March Calendar of Triangle Gardening Programs

'Garden Geometry' will be presented March 22 at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens
420 Anderson St., Durham, NC.
http://gardens.duke.edu/events 
Please call 919-668-1707 to register.

Plants of Distinction: Hellebores in the Winter Garden

Tue, March 1, 2016, 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

 

Pest Management in the Organic Garden 

Wed, March 2, 2016, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM

Course meets for 3 sessions

 

Plants of Distinction: The Spring Awakening 

Thu, March 10, 2016, 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

 

Durham Garden Forum: Epic Success with Tomatoes, Peppers and Eggplants

Tue, March 15, 2016, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM

 

Landscape Plants for North Carolina Gardens: Spring 

Wed, March 16, 2016, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Course meets for 4 sessions

 

The Art of Gardening: Inspiration from Chanticleer 

Thu, March 17, 2016, 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Garden Inspiration

Fri, March 18, 2016, 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM

 

Cooking from the Garden: Spring and Summer Vegetables 

Sat, March 19, 2016, 9:30 AM to 11:00 AM

 

I Need a Plan: The Geometry of a Garden

Tue, March 22, 2016, 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Course meets for 2 sessions

 

Plants of Distinction: The Scent of Spring

Thu, March 24, 2016, 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

 

Tour: Pine Clouds Mountain Stream Garden

Fri, March 25, 2016, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

 

Gardening in Durham for Beginners and Transplants: Everything You Need to Succeed

Thu, March 31, 2016, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM



Fifth Annual Spring Egg Hunt runs all week at the JC Raulston Arboretum from March 21-27.

JC Raulston Arboretum
Ruby C. McSwain Education Center, JC Raulston Arboretum
4415 Beryl Road, Raleigh, NC.
http://jcra.ncsu.edu

Plantsmen's Tour: "Early Bulbs"
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 – 1:00 pm–2:30 pm

Mark Weathington, Director
Some of the earliest bulbs are delicate little plants that give the first taste of spring after a cold winter.

 

Garden Cart Activity:  Everything's Coming up Bulbs!
Saturday, March 5,10:30 am–12:00 pm

 

Friends of the Arboretum Lecture :  "The Value of Seed Banks"
March 10, 7:30 p.m.

Janice Swab, Retired Professor, Department of Biology and Health Sciences, Meredith College

 

Friday, March 18

Plan—and Plant for a Better World—J. C. Raulston and the NC State University Arboretum
6:00 pm
Lecture

Plan—and Plant for a Better World—J. C. Raulston and the NC State University Arboretum
7:30 pm
Exhibit Opening and Reception

 

North American Rock Garden Society (Piedmont Chapter) Lecture:  "NARGS Trips: Santa Fe and Ann Arbor"
Saturday, March 19, 10:00 am

Tim Alderton, JC Raulston Arboretum

Fifth Annual Spring Egg Hunt: Family Fun Event Children's Program
Monday, March 21, 2016 – 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Tuesday, March 22, 2016 – 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 – 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Thursday, March 24, 2016 – 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Friday, March 25, 2016 – 10:00 am–3:00 pm
Saturday, March 26, 2016 – 10:00 am–2:00 pm
Sunday, March 27, 2016 – 1:00 pm–4:00 pm
Welcome spring this year with the Fifth Annual Spring Egg Hunt! The fun starts on March 21 and stays until March 27.



Craig LeHoullier returns to the Durham Garden Forum to present
growing amazing quantities and varieties of vegetables, container plants,
and in-ground plants, on March 15.

 

North Carolina Botanical Gardens 
100 Old Mason Farm Road, Chapel Hill, NC.
http://reg.abcsignup.com/view/view_month.aspx?as=5&wp=184&aid=NCBG

'Diggin' Spring Vegetables' - Family Workshop
Saturday. March 12, 1 p.m.

Indentifying and Controlling Invasive Plants
with Neville Handel, NCBG Land Manager
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 from 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Weeds for Your Needs: Celebrating The Healing Wild Plants
with Doug Elliott
Thursday, March 17, 2016 from 2:00 PM to 4:30 PM

Sustainable Lawns
Saturday, March 19, 9:30 - 12:00 PM 
with Alan Johnson, Professional Landscape

Spring in the Garden Walk
Saturday, March 19, 2016 ;10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Meet in the Pegg Exhibit Hall of the Education Center

Ephemerals
with Linda Koffenberger, Professional Artist
Saturday, March 19, 2016; 1:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Spring Flora
with Milo Pyne, Plant Ecologist
Saturdays, 1:00 – 4:00 PM
March 19: (NCBG)
*These dates are OFF-SITE classes
April 9: (Moorefields) https://moorefields.org/visit/
April 23: (Eno Pumpstation) http://www.enotrails.com/pump-station-trail.htm
May 7: (Sarah P Duke Gardens) http://gardens.duke.edu/directions

Signs of Spring on Nature Trail Hill
with Carol Ann McCormick, Curator of the UNC Herbarium
Sunday, March 20, 2016 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM

Composting Workshop with Muriel Williman
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM

OFF-SITE: For directions: Carolina Campus Community Garden


Durham County Cooperative Extension

Durham Garden Forum: Epic Success with Tomatoes, Peppers and Eggplants
Tue, March 15, 2016, 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM

Durham Council of Garden Clubs Business Meeting: March 1

The Durham Council of Garden Clubs will hold its next business meeting at 10 a.m., Tuesday, March 1 at the John Sprunt Hill House, 900 S. Duke St., Durham, NC 27707.

