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Digital Flower Pictures.com
Almost daily informative blog about plants, gardening and photography. Written by a professional Estate Gardener from Connecticut. |
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Articles from Digital Flower Pictures.com |
A Few Images From Skylands
2007-11-11 10:32:00
A Few Images From SkylandsThe New Jersey State Botanical GardenYesterday’s drive ended up taking me over to Skylands, the New Jersey State Botanical Garden. I had been there quite a few years ago and I vaguely remembered how nice it was. Sure it would have been better to be there a week or two ago but there was still plenty of things to see including a lot of foliage. It is a large collection of trees, perennials, shrubs and it looked like during the season annuals.Persian Parrottia (Parrotia persica) in full fall color.The weather was really crummy as there were a few spots of the snow left over from the night before. Cloudy, chilly (cold, actually) and windy were the key weather words for our visit. The sky was a flat gray rendering any pictures with it pretty much useless. I did have a pretty good day with the camera despite the sky and wind and I will be posting some of the photos this week. I was able to snag my ABC Wednesday picture for this week’s ‘Q’ post. I was worried ...
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Fallen Fall Foliage ~ Part 2
2007-11-10 06:54:00
Fallen Fall Foliage ~ Part 2We are off on a drive to try and find the last vestiges of our fall season. I took these pictures at work on Thursday. The first pictures are the fallen leaves of the Weeping Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum var. magnificum 'Pendula'). It is a beautiful tree that has grown into a graceful specimen. It has actually gotten fairly huge, probably about 40 feet tall.This is a shot of the leaves on the ground with what I call the ‘Twins’ in the background (you can only see one of them the other one is to the right). These aren’t the ones but I actually did plant two Japanese Maples for a pair of twins that a customer had. They plant a tree each time a child is born (three so far). These trees ‘Red Foliage Selections’ (Acer palmatum) from Weston Nurseries. They have gotten a lot bigger over time also. They were planted in 1998 and I have been pruning the tops to keep them shorter. The nice thing about these is they hold their color during the seas ...
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Fallen Fall Foliage
2007-11-09 05:05:00
Fall leaves of the Maidenhair Tree (Ginkgo biloba)It has been a strange foliage season here in Connecticut. The timing just doesn’t seem to be following our normal routine. A lot of the leaves just turned brown and fell off and some other trees are more beautiful than ever. While walking around the Estate yesterday I was struck by how beautiful some the fallen leaves looked. I knew I had missed the Ginkgo Tree by a matter of a day or two because of the several inches of leaves that completely covered the area underneath it. The Ginkgo gets beautiful yellow color and after a few days almost every leaf falls off the tree at once.These are from one of my favorite trees in the garden. There are actually two specimens of Fernleaf Fullmoon Japanese Maple (Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium') growing but since this one is in full sun it gets better color. That is a big name but it is a tree that is big on attributes. I will have a post that deals with this tree in a couple of days.I bought a n ...
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'Sango Kaku' Coral Bark Japanese Maple
2007-11-08 05:14:00
Coral Bark Japanese MapleAcer palmatum ‘Sango Kaku’(AY-ser) (pahl-MAY-tum)Synonym: SenkakiOnce I saw the light slanting down on the Coral Bark it was time for a picture! I love this little tree and usually plant one or a group in every garden I design. It has a small stature (in this area) for a Japanese Maple and grows in shade, although the twig color appears better in sun. I wouldn’t call it dwarf but it isn’t full size either, it certainly seems to be a semi-slow grower. The lime green foliage is a nice contrast during the spring and summer but the real show starts when the leaves turn bright yellow in the fall. The fall color is very persistent and then seems to drop off all at once to reveal the second show of the coral red twigs and branches for the winter. The branch color does fade a little after the wood ages after several years but it is still very attractive.I grow several cultivars of Coral Bark Japanese Maple but I think ‘Sango Kaku’ is still my favorite. It i ...
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ABC Wednesday ~ Wild Sweet William
2007-11-07 04:37:00
Wild Sweet WilliamPhlox maculata 'Natasha'(floks) (mak-yuh-LAH-tuh)Synonyms: Meadow Phlox, Spotted PhloxIf you are here for Wordless Wednesday scroll down to the next post.Seems like just a couple of weeks ago I was featuring another Phlox for ABC Wednesday. This one is new to me and I planted a few of them on the advice of the person at the nursery. I was lucky they had been cut back in the summer so I was able to enjoy this blooms a couple of weeks ago. It still maybe flowering, as I haven’t seen the plant in about 10 days. Each flower looks like it was hand painted and has a delicate look about it. This Phlox grows to about 24 inches and has fragrant flowers. Why it was recommended was its resistance to Powdery Mildew (another ‘P’), which the Garden Phlox (P. paniculata) always seems to get.I had an outbreak of Powdery Mildew in the Rose Garden last week and sure enough when I examined the Lilacs planted nearby they were loaded with it. I have never noticed it so late in the ...
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Garden Mum ‘Sandy’
2007-11-06 04:49:00
Garden Mum ‘Sandy’Don’t go looking for this mum at your local garden center. I took this picture last year and when I searched for ‘Sandy’ it was on the discard list from Yoder Brothers. I going to assume that means it is no longer available. Too bad, as I enjoyed growing it last year. The color is considered bronze and to me it is a real fall color. It has been replaced with ‘Dazzling Stacy’. The discard list is pretty long and kind of confirms my thought that it is difficult to get the same varieties the next year.I reached into the archive because I didn’t shoot any pictures last weekend and I have been working on a house that doesn’t have much of a garden, so I haven’t been taking my camera to work. I going to have to score a couple of shots somewhere this weekend. I need to get a couple of extras since winter is coming up. I am bit like a squirrel, gathering my pictures for winter.This picture is from 2005 and was taken at the New York Botanical Garden. I used ...
