All –
As i’m not sure this went thru… Sobering…
Botanical Gardens Look for New Lures Jonathan Alcorn for The New York Times Laila Romero, a sous-chef, preparing appetizers at the Camellia Lounge at Descanso Gardens. By JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI Published: July 26, 2010
For the last quarter century, the Cleveland Botanical Garden went all out for its biennial Flower Show, the largest outdoor garden show in North America. With themed gardens harking back to the Roman empire, or an 18th-century English estate, the event would draw 25,000 to 30,000 visitors.
Jonathan Alcorn for The New York Times Jazz Monde serving a Pollinator, a signature cocktail offered at the Camellia Lounge at Descanso Gardens. Enlarge This Image
Courtesy of Gabriela Orihuela/Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Gardens are trying new things to lure visitors. The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden has featured Indian dancers.
Ken Blaze for The New York Times The Cleveland Botanical Garden has a “learning farm.” But in 2009, the Flower Show was postponed and then abandoned when the botanical garden could not find sponsors. This year, the garden has different plans. From Sept. 24 to 26, it is inaugurating the “RIPE! Food & Garden Festival,” which celebrates the trend of locally grown food — and is supported in part by the Cleveland Clinic and Heinen’s, a supermarket chain.
“The Flower Show may come back someday, but it’s not where people are these days,” says Natalie Ronayne, the garden’s executive director. “Food is an easier sell.”
So it is across the country. Botanical gardens are experiencing an identity crisis, with chrysanthemum contests, horticultural lectures and garden-club ladies, once their main constituency, going the way of manual lawn mowers. Among the long-term factors diminishing their traditional appeal are fewer women at home and less interest in flower-gardening among younger fickle, multitasking generations.
Forced to rethink and rebrand, gardens are appealing to visitors’ interests in nature, sustainability, cooking, health, family and the arts. Some are emphasizing their social role, erecting model green buildings, promoting wellness and staying open at night so people can mingle over cocktails like the Pollinator (green tea liqueur, soda water and Sprite). A few are even inviting in dogs (and their walkers) free or, as in Cleveland, with a canine admission charge ($2).
“We’re not just looking for gardeners anymore,” says Mary Pat Matheson, the executive director of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. “We’re looking for people who go to art museums and zoos.”
In May, the Atlanta garden opened an attraction that would fit right in at a jungle park: a “canopy walk” that twists and turns for 600 feet at a height of up to 45 feet, allowing visitors to trek through the treetops. Not far away, food enthusiasts can stop in at a new edible garden, with an outdoor kitchen frequently staffed by guest chefs creating dishes with fresh, healthy ingredients. Edible gardens are the fastest-growing trend at botanical gardens, consistently increasing attendance, experts say, along with cooking classes.
Attendance in Atlanta since May is double what it was for the same period last year.
Public gardens across the country receive about 70 million visits a year, according to the American Public Gardens Association. But experts say that because of social trends and changing demographics, attendance is at risk if gardens do not change.
They can, however, take advantage of several trends that could increase garden attendance, including concern for the environment, interest in locally grown food, efforts to reduce childhood obesity, demand for family activities and mania for interactive entertainment. Even economic pressures could help botanical gardens, as more people try to grow their own food. In 2009, 35 percent of American households had some kind of food garden, up from 31 percent in 2008, says Bruce Butterfield, research director of the National Gardening Association. Only 31 percent participated in flower gardening in 2009, about the same proportion as in the last few years.
“There’s a generation that will be less interested in gardens,” says Daniel J. Stark, executive director of the public gardens association, “but that generation is incredibly interested in what’s happening with the planet. Recently, my own two daughters, and a friend, were reading me the riot act about cutting down some trees.”
Mr. Stark’s daughters are 4 and 8.
Some tactics designed to entice nongardening Americans are not new, of course — sculpture and concerts have been around for years — but their popularity is growing. The New York Botanical Garden, for example, is drawing big crowds with its current tribute to the poet Emily Dickinson, who was also a gardener.
The new exhibition at the United States Botanic Garden in Washington features “the spectacular spud family,” with potato-related artifacts, music and bits of pop culture, especially the endurance of Mr. Potato Head.
And children’s gardens are growing more whimsical and interactive, says Sharilyn Ingram, a former president of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Canada who is now a culture professor at Brock University in Ontario. “You get to have a little more fun now,” she said.
