Common Coral Tree

It’s kind of whacky picture day here at Digital Flower Pictures.com. I was just going through some old shots and found a couple that I liked. The weather here today is terrible and it was fun to look back at some travel pictures. The first one is from the world famous Tucson Botanical Garden. The structure had some tender plants inside. I would recommend a visit if in the area.

Common Coral Tree
Erythrina lysistemon
(er-ith-RY-nuh)
Synonyms: Cry Baby Tree, Lucky Bean Tree

This is just an oddball shot of this tree blooming in San Diego, California. They were all over Hawaii too, especially the big island. The color contrasted nicely here.

Just a pensive chimp.

Bailey Arboretum

Bailey Arboretum
Lattingtown, NY

Now I must preface this post with the fact I only spent a couple of hours walking around the Arboretum. I was intrigued but their collection to say the least but found the condition of the grounds a little rough. They need a massive pruning job and a bit of cleaning out of some areas. To be fair I visited in the worst possible time of the year.

The actual plant collection is wonderful, I saw a lot of my favorites and some new things. I definitely enjoyed my walk and there were a lot of photo opportunities. The sky wasn’t helpful on the day I visited and when I return I hope there is at least a little blue up there. I will be going back when the leaves are out and will report back then. It is worth a visit if you are in the area but probably not as a destination. It is very close to Planting Fields State Park and I will do another combined visit soon.


Here is a link to their website:
Bailey Arboretum’s Home Page
I found the History Link on that page to of interest, read about the Dawn Redwoods. One of them has the largest girth of any Dawn Redwood in the world.


I have to go clean up the mess I made pruning yesterday. It is my first working Sunday of the year. I am not complaining other than it is going to cut into my photography time.

2008 NYBG Orchid Show

Asian Corsage Orchid
Cymbidium Via Lady Carisona ‘Chateau Burgundy’
(sim-BID-ee-um)

2008 NYBG Orchid Show
New York Botanical Garden
Bronx, NY

On Sunday I attended the 2008 New York Orchid Show. It was wonderful and although I didn’t do as well photographically as I would have liked I did manage a few good pictures. I got my ticket on-line and since I am member of the garden they were free. I printed it out and used one of my parking passes so basically it was free. I am not sure how much tickets cost but the parking is $12.

Another Asian Corsage Orchid (Cymbidium 'Milk Tea')

Now I have gone to this show for the last three years and each year it gets better. This year there were these fabulous arbors with Orchids tucked all the way up the sides and across the top. This year the show was a little more artistic and set up more in total rather than just a bunch of flowers displayed. I don’t know if that makes sense to everyone. The plants were all in good condition with literally thousands of flowers of all types in full bloom.

Not my finest hour with the camera but I did want you to see one of the Orchid Arbors.

When you get your ticket you have to sign up for a specific time to enter the conservatory. I chose 10:30 (it opens at 10 am) and it was a little crowded already. By the time I left two hours later it was really crowded. I was still able to get near the flowers I wanted to photograph and for being that crowded it was tolerable. I think I may try and sneak back to the show during the week, I am sure it will be less crowded.

I wanted to add that the New York Orchid Show is a little different than the several other large Orchid Shows I have been to. There is no judging of the flowers and no vendors. I like both styles of shows however for photography I think the New York style show is better since it is not located in a dark cavernous hall but a brightly lit greenhouse.

Last week I was awarded this big ‘E’ from Katarina i Kullavik at
Roses and Stuff a garden blog from Sweden. I find the Nordic countries extremely interesting and beautiful. There are quite of few blogs that I enjoy from that area. I always thought they had a really harsh gardening season but I think the opposite is true; in many ways their season is ahead of Connecticut. So thanks Katarina for giving me the award I am both honored and humbled by it.

Chinese Scholar Garden

Chinese Scholar Garden
Staten Island, New York

This is really Part Two for pictures of my trip to the Staten Island Botanical Garden. The first post is here with some more black and white photos and some information on the garden.