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White Flowers
2007-11-05 04:53:00
White FlowersLike the post of last week on Pink Flowers I had a few photos of white flowers hanging around and thought I would do a post on them. I really like white in the garden as it pretty much mixes with any other color for me. It looks good set off by a dark background. I am not a fan of all white gardens but that is just personal taste, I would never put someone down for having one.I always thought this first plant was called Star Jasmine but I have found out that is more correctly called Angelwing Jasmine. The scientific name is Jasminum nitidum and it has several other synonyms including Shining Jasmine and Confederate Jasmine. I guess calling it Star Jasmine is okay since I found several references with that name, but there are several other plants that have that name also. Maybe some of the Zone 9 and above gardeners can chime in on the best common name. I have been growing this one at work and it grew well this year and was blooming when I moved it back inside a couple of w ...
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Sparkleberry Holly
2007-11-04 08:06:00
Sparkleberry HollyIlex x ‘Sparkleberry’This is an interesting deciduous Holly that I have been growing for several years. I always thought it was a cultivar of Winterberry Holly but after looking it up I found out that it is a cross between Finetooth Holly (Ilex serrata) and our native Winterberry or Black Alder (Ilex verticillata). According to my research ‘Sparkleberry’ was the result of a controlled cross between the two plants in 1961 by William Kosar. It came out of the National Arboretum’s plant breeding program with the desire to have the I. serrata’s heavy fruiting characteristics and the adaptability and larger berry size of the Winterberry. From my point of view they were extremely successful.I have my plants on the edge of the woodland in full sun. They can also tolerate part sun and very wet sites. Although you will get more berries when they are planted in full sun. I don’t have the male pollinator ‘Apollo’ that was developed at the same time. I do have s ...
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Garden Mum ‘Madeline’
2007-11-03 14:27:00
Garden Mum ‘Madeline’This Chrysanthemum caught my eye while I was at the garden center last week. I was looking at some plants and also wanted to get a few pictures of any late blooming stuff they might have. It was Lexington Gardens in Newtown, CT. It is a wonderful place that often stocks rare and unusual plant material. They have a great greenhouse and a lot of crafty stuff. I wasn’t prepared for them having the Christmas displays up, although I remembered after that during my brief retail nursery career that everything was seasonal and had to be rotated in and out quickly.‘Madeline’ is a new mum from Yoder Brothers and is from their Prophets series of garden mums. It is actually a whole new flower form called ‘quilled anemone’. The flowers are also kind of a unique color, not what I would call a bicolor or two tone but it has that effect. According to the Yoder Brothers website there “five basic flower forms are commonly found in garden mums: button, daisy, decorati ...
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More 50mm/1.8 Photos
2007-11-02 04:55:00
Here are some more shots from the 50mm/1.8. In some ways I against having too many lenses in your bag as it complicates things. I start thinking well if I only had this lens or that lens. Basically you need to have a couple of good lenses and a pretty good camera to get good shots.The first picture greeted as I walked out the door yesterday morning. Too bad the day didn’t live up to this sunrise. It was just one of those days where a lot of little things kept me from getting done what I wanted. I did get the sprinkler system blown out but it took all day. I did manage to walk around and get a few pictures. This is a native tree from the Estate. Pretty good color for a seedling.I read on Ki’s blog that his ‘Beni Kawa’ Japanese Maple was in fall color already and many of his other Maples hadn’t changed yet. So of course I had to check my specimen and sure enough it was coloring up. There are some other Coral Bark Maples planted near this one (‘Japanese Sunrise’ and ‘Sango ...
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Botanical Shots with 50mm/1.8 Nikon Lens
2007-11-01 05:04:00
Botanical Shots with 50mm/1.8 Nikon LensI picked this lens up during the weekend, mostly for trying some handheld night photography and trying to learn more about taking portraits. Normally I would have changed over to the 60mm macro lens when I took my camera to work the last two days but decided that I would try out the new lens on some botanical shots. Well I am glad I did. It is really sharp and other than having to take a couple of steps back it did pretty good. For the most part I don’t like cropping and it is going to be an adjustment trying to get full frame pictures with the 50mm but the sharpness and color is right on.The Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) was the last in the garden, which has about 75 of them. There are probably more than that as I have been encouraging them to seed. The color here is true, it was more purple than usual, maybe because of the frost. It was the first attempt at a flower shot and I think it did okay. Having to zoom with your feet is somet ...
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ABC Wednesday ~ ‘Scarlett O’Hara’ Winterberry Holly
2007-10-31 04:46:00
ABC Wednesday ~ ‘Scarlett O’Hara’ Winterberry HollyWinterberry HollyIlex verticillata ‘Scarlett O’Hara’(EYE-leks) (ver-ti-si-LAH-tuh)Synonyms: Black AlderThis week brought a wealth of ‘O’ photos. I actually had a few extra that I didn’t use. Those will probably be popping up here and there over the next few weeks. I am the only one that is thinking about next week’s letter right after this post? ‘P’ should be easy. I am thinking of something already.We pretty much wrapped up the gardening season here this week. Both Monday and Tuesday featured killing frosts. In one way I am sorry to see it go, in another it was a fairly terrible season to grow things around here. We had a late Spring, cool summer, drought in late summer early fall and all that really didn’t add up to a great growing season. I guess some plants liked the conditions and flourished and some didn’t and didn’t do well. All in all Connecticut’s climate is fairly amazing because of the amount ...
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