of the residential front yard gardens we saw - these are just the gardens in a small square block of homes by the ocean.

Springtime around the spread

Seems like a while since I've shown my own garden progress, not that I've done much. My Senior Associate Assistant Garden Maintenance Engineer was out there in March, during the week that was 80° and she accomplished a lot of clean-up. I did get out this past weekend and got a little done. On top is the front yard, now, when it looks fresh and neat. It'll look like an uncontrolled jungle in another month.

Hypertufa hell

I am trying my hand at hypertufa so I have something else to sell at this Garden Art Sale coming up on June 24 at the Parkside Lodge in Delaware Park (during the Parkside Garden Tour).

It's the first time I've ever done this, but it's been on my list for a long time. I followed the directions I found on this blog here. It's quite easy, almost therapeutic. I started last weekend, I'll make more this weekend and then the following weekend - they take roughly three weeks to cure, and I have to leach the lime, add holes by drilling and "scruff up" the exteriors, so I want them all done three weeks before the Sale.

A new hosta -- the Mike Shadrack

It's not really mine. It was a birthday gift to my wife from the human Mike Shadrack. How many people get a plant named after them?

The hosta Mike Shadrack

The hybridizer, Bob Kuk from Kuk's Forest Nursery (a 2011 American Hosta Society Eunice Fisher Distinguished Hybridizer Merit Award recipient), created this variety in 2001 from the parents H. "Rock and Roll" and H. "Great Expectations." Seems about right. if you know the human Mike Shadrack.

The human Mike Shadrack pushing around his wife,
Kathy Guest Shadrack. Both authors of books on hostas.

It's described as "Medium green with a medium gold margin, extremely cupped and rugose on a vase-shaped clump." It's a moderate grower with a 9"x9" sized leaf and broadly ovate leaf shape that is slightly rippled -- with a dull leaf texture. The plant is considered large (30-35.99" tall) with scentless white blooms. It is in the Lilaceae family in the genus hosta, hardy to Zone 3b. And can be purchased from Hostas Direct.

Mike, and his wife Kathy are both authors of books on hostas. They live outside of Buffalo, NY, and travel the country in the "hosta speaking engagement circles." Yes, there are hosta speaking engagement circles. You can find out more about them on their own site, Smug Creek Gardens.

I have to find a special spot for this hosta, which we'll just call "Mike."

Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate park

Two weeks ago we were in San Fransisco visiting the sites and seeing the sights. One garden on my bucket list has always been the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. The five-acre site was originally created as a one-acre "Japanese village" exhibit for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894.

The garden(s) are exquisite. Expertly maintained, the garden views open up as you walk through, each section different from the next but all one manicured whole. There are visually busy areas of clipped trees, bamboo hedges, bright & brash colors - but also quiet wooded areas that seemed to glow and parts with more colors of green than you've probably ever seen.

Meandering paths lead up hills, across streams, over ponds, an arched drum bridge, pagodas, stone lanterns, stepping stone paths, native Japanese plants, serene koi ponds and a zen garden.

There's a real tea house restaurant, and an obligatory gift shop selling mostly tea-related items. I was hoping for more garden-related merchandise.

Mexican garden art store visit

When in Mexico in February, we visited a garden store in Puerto Vallarta, near the airport. This store was always screaming to our friend Jay who drives by it every trip into Puerto Vallarta from his Sayulita vacation home. This store had TONS of items from huge outdoor dining table to house numbers and every wall hanging, sculpture, water fountain, bird cage, bar, chair, lantern, tile, jug, pot, basket, mirror, wind chime, lounge chair and table you can imagine. It seemed endless, like the warehouse from the last scene of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. For your viewing pleasure:

How not to approach selling at a garden art sale

I've gone and done it again. Signed up for something with little to no knowledge of what I'm doing. I signed up to participate, as a vendor in the upcoming Buffalo-style Garden Art Sale. I get a ten-by-ten booth to sell garden art, or garden-inspired products to rabid gardeners. It's being held during the Parkside Garden Tour, so we're sure to have a good-sized built-in crowd.

FOR SALE: Framed original watercolor painting

FOR SALE: Framed original watercolor painting by Susan Webb Tregay, used on the first color Garden Walk Buffalo in poster (2002). 

Partial proceeds of sale to benefit the National Garden Festival. Price of this beautiful painting (and small part of Buffalo's gardening history) is $850. If interested, email gardenwalkbufffalo@yahoo.com.

One of the signed 2002 Garden Walk Posters, and description, are attached to the back of the painting. Painting size is 29"h x 33"w. Framed size is 31"h x 37.5"w.

The Gardens of Alcatraz Island

 

I didn't expect much from a prison garden, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the gardens in and around San Francisco's former federal penitentiary, Alcatraz.

Alcatraz is called "The Rock" for good reason.
It's mostly rock and buildings.

The island, originally an uninhabitable pile of rocks, home to only birds, had barely anything more than scrub brush when roads were first blasted out of the rock in the 1850s. Then it was developed as an army military garrison leading up to the Civil War. The three officer's homes, at the time, had small gardens. And the common areas used plantings to visually break up the seemingly endless piles of cannon balls. Soil had to be brought there from the mainland for growing. One large lawn and garden was watered with reclaimed water from the cell house showers.

National Garden Festival Guides

Coming to you soon... These books are printed and we're looking for distribution sites, as well as being able to order them online through the National Garden Festival (NGF). They were available at Plantasia (the local garden & landscape show) and LOTS of books sold. Cost is $5, or $8 for two. Proceeds benefit the Garden Festival and offset the cost of the books.

The Open Gardens/NGF guide is a flip-over book - it's two, two books in one.

Garden related activity for when you're not gardening

Please visit Garden Walk Bufalo's new Facebook page which can be found here. Please click over and "Like" our page. Features you'll find there include:

And yet more Buffalo gardens in another magazine...

...and again, photos of my garden were in the mix. They're old photos - it doesn't look quite like this anymore. The top photo, where you see the Royal purple smoke tree, no longer has the tree. That's the spot I'll be adding my handmade copper heuchera fountain.

Can a garden tour change a city?

Last week, the Buffalo News published, in the Editorial Page, an article written by Randy Hohle, an assistant professor of sociology at D’Youville College. He is working on a research project titled “Rusty Gardens: Creativity, Civic Engagement and Urban Revitalization in the Rust Belt.” And this article was a brief bit about some of the information he has uncovered in the process of researching and interviewing gardeners and garden tour organizers from around the Buffalo Niagara region, as well as in other cities around the country. You can read his full editorial in the Buffalo News here.

Leaf magazine is out - and I'm in!

I was very honored to be asked by Rochelle Greayer and Susan Cohan to contribute a small bit to their wildly successful new (and free) online gardening magazine Leaf. When planning their section on international garden markets for this second issue, in the back of one of their minds, they recalled I had written posts (here and here) on Holland's Bloemenmarkt, a generations-old flower market located on permanently-moored barges in a canal in the heart of Amsterdam. You can read the article it on page 54.