Newport Flower Show 2014

 

The Breakers

New England vacation tours are incomplete without a visit to America's royal mansions in Newport, Rhode Island.  The Breakers, Chateau-sur-Mer, The Elms, Marble House, Rosecliff, Green Animals Topiary Gardens, Kingscote, Hunter House, Isaac Bell House and Chepstow are all homes of the rich and famous families from the 19th and 20th centuries. 

The Elms

Fountain at the Elms

One of the Classical Revival lower level gardens at the Elms

                                                 

Green Animals Topiary

The sumptous architecture was designed to recreate England and France's 18th century palaces and country estates. The Mansions' landscapes, bronze statues of gods, animals, and gardens were considered fine art.  Called the "Eden of America" in the 18th century by Jeremiah Morse, an American minister and geographer, the perfectly manicured lawns and private gardens thrive with the New England climate and the labor of many servant gardeners. The majestic trees and palatial landscapes are a sight to behold.

One of the best days to visit the Newport Mansions is during the Newport Flower Show, sponsored by the Preservation Society of Newport County.  The horticultural event is held the last week of June every year at at the Newport Mansion called Rosecliff.

 

Rosecliff's magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean, ideal for garden vendors.

Despite being a Florida landscape designer and gardener, the Newport Flower Show is one of my favorite gardening events of the year and I found myself lucky to be able to attend this year at the very last moment.

 

The flower show's theme this year was "Journey: Grand Vistas" with the emphasis on traveling to different continents was considered the ultimate introduction to society to finish one's education and cultivate sophistication. The floral designs, garden beds, container gardens, and outdoor rooms all showcased competition titles featuring various sights and forms of travel to national and global locations, such as The Grand Tour, Mr. Rockefeller's Carriage Roads, The Cannonball Express, Ellis Island, Route 66, Vintage Travel Poster, The Overseas Highway, and Par Class.  Gardening clubs and horticultural professionals were all invited to participate.

 

Grand Vistas Boat Display

 

Edwardian Travel Lady, topiary designed by Green Lion Weddings

The 2014 Garden Club Challenge featured "A Postcard from..." vignettes using postcards representing national and exotic travel destinations, included Williamsburg, Virginia, Cape Cod, New Orleans, Yosemite National Park, Hawaii,  London, England, Capetown, South Africa, the Azores, Norway, and New Zealand.  Two first place awards went to Noanett Garden Club in Dover, MA, for their Hawaii postcard and to the Seaside Garden Club, Newport, RI, for their London postcard.

 

 

I enjoyed listening to whispers of "ooh and ah" at the creativity of the designers and overheard one show attendee describing the Hawaiian entry as flowers that can be grown in Florida. She was right. I know mailmen all over the United  States would enjoy these mailbox gardens.

My favorite heart-stopping moment of the day was being able to meet P. Allen Smith, yes,P. Allen Smith, landscape designer, gardening celebrity, who was the guest speaker at an elegant private luncheon.  As Mr. Smith discussed his landscape design education, he asked his audience about anyone visiting famous gardens at Hampton Court and Stourhead in England Charleston, SC, and Mount Vernon, I had to raise my hand.  I agree with Mr. Smith that these gardens are a must for any landscaper's inspiration and design ideas.

Agave americana variegated

My favorite garden vignette, A Painters' Garden by Crystal Brinson Horticulture

 

Teasing Georgia, First Place Award to Arthur Murphy, Newport, RI 

I loved finding garden accoutrements from Clearwater, Florida, like the amazing foliage waterfalls from Leaves By Jenney and the elegant and romantic Florentine planters and lifelike Great Blue Heron sculpture, from the original Frederick Church's masterpiece from Pennoyer Newman, in New York.

 



The Newport Flower Show 2014 was an outstanding success and a great opportunity to see incredibly creative vignettes and floral displays by professional landscapers and garden club members who should be professionals, horticultural works of art, and a view of the Atlantic that can only be described as breath-taking.

Make your plans now to come to New England and tour the Newport Mansions. If you're there in June 2015, don't miss the Newport Flower Show.  I know I have it on my calendar to be there.

If you would like to see all of the displays and photographs from this year's Newport Flower Show 2014, click here. 

