Garvan Woodland Gardens (1)

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I’d heard about Garvan Woodland Gardens from one of my neighbors – decided that it was a place to see along with Hot Springs National Park. Out membership in Friends of the Springfield Botanical Gardens provided us with free admission so we visited on both days we were in Hot Springs.

On the first day, we arrived after lunch and noticed the carillon as we walked from the parking lot to the welcome center.

It had rained earlier in the day and the humidity was very high. We opted to take the Golf Cart Tour (which cost us $20 each) – which turned out to be a great way to orient ourselves to the place. Our driver/guide was very informative about the history, maintenance, and highlights of the gardens. Our visit between spring and summer flowers so there were not a lot of blooms…but the trees and the ambiance of the place made the visit worthwhile. I took a few pictures along the tour: pools of water on rocks, a stone bridge, a few flowers, the slope down to the lake, butterfly weed, ferns with horsetails, fairy houses, and the shape of an eye in stone.

Tomorrow’s post will be about our second visit to Garvan Gardens when we revisited our favorite places.

eBotanical Prints – July 2022

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20 botanical print books in July. The topics include: plant relations/structures/geography (3), roses, gardens, orchids, ferns, water plants/lilies (3), wildflowers (3), and The Plant World periodicals (7). I will continue to browse The Plant World periodicals into August.  

The whole list of 2,432 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the July 2022 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

Click on any sample images in the mosaic below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the July 2022 eBotanical Prints!

Plant relations * Coulter, John Merle * sample image * 1901

Plant Structures * Coulter, John Merle * sample image * 1906

Popular geography of plants; or, A botanical excursion round the world  * Catlow, Maria E.; Daubeny, Charles * sample image * 1855

Roses and their Cultivation * Sanders, Thomas William * sample image * 1917

The Flower Garden * Sanders, Thomas William * sample image * 1919

Select orchidaceous plants [First series] by Robert Warner ; the notes on culture by Benjamin S. Williams. * Warner, Robert * sample image * 1865

Select ferns and lycopods * Williams, Benjamin Samuel * sample image * 1873

The Water Garden * Tricker, William * sample image * 1897

Water-lilies and how to grow them * Conard, Henry S.; Hus, Henry * sample image * 1907

The waterlilies: a monograph of the genus Nymphaea  * Conard, Henry S. * sample image * 1905

Wild flower preservation; a collector's guide * Coley, May; Weatherby, Charles Alfred * sample image * 1915

Useful wild plants of the United States and Canada * Saunders, Charles Francis; Aring, Lucy Hamilton (illustrator) * sample image * 1920

California Wild Flowers * Saunders, Elisabeth Hallowell * sample image * 1905

The Plant World Vol VI 1903 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1903

The Plant World Vol V 1902 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1902

The Plant World Vol IV 1901 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1901

The Plant World Vol III 1900 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1900

The Plant World Vol II 1899 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1899

The Plant World Vol I 1898 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1898

The Plant World Vol VII 1904 * The Wildflower Preservation Society * sample image * 1904

Brookside Gardens – May 2022 (1)

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My daughter and I took a stroll through Brookside Gardens when she was here last week; we both savored it – anticipating that it would be a long time before we were back…or maybe it would be the last time. There was plenty to see…starting with the spring bulbs in the parking lot rain gardens. I noticed that the new growth in the stand of horsetails near the visitor center is a lighter green.

The new growth of ferns contrasts with the greens around it. The glossy green bushes in the background are camellias that are completely done with their blooms.

The rhododendron blooms are past their peak. There were some flowers that had been knocked off by the rains of the previous day.

The spiral walk in the 2009 anniversary garden is less distinct with the spring growth than it was in the winter.

The new sculpture made from the trunk of the sycamore that had to be cut down (uphill from the conservatory) is well done – representing some of the trees that are prevalent in our area: oaks, pines, maples.

My daughter hadn’t seen the other more recent sculpture…liked it as much as I did.

It’s easy to like flowers – big and small…lots of them to enjoy this time of year.

We didn’t go into the Tea House since there was a yoga class in progress. I settled for a cypress (with reflection) picture from the path.

Another new-to-me feature of the garden…that I photographed near the visitor center: mobile sculptures. They stand out now…will even more in the winter!

More about our visit to Brookside tomorrow….

Macro Photograph (Brookside Gardens) – Part II

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Continuing the images from my walk around Brookside Gardens….

Even cold damaged flowers are good subjects for macro images…particularly with small water droplets on them. The amount of magnification makes quite a difference!

Juniper adds green and blue color to the scene this time of year.

I am always attracted to the horsetails near the visitor center…in a thick stand. These primitive plants have always fascinated me because they are a plant I learned about in a biology text book (way back in the early 1970s) then recognized in the wild on a day trip to Platt National Park.