These pictures were all shoot with my compact (point and shoot camera) Nikon 8400 camera. The black and whites were from a series of doorway and hall photos I tried at the garden. I think I had limited success on the doors but there were a lot of photo opportunities at the garden. The grounds outside of the walled off Chinese Garden are full of interesting plants and it is a well tended garden. The pictures were shot on the monochrome setting and are not conversions.

My visit was in September and that feels so far away from now as it is snowing like heck outside now. They say 10 inches but at these rates we are looking at a foot or more. Significant ice is also expected and then a turn back to snow. I was hoping to get back to work full time next week but I really should have known better. I am not complaining about the snow itself as we have had hardly any this year.

Here are two quotes that kind of sum up how I am feeling.


"Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?"

William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing

"Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle,
a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl.
And the anticipation nurtures our dream."

Barbara Winkler



This a building I took a snapshot of on the way from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to the Subway in Lower Manhattan.

Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum
Oyster Bay, New York


Yesterday I drove out to Long Island and visited Planting Fields Arboretum. My main goal was to see the Camellia Collection but I was, however, a little early as most of the plants were just in bud. There were a few blooming but the real show looked like it would be coming in a couple of weeks. Hardly a disappointment I decided to go to the Main Greenhouse and have a look around. They still had the Poinsettia display up and that was colorful with some interesting types and colors. My camera fogged up and I wasn’t able to get a clear picture in that part of the greenhouse. The other parts of the greenhouse have Orchids, Succulents and Cactus and Begonias in separate rooms with some other tropical plants displayed along the way.

Morning Glory seed pods

Normally when I have gone to this Arboretum I have just stopped in along the way from buying plants out on the North Fork, which kind of makes for a rushed visit. Yesterday I decided to make it my primary destination. I could have stayed all day, oops, that’s what I ended up doing only leaving because of the dusk. I wasn’t really prepared for the riot of bark, berries, flowers and other botanical delights. The large collection of Witch Hazels was amazing and I kept coming across them here and there in the garden. I am not sure they were all marked correctly but they made for a fragrant and colorful distraction for a winters afternoon. Seeing the arboretum ‘bones’ was good, as I found several new (new to me) plants that I want to go back and photograph during the spring and summer.

Main Greenhouse, I got both pictures of the Greenhouse before the 8400 died

Since I only used the 60mm/2.8 Micro-Nikkor and the 50mm/1.8 I didn’t really take any landscape shots. I wish I had but maybe next time. I had my Coolpix 8400 and that has a 24mm equivalent lens but the battery died shortly after I got there. I really need a spare battery for that camera as it only lasts about 25% of the D70s battery. It is going to take awhile to sort through all the pictures I took. I was doing some depth of field and exposure experiments to get ready for the upcoming season. I also tried a few menu adjustments and wanted to see the results of that. With my newly stocked up Ipod on and the pretty nice weather (not super, windy and cloudy but fairly warm) I was really ‘out there’.

Bark from a large specimen of Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera)

Their website gives some of the rich history and explains the collections better than I could:
Planting Fields.org

Garden Statues from Skylands

Garden Statues from Skylands
The New Jersey State Botanical Garden

If you came for Wordless Wednesday scroll down to the next post.

Short post today as I am experiencing a few computer problems. Everything was working so well for so long that something had to crop up. Luckily I have almost everything backed up to disk now. That takes a lot of the worry out of it. Everything seems to be working again.

These are some of the beautiful statues they had at the New Jersey State Botanical Garden. Normally this kind of thing is just okay with me but when you have a garden that big and the statues are tastefully blended into the landscape and garden they work very well. To me accents in the garden are never as important as the plants themselves but I know for some people it is the other way around. I tried to find out some information on the Eagle sculptures but didn’t come up with anything. They are very cool and are located right at the front entrance.


