We Interrupt This Broadcast To Bring You A Special Bulletin

As I've been s-l-o-w-l-y blogging about our Spanish adventures, life at Longwood continues apace and a whole two months of work and gardening has gone by with no mention. Time to fix that! So here's an update on the Student Exhibition Garden: it grew!!!

Things really took a leap while we were away in June, and the scorching heat of July didn't really make a dent in our garden, except for the potted Pennisetum, which we toyed with keeping as an homage to the neglect often found in city gardens. In the end we decided to take it out and replace it with something a little less thirsty!

Our Schizachyrium has filled in nicely and as we were doing maintenance the other day, we wondered how it would look if it were trimmed in a spiral? I haven't been daring enough to try it yet!

Maintenance has been surprisingly simple and not as time consuming as I imagined. We spend about an hour a week grooming the containers, trimming vines, and deadheading. Weeds haven't been much of an issue, except for the persistence of the Wisteria that keeps coming up (a Wisteria covered arbor once occupied a portion of our garden and the suckers are a constant reminder of what once was). During the heat wave we had to water the containers and some of the in-ground plants daily. One day when I went out to water I found a visitor napping in the Carex pennsylvanica. I'm such a sucker for the cats here that I didn't want to spoil her nap! Needless to say, the watering didn't happen that day and the plants were just fine!

Every time I go to the Exhibition Gardens I have to remind myself to stop and look around, to try and see it with a visitor's eye. When I do that, I'm constantly amazed and quite proud of my fellow classmates and our accomplishment! All of the gardens look amazing!

This is our neighbor, Fragrance From the Four Corners of the World, featuring fragrant plants native to the four main continents of the globe:

And across the way is Fragrance Flows with their awesome railroad tie 'water wheels' of fragrant plants:

Spheres of Fragrance never ceases to amaze me. Our classmates just didn't know how they were going to pull this one off but they did! The vibrant colors and textures of this garden make it my favorite. And the awesome burgundy foliage? Rice!! Which they grew from seed!

One of the most gratifying aspects of this project has been the positive feedback and compliments - not from Longwood staff, though they have been profuse in their praise - from Longwood guests visiting the gardens! Through new interactive technology, guests can dial a number on their cell phone and hear us talk about the garden. They can also leave a comment, which many have done.

To hear our message, dial 610-717-5599 then press 125#. The gardens are at their peak, so if you're nearby now is the time to see them. The next PG class is already designing the gardens they'll build in these spaces next year, so be sure to come back next year as well and see what new and exciting designs the students are bringing to Longwood!

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming...

We Kick Grass!

Last Wednesday was a red-letter day. It was the day our Student Exhibition Garden was finally complete! Nearly a year in the making, the sense (or should I say 'scents') of excitement, pride, accomplishment, and not a little relief at watering the last plant in was downright euphoric. I swear I could hear a score of garden angels break into the Hallelujah Chorus when we turned the hose off!

I've heard our exhibition gardens compared to the likes of those at Chelsea, Hampton Court, Chaumont, Cornerstone...if you're not into gardening and aren't familiar with these venerable horticultural venues, trust me when I say such a comparison is huge! Flatteringly huge! Dare I say intimidatingly huge? Granted, we don't have the financial backing that those gardens do, but we took what we were given and turned it into something spectacular!

It was an enormous challenge and we not only rose up to meet it, we stared it in the face and declared through gritted teeth, "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?!" (apparently channeling Clint Eastwood with a trowel in his holster is what happens when one blogs at 5am).

My design partner Shannon and I, along with our Class of 2011 colleagues Carolyn and David, not to mention my other classmates with their gardens, well, there's just no other way to put it - we rock!

Imagine, then, how utterly deflated I felt when I asked why the photos on two of the signs for the gardens don't feature images of the designers and received the answer, "It's not about you".

And there followed a stunned silence.