And then there are the best of the rest. Do you recognize the gingko bud, a yellow holly berry, a rhododendron bud?

Overall – every time I go to Brookside there is something new to notice. My observational and photographic skills get a workout!

Mini Road Trip: Brookside Gardens – April 2021 (2)

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Continuing the photographic tour of Brookside Gardens from yesterday’s post….

I always make an effort to see the deciduous magnolias blooming at Brookside and they were at the top of my ‘to see’ plan for this mini road trip. The first one I saw was quite a shock. All the flowers had been destroyed by the frosts. The tree won’t be producing any seeds this year. The drying remains of the flowers were glowing in the morning light….interesting looking but ultimately not positive for the tree.

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I would occasionally see a tree that I thought might have escaped the frost damage

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But a closer look always showed that the flowers were damaged. The might still be intact enough to draw insects and maybe produce seeds.

At least one tree had buds that looked normal – the late bloomer might be the one with the successful seed production this year.

The tulips are the other big display in April. Some of the beds also had fading hyacinths. I like to photograph tulips that appear to be glowing from within….and there were several situations that provided the opportunity for that.

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Benches at Brookside always look appealing to me but I rare sit down. Usually I am walking around, taking pictures of anything that looks interesting. Maybe I should try something different next time I visit….pick a spot and sit for a bit.

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A project idea – maybe take pictures of tree trunks that includes the name of the tree (many of the trees at Brookside are labeled like this. It would be good to have as a reference.

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I always like the stone sphere sculpture. Sometimes there are early butterflies that warm up in the sunshine around it…but I didn’t see any while I was there.

On the way back to the car, I stopped again to photograph the lush horsetail bed at one corner of the visitor center….and that was the last stop of my walk. The parking lot was filling up  and I was glad I had come early enough to avoid the crowd.

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Mini Road Trip: Brookside Gardens – Part 1

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The mini road trip to Brookside Gardens last week was my first time back to the gardens in over a year. It was in the low 50s, sunny and breezy – I typical early March day for our area of Maryland. The outing started out with a group of five robins looking for worms in our front yard as I drove away for the house – a great indicator of early spring. There were not as many people at Brookside as there had been at Centennial Park and almost everyone was masked and maintaining distance; it was a more comfortable situation…and I took so many pictures that there will be a second post about the mini road trip tomorrow.

On the walk from the parking lot toward the visitor’s center, there was a bird’s nest from last season in one of the young trees. I’ll see the spring action at Brookside this year that I completely missed in 2020!

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It’s still early in the season – but there are some flowers to photograph in the gardens already.

There are plants that stay green through the winter too. I always enjoy the profuse stand of horsetails planted in one of the beds at the visitor center.

The tall sycamore uphill from the conservatory has been cut to a tall stump. It had struggled in recent years with some the higher branches being leafless/dead. The stump has been fitted with a mask and googly eyes!

There was another tree I noticed had been cut down too! I’m glad they left the roots and short stump…wonder what will come up around it in the bed.

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The hydrangea flowers from last season were prevalent….and seem to always draw my attention;  their flowers are so large and they last, in dried form, through the winter. Maybe I’ll plant some native hydrangeas at my house…although the deer that come through our yard would gobble them up if they were not protected with fencing.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the witch hazels blooming at Brookside!

American Museum of Natural History in 1953

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The 1953 volume of the Magazine of the American Museum of Natural History is available from Internet Archive (here is the link for whole collection list). I am featuring the volume of magazines published the year I was born this week. There were two items that resonated…that reminded me of other years in my life.

The first was an article about Bandelier National Monument.

I’ve been to the place at least 4 times: Spring 1971, August 1980, September 1981, and March 2005. The first time was for a picnic during a high school trip. In 1980 and 1981 my husband and I camped there. We hiked to the lower falls in 1981….and took our best pictures of the place.

The sideshow below is a mix of pictures from the 1980 and 1981 trips. Based on the pictures, we took longer hikes in 1981. My husband did all the photography. I scanned the slides years later.

In 2005, it was a wet day. It was a bit larger group with my parents, husband and daughter. We only walked around near the visitor center. It is a place to visualize how people lived long ago….and the juxtaposition of more modern history of the world in nearby Los Alamos, the lab at the forefront of creating the first atomic bombs.

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The second item was a picture of horsetails.

I remember reading about the plant in a textbook when I was in college in the mid70s…and then being thrilled to see and recognize a stand growing in Platt National Park when we visited a few months later. I had probably seen them before but overlooked them…didn’t realize that these are remnants of primitive plants that used to be the understory of the giant forests that eventually formed coal deposits. The genus (Equisetaceae) was eaten by dinosaurs!

I like finding publications from meaningful times in my life ….it’s a tangible connection to history. It’s also fun to see places I have seen more recently and to think about how they’ve changed … how they’ve remained the same.