A Hidden Garden: Edinburgh

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have a visit from my mother-in-law. We started the trip in Edinburgh with a literary pub tour, and the following day we wandered from Waverly Station down the Canongate to Holyrood Palace (official home of Her Majesty when in Scotland). There were quite a few brass plaques along our route that she (my mother-in-law, not the Queen) wanted to read, channeling her own mothers habits. One of the signs read: Dunbars Close Garden.

I always love a garden so we ducked off the main drag to take a look. It was wonderful! According to our pub tour, the closes (courtyards) originally held livestock; this one had been converted into a series of lovely gardens. Each area of the garden had a particular geometric layout with worn stone benches for sitting and contemplating. I was thoroughly enchanted to find this lovely little corner of solitude so close to the tourist throngs of Edinburgh. If you ever visit, be sure to keep an eye out for hidden gardens.

Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam

Flower and the view across the canal,
Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam

In addition to the lovely parks dotted around Amsterdam, there is a delightful little botanical garden, the Hortus Botanicus. As we were visiting in March, there wasn't much blooming in the outdoor parts of the garden, save an explosion of snowdrops and crocuses, but the greenhouses were great. It was also a great opportunity to get out of the cold and heat ourselves up.

An assortment of palms & cycads

One of the houses, the Palm House, held a large variety of cycads.  Cycads are an amazing and ancient plant that go back to the time of the dinosaurs.  The Hortus Botanicus is part of a breeding program to try to preserve cycad diversity.  If I had a greenhouse, I'd definitely put in a potted cycad - they really look Jurassic.


Processed foods and their veggies

Also in the Palm House was this adorable educational setup. They had cans and bags of various foodstuffs with the fruits and veggies they are made of growing out of them!  A potato plant grew out of a bag of potato chips; a strawberry grew out of a can of strawberry yogurt; a tomato grew out of a tin of tomato sauce.  It's a shame that so few kids have the opportunity to get out into the garden or farm and see what their food is made of.  I think this display is a great way to bring that information into an indoor setting that can reach a lot of kids (and adults).

Bumble-bee-striped butterfly

Flying Dutchmen butterflies



Lacey-winged butterfly


The Hortus Botanicus was my first experience with a butterfly house. The concept sounds very Victorian to me (I imagine white-moustached explorers with pith hats and butterfly nets) but I'm glad I visited.  The butterfly house is a long greenhouse planted with all the plants their butterfly collection need to eat and breed.  Each variety of butterfly has a particular food that it prefers, as well as a particular plant that it lays its' eggs on.  They also had a case with samples of various cocoons. The highlight was standing still while bright orange butterflies (Flying Dutchmen) flitted about our heads; truly awesome.


Flowering succlent

Spanish moss and tilandsias



Something with Seussian flowers that lacked an ID tag...


All in all, the Hortus Botanicus is tiny and very pleasant.  Even in winter there were plenty of things blooming in the greenhouses and the pathways between and around the greenhouses are very nice.  Outside there is also a lovely herb and medicine garden and a meditation pathway.  We only spent a couple hours there on this trip, but I'm sure one could easily spend half a day when the flowers really start to arrive in the spring.  And really, who wouldn't love a butterfly house?

Welcome to Woodlands

Woodlands Community Garden

A few weeks ago, I had my introduction to my new community garden!

The space is really neat- in 2010, a group of volunteers cleaned up an abandoned lot where a building had burned down decades earlier. Last year, the Woodlands Community Garden was born in that space. That's why all the gardens are in raised beds- we're growing on rubble! In addition to the plots, there are community growing areas and a teaching center made of recycled wood pallets. The whole thing is very eco-ghetto-fabulous.



The view into the garden from across the street.
Note the walls of the adjacent buildings on the sides of the photo.



Garden entrance catwalk, with geometric wall grafitti



I met the organizers as well as half my fellow "plotters." There are 4 of us so far and we are starting to get things sorted.  We've ordered our seeds and last weekend we got our beds weeded, turned and composted. We can't wait for our seeds to arrive so we can get planting!



Working away, with pallet shed in the background

p.s. Happy Leap Day!

Botanic Garden Tour: Glasgow, Scotland

As I mentioned last week, two months from now I will be calling Glasgow, Scotland "home."  I am really excited about it for tons of reasons, and one of them is the spectacular Botanic Garden right in the middle of the city.  As soon as I walked into the big Victorian green house, I knew this would be a spot I'll visit frequently.  This will be especially true in the winter when it's cold and rainy- they have central heating installed in the greenhouse so they can grow tropical plants (like tree ferns!).

The Glasgow Botanic Garden covers a large area of the city along the River Kelvin.  There are rose gardens, a vegetable garden, an herb garden, gardens through time (looking at introduced species), greenhouses, lawns, pathways... it's just lovely.  Also, it's free and open to the public.  During garden hours, the large iron gates stand open for anyone to wander in as they please.  I really love a good public garden.

