Serenity in the Garden

'Elizabeth' Magnolia was bred by Brooklyn Botanic Garden in Ossining, NY.   I love yellow-flowering magnolias. The cover of a Garden Design Magazine features one and it makes my heart skip a beat. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden introduced the yellow-flowering magnolia to the world. BBG  launched the breeding program in 1953 at its R&D facility, the Kitchawan Research Center, in Ossining, New York (the town next door to me). They bred eight magnolias before the program shut down at Kitchawan in 1991. These BBG hybrids are still available today. These beauties flower between mid-April and mid-May. Magnolia  x ‘Elizabeth’ One of my favorites is  Magnolia  x ‘Elizabeth’  which was introduced in 1977. It is a cross between  M. acuminata  and  M. denudata.  Dr. Evamaria Sperber, who helped start BBG’s breeding program bred this tree. It is valued because it flowers before the leaves come out which makes an elega...

My new book Floratopia is out! I am so happy to finally be able to share flower garden design ideas with everyone. I have been working with annual and perennial flowers in all my landscape projects for decades and yet I wrote about everything but flowers.  Odd. Well, that has now been corrected. I have amassed a collection of flower tips accompanied by my photos and categorized them in 6 sections in the book.  Osteospermum Serenity Series Why did I write this book? Here is an excerpt from my introduction: "Flowers are such an important part of our living world—offering food and habitat to our threat-  ened pollinators such as bees, birds, butterflies, and more. That is why I chose to write about  flowers and flower garden design. I have worked with flowers as a landscape designer and  horticulturist all my adult life, and I know how wonderful it is to open the door to the sight of  colorful blooms in the garden. More important, I believe we need flower gard...

ZOOM TALK - June 9 at 6 pm EST  Sponsored by the Los Angeles Association of Professional Landscape Designers - Go here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gardentopia-with-jan-johnsen-tickets-106030600380 Join award-winning landscape designer and garden writer Jan Johnsen to discuss the concepts in her latest book, Gardentopia. About this Event “Gardentopia is that rare marriage of the art of landscaping and the technical knowledge of how to compose a landscape―boiled down to readily understood and easily executed actions. This book puts you in the driver’s seat and shows you how to chart the course to your own personal garden utopia.” - Margie Grace, Grace Design Associates Any backyard has the potential to refresh and inspire if you know what to do. Jan Johnsen’s new book,  Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces , will delight all garden lovers with over 130 lushly illustrated landscape design and planting suggestions. Ms. Johns...

The French have long understood that vegetable gardens can be places of beauty. They located their traditional  potagers , or kitchen gardens, outside their kitchen windows and included vertical structures, flowers, and artistic plant groupings designed for aesthetic appeal.  Flowers look beautiful and attract the all important pollinators to your garden. Read the wonderful article I have linked here for learning how to include beautiful flowers and more in your veggie garden.  Infographic - go here for more

Now More than Ever - Lets Get Kids Gardening -  When did we abandon the simple pleasures of growing carrots in milk cartons, planting hollyhocks along old fences or having fragrant lilacs at the corner of a house?  Let's reclaim this as part of our ordinary life... Hollyhocks We all have such memories - even city kids like me... It might be the 'weed' that smelled like licorice (anise hyssop),  or the buttercups that you put under your chin,  or the honeysuckle that you could suck a teeny drop of 'honey' from,  Honeysuckle the sweet smell of roses as you walked past a certain house,  or the bright yellow daffodils in early spring that sprang up overnight it seemed. daffodils by Jan Johnsen I would like us to revive 'garden memories' - to bring flowers, plants and gardens back into our lives. This kind of knowledge has been cast aside in favor of math and physics but I say children can learn thos...

Every year I reprint this at dandelion time where I live-   The dreaded Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) , for which we spend tremendous amounts of weed killer money to eradicate, has been prized over the years for its medicinal and nutritious properties. In fact, dandelion roots, flowers and "dandelion greens" (leaves) are all edible! Dandelions are a rich source of vitamins A, B complex, C, and D, as well as minerals such as iron, potassium, and zinc. And in traditional medicine, dandelion roots and leaves were used to treat liver problems. Native Americans used dandelion decoctions (liquid made by boiling down the herb in water) to treat kidney disease, swelling, skin problems, heartburn, and stomach upset. Young Dandelion leaves • Dandelion roots can be roasted as a coffee-substitute, or boiled and stir-fried as a cooked vegetable. • Dandelion flowers can be made into a wine. • Dandelion greens can be boiled, as you would spin...

Just as a forest is connected by an underground fungal network, enabling individual trees to communicate with each other, and can warn each other of danger by releasing chemicals into the air, so are we all connected together deep within, sharing the wisdom and knowing of the Earth, our common home.  And this network is sending us warning signs, that our present way of life is not only unsustainable, but over .  Even when this pandemic comes to an end, we cannot afford to “return to normal” for very long. This present crisis can awaken us to the reality that we need a new way of life, one that is truly sustainable with the Earth and Her “other-than-human” inhabitants.  This virus can be heard as a part of the cry of the Earth—calling to us to change, adapt, awaken from our dream of eternal economic growth,  the nightmare that is destroying so much of Her fragile beauty and wonder. - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee go here for the entire post -   h...