Gardens in a Flash

One of the best ways to learn about gardening is to visit some of the best in the world. The Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden is a somewhat expensive outing at $15 per person for entry, it does provide many hours of delightful experiences and many, many colorful tropical shrubs, plants, ground covers and trees.

This picture taken at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden shows some of the amazing combinations of tropical flower, tropical leaves, tropical ground cover, tropical upper story trees, and tropical shrubs that are placed dramatically throughout the gardens. Note how the varigation on the shrub leaves matches the nearby tropical flowers. Note how the blooming tropical flowers at the top of the plant look airy and light pink while the tropical ground cover is in muted purples.

The use of space in the Hawaii Tropical Botanical garden is also amazing. When the gardeners planted the tropical shrubs they left spacing that entices the eye to the background tropical bushes and draws the eye up to the upper story tropical trees. Note how the play of sun on the tropical shrubs show that space above was allowed and maybe even pruned to help the understory shrubs grow to their best color and size.

Besides providing a shady escape from the Tropical Hawaiian sun, Hawaiian Tropical Botanical gardens provides an uphill and downhill walk, interludes to sit and relax beside lily pad filled ponds, trickling streams, glimpses of seashore, and many glorious plants.

The Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden is open from 9am to 5pm everyday, except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day, with Garden admissions ending at 4pm. This self-guided tour takes an average of about an hour and a half. The walking distance is just over a mile, round trip.

Admission for a day is $15 for adults, children ages 6 - 16 are $5. Children under 6 are free

If you visit the website, expect to find many more pictures and the chance to buy tropical plants online. See Care Tips for the Winter Gardener of Tropical Plants if you’d like to create a tropical have in your home using a greenhouse.

[1] Big Island of Hawai’i by Robert Nilson, Moon Handbooks

Red Twig Dogwood and Yellow Twig Dogwood are two of the most colorful water loving native plants used in Northwest Gardens.

This picture shows the rich color that turns a garden or waterfront aflame in late autumn. Taken in late November, the red and yellow color in the native plant shrubs contrasts nicely with the blue of a sunny day and the water along the beach.

Red twig and yellow twig dogwood tend to be inexpensive to buy at local Garden Nurseries. Red and yellow twig dogwood share the same habitat, the marshy areas that are native to the Black River, Duwamish River flood plain through the Renton, Kent, Auburn, Sumner, Puyallup valley. The plants will flower if local deer don’t eat the blossoms off. The red and yellow color is more intense if the branches are pruned down as if eaten. The branches of red twig dogwood and yellow twig dogwood green up in spring with the first leaves. Flowers mostly show up in small clusters on the ends of branches. The red twig dogwood and yellow twig dogwood grow about 6-8′ high if left unpruned and about 3-6 feet wide with arching branches. Red twig dogwood and yellow twig dogwood don’t mind wet roots and can tolerate drought and poor soils, needing very little fertilizer.

Thanksgiving morning, I joined friends for a walk from Stanley Sayres Memorial Park in Seattle, WA to Seward Park, a lovely hilly park on Lake Washington. I grew up downtown Seattle so my parents often took us to Seward Park to play and to watch the Blue Angels fly overhead during the Hydrofoil Races during Seafair every year. The walk from Stanley Sayres Memorial Park to Seward park is about 4 miles round trip along the shore of Lake Washington. The trail passes several marinas, some marsh land and then follows along the edge of Seward Park. Seward Park is a hilly park filled with grassy areas and lined with trees. Views of Mt. Rainer over the lake are terrific. Walkers may spy various ducks and an otter or beaver. This is a very natural park and the gardening is minimal except for examples of lovely trees that you might want for your garden.

Note the many plants that line the shore. This is a terrific way to find out what plants grow naturally and use them in planting a pond garden.

Coricancha (Qorikancha) is the site of the former Inca center in Cusco and is now the base of the Santo Domingo church. This is a typical result when someone has previously done the laborous stonework or for the stones to be stolen and used in other buildings. A walk through Coricancha is educational about the Inca especially in terms of their stone building capabilities.

Most people leave by way of the formal gardens which are seen from above.

In this part of the garden, the three major Inka symbols are carved into plants so viewers can see the serpent, the jaguar and the condor from above. Other plants include some of the largest tree-sized fuscias I’ve seen.

Coricancha’s temples, according to Lonely Planet, one to the sun and one to the moon, were covered with solid sheets of gold and silver respectively. The museum documents some of the astrology used by the Inca, including two gorgeous modern astronomy paintings of the Milky Way.

The rose garden at Pt. Defiance Zoo in Tacoma in summer time offers gorgeous colorful blooms and wonderful scents. Rose gardens are a great way to discover which rose to plant in your garden.

What to Look for in a Rose?

A rose that has lush green leaves, seems devoid of disease such as black spot or rust, has well shaped flower buds and blooms in a public garden like the one at Pt. Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, is likely to be a good selection for your own garden. My experience with roses has been instructive. Roses with heavy blooms like the Austin roses will likely retain rain water and mold unless they are protected under a shelter. Roses that get black spot or rust easily often won’t survive for another year meaning you’re going to waste your money.

My favorite roses for the Renton area are the bush roses or the floribunda. Floribunda means many flowering and I typically find they bloom repeatedly throughout the summer, are relatively disease free and have long stems with the flowers showing many stages of bloom at the same time. This makes floribunda roses wonderful for flower arrangements. Look for floribunda varieties with scent if you usually tend to shop for tea roses.

Things to Look for in Public Rose Gardens Like the Pt. Defiance Zoo in Tacoma

Notice the pergola in the back of the picture. Look for how structure is used to make roses look their best. Pt. Defiance Zoo uses a variety of trellis, stakes, and other structures to make their garden really attractive. One of the nice things about this small garden at Pt. Defiance Zoo is you get a taste of beauty on your way to visiting the zoo.

See more pictures at TacomaMama.com

A stroll through Kubota Gardens will introduce any visitor to Seattle, WA, or local the basics of Northwest garden design plants and Japanese garden features. Started in 1927 by Fujitaro Kubota as part of his gardening company, the garden was donated and turned into a public feature in 1923.

What should visitors to Kubota Garden’s look for? Northwest plants such as colorful spring blooming azaleas and rhodedendrons are a special treat in terms of color. Japanese maples with their delicate leaves, changing foliage and delicate flowers and seeds. Giant 50-ft tall trees that form a backdrop for garden spaces including native doug fir, big leave maple, elm, and cedar. Lush green lawns beg you to lie in the shade if dry enough and mosses a plenty. Whichever way you turn, Kubota gardens will provide many beautiful plants to enjoy. To see more pictures, see Mid Beacon Hill blog.

The picture I’ve included from Kubota Gardens, shows one of the primary five styles of Japanese gardens talked about in “Creating Japanese Gardens” by Ortho Books. The essence of a stroll garden is to provide an expansive place filled with beautiful scenery to look at including ponds and changing color. Reflections add to the broad appeal of a Japanese stroll garden which provides the chance to stretch ones legs and mind. Look for variations in the walkway and the openness of the foliage and test how it alters your mood from point of discovery that begs for a photograph to places where the walk speeds you up to the next view point.

Stroll gardens are meditative, make the visitor respond to nature and provide many of the best plants to be seen in a Japanese Northwest garden. I hope a visit to Kubota Gardens will bring you much pleasure and a chance to understand the Japanese garden style, the stroll garden.

Welcome to Gardens in a Flash, my new blog about everything to do with gardens world wide. Let me know what you think about it, I love to visit other blogs and write about what I see in this blog.