The agenda will include an update by the Planning Committee for the Annual Meeting of The Garden Club of North Carolina, Inc., to be held in Durham April 17-19, 2016.

Council Committee Chairs should attend and present their respective reports.

Town & Country Garden Club Sponsors $1K Grant to Brogden

Town & Country Garden Club President Robin Marin (second from L) helps present a $1K NC Beautiful award Monday, Feb 8 at Brogden Middle School of Durham. This is the second of two grants the T&C Garden Club awarded to Durham Public Schools this year.

Brogden Middle School was recently awarded a $1,000 grant by NC Beautiful and the Town & Country Garden Club.  The Windows of Opportunity grant was given to Brogden for it’s planned efforts to improve the school’s grounds and to revitalize its pond area.  NC Beautiful executive director, Steve Vacendak presented the check during a special ceremony last week.

“The goal is to bring the pond back to life and provide a space for teachers to bring classes studying ecosystems and for students to observe habitat. With a new pump, koi fish, protective covering, plants and more, we can turn this dilapidated pond into a place all of our students and teachers want to be”, says Abby Exum, Brogden’s AIG Facilitator and Support Specialist.

School leaders say the project will also serve as a service learning opportunity for students and a video diary will be kept to document the transformation.

NC Beautiful has been providing environmental education and beautification opportunities that elevate the quality of life of North Carolinian's for almost 50 years.  Through the Windows of Opportunity competitive grant, teachers are rewarded for their innovation and creativity as they promote environmental stewardship with their students to improve appreciation of the environment. 

http://www.dpsnc.net/pages/Durham_Public_Schools/News/Brogden_Awarded_NC_Beautiful_G

Petals with Provenance: Heirloom Flowers

Spring’s plant catalogs with heirloom varieties. Photo: F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas.

            

By Bart Ziegler

WSJ, ZieglerFeb. 18, 2016                     

In 1792, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a fellow plant enthusiast to gush about the snail flower, an ornamental bean vine named for its buds that curl like the shell of a mollusk. It is “the most beautiful bean in the world,” Jefferson said of the purple-and-white flowers, whose heady scent resembles jasmine.

Despite the founding father’s endorsement, the snail flower, Vigna caracalla, fell out of favor, and seeds from the annual vine, a South American native, were no longer sold in the U.S., the fate of a surprising number of once-popular garden plants.

“We were looking all over for it,” said Peggy Cornett, coordinator of plants at Monticello, the Jefferson estate in Virginia. Eventually, the historic site’s horticultural staff located the beans in a European catalog, began cultivating them and now sells them on monticelloshop.org.

Heirloom vegetables have been the rage for more than a decade in the garden world, with foodies cooing over zebra-striped tomatoes and blue potatoes. But a lesser-known category of historic plants has its own devoted following: heirloom flowers.

Even as this spring’s mass-market plant catalogs promote the horticultural industry’s latest inventions—black petunias, anyone?—many gardeners choose to nurture such plants as the meadowsweet, available at heritageflowerfarm.com, which Emily Dickinson is believed to have tended in her Amherst, Mass., yard in the mid 1800s. The frilly white blooms were found in her dried-flower collection.

Cooking-school manager Alicia Guy, who grows antique dahlias at her home outside Seattle, said of doing so, “It makes me feel like I have a connection with gardeners from 100 years ago that transcends technological change.” Older varieties of the summer showstoppers unfurl in color combinations today’s versions can’t deliver. Bishop of Llandaff’s brilliant red petals and yellow stamens pop against its dark bronze-colored foliage. And Ms. Guy likes knowing her great-great grandmother might have cared for the same flowers.

While not strictly defined, heirloom flowers generally date to at least the first half of the 20th century, before modern breeding techniques, which serve the needs of wholesale greenhouses. Rapid and uniform growth are often prized over fragrance and longevity in the garden, said Peter Zale, curator at Longwood Gardens, a public garden west of Philadelphia. Ms. Guy said her heirloom dahlias tend to come back more reliably each spring than contemporary versions. Heirlooms usually come “true to seed” as well: Seeds they create produce the exact same color and variety—not always the case with modern hybrids.

The bragging rights historic plants give gardeners are well-founded. You can grow the same tulips planted in the White House Rose Garden when it was redesigned for President John F. Kennedy, in 1962; the variety of tuberoses Louis XIV enjoyed at Versailles; or the diminutive Silver Bells daffodils that author Eudora Welty tended in her Mississippi yard in the 1930s. All are available through Old House Gardens (oldhousegardens.com).      

Antique plants reward gardeners with quirkiness, too. Brilliant purple-blue blooms emerge along the 3-to-4-foot spikes of the perennial bee larkspur—a type of Delphinium elatum, the ancient European parent of modern delphiniums—but a peep at their deepest petals brings a surprise.

“It looks like a bee is hanging out of the flower, down to its fuzzy stripes,’’ said Amy Murray, coordinator of horticulture at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Mass., a historic site whose gardens host flowers popular from 1790 to 1840. Find bee larkspur seeds at anniesannuals.com.

Raising heirloom plants yields more than beauty: You ensure their survival. Catalogs from the late 1700s and early 1800s offered hundreds of varieties of hyacinths, said Scott Kunst, founder and owner of Old House Gardens, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Today, most purveyors sell a half-dozen or so types of these Easter favorites.

Heirloom flowers can’t be conserved in a museum like historic documents or antique furniture. “The only way to save them is to grow them,” Mr. Kunst said.

See specific heirloom flower profiles and entire article at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guide-to-planting-heirloom-flowerswith-links-to-thomas-jefferson-and-more-1455811830