This next statue is ‘Diana’, Goddess of the Hunt and of the Woods. It is a copy of the 4th Century B.C. Greek statue. It was cast in lead in London in 1920 and purchased for Skylands in 1924. This was a beautiful piece of art that was right on the edge of where the garden met the woods.


I liked this planter. It had these lion heads on two sides and a face of a woman on the other two. It was in the center of the annual garden. The annual garden looked like it had been quite nice during the season. Of course during our visit it had gone by.

I just found out last night that my sister is moving from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Glen Ellen, California. Hmmm, I can sense some wine tastings in my future.

A Few Images From Skylands

A Few Images From Skylands
The New Jersey State Botanical Garden

Yesterday’s drive ended up taking me over to Skylands, the New Jersey State Botanical Garden. I had been there quite a few years ago and I vaguely remembered how nice it was. Sure it would have been better to be there a week or two ago but there was still plenty of things to see including a lot of foliage. It is a large collection of trees, perennials, shrubs and it looked like during the season annuals.
Persian Parrottia (Parrotia persica) in full fall color.

The weather was really crummy as there were a few spots of the snow left over from the night before. Cloudy, chilly (cold, actually) and windy were the key weather words for our visit. The sky was a flat gray rendering any pictures with it pretty much useless. I did have a pretty good day with the camera despite the sky and wind and I will be posting some of the photos this week. I was able to snag my ABC Wednesday picture for this week’s ‘Q’ post. I was worried about that because it isn’t really an easy letter. Today’s post is about yellow fall foliage, I guess, it was an unintended theme.
One of many paths leading to heavily wooded areas.

The sun did start to peak out as evidenced in the first picture but only after we started to drive out of the parking lot. That one was shot on the entrance road. We spent about 3.5 hours looking around and saw some really beautiful foliage and evergreens.

I wanted to go out and get a few photos today but it is pretty windy here today. It is also kind of cold. It seems like the wind is dying down a bit so I might go out after all.
Unnamed Japanese Maple, very effective against a backdrop of Taxus.

Kiku at the New York Botanical Garden

Kiku at the New York Botanical Garden

Chrysanthemum Festival in the Bronx, 2007

Kiku in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyards.

On Sunday I attended the Kiku Chrysanthemum Show at the New York Botanical Garden. I want to first say that I didn’t take in the whole show and only spent about two and half hours at the garden so this by the nature of my visit can’t be a complete review.

Stone and Kiku garden display. Very creative.

I printed my on-line free member tickets the night before and they give you a choice of admission times at 15-minute intervals. I chose 10:15 and was one of the first people inside. By the time I left the Conservatory at noon it was getting packed. I was very impressed by the flowers being displayed. They were probably some of the most beautiful Chrysanthemums I have seen. Once the crowds started to arrive it was very difficult to see the booths the flowers were in and I think the people were kept a little too far away from them. If you want to take some close ups you better bring a lens longer than the 70mm I had.

Be prepared for large crowds.

The big Chrysanthemums that had around 175 flowers were amazing. The growing of these plants is something I don’t think I could do, way too tedious. I actually liked the cascade mum display better. I think I have seen those at the garden before. They were more natural looking and they had a few more varieties to look at.

Among the Chrysanthemum booths there were numerous cultivars of Japanese Maples. Some were starting to show their stunning fall color. Interspersed inside the Maples were different and interesting Bonsai trees. Inside the Conservatory in the area were the seasonal displays are located there were more Bonsai trees and two of the big Chrysanthemums that you could get a little closer to. The lighting wasn’t the greatest for photography.

In general I didn’t have a good day with the camera. That used to frustrate the heck out of me but now I just let it roll off. I enjoyed seeing the flowers and it was a lovely day to tour the garden so I will just leave it at.


As I said this isn’t meant to be a complete review of the Kiku exhibit. I will go back when the hype dies down a little bit for a more extended look around. Here is a link to the show:
nybg.org/kiku
I would encourage everybody to attend and form their own opinions. For me it was worthwhile and fascinating.