The Landscape Show: New Ideas and New Plants

 

One of my favorite events of the year is the Florida Nursery, Growers, and Landscape Association's (FNGLA) The Landscape Show, held in Orlando every Setember.  The convention of nursery growers, garden experts, and landscape product vendors showcases the best of the country's newest and interesting ornamental plants and trees, elegant hardscape and accoutrements, innovative gardening tools, and horticultural experts for commercial and residential landscapes.

At the entrance, FNGLA organizers always have a lovely topiary scene greeting the guests.  This year, there were Busch Gardens toy soldiers, UF/IFAS chickens, and Sea World penguins.





Jaw-dropping mature trees, exciting foliage and colorful annual and perennial plants were on display and for sale to wholesalers.

Wholesale and retail nursery, Knox Farms award-winning display.

Multiple head Phoenix sylvestris

Award-winning booth of Oleo europeana

Award-winning Gumbo limbo, also known as Copperwood, Bursera simaruba

I always enjoy the classic water features and various pottery material to offer clients in future landscape designs.

 

Lots of great ideas and new resources. FNGLA's The Landscape Show has been a successful, mind-expanding exercise for my creativity and happily increased the desires of my plant addiction.

Click here to see all of my FNGLA's The Landscape Shows photographs.

Creating A Florida Cottage Garden

This is an article I wrote and published on ICanGarden.com Aug 2007, that I've updated and added new landscape photographs. Enjoy.

College Park, Orlando Florida Cottage Garden

     Whether you are a gardener or not, strolling along a meandering pathway through fragrant rainbow-bannered flowerbeds, dappled with ‘out of the ordinary’ ornamental surprises around various twists and turns, is one of the most delightful experiences anyone can have. Texture, variety, fragrance, color and serendipitous opportunities in English cottage gardens provide a memorable and soulful experience for the neophyte green thumb and expert landscaper alike.

     A beginning gardener can be overwhelmed and only imagine the hard labors that the cottage gardener went through while designing. The Master Gardener knows how many hours and years of sweat and preparation it took to eventually produce such an exquisite yet chaotic fantasy-filled garden. Cottage gardens first appeared as necessary areas on farms to grow herbs and vegetables for individual tenants who worked the vast farms. As the peasant began to rent or  own their land, the natural extension of planting flowers and adding beauty also extended to the cottage’s surrounding foundation.  European cottage gardens have an aesthetic appeal that to most people it looks like every plant, flower, and visiting creature just happened to appear on its’ own naturally. The gardens seem to just sprung up without any apparent design and happen to thrive in cooler climates; but with a little research and planning on your own zone and microclimates, you too can have a beautiful, simple, low maintenance cottage garden in Florida. 
 

The first step in planning a cottage garden is to understand what they are. Cottage gardens are to landscapes what George Seurat’s pointillistic paintings are to art. Some artists, like Paul Signac, during Seurat’s lifetime considered his paintings ‘messy’ and complicated but his critique of his final completed artwork was that Seurat’s paintings were masterpieces. These paintings incorporated minute individual dots blending a variety of shades and colors in harmonizing sweeps to create natural compositions and display scenes or events that when viewed as a whole were stimulating and filled with energy.

English cottage garden.

 

     Cottage gardens, can look messy, weedy, chaotic on your nerves, and be hard to keep under control; but if planned correctly from the beginning, they can be breathtaking, attractive, low-maintenance, eco-friendly gardens, where earth’s creatures can feel invited, relaxed and welcomed. Cottage gardens need to be well thought out though in the planning stages as to your ultimate purpose in having it as a landscape. Whether it is attracting birds and butterflies, having a cutting garden to enjoy flowers indoors, or using your yard to have a colorful xeriscaped lawn with low-maintenance in mind, your cottage garden can have one or all these goals incorporated in one landscape design.

Florida cottage garden

     Once you have established your goals, you can begin to select the design shape and your palette of plants. Here in Florida, many new residents pine for their Northern gardens and automatically assume that they cannot have them with our tropical climate. Au contraire,  gardening enthusiasts — once you know the plant species you would like to use, then select a similar tropical zone shrub or flower to plant in its place! Take any zone landscaping design and their plant list, find those individual plant specifications of mature height, flower color, leaf texture, sun and moisture needs and then imitate those same requirements with a Florida-hardy plant. Take for example northern lilacs: Lilacs are sumptuously tall, fragrant with flowers that herald in springtime up north. Lilacs do not grow in zones 8b through 11b, but if you research Florida gardening books, or ask your favorite Florida Master Gardener, you will find that butterfly bushes, buddleia spp., resemble lilacs, come in multiple colors, and lend height to your garden beds. They are also fragrant and attract butterflies, as the name honestly implies.



