Last Days to Sign Up for Landscape Design Summer Intensive! Classes Start July 9.

While living in Kyoto, Japan as a college student, Jan Johnsen first experienced the “restorative powers” of gardens. “On the weekends I went to visit the serene landscapes of that city and they opened my eyes to the sublime loveliness that could be created in a small plot of ground within an urban environment,” she said.

Johnsen, who will be teaching in the Landscape Design Summer Intensive this July, started out as an intern at a high-pressure architecture firm in Japan, but her frequent visits to Kyoto’s treasured gardens changed her life, leading her to work in a landscape architecture office in Osaka. She next studied landscape architecture at the University of Hawaii and years later earned a graduate degree in planning. Today, her serene landscape designs clearly show the influence of Asian culture and thought.

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Here’s wishing a happy (if belated) Fourth of July to anyone who was too busy with cook-outs and pyrotechnics on Wednesday! It sort of feels like we had two Fridays this round, didn’t it? And I suppose that also means two Mondays, if you want to be a pessimist. In any case, the fireworks continue into this weekend with color of a less combustible sort. So jump into something summer-appropriate and be liberal with the sunscreen: these flowers like it hot!

Seeing as the scene along Daylily Walk is so ripe with painted color, we thought we’d do a little more to highlight the hands-on horticulture behind the daylily. Visit the Home Gardening Center at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday for a gardening demonstration with one of our staff experts, all set to fill you in on the growing techniques behind this hardy summer perennial. We’ll also share some pointers on many of the latest and greatest Hemerocallis cultivars–with over 45,000 of them to choose from, a daylily obsession can easily become a lifelong passion. (Trust us: our NYBG scientists all but created the craze.)
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Finally Friday. If you couldn’t find the time to get outside on the Fourth, be sure to prepare for this weekend: sunglasses, sunscreen, a few bottles of water. And do they still make parasols? Maybe one of those, too. Not everyone has the benefit of built-in shades, butterflies excluded.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen