City Gardener

In a world ruled by natural selection, plants have evolved many methods to escape being eaten by herbivores. These little tricks take many forms, from poisons like deadly nightshade, to spikes on cacti. At the U of M Conservatory Greenhouse I've noticed one particular plant that displays an unusual trick to fool animals that would otherwise eat it in its youth. The leaves of the juvenile lancewood plant from New Zealand are about as photogenic as they are appetizing -- in other words, not at all! The serrated leaves are stiff and barbed. They also appear to be dead, with a desiccated brownish color. But as the plant grows taller, up to 60 feet, it completely changes its form of its leaves, and the trunk grows multiple branches forming a lollipop shaped canopy.  The tender green leaves of the mature tree appear similar to eucalyptus leaves, with smooth edges. These tender mature leaves are well above the reach of grazing animals like the giant 12-ft moa bird that roamed New Zealand...

A large contingent of students and staff was gathered when I arrived for my volunteer shift at the Conservatory Greenhouse at the University of Minnesota on the St. Paul campus. The crowd was on hand to help with the gentle felling of the largest plant in the greenhouse, decades old and 30+ feet tall. Native to the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, this fern -- S phaeropteris intermedia the largest of all tree ferns -- has been happily growing in the tropical room of the greenhouse for a number of years, to the point its fronds are brushing up against the glass ceiling panes of the roof.  Tree fern fronds brushing against the roof of the U of M greenhouse Rather than cut the tree down and lose the specimen, the staff decided to try to save the tree. The process would involve cutting off the top half of the tree and reinserting it into a new space in the soil of the greenhouse floor. Months of planning and preparation A well-known technique was used, referred to as ai...

We celebrated a bit of good news in our household with a spontaneously planned trip to Japan in November. Completely unintended, the trip coincided with the full regalia of fall colors. Particularly notable were the popular Japanese maples of every size and variety with their brilliant reds, yellow, oranges, greens, and rusts. But happy accident, we learned a few things about the art of sculpting full-grown trees - niwaki - and how to protect plants from ice and snow over the winter - yukizuri . Winter is coming The fall colors were still in full swing with crowds of adoring leaf-peepers - like me - filling the famous gardens and parks. Despite the crowds, there was already serious preparations for the coming winter. Fancifully pruned trees - the tree-sculpting art of niwaki similar to bonsai -  were being trussed with ropes and propped up on long poles . As newcomers, the preparations seemed extremely odd, as if some hurricane was about to shred the life out of every branch an...

I've had the privilege of visiting the United Kingdom a few times, but I had never visited the English Channel or the south coast. On a recent backpacking trip up the Thames River with friends in the county of Oxfordshire, my partner and I took the opportunity to explore a small bit the coastal county of Dorset.  Route to the Dorset Coast We had ended our hiking trip up the source of the Thames River in the town of Cirencester, in Gloucestershire. From there, we took a train south to Bristol, then continued south on a train to Dorchester, in Dorset. From there, we caught a double-decker bus to Bridport. In Bridport we hiked with our meager backpacks a short distance down to the connected harbor village of West Bay. Bridport and West Bay, Dorset Since we didn't have a rented car, public transportation was our only option to get around. We chose the town of Bridport and the connected harbor of West Bay as our base for exploring the coastal trails. We chose this location because:...

This post is more of a journal entry than a public blog post. It is interesting to me, but won't be too interesting to almost any other reader - except perhaps my partner who was there as a co-conspirator. I want to document my thoughts about the past, my backyard garden, and what we put in it. The size of our city lot was not large. At 100 x 50 ft, there was just enough room for the house, a small garage, and back yard. The driveway was shared with our neighbor. The style of the house was standard American Foursquare, built in 1903. We bought the place in the early 1990's and slowly, over the next 25 years, renovated almost every inch the house and garden. A dry stone wall was built, with terrace bed to break up the height of the wall Caladiums and dragon-wing begonias line the steps of the front porch Well-earned sit-down on the front porch after a busy day Front wall terrace with blue phlox, hostas, astilbe, snap dragons, and coral bells. Front wall terrace, brunnera "J...