If you can dream every square inch of a garden, every day of its year, and every flavor of its season, then you can make it happen.
— Monty Don, host of the BBC's Gardeners World
This webpage reviews plants, materials, and techniques used in a midwest garden located in Bloomington, Indiana. The gardener is a "transplant" from decades of gardening in Southern California, so this is a challenge dealing with new environments and microclimates. View the garden on a walk-though, May 2023.
By the way, what's up with the quote above? Who is Monty Don? He's a presenter at the BBC's weekly "Gardeners' World" TV show, and if you give him a chance he could become your gardening guru. Check him out at his website.
The pollinator garden includes species of interest to bees and butterflies, including these blue and violet species geraniums, perennials that bloom every year. The darker one is 'Rozanne,' an award winner, while the violet one is a species of Geranium maculatum.
Pelargoniums used to be categorized with geraniums but they have their own genus now. 'Brown Butterfly' is an heirloom variety hybridized in 1954 and is still stunning when in bloom. It's tender so it spends the winter in the greenhouse but can be put outside in spring.
This compact shrub rose 'Bolero' opens with delicate buds but matures to an old-rose multipetaled blossom touched with blush pink. This is its frist year here and it's already distinguishing itself in the front rose-bed border. Nice fragrance too, which is always a plus.
This year was a first: a parental pair of robins took over one of the back porch hanging baskets. I had to refrain from watering the violas so as not to disturb them but it was worth watching them. Mrs. Robin eventually laid four eggs in all and she and her partner incubated, took turns feeding the chicks, and the babies eventually fledged successfully four weeks later. You can watch a feeding session here.
A backward glance
One of our more prominent horticultural ancestors was Frederick H. Dressel, born in 1861 in Darmstadt Germany. He was botanically inclined from an early age, spending some time in London learning about orchids. Frederick was the son of Hermann Dressel, a Darmstadt merchant, and his wife Elizabetha Pattburg. Herman was the younger brother of our ancestor Marie Dressel Schuckmann, who emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina with her husband Louis who ran a successful haberdashery.
Frederick emigrated to America and settled in Weehawken, New Jersey where he established a greenhouse for the propagation and cultivation of orchids, palms, and ferns. His fame as an orchid expert was well-known and the American Museum of Natural History in Washington DC commissioned him to search for rare examples in Mexico, Central and South America. He also developed a new variety of Boston fern which he named 'President Wilson' and had a fern named after himself as well, the Dresseli. He was a well-known presence at horticulture show throughout the United States. Another brush with fame: he was the grandfather of the actress Trish VanDevere (born Patricia Dressel).
If you want to know more about Frederick and his Dressel family, please visit the Dressel webpage.
Copyright © All rights reserved
Template by OS Templates