The highlight of my trip to the garden?  The carnivorous plant exhibit! My mother has always had a thing for carnivorous plants, especially pitcher plants.  We have been on many expeditions to various bogs around New England in the search for pitcher plants, and she can take you right to the spot at the edge of the lake where the Sundews dwell.  Maybe one day I'll tell you about the Great Bog Hunt of 2005... it involves a bulldog, birch-bark shields, an impenetrable forest of spruce, and a temper tantrum.  But not today.

The Glasgow Botanic Garden had the most beautiful carnivorous plant exhibit I have ever seen.  That is saying something because I have seen exhibits of them in gardens all over the world from Australia to South Africa - none were as well-done as this.  There were specimens of pitcher plants I had never seen before, all artfully arranged around a greenhouse.  There were also sundews (little carnivorous plants who never get much love) as well as Venus fly traps.  I could have spent hours just looking at these plants.  They are truly stunning.  I hope the exhibit is still on when Mom comes to visit me in Glasgow!

"Let Glasgow Flourish"

Beautiful ironwork on bridge over the River Kelvin

Glaswegians enjoy a rare sunny day on the lawns of the garden

Assorted pitcher plants

A mass of Venus fly traps

Bulbous pitcher plants and moss

Blooming pitcher plants

Varied and variegated pitcher plants

Mighty Kitchen Garden Update

The garden continues its slow movement into proper summer production.  I am finally harvesting little baby zucchini and a strawberry or two seems to ripen every couple of days.  Before I know it I'll be inundated in squash and drowning in tomatoes.  It doesn't quite feel that way yet, but I know it's coming.  In the quiet before the storm, I thought it would be a good time to show you what's doing what here at the MKG.

The squash and zucchini are looking like the garden monsters they are.  There are lots of blossoms and some baby zukes starting to come in.  In about a week I will have to start on the Daily Zucchini Patrol, lest I miss one and it grows into a vegetable club.  Seriously, you could knock someone out with an overgrown zucchini.  I'm sure I'll have one to show you later in the season.  Also, it's prime time to whip up some stuffed squash blossoms.  Yum!

The eggplants are all sporting their pretty little lavender flowers, but no baby fruits yet.  I think I might need to add some flowers to the garden to attract more bees, they seem less abundant than in years past.



This is a baby Giant Aconcagua pepper.  It's hard to see - look in the center of the picture to the left of the main stem.  There it is!  It should be ready to harvest in about a week.  The only other pepper with fruit so far is the Hungarian yellow wax.  Let's hope the others get their groove on soon.

The strawberries are chugging along one fruit at a time.  I had two for dessert last night and one for a snack this morning.  There's no point in trying to save them up, better to just give them a quick rinse and pop them in my mouth.

Little baby Sungolds!  The all-time tomato favorite in our household.  In fact, I've yet to meet a person familiar with Sungolds who wasn't a huge fan.  This is a stupendously delicious tomato.  Still looking at another week or more until I can eat one- the suspense is killing me!

I won't have to wait long once the tomatoes start coming in though- there are lots of flowers ready to turn into tomatoes.

Last but not least, we have the corn (back) and beans (front).  The corn isn't exactly "knee high by the 4th of July" but I planted them late and they are a dwarf variety that only grows to 3 feet or so anyway.  It's my first year for corn so I'm not holding my breath.  The beans seem to be coming in nicely.  A few more weeks and I will be able to harvest them. 

Come to think of it - I had a dream last night (seriously) that I was picking a purple bean off a plant and realized it had green beans growing below it on the same plant.  And the beans next to it were Borlotti beans.  Hmmm, apparently my subconscious is ready to get this harvest started!

How does your garden grow?

Garden Tour: S & J's Richmond Garden

Some friends of mine, S & J, moved into a new rental house in Richmond, California about six months ago.  In that short period of time they have managed to put together quite a nice veggie garden!  They were kind enough to let me stalk their plantings so I could share them with you.  Isn't it fun to see other people's gardens?

There was a low retaining wall forming a step in their backyard- they decided that this would make the perfect spot for the garden beds.  To prepare, they cleared the area of weeds and added mulch.  Then they set up four raised beds measuring about 2.5' x 5' and filled them with a mix of soil and compost.  Two of the beds are home to tomatoes and herbs, one bed contains sunflowers, beets, carrots and herbs, and the last bed holds lettuce and peas.


Tomatoes, marigolds, and cilantro

The long view - looking down the 4 garden beds

Mesclun mix overflowing the bed

Happy beets - carrots - beets


Considering that this garden is only a few months old, and we have had wet and cool weather out here, things are looking great!  Not pictured are three wine barrels, home to herbs and peppers.  J spent a lot of time living in New Mexico and there was no way she would have a veggie garden that didn't contain chiles.  There seems to be some cult surrounding New Mexicans and their chiles...  Maybe she'll share some with me when they're ripe and I will understand their magic, too. 

Thanks, guys, for sharing your garden with us!