Beg pardon? 'Not about us'? What is a program - any program - if not for the people in it? And what is a design - any design - if not a reflection of the designer(s)? The Program (she gestures with both hands to indicate appropriate placement of quotes around the word) didn't conceptualize, design, and build these gardens, we did. The Program (quote-y gesture repeated) didn't slog 14 hours a day - often longer - to satisfy work obligations, deadlines, and balance all the other requirements 'the program' puts on us, we did (hey, it's my blog, and I'll rant if I want to!).


The Student Exhibition Garden at Longwood will be officially launched sometime this summer and it is my sincere hope that our hard work receives the recognition it deserves. These gardens reflect not only our creativity and ingenuity, but countless hours of planning, preparation, and sweat (LOTS of sweat! We worked our asters off!).

Installing the gardens was supposed to offer "real world" experience. I worked in the landscape industry for three years before coming to Longwood and I can tell you that many of the tools essential to landscape installers "in the real world" were sorely lacking yet we made it happen. And while there were things that needed to happen and people involved who laid the groundwork, developed the space, and provided invaluable assistance along the way (I salute Dan Maffei and Harold Taylor - We couldn't have done it without you!), my class is the first to leave our green fingerprints on it. I can't think of anything more personal than that.


Last summer when we were putting our design programs together the three main objectives for our gardens were: "Fragrance", "Safety", and "Wow!". If you ask me, I think we hit the bull's eye with that last one! Who's feeling lucky now?

Nicotiana and Papyrus bloom abundantly in our containers

Rebar arches fabricated for us by Longwood master welder, Dave Beck

Our central focal point, a floriferous 'downtown' skyline surrounded by native sedge Carex pennsylvanica and Calamintha 'White Cloud'

Mina lobata covers the arches with flaming blossom

'A Scents of Place' Comes to Life

They say Rome wasn't built in a day, but I bet they made good progress given enough time and all those soldiers (and slaves - but that's a history lesson for another day) to lug around all that stone. We aren't building a city, just a cityscape, we have rebar instead of stone, we don't have slaves, we have fellow PGs (though the terms can sometimes feel synonymous), and I have to say the four of us made some amazing headway on our exhibition garden in just two days' time.

Let's go back to mid March: the site containing the Student Exhibition Garden was completed, the paths laid, the plots tilled and ready to go. By the end of March we were able to mark and stake our hardscape areas. By early April the hardscape was in and a few other elements put in place.

Part of our design consists of a series of arches in various stages of construction (or deconstruction, depending on which way you're going) that frame different views of our garden as you traverse the path around it. The arches we designed were fabricated in Longwood's metal shop by our new best friend, Dave. As he finished each piece, we transported them the half-mile from the shop to the garden and set them in place (the full arch - at 10' in height and set in the bed of my pickup - just barely cleared the overpass between the maintenance facility and the Boiler Room Woods access road. We were all holding our breath on that one and let it out in a collective sigh when we made it through!).

Since the garden is ephemeral we didn't use concrete to hold the pieces in place, opting instead to set the two-foot footings in well tamped course gravel. These suckers aren't going anywhere!

With the arches in place, we tilled the planting areas once more to incorporate a healthy dose of compost.

The containers, composed by my design partner Shannon, offered the first hint of what was to come: whimsy, creativity, use of ordinary materials for a not so ordinary purpose, not to mention color, texture, and - most importantly - fragrance (too bad garbage cans don't always smell this good)! People's reactions to using rubbish bins as planters has been very positive and I've overheard a few visitors remark favorably on the idea. Plus, when the garden is dismantled, the cans can be reused for their original (or another equally creative) purpose!

Now comes the exciting part! Until this week our plot had acquired a sort of junk yard persona with all the metal pieces lying haphazardly about, but put the plants in place and everything is transformed!

Putting the first plant in the ground was a moment worthy of capturing for posterity (I just might have to upload this to the Digital Archives when they aren't looking!)!

Within an hour, most of the plants were planted and the design came instantly and vibrantly to life.

A thick layer of composted leaves gave it the finishing touch. We're just waiting on our final plant delivery to complete the installation and then we'll be ready to take the rope down and welcome visitors to our garden!

With the progress we made in just two days, I bet even the Romans would be impressed!