Butterfly Bush, Buddleia spp. 'Lo and Behold'

 

      Another favorite Florida tree that can substitute for lilacs is the non-native crape myrtles, with dozens of colors, heights and blooming seasons. Crape myrtles love the sun, are drought tolerant once established, and need very little maintenance, not even yearly heavy pruning.



Rain lilies

Zephyranthes spp. in my yard. 

Rain lilies in my yard

       Cottage gardens in the springtime have a variety of colorful, blooming bulbs, like the beautiful crocus. Floridians can enjoy springtime blooms all summer long if they plant pink, white, or yellow rain lilies, zephyranthes spp instead.  Immediately after a rainstorm, these sweet flowers pop up without cajoling to naturalize in your landscape, having no pest problems and needing no maintenance. They truly reflect a joyful English albeit tropical cottage landscape.

      To create the flowing shapes and textures found in cottage garden designs, incorporate flowers and shrubs that easily self-seed so that the plants volunteer the next season in other areas.  Sprinkle any flowers that you deadhead throughout the seasons into beds that you would like the plants to spring up. Use specimen and foundation plantings sporadically in the center or back of any border gardens to create depth and height. A specimen planting is the use of a single shrub, tree, ornamental grass, or topiary that is striking in foliage or flower color, shapes, unusual foliage texture, and adds height such as a multi-level pruned shrub.    The longer your cottage garden is, the more specimens you can use, but remember: the smaller the garden area, frugality in the amount of specimens is better. 
 

     Cottage garden flower colors range from assorted rainbow colors or your favorite monochromatic color, such as all blue flowers and blue-hued leaves, or an all-white garden popularized by Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst Castle.  Even though the Sissinghurst ‘White Gardens’ had a singular color name, Vita employed various shades of creams, greys, and lighter green flowers and plants into the garden.

Formal cottage garden

When planning your cottage garden, use the amount of plants based on their mature width. This is not the time to plant every inch of your landscape. Allow the garden to fill in naturally over a few years.  If you overplant with lots of high maintenance flowers, shrubs, and trees, you will find yourself with a lot of pruning, frustration, and possibly removing these same plants in the future. As your cottage garden matures, you can always fill in seemingly empty nooks and crannies with annuals, summer bulbs, and groundcovers.

 

Stones add the perfect cottage touch.

 

     Finishing your cottage garden setting, you may want to add stones or pavers to allow for a pathway or as hardscape borders.  Classic accoutrements such as bird baths, obelisks, water fountains, whimsical bird houses or garden signs can be added.
 

     Despite all the planning, substituting your own Florida native and non-native species, and knowing what conditions you are working with, creating a cottage garden should be free-flowing, spontaneous, and unique. Understanding the basics of cottage gardening, you can now go through any gardening book, magazine, or your favorite website, and no matter what zone they are designed for and with their plant palette, substitute your own Zone 8 –11 plant favorites, with similar colors, heights, flower and leaf shapes, that match your sunlight, soil moisture, growth needs for your own personal landscape design and presto — you will have your own individual Florida cottage garden.

 

Interest on every level.

Resource to find the perfect plants for your yard?  

Florida Waterwise Landscape Database http://www.sjrwmd.com/waterwiselandscapes
Teresa Watkins, Photographer All Rights Reserved 2013

Spiraling Upwards

Teresa's past posts on topiaries:

Topiaries Leafing Out   Check it out!

Topiaries Leafing Out

Photos copyright 2005-2007 Teresa Watkins

Topiaries are one of my favorite garden features.  Walt Disney World and EPCOT feature topiaries of the Disney fairy tale characters during their International Flower Show each spring.

 WEBecoist has more great photos of exotic and creative topiary artwork to enjoy.  

(images via: Wicanders Cork Oak Blog, New Lantern and HorseHints)

Step by step directions to making a topiary:

• How to create a sphagnum topiary.
• How Disney creates their topiaries.
• Topiary Design
• How to make moss topiaries.

Sources for topiary frames:

• Apenberry's - Orlando
• Topiary Inc - Tampa
• Chris' Topiary Nursery - Online order
• Cliff Finch's Zoo - Online order
• ETopiary - Online Order
• Topiary Joe's - Corporate, custom topiaries