I will be posting a few more pictures when I get a chance to go through them.

Queens Botanical Garden

Queens Botanical Garden
Flushing, New York

Yesterday I left early and visited the Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing, New York. I wanted to kind of make a clean sweep of the NYC Botanical gardens having already visited the New York Botanical Garden and Wave Hill in the Bronx, Brooklyn Botanical Garden and the Staten Island Botanical Gardens this summer. It wasn’t as much as an adventure as getting to the Staten Island Garden. I drove to the Metro-North Railroad Station in Katonah, New York and got the train to Manhattan. I then bought a Metrocard and took the #7 Subway train to its terminus at Main Street in Flushing, Queens. It is about a 40-minute ride on the Subway and then I walked the eight blocks south on Main Street to the garden. I took the bus back to the station and you may want to consider taking it to the garden.

The new Visitor and Administration Building at the Queens Botanical Garden

The garden was nice, smallish compared to the others but it really had a country atmosphere, which was kind of amazing to me. If it weren’t for the skyscrapers and the jets taking off from La Guardia you might not know you were in NYC. There is a lot of construction going on at the garden. It looked like a pretty big area was closed off and totally ripped up. The Visitor and Administration Building was brand new and they are so planning a new maintenance building and area.


Some of the highlights of my visit were the Rose Garden, Pinetum, and while I didn’t get to actually go inside the area reserved for Weddings. There was a Wedding later in the day with; I’m guessing 50 guests. I got to see the bride walking down the aisle and I liked the air of anticipation before she arrived. The Rose Garden had a lot of roses and seemed well cared for and my only knock (and it is a small one) was the roses for the most part weren’t labeled and they were kind of scatter planted (mixed up). As I said there were a lot of flowers and a good selection of cultivars. The Pinetum was interesting, I didn’t see anything really rare but there was an interesting selection with some very old specimens. It looked like they are going to need to do some transplanting soon and I would have liked to see a few more dwarf types of trees. If you are not familiar with what a Pinetum is here is the definition: “An area planted with pine trees or related conifers, especially for botanical study.”

One of the Circular Annual Plantings

The rest of the display gardens were nicely presented and tended. There were a couple of very nice annual/tropical plant circles that I found interesting. There was also a large circular perennial and annual border that was impressive. I have tried to make a comprehensive review here since it was hard to find any reviews on the Internet about the QBG. A review would not be complete without mentioning the experience I had in the Senior Garden section. The Senior Garden was located in one of the far corners of the garden, and is made of a lot of small vegetable plots, each tended by a senior. Apparently they just started opening on the weekends for visiting. They were calling over to me to come visit as I walked by. Of course I went in and looked around after a few minutes one of the gardeners approached me and started to talk about the garden. I don’t think I have ever met a group that was more friendly and proud of their garden. They had to show me everything and I found them to be quite knowledgeable. When they heard I was professional that seemed to trigger some questions. It was a very personal and enjoyable visit for me. The kind of experience you wouldn’t get at the other Botanical Gardens in NYC.

Overall it was a very enjoyable visit. I can’t remember the last time I rode one of the Subway lines to the end in the Outer Boroughs. The #7 line drops you in the middle of Chinatown and that is an experience in itself. When I was in Grand Central I had a bolt of fear as the US Open Tennis Tournament and a Mets home game was scheduled on Saturday. It turned out to be baseless as I dodged both with happy accidental timing. You probably wouldn’t want to make this your top destination for Botanical Gardens in NYC but if you are interested or have the time it is certainly worth the visit.

Sedum 'Autumn Joy'

A quick word about the pictures here. When I go shooting I often give myself a little challenge to try and complete on my journey. Yesterday it was to get a few full frame flower and plant pictures. As usual I took a lot of close ups but tried to complete my personal challenge. I had quite a few failed attempts (which we won’t be seeing) and the three that came out the best.

