Garden Walks 2016
Garden Photos by Coe Students (October 2016)
In October we hosted an afternoon garden party, invited students to submit photographs of the garden, and provided a few Coe Book Store gift certificates for what we judged the best photos. This slideshow shares submissions from our three prize winners: Kristen Granata, Brenna Deerberg, and Kathy Duong. We will be arranging more student photo opportunities in the spring. ~Bob
Ornamental Grasses (October 2016)
Perhaps the most significant change in the Alum Garden plant selections in the last three years has been the expanded dependence on ornamental grasses. The grasses are at their peak in the autumn, in the months when the garden has the most visitors. In some cases they maintain their stature into the spring and can also provide some "winter interest" during the months when most of the perennials and all of the annuals have disappeared. Twenty different new species of grasses have been brought into the garden since July of 2014. These photos are intended to introduce you to some of these new residents. ~Bob
Perhaps the most significant change in the Alum Garden plant selections in the last three years has been the expanded dependence on ornamental grasses. The grasses are at their peak in the autumn, in the months when the garden has the most visitors. In some cases they maintain their stature into the spring and can also provide some "winter interest" during the months when most of the perennials and all of the annuals have disappeared. Twenty different new species of grasses have been brought into the garden since July of 2014. These photos are intended to introduce you to some of these new residents. ~Bob
Fall Seeds and Fruits
Photos of Alum Garden seeds and fruits in the middle of October, 2016.
Photos of Alum Garden seeds and fruits in the middle of October, 2016.
A Morning Garden Walk: 15 September 2016
There's no special order to these photos--though you will find some bloom color groups. By the middle of September, the garden is no longer in a peak bloom period, but there remain some lovely pockets of color and bee/butterfly action.
An August 15 Garden Walk 2016
Because of my limited camera and editing skills, most of the website’s photo slide shows concentrate on individual blooms. I find it difficult knowing how to adjust camera position, settings, and lighting so the photographs successfully render large swaths of a garden landscape. The pictures appear without focus or structure, just a jumble of plants. Of course, in many instances the camera is simply recording the absence of structure in the actual garden beds.
The following photographs, taken on the morning of August 15, attempt to transmit some of the current interrelationships between plants in several flower beds. While these communal photographs may reveal egregious design lapses, I still think there is evidence of progress. James Thurber once advised writers to not worry about getting everything right the first draft, “just get it written.” Perhaps the same advice applies to gardens: just get the plants in the ground. Sooner or later, something good will happen. ~Bob
Because of my limited camera and editing skills, most of the website’s photo slide shows concentrate on individual blooms. I find it difficult knowing how to adjust camera position, settings, and lighting so the photographs successfully render large swaths of a garden landscape. The pictures appear without focus or structure, just a jumble of plants. Of course, in many instances the camera is simply recording the absence of structure in the actual garden beds.
The following photographs, taken on the morning of August 15, attempt to transmit some of the current interrelationships between plants in several flower beds. While these communal photographs may reveal egregious design lapses, I still think there is evidence of progress. James Thurber once advised writers to not worry about getting everything right the first draft, “just get it written.” Perhaps the same advice applies to gardens: just get the plants in the ground. Sooner or later, something good will happen. ~Bob
A June Garden Walk (15 June 2016)
Several Morning Walks: May 2016
These photos were taken during a seven-day stretch, May 20-26. During this period, the garden felt like it' was moving at a breakneck speed. Every day new flowers were emerging, appealing for attention, while others were silently exiting--often with an unexpected celerity. ~Bob
Photos by Tom Moye (Spring 2016)
The last two weeks of the spring term, Tom Moye (a friend from the Psychology Department) periodically came by the garden and created some wonderful portraits of late April/early May flowers. In addition to photos of pale corydalis, grape hyacinth, moss phlox, anemone blanda, bleeding heart, and apple blossoms, you will find a photo of exquisitely spaced beads of dew on a lady's mantle leaf and two views of Sylvia Shaw Judson's The Little Gardener. ~Bob
Flowering Crab Display: Last Week in April, 2016
Although we have added several hundred new plants to the Alum Garden in the past two years, some of the prime moments in the garden are provided by those flowers and trees that have been in the garden since its beginning. There is certainly nothing to match the drama of those special days in late April or early May when the eight flowering crab are in full bloom. Here are a few photos taken on April 26, focusing on the trees at the quadrant's four corners. ~Bob
Garden Walk: 14 April 2016
Heraclitus of Ephesus was right on both counts. You never step into the same garden twice. And I’m never the same person who steps into the garden. I leave the Alum Garden in the evening, and when I return the next morning, the experience is always different. While the evidence of each season’s relentless evolution is always present, it’s most easily witnessed in the spring when the pressures of freshly awakened life are so insistent. The following photos, taken on a Thursday morning in the middle of April, all focus on phenomena not present earlier that week, and in most instances no longer lingering five days later as I reflect back on that morning walk. ~Bob
First Spring 2016 Garden Walk: March 31
Arrived at the garden at 10:00 a.m. Temperature was 45F, humidity at 80%, overcast, minimal breeze. Garden rain gauge recorded 0.7” of rain last night. Perfect rain for this time of year. I walked around the garden and recorded everything that showed new growth. Inspiring to note how many perennials emerge so early in the year. Evidence of their determination and toughness. Here’s my list:
Trees/shrubs budding out: elderberry, flowering crab (the espalier crab has beautiful red leaves), viburnum buds just emerging, forsythia still in bloom, red twig dogwood buds beginning to open. The yews not quite ready to put on new greenery, but they look so much better than in 2014 after that long, tough, cold, windy winter.