The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or cherry blossoms, but the chuff of a spade in the soil

After a record-breaking winter and weeks of gazing at a bare and forlorn landscape, spring finally came with a roar! Not to be outdone by its predecessor, spring almost broke its own records with a run of hot weather that inspired the early flowering trees and shrubs to bloom a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. I was disappointed to have missed the Yoshino Cherries (Prunus x yedoensis) and Weeping Cherries (Prunus subhirtella 'Pendula') in the gardens, which is further proof that the seasons move so fast, if you blink you might miss something. I was able to enjoy them from a distance driving through the countryside, at least. I have become excessively pro-Prunus, especially the cherries! A cherry tree blooming along with the Magnolias and Forsythia just screams "Spring!"

The arrival of spring also meant that breaking ground in our display gardens could finally take place. The snow had melted, the rains had eased, and we were able to make some real progress. While still in our Landscape Construction class at the end of March, we took advantage of one chilly but dry day to mark out construction lines on the ground. Our instructor, Dan, worked with us as each team measured, staked, and marked out the hardscape areas in our plots. Once the areas were marked, excavation could begin (when the weather chose to cooperate, which it didn't).

Once the construction of the space was complete, each plot was graded and a ribbon of mulch laid around the perimeter to prevent soil from running off. This is our plot, ready for marking. Take note of the deciduous shrubs to the right.

Alterations in the drawing from the copy machine and ever-so-scanty changes in the dimensions of the actual site may require some adjustment of the design to fit the space. Some of our classmates had discrepancies of several inches that they had to deal with. We were lucky - our measurements differed by a whopping half-inch!

Here all the lines have been drawn and the hardscape areas begin to take on life and form.

In even high-pressure situations it's good to have some levity!

The next step was to excavate the hardscape areas, install the steel edging, geotextile (otherwise known as weed-barrier fabric), and gravel. Ours is the only design of the four that doesn't have a path through the garden; we designed ours with step-in areas instead, so the visitors will still be able to interact with the garden without actually walking through it. For this reason we chose to use the same gravel as the existing path, which is sold in the trade as "rice chips". Remember those shrubs? They're Viburnum, now in full bloom!

The steel edging came in 16' lengths that had to be cut to size. Since we were dealing with all right-angles, some pieces could be bent which entailed cutting the edging about 2/3 through then bending in the desired direction. This not only gave us clean corners, it helped reduce the amount of waste since we didn't have to cut as many pieces.

In a permanent garden, a path or step-in area such as ours would be excavated much deeper than our shallow 3" and built with a base layer under the gravel. Since these gardens are temporary and will be dismantled in about six months, we're able to get away with a few short cuts. We did go deeper than 3" since the edging measures about 5" in width, backfilled a bit and raked it smooth, then cut the geotextile to fit, poured in the gravel and voila!


With the hardscape complete, the next step is installing our hard goods elements. We're having some arches custom built, and are in the process of procuring the other elements from commercial suppliers. Following that step, we can begin planting! Landscaping on the east coast is so different from what I'm used to on the west - when our first shipment of plants arrived (Calamintha 'White Cloud') I helped off-load them and was somewhat shocked to see 62 pots with nothing but sticks sticking out! We gave them a cozy home in the student greenhouse and they came to life - to my relief - very quickly!

With a self-imposed installation deadline of May 15, we have just a few more weeks of work. The goal is to have the gardens installed at least two weeks before we depart for Spain. While we're gone, the Class of 2011 will oversee maintenance of the gardens. Next year it'll be their turn to mentor and teach the new Class of 2012 when the process starts all over again!

This project isn't just about building a display garden, though. We were also involved in the process of giving the entire space a name. In class we took an hour or so to brainstorm ideas to submit to the marketing folks. As we called out words and phrases that popped up in our minds, Dan wrote them on the board.

Ultimately, the decision was for "Student Exhibition Garden", which implies a connection to Pierre DuPont and the inspiration he received from the World's Fair exhibitions all those glorious years ago - inspirations that helped him shape the gardens at Longwood. If the visitors who see our gardens aren't inspired, hopefully they'll at least be impressed by the creative designs and incredibly hard work (on our own time, I might add) that has gone into these gardens.