Chinese Scholar Garden

Chinese Scholar Garden
Staten Island Botanical Garden

The showcase and centerpiece of the Staten Island Botanical Garden is the New York Chinese Scholar Garden. There is a separate admission charge of $5 (US) for this garden. The other gardens are free. I gladly paid and didn’t think to ask if my New York Botanical Garden membership fee would get me break. It didn’t matter as the show was well worth the admission. It is a remarkable garden that has surprises around every corner. I had my trusty Coolpix set to black and white and also had the D70s with the 60mm shooting color. In hindsight I probably should have put the wide-angle lens on the D70 but I like the challenge of trying to get shots with the 60mm prime. I have been wanting to shoot more B&W so I actually used the little camera more. There was a multitude of shots to be had with all the angles and details in the garden.



I looked up just what a Chinese Scholar Garden is supposed to be and found this article on Wikipedia:
Chinese Scholar Garden



I have reprinted a portion of it here:

“The Chinese (Scholar's) Garden is a place for solitary or social contemplation of nature. To be considered authentic, a garden must be built and planned around seventeen essential elements. 17 features of a Scholar's garden: 1) near or at the home; 2) small; 3) walled; 4) small individual sections; 5) asymmetrical; 6) various types of spatial connections; 7) architecture; 8) rocks; 9) water; 10) trees; 11) plants; 12) sculpture; 13) jie jing (borrowed scenery); 14) chimes; 15) incense burners; 16) inscriptions; 17) use of feng shui for choosing site.”
Source: Marylyn McKean, Professor of Garden History at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design



The rest of the article goes on to talk about how the different plants are used and what they symbolize. All of which I found interesting. I think the only other Chinese Garden I have ever been in is the one in the Montreal Botanical Garden Montréal, Québec Canada.
Click Here

And that was really new at the time. The New York Garden seemed more established. Now know more about Chinese Gardens, including the major elements I can see how they were presented in Staten Island. I had the garden to myself a good part of the time which was nice. I only had to wait once when I was taking a picture for someone to move out of the way. It was really quiet and therefore more enjoyable to me.

I have decided to post only the Black and White pictures here today. These are not color conversions but shot with the camera in the monochrome setting. You can see I was fascinated by the Moon Gate. The only other one I have remember seeing was at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, MA.



Well the will be another post on the Garden, probably in color, in the next couple of days. I have to think about what I want to post for ABC Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday. It is back to the grind today. I can’t believe it is Labor Day already. I am going to have to do some watering if it doesn’t rain this week.



My apologies to anyone on a dial up connection for posting so many pictures. I crushed them down as far as I could without losing too much of the quality.

Staten Island Botanical Garden Canna Lilies

Staten Island Botanical Garden Canna Lilies

Yesterday I decided to visit the Staten Island Botanical Garden. For those that don’t know Staten Island is one of the five boroughs that make up New York City. Here is more info on Staten Island:
Click here



I didn’t get to see too much of the Island but what I did see makes me want to go back and explore it some more. It is quite an arduous journey to get there from Connecticut. The first thing I did was hop in the car and drive to Katonah, New York to get the train to Manhattan. After the train brings you to Grand Central Terminal you have to get the Times Square Shuttle, on the Subway, to go downtown. I knew the #1 line is what I wanted to take to the Staten Island Ferry. Once I got on the #1 line I figured I was all set to ride down to the South Ferry station. Oh no, all trains were stopping several stations from South Ferry due to construction with shuttle buses to go the rest of the way. I decided to walk and of course it was a lot longer than I thought but enjoyed walking around lower Manhattan snapping a few pictures. When I realized how far I had to go I decided to get back on the Subway and this time jumped on the R/W line to Whitehall, which also drops you at the SI Ferry. I got on the boat which is a 25 minute ride and features great views of New York Harbor. Here is a link for more information:
Click here

The price is certainly right for the ferry ride, free! Once at the St. George Ferry Terminal I caught the S40 bus to the garden. All in all, 1 truck, 4 trains, 1 boat and 1 bus. Total time: 3 hours. Add in about 3 miles of walking, also.


