Archive for the ‘Garden Travel’ Category

A hunt­ing estate in the South Car­olina backwoods

Imag­ine my sur­prise when I dis­cov­ered a chap­ter on this home in the book Low­coun­try Plan­ta­tions Today, given to me by my pre­scient friend Lisa some years before. Last Sep­tem­ber my sis­ter Mary Lynn and I were on our way to go kayak­ing at the ACE Basin near Beau­fort, South Car­olina when we passed this home out in the mid­dle of nowhere. Sur­rounded by 100+ year old oaks, the estate includes gor­geous barns as well. Accord­ing to my Low­coun­try book it is called Bonny Hall Plan­ta­tion and was built circa 1897 on the Com­ba­hee River. Once owned by the Dou­ble­day pub­lish­ing fam­ily, it is now reputed to be the domain of a Hol­ly­wood pro­ducer. Som­er­set Maugham wrote The Razors Edge in the guest house there in the 1940’s.

Our kayak­ing guide, Kim, owns Beau­fort Kayak Tours (www​.Beau​fortkayak​tours​.com) with her hus­band David. She is a local as well as a nat­u­ral­ist and very well informed about the area. We kayaked in the swamps where the land was used for rice pro­duc­tion before the Civil War. Now a lot of the land is owned by wealthy fam­i­lies who use it for hunt­ing part time. This is a good thing because it pre­serves the land and saves it from development.

That’s us, kayak­ing away!

On the web:

Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery (click on web­site at right) fea­tures Euca­lyp­tus “Moon Lagoon”, a col­lec­table drought tol­er­ant shrub.

¹¹⁄₁₈: Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (San Marino) offers an all day Ranch sym­po­sium on urban agri­cul­ture. (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)

¹¹⁄₁₉:

• Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (above): Thanks­giv­ing Flower Arrange­ment class.
• Theodore Payne Native Plant Foun­da­tion (Sun Val­ley): 3 part Native Plant Design Sym­po­sium (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Des­canso Gar­dens (La Canada): Her­itage Oak Walk (www​.des​canso​.org)

C of C campus

The first leg of my Sep­tem­ber trip to the Low Coun­try was booked through Road Scholar (for­merly Elder Hos­tel — I really love their new name). Road Scholar is a non­profit tour com­pany ded­i­cated to “life­long learn­ing”. They have a mouth­wa­ter­ing array of trips in their cat­a­log, many involv­ing some type of vol­un­teer­ing. My Charleston leg was orches­trated by the Col­lege of Charleston, a very old (1770) and won­der­ful pub­lic lib­eral arts and sci­ences school. We stayed in a lovely hotel, the Fran­cis Mar­ion, and ate our meals in the stu­dent din­ing room. That was so much fun; carbo load­ing and enjoy­ing the high energy of the stu­dents. In the morn­ing we would hear talks given by experts on the his­tory of the Civil War, Charleston, cook­ing, music and more; after­noons were devoted to sight­see­ing. Many of our group had enjoyed 6 or more trips with RS. I would have to give Road Scholar and Col­lege of Charleston an “A” for my experience!

The C of C cam­pus has amaz­ing old oaks

• www​.fran​cis​mar​i​on​ho​tel​.com
• www​.road​scholar​.org
• www​.cofc​.edu/

On the web:

Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery has a new ship­ment of books from…Australia! Click on their web­site to the right of this post.

Thurs­day, Novem­ber 10: Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens (hunt​ing​ton​.org) Talk and sale on Native Trees for Native Gar­dens by Lili Singer

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 12:

• Des­canso Gar­dens (Des​can​sog​a​r​dens​.org) La Canada: Flower Mar­ket Tour, Fruit tree prun­ing and Fall color walk
• San Diego Botanic Gar­den (sdb​gar​den​.org) San Diego County: Bromeliad Bash
• Theodore Payne Native Plants and Flow­ers (theodor​e​payne​.org) Sun val­ley: Irri­ga­tion 101 and Native Plant Horticulture

Con­tin­u­ing my low coun­try trip, the next stop after Charleston was Savannah.More of a “real” work­ing city than Charleston, Savan­nah is home to the ter­rific art school SCAD (Savan­nah Col­lege of Art and Design), and has a very “lived-​in” look. There are lit­tle restau­rants and bars in every square (and some alleys). We enjoyed tour­ing the famous 22 squares, or vest pocket parks, with Jonathan Stal­cup, a local archi­tect who restores and sells his­tor­i­cal struc­tures (www​.archi​tec​tural​sa​van​nah​.com). The high point of the day was the urban for­est of South­ern live oaks, or quer­cus vir­gini­ana (ques­tion: if Eliz­a­beth the 1st hadn’t been a vir­gin what would they have named every­thing?) It must be such a priv­i­lege, liv­ing with these gor­geous trees. The heav­i­est of the native hard­woods, these trees were used for struc­tural beams and ship build­ing. Some of the old­est trees are over 1000 years old, with 35′ cir­cum­fer­ences and a height of 55′. They are uni­formly draped with tilland­sia usneoides, mis­named span­ish moss. My sis­ter Mary Lynn and I picked some to take home, ignor­ing the chig­ger warn­ings. The next day we had some bites and the tilland­sia went back on the trees!
On the web:

Tues­day, ¹⁰⁄₂₅:

• Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens, San Marino: Lec­ture on prop­a­gat­ing, grow­ing and car­ing for figs (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)
• San Diego Botanic Gar­den, Encini­tas: Suc­cu­lent wreath class (sdb​gar​den​.org)

Thurs­day, ¹⁰⁄₂₇: The Arbore­tum, Arca­dia: Prop­a­ga­tion work­shop with Dave Lar­rom (arbore​tum​.org)

Sat­ur­day, ¹⁰⁄₂₉:

• ***** Aus­tralian Native Plant Nurs­ery in Ojai (aus​tralian​plants​.com) is extend­ing their sale to Sat­ur­day, 10/​29 — Click on box to the right!*****
• Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Native Plants, Sun Val­ley: Native plant hor­ti­cul­ture with Lili Singer and Low Impact design class on man­ag­ing rain and irri­ga­tion water (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• Nopal­ito Native Plant Nurs­ery, Ven­tura (nopali​tonurs​ery​.com) : Plant­ing, prun­ing and water­ing native plants in the fall /​free with preregistration.

A 5 foot baby!

I took this on my recent tour of the Low Coun­try with my sis­ter, Mary Lynn. Not a great photo, but I didn’t want to get any closer. As per Wikipedia, since 1948 there have been more than 275 unpro­voked attacks on humans in Florida, of which at least 17 resulted in death. There were only nine fatal attacks in the U.S. through­out the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but alli­ga­tors killed 12 peo­ple from 2001 to 2007. In May 2006, alli­ga­tors killed three Florid­i­ans in less than a week. This photo was taken at Mid­dle­ton Plan­ta­tion out­side Charleston, South Car­olina. I was thrilled to see this guy out of the water as I had seen 3 in the water pos­ing as float­ing logs — not very excit­ing. I think he (or she) might be more of teenager than a baby. There were all sorts of fam­i­lies stand­ing around which didn’t phase him, but some­one closed the top on their stroller and bam, he was out of there!

An inter­est­ing fact: the range of alli­ga­tors is increas­ing north­ward along the Atlantic Coast towards Vir­ginia. Look out, Wash­ing­ton, DC! Our politi­cians may not be at the top of the food chain much longer!

And finally, I leave you with these words of wis­dom from nat­u­ral­ist and TV per­son­al­ity Jack Hanna: “The best thing to do is just leave them alone. Alli­ga­tors want to be away from you just as much as you want to be away from them.”

On the web:

Sales:

• The Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild­flow­ers and Native Plants Annual Native Plant Sale, Octo­ber 14 — 15 in Sun Val­ley (San Fer­nando Val­ley) (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• San Diego Botan­i­cal Gar­den, Encini­tas: 29th Annual Plant Sale, Octo­ber 15 — 16 (www​.sdb​gar​den​.org)
• Jun­gle Music/​Encini­tas: owner Phil Bergman has posted a “new arrivals” sec­tion on his web­site show­cas­ing new palm trees, cycads and trop­i­cal plants (www​.jun​gle​mu​sic​.net)

Classes, etc:

• Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens, San Marino: every­thing you wanted to know about Gingko, Oct. 11/ Iris: the Rain­bow Flower Talk and plant sale, Octo­ber 13/​Flower Arrang­ing: the Crafts­man Esthetic, Oct. 15/​Orchid Sale and Show, Octo­ber 14 — 15 (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)
• Des­canso Gar­dens, Flintridge: In Praise of Grasses event and Paint your Gar­den with Wild­flow­ers lec­ture, Octo­ber 15 (www​.des​canso​.org)
• Potted/​Atwa­ter Vil­lage is spon­sor­ing a weekly con­test for best ter­rar­ium with a grand prize of $500.00 (www​.pot​ted​store​.com)
• Los Ange­les Arbore­tum, Arca­dia: lec­ture on Nat­ural landscapes/​Garden Spaces with Amy Net­tle­ton, Octo­ber 12 (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
• Fuller­ton Arbore­tum, Fuller­ton: Eat the yard: Organic Edi­ble Gar­den­ing Part I, Octo­ber 15