When the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden, in Boothbay, opened its $1.7 million, two-acre children’s garden this month, it came with a chicken coop, where children can harvest eggs, and a windmill weather station.
In Wyoming, at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, the new children’s village has adopted sustainability as its theme. It includes a solar-powered discovery laboratory where children can make art from reused materials, a feature that helped it win the highest level of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
Teenagers in Cleveland are learning how to grow corn and zucchini on urban plots.
Because of environmental concerns, Descanso Gardens, near Los Angeles, is doing the once-unthinkable: it plans to uproot its historic — but nonnative — collection of camellias, some as tall as 30 feet, which were planted decades ago under the shade of natural woodlands. “It’s a fantasy forest,” says Brian Sullivan, the director of horticulture and garden operations.
But the fantasy cannot be sustained. Camellias require so much water that it is killing the trees — not to mention being wasteful. Descanso will relocate the camellias, even though some will be lost, and allow the woodlands to return to their native state. “We expect opposition and kudos both,” Mr. Sullivan said.
But Descanso still must reach out beyond its aging membership group, he added, so it is remaining open in the evening; offering cocktails (including the Pollinator) at a new Camellia Lounge; breaking ground on a $2.1 million art gallery whose exterior walls will be hung with vertical plant trays that will blend into a turf roof; and maintaining an edible garden dense with fruits, vegetables and herbs that are donated to a local food bank.
Food festivals are becoming a large part of the year-round programming that gardens view as important to winning repeat visitors. In January, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Fla., drew some 12,000 people to its fourth International Chocolate Festival with Coffee and Tea. It was followed in April with a local food festival, and this month with a mango festival. In November comes its annual Ramble, a garden party featuring antiques and music.
Yes, Fairchild also has an orchid festival.
But showcasing flowers is clearly shrinking in importance. “Most gardens,” Ms. Ingram, the Canadian professor, said, “would feel that displaying flowers is necessary, but not sufficient.”
One doesn’t have to be a social researcher to notice the decline in the number of people (not interested, but) willing to participate in gardening, particularly raising flowers. New subdivisions are laid out to facilitate easy yard care -not gardening- while (whilst) both spouses work two jobs to meet the mortgage payment and “spare time” is spent on social interactions via computers or ipods or whatever those things – needing to be recharged all the time – are called.
In this category, BULBS would be entered with the usual info – Variety, Hybridizer, year, County Division & Color code. However, the award would go to the one producing the most “AMPERAGE.”
Elementary electric experiments have relied for years on the potato (potatoe) to demonstrate how plants can produce electricity. I am not going to detail here how to extract it, but it can be done very simply by inserting prongs in the tuber.
The idea is that ultimately you can recharge your hand held “whatever” simply by sticking prongs in a daffodil bulb you carry in your pocket or purse. This will allow you to get to Daffseek and find out the amperage of the bulbs available in your area.
As to judging, there will undoubtedly be an RHS standard set but I would think most societies could improvise. A word of caution! Having been stopped by a Wisconsin Highway Patrol with John Beck present, make sure the amp meter is properly calibrated before a show.
I would urge all daffodil societies to act on this expeditiously. Keith Kridler may already be trying to do it with turnips.
Denis Dailey
Saint Paul MN
Already had frost in my patch but too wet to plant
I know NOTHING about running a large public garden. I know they all have a bottom line to meet and bringing in the needed money may require some creative thinking in the future. I think sadly, it is the location of some of these gardens that have fallen out of favor as much as anything, that has shrunk their attendance and popularity. Demographics change, whereas, a garden once established is not free to move to a better location.
The National Arboretum is a prime example. When it was established it was in a fine location, but today it is surrounded by neighborhoods that are known to be high crime areas.
What stood out for me in this piece was the comment about the two children ages 4 and 8 who read their father “the riot act” about cutting down trees. I think it is a shame that children are subjected to propaganda about nature. Were the trees in question native trees? Were they diseased? Were they old and in danger of falling and causing damage? Were they putting nearby structures at risk? Causing foundation problems? Interfering with sewer lines? Could these children, ages 4 and 8 have had ANY sense of these kinds of issues that adults ask themselves when deciding which plants are best suited for a location and which are not?
Not every tree is a good or desirable plant. And to have small children believe otherwise to promote a “green” agenda is shamefully taking advantage of their innocence.
