Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.

Rubus idaeus ‘Raspberry Shortcake’

Most of us like our blueberries served in a bowl. Of course, very few of us imagine growing them in a bowl, but that is precisely what modern hybridizers are allowing us to do. I exaggerate when I say bowl–I hope you understand that. But growing blueberries in a container–and a reasonably sized container, at that–is now a reality.

I have been perusing information from growers on the new introductions for 2013 and have found some truly interesting edibles. Fall Creek Farm & Nurseries of Oregon have a new series coming out this year called the BrazelBerries™ collection. The collection consists of two dwarf blueberries and one thornless raspberry which are small enough to comfortably tuck into a container for your patio garden.
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.

Oconee bells (photo by Natural Gardening)

Oconee bells (Shortia galacifolia) is a rare and wonderful relative of the wandflower (Galax urceolata). Its foliage is a diminutive version of the wandflower’s, with glossy round leaves showing wavy margins and striking venation. These glistening leaves and the striking patterns within them remind me of a shiny crocodile handbag. I suppose I should say faux crocodile handbag to be politically correct. That, and the pattern of the veins is different.

However, the flower is otherwise completely different from the wandflower. Shortia has pinkish white, bell-shaped flowers with jagged edges that appear in early spring. This small woodland groundcover (growing 4 to 8 inches tall) is a must for any woodland aficionado. I must warn you that it is not the easiest woodland plant to grow, but once established, it will do fine in your garden.

Oconee bells are from Oconee County and its surrounding areas in South and North Carolina. The region is full of lakes, rivers, deeply wooded forests and hilly terrain. The name Oconee is a derivation of the Cherokee word Ae-quo-nee, which means “land beside water.”
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.

Wandflower (Galax urceolata)

I have been spending the past few weeks in the Native Plant Garden, preparing the 2.5-acre site for winter. Most of my time has been spent cutting back foliage, raking leaves for shredding and returning to the garden as mulch, and tying together loose ends by updating the inventory of the collection. While much of the garden is going to bed, there are a few horticultural stars that are still out for the winter, and they look sublime at this time of year.

Three winter woodland wonders that caught my eye the other day were the wandflower (Galax urceolata), it close relative the rare Oconee bells (Shortia galacifolia) and the luscious-looking wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). All three are evergreen ground covers that do well in woodland shade but probably look their best in part-shade, where the canopy opens up to let in streams of light.

The wandflower (Galax urceolata) has glossy, rounded, heart-shaped leaves that look spectacular all year round. Once the cold weather sets in, the foliage starts to turn red. By the holiday season, the coloring is as intense as Rudolph’s red nose. Wandflower or Galax grow 12 to 16 inches tall with the flower spikes extending above the foliage like a narrow white bottle brush in late spring to early summer.
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Let’s just say it’s not your everyday cubicle. The grids of Victorian glass and arching metal framework make for a view you’ll never find behind drawstring blinds. Come to think of it, desktop computers have a rough time with the falling mist in the rain forest houses, too. But as Manager of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Christian Primeau’s workspace is as much an office as yours or mine. Just bigger, brighter, and more…flush with growing life. For our part, we make do in the Library Building with a potted basil plant, and one or two ferns to hold down the window sill. But that’s not to say a novelty cactus is your last hope for office decor!

Instead, take a hint from the Tumblr crowd’s fascination with these living bubbles and get involved with terrariums; it’s like having a mini conservatory sitting on your desk, and you don’t even have to get a permit to run hose attachments into the building.
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Sonia Uyterehoven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.

I read somewhere that a hummingbird’s wings beat between 70 and 80 times a second, and can accelerate up to 200 beats per second during courtship. They can fly at an average speed of 25 to 30 miles per hour, but can dive at 60 miles per hour. With all this hyperactivity, these birds need sugary nectar to support their high-energy bursts.

Fortunately for them, some flower nectar has about two times as much sugar as the average soft drink. The blooms these birds favor tend to be bright red, pink, and orange–flowers in the shape of long tubes that are adapted to the hummingbird’s narrow bill. However, like other avian species they have a poor sense of smell, so the colorful flowers they pollinate do not have strong fragrances.
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

Tulipa ‘Spring Green’

As I mentioned the other week, I have been making the Garden rounds to talk to different colleagues about their favorite bulbs. We often like to use tulips here at the NYBG as part of large annual displays in springtime. We plant the bulbs in November, which then flower in May. By June, they have all been dug up and recycled in the compost pile.