I know I am!

"A Scents of Place"

'Guinea pig' is the term some people use when they are the first to be subject to a new plan or process that has never been done before. I prefer the term 'ground breaker', for what could be more appropriate than that to describe what the PG Class of December 2010 will become when the newest garden project here at Longwood is realized? We will literally be breaking ground - with more than shovels and spades, I might add - when we install the very first public display gardens at Longwood designed solely by students in the Professional Gardener Program!

Throughout the history of the program students have been required to design and maintain both a vegetable garden and an ornamental garden. The allotted space measures 15' x 50' with two-thirds dedicated to veg and the rest to ornamentals. You can read about my garden adventures from last year here, here, and here. Oh, and here! The blogs of my esteemed classmates are linked over on the right if you want to see what they did with their gardens and, really, why wouldn't you?

Our gardens on the Row gave each of us an outlet for creativity and serious hands-on learning but only we students and the other tenants on the Row were able to enjoy them since they're located far away from the public eye (which, in the case of my garden, was a good thing I think!).
Somewhere along the line the idea germinated that the students' talents should be showcased in the gardens proper, for all the world to see (gulp!). What better way to show Longwood's guests some of the things that students learn and do in the PG Program? And so it happened that a PG alum named Danilo Maffei, who is now a Landscape Designer at W.D. Wells and Associates, Inc., was called upon to design the space that would one day become what I like to think of as the PG students' version of the Festival des Jardins de Chaumont-sur-Loire.

The most logical place to put the new gardens turned out to be the Example Garden, which is part of the Idea Garden (see map). See the tiny space to the left of the label for the Special Events Pavilion? That's where our gardens will be. Until a few short months ago the Example Garden was, well, an example of how a typical suburban backyard could be planted with ornamentals and vegetables both in a unique and creative way. Here's what the space looked like last July:

Now, grab hold of something, because I'm sure you'll be shocked and will clutch your heart, gasping in astonishment, when I tell you that this entire space has been gutted. Yup, none of this is there now (only the brick patio and the water feature were given a reprieve from the backhoe!). If you were to peer over the temporary plastic construction fence, what you see today would probably not be too impressive since it's mostly mud and gravel punctuated by a few pieces of heavy equipment. Were you privy to the behind-the-scenes workings of this project - as you soon shall be, you fortunate reader - you would be rather impressed at the progress made in such a seemingly short amount of time. I know I am, coming as I do from a design/build background in a climate where a project can safely commence without threat of postponement due to blizzards or hurricanes! Even with the amount of Weather the contractor has had to deal with, they've done a pretty nifty job of whipping this space into shape!

So let me regale you with the process thus far: when it was decided that this was going to pass from Concept to Reality, the process of designing the gardens was incorporated into the curriculum by becoming a major focus of our Landscape Design class, which took place last summer. The very same Danilo Maffei who designed the space for the display gardens was our instructor and guiding hand throughout the beginning of the project. Keep in mind some of us had had design classes or first-hand experience before, some hadn't. We were teamed up in such a way that those who had never worked on a landscape design project were paired with someone who has then each team was assigned one of the four plots to design. Four gardens, four teams (three teams of 2, one team of 3). And we were off!

The first step was to interview the client - in this case, Longwood Gardens, personified by head designer Rodney Eason. We all peppered him with specific questions about what he wanted for the gardens and came away with three main things for our design programs: "Wow!", "Fragrance", and "Safety". Easy, right? Right. Try interpreting what someone means when they say they want to be "wowed". Since our gardens are intended to be temporary display gardens, they will only exist for three seasons (spring through fall) and also have to conform to the overall theme of the gardens for 2010 which is Fragrance. Also not as easy as it sounds...er...smells? In the end, we were encouraged to let our creativity run rampant. So we did!