Once I arrived at the Garden, which is located in an area called Snug Harbor I relaxed and started walking around. The garden is great. It is set up a bit like a maze, which I like, and the different gardens are next to each other but remote at the same time. They didn’t have a lot of rare plants but what they did have looked great and there were plenty of different things blooming to keep this shutterbug happy. Most everything was well maintained and for this time of year it was quite lush. One thing that was featured in a lot of the gardens was Canna Lilies. So here are three unnamed Canna portraits. I will be writing about my trip for several posts including one very special garden which is part of the SIBG, coming up here. I snagged a couple of ‘G’ posts for ABC Wednesday and I may have a day where I just post pictures I took in Manhattan.

NYBG Water Garden

NYBG Water Garden

I went down to the New York Botanical Garden today. I saw some unusual flowers and learned a couple of new plants. It was a quick tour with my main goal of hitting the Rose Garden. These are a couple of shots of the Water Garden that is outside the Conservatory. It was in bloom with a good collection of Lotus and Water Lilies. Lighting wasn’t optimal and it felt like it was going to rain at any minute.



I will probably be living on the photos I took today for a while. My upcoming week doesn’t really have a lot of flowers forecast. I wanted to get my ‘E’ picture for ABC Wednesday. I have a couple to choose from now. I kept my eye out for plants that start with the letter e. That was kind of fun.

I probably won’t be providing a lot of commentary with the pictures that I post for a spell. I have revived a project that I was working on a few years back. I wrote a book on the history of the Premier Gold Mine, which was along the Alaskan/BC Border. A couple of my cousins worked there. I had a deal to publish it but it didn’t work out. I have recently been researching self-publishing the book on the internet. It still needs a bit of work (bit of an understatement) and I have literally hundreds of historical photographs to wade through, again. This blog has always been mostly about the pictures so It probably won’t be a bad thing.

Roses from the BBG

This is probably the last post on my trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the Cranford Rose Garden. Here is an except from the history of the Rose Garden:

“In June 1928, the Cranford Rose Garden celebrated the grand opening of what has become one of the largest and finest rose gardens in this country. It was designed by Harold Caparn, a landscape architect for Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Montague Free, the Garden's horticulturist. Caparn had drawn the plans several years earlier, at the request of Stuart Gager, the first director of BBG.”

Full History.

They have a lot of other information on the rose garden if you click around a bit.


I got a couple of pictures of the roses although the heat had kind of got to them by the time of my visit. You could tell they had been blooming a lot by all the spent flowers. The roses I care for at work all had a great season but this next heat wave is going to knock them back.



This first rose is ‘About Face’ (cv. WEK osupalz). It is a Grandiflora Rose that won the AARS award in 2005. It has a light fragrance (I didn’t notice it) and a petal count of 35. Some of the parents of this rose include ‘Hot Cocoa’, ‘Ole Sole Mia’ and ‘Midas Touch’, all roses that I like. This rose has a very unusual color, which was quite captivating.




This next rose is a 2008 AARS winner called ‘Dream Come True’. Here is the story of how it was hybridized by a retired obstetrician.
Story

It looks to be a nice rose, following the trend to more multi-colored types. I had to step way into the rose bed to get this picture and was worried someone might see me as I quickly snapped the photo. I don’t really feel bad doing something like that as I am a professional gardener but I wouldn’t want anyone to get upset about it. If the roles were reversed and you were stepping into my plant beds to get a photo it would be okay, as long as you were careful.



This last rose photo is of the rose ‘Lady Elsie May’ (cv. ’Angelsie’). This is a shrub rose that won an AARS award in 2005. It is the only rose I have grown out of the ones pictures here and in my mind it is a winner. This rose has it’s own website which I thought was funny.
Lady Elsie May.com