The reason why tulips are not often part of permanent displays is that many varieties don’t come up consistently in subsequent years. They look glorious the first year, spotty the second year, and prove fairly anemic moving into the third and fourth years. Happily, this is not true with all tulips, and many make wonderful, long-lived additions in a garden provided they have good drainage.
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

Korean mums were first hybridized (bred) in Connecticut in the 1930s by a nurseryman named Alex Cummings. He was working on hybridizing cold-hardy varieties that would flourish in New England temperatures. A tall plant–a wild species he mistakenly identified as Chrysanthemum coreanum–fell into his hands and the results were the lavish Korean mums you see planted today in both our Jane Watson Irwin Perennial Garden and the Home Gardening Center.

The chrysanthemum that Cummings was working with turned out to be Chrysanthemum sibiricum, a wild mum with white-pink daisies, vigorous growth, and good branching. This species is also native to Korea, so the popular name of “Korean mum” is correct. Korean hybrids tend to be four feet tall with spectacular, daisy-like flowers that come in a wide range of colors, from pale yellow and dusty pink to burnt-orange and fiery red.

At The New York Botanical Garden, we have a selection program for the Korean mums. Each year we grow a wide variety of Korean mums in a kaleidoscope of colors. In the Perennial Garden, we group them as separate colors–a selection of red mums in the hot room, pink in the cool room–paired beautifully with fall shrubs and perennials to create vibrant autumnal displays.
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education, and can often be found hosting gardening demonstrations on Saturdays and Sundays.

Hyacinthus orientalis

Next weekend, I will be teaching visitors to the Home Gardening Center how to properly site, plant and protect their bulbs from hungry critters. It is a demonstration that I enjoy giving every year. We examine a number of bulbs, learn all the basics and then find a few nice empty spots around the Garden to plant. It is one of the demonstrations where I like to get hands-on with visitors, encouraging them to jump in and help prepare a nice display for the spring.

Last week, I made the rounds with a few of the curators and gardeners asking them about their favorite bulbs and planting techniques. The first stop I made was to meet with Jody Payne, the curator of the Rock Garden. I asked her for some good recommendations for the homeowner.

Our discussion started with one of my favorite spring blooms for fragrance–hyacinths. Jody recommended the Festival Series as a good choice. Festival Series hyacinths have a more open form than your traditional hyacinth and they are not so prone to flop over once they are in full bloom. Each bulb produces several flower stalks providing a full display. The Festival Series comes in pink, white, and blue, with a delicious fragrance. They create a nice, naturalistic look in the garden.
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education, often hosting live gardening demonstrations for visitors on Saturdays and Sundays.

The other week, I was with the Students of Professional Horticulture, taking them on a walk around the Home Gardening Center while discussing wildlife gardening. Technically, any time of the year presents the opportunity to lecture about attracting wildlife into the garden, but fall is a spectacular occasion.

We passed by one of my favorite asters, Aster tartaricus ‘Jindai’, that was smothered with bees and butterflies–monarchs and red admirals on this occasion. ‘Jindai’ is a compact tartarian aster that reaches three to four feet in height (the species can grow up to six feet tall). It was discovered at the Jindai Botanical Garden in Tokyo, Japan.

This sturdy variety has stolen my heart since it doesn’t require any staking. The large foliage of the aster is full at the base of the plant and then tapers nicely as it extends up the stem. In September and October a profusion of flowers adorns these tall stems, a lovely combination of medium purple ray flowers with bright, buttery yellow disc flowers. The complementary colors play off of each other exquisitely.
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Yesterday as I was watering my office plants, I gave the newest addition a gentle poke; gentle because it is an agave, and can quite aggressively poke back. It had been weeks since I had last watered it, and I wasn’t sure if it needed another dousing. I prodded its leaves and they felt healthy. I looked under its pot. I asked it, “Do you need water?” It didn’t answer.

So I decided it was time to indulge in one of the perks of my job: I grabbed my iPhone, snapped a picture, and sent it off to Christian Primeau, the Manager of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory (you might remember him from this great how-to video he did on planting water lilies in containers at home). “Do you mind if I ask you how I can tell whether or not my agave needs water?” Lucky for me (and for my agave) Christian didn’t mind in the least and sent back a really cheerful, fact-filled email.

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