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sharing Abiquiu
The O’Keeffe compound, Abiquiu, New Mexico
I had a delicious experience visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico this past weekend. Located about an hours’ drive northwest of Santa Fe, the Spanish colonial-era compound was the painter’s personal home and studio; Ms. O’Keeffe also painted nearby at Ghost Ranch. As the brochure states: “ Touring her personal home and studio in Abiquiu gives you a remarkable, firsthand glimpse into the way she lived and views of the landscape she loved. She created some of her most famous and iconic works here.”
Georgia O’Keeffe’s studio
Georgia O’Keeffe, who died in Santa Fe in 1986 at the age of 99, was one of the most important artists in the 20th century, and a pioneer of American Modernism. I especially love her floral paintings and landscapes. She was courageous in her conviction that women could paint as well as men, a belief not widely held when she started painting.
The courtyard she painted so many times
A favorite quote of Ms. O’Keeffe’s:
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.
On the web:
- Sept. 1 — 11: The Potted Store/Los Angeles: Storewide Sale (www.pottedstore.com)
- Sept. 2 — 4: City Farmers Nursery/San Diego: Master Chain Saw Carver George Kenny carving demo and auction (www.cityfarmersnursery.com)
- Sept. 3: Huntington Library and Gardens/San Marino: 28th Annual Succulent Plants Symposium (www.huntington.org)
- Sept. 5: Descanso Gardens/la Canada: Rediscover the California Garden talk and tour (www.descanso.com)
The best (and only) bus garden
Where did you say they put that garden?
One of the last frontiers of gardening? You guessed it, the top of a New York City bus! One of the recent articles in a favorite blog of mine, Urban Gardens (www.urbangardensweb.com), carried this story about NYC designer Marco Antonio Castro Casio. He wrote his graduate thesis, “Nomadic Urban Architecture” featuring moving gardens like the one you see here.
“If a garden were planted on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the city’s bus fleet,” calculates Cosio, his busses could add 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city. That’s as much as 4 Bryant Parks. Meant for the public bus system, the first garden was installed on the BioBus, a mobile science library. In this photo the garden is 5 months old and comprised of succulents. Next? How about a vegetable and herb garden..and they say there is nothing new under the sun!
Site for Marco Casio: www.busroots.org
On the web:
Thursday, February 17
- Plant Favorites from the Huntington Nursery with Shirley Kerins @ the Arboretum: A special program for plant nuts! Our guest speaker will discuss and show a range of flowering and herbal flora easily grown in Southern California gardens. The morning ends with a plant sale. Shirley, a landscape architect, is nursery manager, manager of plant production and plant sales and curator of the Herb Garden at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. She also designed the Kallam Perennial Garden at the Arboretum. 9:30 — noon, $20/class — (626) 821‑4623 or jill.berry@arboretum.org
Saturday, February 19
- Shipley Nature Center: A Family Celebration to Save the Monarchs, 10am — noon, Puppet show, crafts and more @ Huntington Beach Central Park, free parking @ 17851 Goldenwest St. near Talbert, info: (714) 842‑4772 or www.shipleynature.org
- Square Foot Gardening Workshop @ the Arboretum: 10am-1pm; Square foot gardening uses only 20% of the land space of a conventional garden and saves both water and time. There is no tilling of the soil so anybody can do it. Learn how with Jo Ann Carey. $25/$28 nonmembers
Pre-registration required, call 626.821.4623
What makes a destination nursery?
A mossy fountain at Laguna Nursery
This is a difficult post to write because most nurseries are special in some way. Every community needs and deserves a generalized “garden center” for obvious reasons (especially since Target has closed all of theirs — yea!). So I’m not necessarily talking about service, selection or price. With destination nurseries something more indefinable is usually in play, starting with the passion of the owner. Most of the nursery men and women I’ve met love what they do — which is lucky for us in this harsh economic climate. But it is much harder to specialize because it cuts down on clientele. So, need Australian plants? Go to Jo O’Connell’s Australian Native Plants Nursery in Ojai. Jo provides Australian plants to the Huntington Botanical Gardens, among many others. Want your roses grown locally and acclimatized — Otto and Sons in Fillmore has an enormous selection. How about a custom topiary spelling out your name? Get it at Eden Nursery in Orange County. Two nurseries that specialize in jaw dropping fountains, planter arrangements, orchids, garden furniture and accessories: Laguna Nursery in Orange County and Rolling Greens Nursery in Culver City. Upland Nursery in Orange County has 350 varieties of plumeria. Does your spouse want to see a phenomenal car collection while you shop for petunias? The only place for that is Simpson’S Garden Nursery in San Diego County. Also in San Diego County: Botanical Partners with every bamboo imaginable, and Jungle Music for collector’s palms. The owners of these nurseries (Ralph Evans and Phil Bergman, respectively) will give you help in deciding what will do best in your garden — they want you to succeed and come back for more. Of course, that is true of all nurseries, large and small, general or specialized.
I have a “Destination Nursery” listing at the bottom of my categories on Socalnurseryplants.com. For more information on each nursery, go to the category for that nursery.