Chriss Rainey
As to judging, there will undoubtedly be an RHS standard set but I would think most societies could improvise. A word of caution! Having been stopped by a Wisconsin Highway Patrol with John Beck present, make sure the amp meter is properly calibrated before a show. All I did was open my nouth “o))
silly officer offered to wrote me a ticket as well
and me innocently being tired enough to weave all over the road
Bah! He was alomost as bad as the guy who won;t let me drive after I go drinking…..
Dear all, (feel free to delete, here)
I hope this isn’t tooo off-topic for you, but, as an avid and future oriented gardener,
I have to agree strongly with Chriss, the green movement has turned into a ‘bored-housewife campaign of ignorance!’ (my words) I am constantly trying to educate people to the real big picture, but organizations such as CITES, RHS, Kew Gardens, national border agencies, etc. are shamelessly using popular opinion to control nature, fill their coffers and/or secure their places in history. Television reports and magazine articles on nature, zoos and gardens have become little more than opportunities to sell copy via exciting the unwitting masses, convincing them how horrid we all are, when we plant a non-native tree or cross pollinate two plants to create something new, or raise endangered plants and animals, instead of educating people to the real and complex world of nature (and its intereaction with politics), to which gardenening is an important and viable part. Yes, this sounds like a rant, but I am truly concerned at the spread of ignorance we are seeing these days. An ignorance resembling George Orwells dark visions. People are kept stupid and handled as such.
I remember when one visited the Chelsea flower show and saw wonderfull flowers representing the greatest efforts of plantsmen. These days the RHS should change their name to the Royal Hardware Society. The display gardens now have little to do with horticulture! Needless to say, the profit margin is considerably higher for garden implements and decoration, than for the living organisms they used to contain. Also, one requires little skill as gardener to produce these items. Any chinese factory can pop them out. Even if there were great and inspiring show gardens, one could hardly see them for the masses of visitors, due to over-sold attendances. It has become a well-mannered mob looking for the next champagne bar. Even when one visits one of the great RHS gardens, such as Wisley, one finds little in the garden centre that hasn’t been promoted in the last issue of The Garden, a magazine that is barely different from any garden rag you can purchase at a news agent! A sad state of affairs. More gloss, more floss!
In a way, the current situation for botanical gardens and the like is their own fault. There was a period of high and mighty, which kept many normal folk at bay, while they really should have been recognized for what they are: the gardners and protectors of our horticultural future. More often than not, egos and small politics have played a role in killing the interest in becoming one with nature and getting ones hands dirty. You now bring in the marketing and management experts to help the gardens survive and, voila, you have a planted amusement park with entertainment as the main dish.
The current green movement to vegetables and company is easy to understand. For many a matter of survival and general health. I suppose we should push flowers as the perfect nutritional supplement, as many are edible and extremely nutrient rich, but this is not the same joy and wonder of nature that will insure its diverse survival. Even those willing to plant an apple tree are generally ALL planting the same clone! Of the over 300 varieties once grown in my are (100 years ago), there are only 15 now grown and most are modern. We are doing something wrong, here.
I suppose we are all a bit iconoclastic, growing specialist plants, such as Narcissus, Tulipa, Hemerocallis, rock garden oddities, etc., but I do like to think we represent a group(s) that has/have shown dedication, rather than has shut itself off from the ‘real’ world. Let us not forget our humble beginnings, when we though all yellow Spring flowers were daffodils….
end of rant….
Jamie V.
Cologne
Germany
Cleveland Botanic Garden had a daffodil exhibition this year. Two of their horticulturists visited CODS show the week before their event. We gave them the banners to use plus some of our educational materials. They plan to have an ADS Appoved show next spring. They were very enthusiastic about having daffodil shows.Other than a show Dan Bellinger had there a few years ago, there have not been annual shows there since Wells Knierim. Lets hope they come off and are successful.
Naomi
The garden clubs of Maryland are very active in supporting different botanic gardens etc. For instance the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland has just successfully partnered with Cylburn Arboretum, Baltimore, in building a totally green building on the property and now has its headquarters there. A large flower show was held there this past spring. On the Eastern Shore, many clubs support and participate in things that occur at the Adkins Arboretum in Caroline County. The eleven Clubs on the Eastern Shore host about 9 or 10 shows every two years including daffodil shows so we are actively encouraging the public to plant and show the fruits of their labors. Hopefully, this will continue. Many people come to the shows so they are aware of what is happening.
Joanna