Oregon-based Terra Nova Nursery has come out with a ‘Soda Series’ of coral bells that include cultivars named ‘Root Beer’, ‘Ginger Ale,’ and ‘Cherry Cola’. We bought ‘Cherry Cola,’ a compact plant with rounded leaves that morph between red and chocolate brown (more red), this year. It grows to be about 6 inches tall and 14 inches wide making it well suited for a container or the front of a border.
But what really distinguishes Heuchera ‘Cherry Cola’ from other colorful coral bells is its flower. In the spring it produces a rich display of cherry red flowers that cover the plant and creates quite a sensation. It is also fairly winter hardy and the deer tend to place coral bells fairly low on their menu. It is happiest in part shade but can handle sun and shade.
They came. They saw. They conquered! And lucky for us, everyone still has their brains in place.
Couldn’t make it to the Garden this weekend to watch Ray Villafane transform two of the world’s heaviest pumpkins (including the world record-holder) into a super-creepy zombie tableau? Never fear!
We caught all the action via time-lapse camera and in a slideshow. Head below the jump to see them … if you dare!
I got a nice surprise this morning when I stopped by the big pumpkins; I found Brant and Elanor Bordsen, of Marysville, Calif. standing beside their beautiful, pearly pumpkin chatting with Garden visitors and staff. I told them I was surprised and excited to see them here (I had no idea they were coming!), and they said that they decided that they wanted to be here when Ray Villafane cut into their 1,693 pounder, to remove the seeds themselves, and to watch the progress of his sculpture. I asked them if they had seen the concept drawing for his sculpture yet. They said no, so I pulled it up on my BlackBerry and showed it to them. They agreed that it was certainly spooky and would be quite the spectacle!
We’ve heard that people want to meet the pumpkins officially, so here they are! Introducing the four heaviest pumpkin the world, currently on display as part of the Haunted Pumpkin Garden.
We’re 7,000! 7,000 photos that is, uploaded to our photostream on the photo-sharing website, Flickr. And if you like taking your own photos (instead of looking at ours), we have a Group Pool, too (with nearly 10,000 user-submitted photos), where everyone is free to share their shots of the Garden.
The New York Botanical Garden didn’t just start growing traditional styles of Japanese chrysanthemum–called kiku in Japanese–on a whim. It’s a labor intensive process that the Japanese have been perfecting for centuries, passing down techniques from generation to generation. Some of the more complex display styles can take a team of gardeners almost a year to pull off, which also includes the fabrication of multiple sets of giant metal frameworks upon which the flowers are trained. Training the plant, forcing its buds, timing the blooms; kiku is most definitely not for novices.
