Better Homes & Gardens is providing free passes to a long list of gardens, nationwide. All you have to do is sign up.

Adkins Arboretum is the only Maryland Garden on the list, but there are plenty of others nearby in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D.C., including Longwood Gardens and the Smithsonian Gardens.

If you have a favorite public garden, check to see if it is offering free admission or a special program on National Public Garden Day.

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The purpose of the gardens at Baltimore's National Aquarium is to demonstrate the beauty of the native plants of the Chesapeake Bay and encourage visitors to consider planting some of these native varieties in their own gardens.

To help you with that process, Garden Variety has a list of plants for each of the "regional" gardens outside the Aquarium, from the marshlands to the Allegheny mountains.

But don't let these lists keep you from visiting the gardens. Just take them along so you can identify what plants and shrubs you'd like for your own garden.

(And check out Jed Kirschbaum's photo gallery of the Aquarium gardens.)

Continue reading "Baltimore Aquarium's Waterfront Park: a plant list" »

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There are 90,000 square feet of garden space at the entrance to the aquarium and even the stone paths around them are designed to illustrate the tides and waves of the bay.

Chris Partain is the senior horticulturalist at the aquarium -- the plant person among all those fish people -- and she is in charges of keeping the gardens filled with native plants, including the salt march beds that require her to dust them 50 pounds of salt every week.

(View Jed Kirschbaum's photo gallery of the gardens.)

Continue reading "Baltimore's National Aquarium: the gardens" »

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Noted garden writer Susan Harris, who blogs for Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville, writes of her recent visit to Ladew Gardens and how she was "wow'ed" by all the gardens in Monkton, not just the famous topiary garden.

There are some wonderful pictures on the blog, and Susan also recounts her conversation with head gardener Tyler Diehl about how he keeps his lawns so perfect without polluting the entire watershed.

There is excellent information there for all you lawn nuts out there.

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If Emily Dickinson's neighbors saw her gardening at her Amherst, Mass., home in the moonlight, they might have thought her eccentric.

She was that. But the poet was also troubled by very sensitive eyes, and the sunlight hurt them.

But she did love her gardens, and the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx celebrates the poet and gardener with a new exhibition that opens this weekend and continues until June 13.

It is part of a series of exhibitions that demonstrate the role and influence of their gardens on major literary figures. The New York Times describes the thinking behind the exhibition and provides a slideshow of its elements.

Continue reading "Emily Dickinson's Gardens" »

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The sale is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $15 for the sale and $25 if you wish to attend the sale and also hear a lecture by noted horticulturalist and hellebore expert David Culp at 11 a.m.

Visitors will also be able to tour the gardens, the house and the nature walk.

There will also be a preview sale from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. The fee is $75 for Ladew members and $100 for non-members.

To get your tickets, call 410-557-9570, ext 224 Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Continue reading "Ladew Topiary Gardens plant sale" »

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Baltimore's Cylburn Arboretum reopens Saturday with a multi-million-dollar makeover that features a new visitors center, restored gardens and, for the first time ever, parking!

There will be a ribbon-cutting and dedication at 11 a.m. and an afternoon of family and garden activities - plus food - begins at 12:30 p.m.

Closed since the fall of 2008, the post-Civil War Cylburn Mansion will also have composting toilets in its restrooms, geothermal heating and cooling and a newly paved two-lane road to make it easier to enter the 207-acre site from Greenspring Avenue.

But the star of this weekend's show will be the Vollmer Visitor's Center, build into the side of a hill  with a "green roof" and interior paneling of natural woods native to Maryland. In addition, a classroom for up to 100 people has been added

Cylburn is a city-owned gem, with 3 1/2 miles of walking trails, but it wasn't very accessible, there was really no place to park and there was no place for visitors to learn about the center and its collection of trees.

Continue reading "A makeover for Baltimore's Cylburn Arboretum" »

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Categories: Public gardens