Here we are conducting the site evaluation:

From there we began to draw concept diagrams, running through several iterations before deciding which one we would pursue as a final design. My partner in design, Shannon, and I decided on a modern rectilinear design that mimics a cityscape. Our design theme (with much coaching and hinting from Dan) became "A Scents of Place" (which trumped the silly yet catchy "Smellapalooza"). This is one of the drafts of our concept design:


It was really fascinating to see how differently each team approached the process and the designs that each ultimately came up with! Team A designed a garden based on a concept of "The Four Corners of the World". Their garden is divided into sections representing the four corners of the globe, with fragrant plants from each continent, as it were, divided by an ocean of plant material.


Team B is Shannon and me! Here's our final concept drawing showing our city scape and an elevation detail.


Team C went all out and designed this funky garden with fragrant mounds of varying sizes aligned along a central curving path. I can't wait to see this one when it's finished!

Team D's concept centered around water wheels or, in this case, wheels of fragrance. Their path curves around three herbaceous 'wheels', around and within which are planted different kinds of fragrant plants flowing from one wheel to the next.


This drawing shows you the entire space and how the plots are divided. A circular patio is set in the center touching just a corner of each plot. One side of the patio is outlined by a curved seat wall with two plots behind, these separated by a hedge. Opposite the seat wall is a screen of the same hedge plant with the other two plots behind, also separated by a hedge. A gravel path runs the perimeter of the entire space and up the middle through the circular patio. The space is screened from the Idea Garden beyond by a slight rise to the north, planted with trees and shrubs, a small structure to the west, existing plantings to the south, and the existing wall to east.

And here are Shannon and I hard at work in the concept development phase (that's my housemate Gavin back there, contemplating his next move. Or maybe he's just gnawing on his pen?).
The fun part of this whole development was presenting our design concepts to a committee consisting of Longwood staff from such departments as Horticulture, Guest Services, Design, etc. Not to mention our supportive and attentive classmates (grin)!


("This is where the new PG spa will go...")

Wait, did I say fun? It was absolutely nerve-wracking because the committee members were severe in their critiques and suggestions (I mean that in a good way - they brought up many good points and keen observations). After that it was back to the drawing board to refine our designs and investigate ways to incorporate some of the suggestions that were made. Compared to the two committee presentations, our final presentation to the Board of Directors was actually quite easy. They all loved our ideas and expressed great eagerness to see the finished gardens! Afterward Dan escorted us into the adjoining room for a debriefing and proceeded to do happy dance! I guess he liked what we did, too!

That was last summer. Fast forward to now: we're in the Landscape Construction class (also taught by Dan) learning all about how to take a design and translate it to the ground. Construction on the Example Garden is nearing completion and now that we have our budgets, we'll finalize plant lists and start procuring materials. The average last frost date is estimated to be April 17, so we anticipate a late spring installation. As part of the mentoring process, the newest PGs (Class of 2011) will lend a hand in the installation and maintenance of the gardens. They get to design their gardens when they have class with Dan this summer then they will mentor the next class (Class of 2012) when the process starts all over again!

And now you can see why we're nothing if not ground breakers! We are the first class in the history of the PG Program to have gardens on display to the public. As with any new venture, there are some wrinkles to iron out but one thing we've learned since coming to Longwood is that - somehow - things always work themselves out (I think it has to do with the staff here being horticultural magicians. Seriously! I like to think of this place as a sort of Hogwarts for Horticulturists!). Come back in the spring to see how the installations went and see pictures of the finished gardens! In the meantime, enjoy the progress photos:

Early January 2010: the space under construction and a blanket of snow!

A border of new trees and shrubs along the north edge of the space. As they mature the trees will help mask the employee parking lot on the level above.

Late January 2010: the central circular patio is laid out and marked for excavation, grading, and installation of the gravel base layer. This is Plot A, the only plot fully completed with soil amended and tilled so far (I'd like to know who Team A bribed for that!?)

Plot C with the existing patio terrace and new retaining wall. The gravel path will extend around the perimeter of all the plots and through the circular patio in the center.

Plots C and D still under construction. In the left background is Plot B (Shannon's and mine) which turned out to be the narrowest of all the plots so we will undoubtedly need to tweak our design as we lay out the plants. We just love a good challenge!

*Special thanks to Danilo Maffei of W.D. Wells and Associates, Inc. (and our fabulous instructor) for the classroom photos.