Everything Else: columbine, lychnis lipstick (dark burgundy basal leaves), several goldenrod, several dianthus, crystal peak obedient plants, several varieties of nepeta, gypsophila, sage, chives (ready to pick), gooseberry and comfrey (transplants from my back yard), corydalis, sweet fern, blueberries, pearly everlasting (these four all transplants from Field Station), sweet annie (the lone annual in this list, hundreds of tiny annies within 3 feet of last year’s single plant), the roses, cranesbill, hyssop, rue, lavender, St. John’s wort, several thyme (e.g., Annie Hall), several sedum, several alliums, all the yarrow and mums and spurge, Siberian iris, some hostas, tansy, salvia, a few poppies, shasta daisies, several speedwell cultivars, most of the asters, lamium, Karl Foerster grass, rudbeckia, purple coneflowers, scabiosa, sever penstemon, potentilla, phalaris (lovely pink/yellow/green variegated foliage but an aggressive spreader that needs to be confined), mums (several cultivars), baptisia (just beginning to emerge), marguerite, sneezeweed, salvia, coreopsis, monarda, peonies, phlox, several perennial artemisia, briza media, brunnera (two cultivars), lady’s mantle (covered with rain drops), sempervivum (all look good), rock cress (the star of the garden with its lovely white blooms), silver frost sedum, lewisia, bleeding heart, moneywort, and “spruce sedum” (not sure “spruce” is correct name, but that’s what I call it).
Below are a few photos from that morning walk. ~Bob
Trees/shrubs budding out: elderberry, flowering crab (the espalier crab has beautiful red leaves), viburnum buds just emerging, forsythia still in bloom, red twig dogwood buds beginning to open. The yews not quite ready to put on new greenery, but they look so much better than in 2014 after that long, tough, cold, windy winter.
Everything Else: columbine, lychnis lipstick (dark burgundy basal leaves), several goldenrod, several dianthus, crystal peak obedient plants, several varieties of nepeta, gypsophila, sage, chives (ready to pick), gooseberry and comfrey (transplants from my back yard), corydalis, sweet fern, blueberries, pearly everlasting (these four all transplants from Field Station), sweet annie (the lone annual in this list, hundreds of tiny annies within 3 feet of last year’s single plant), the roses, cranesbill, hyssop, rue, lavender, St. John’s wort, several thyme (e.g., Annie Hall), several sedum, several alliums, all the yarrow and mums and spurge, Siberian iris, some hostas, tansy, salvia, a few poppies, shasta daisies, several speedwell cultivars, most of the asters, lamium, Karl Foerster grass, rudbeckia, purple coneflowers, scabiosa, sever penstemon, potentilla, phalaris (lovely pink/yellow/green variegated foliage but an aggressive spreader that needs to be confined), mums (several cultivars), baptisia (just beginning to emerge), marguerite, sneezeweed, salvia, coreopsis, monarda, peonies, phlox, several perennial artemisia, briza media, brunnera (two cultivars), lady’s mantle (covered with rain drops), sempervivum (all look good), rock cress (the star of the garden with its lovely white blooms), silver frost sedum, lewisia, bleeding heart, moneywort, and “spruce sedum” (not sure “spruce” is correct name, but that’s what I call it).
Below are a few photos from that morning walk. ~Bob
Garden Shadows: Morning Walk, 23 January 2016
At least once a week during the winter months, I walk through the garden, pick up whatever trash may have blown in, see how things are doing, and ponder possible changes for the coming year. My Saturday morning walk on the 23rd was particularly pleasant because the temperatures had moderated and the sun was shining. As usual at this time of the year, the garden gate's locks were all frozen, but using a small candle I was able to warm up one of the locks, open the gate, and spend an hour enjoying the garden's peaceful solitude. One of the great joys of gardening is how a garden is always changing, every day a new holiday, a festival of unexpected sights and sounds and textures. On the 23rd, perhaps because it was the first day in several weeks when I was in the garden while the sun was shining, I was particularly struck by the shadows on the snow--the inspiration for these photos.