Daina Savage

Our unusually hot summer may be browning out lawns and killing evergreens, but heat-loving plants like crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) are putting out exuberant displays right now. At the edge of their hardiness zone, (the indica species is hardy to zone 7, the fauriei species to zone 6), the plants are not always reliable performers unless they have plenty of heat and light. (My neighbor’s 10-year-old plant never really bloomed until this summer, when a storm took out the shade of the pine tree next to it.) With arrestingly brilliant flower clusters, followed by vibrant berries and radiant autumn leaf color, they’re a late season standout in a mixed garden bed. Undemanding plants, they won’t flower well if fertilized or watered too heavily. Wait until late spring to prune them when new growth emerges. The National Arboretum websitehas a guide to help with selections, as well as a resource for developing new hybrids like the miniature “Pocomoke” and promising “Arapaho” and “Cheyenne” varieties.

When you and your plants are wilting in the summer heat, it’s a pleasure to have no-fuss bloomers brightening your garden with little effort. Versatile daylilies serve as a bridge between seasons in the perennial bed, blossoming in a multitude of colors, forms, and heights. Best known for a trumpet shape, the more than 13,000 cultivars of daylilies can be now found rounded or ruffled, pinched and curled, with spidery trails or with fluffy cascades of petals, with each flower blooming for a single day. Some varieties boast dozens of blooms per stem. Everblooming and reblooming varieties extend the show throughout the summer, with brief rests between new waves of blooms. Daylily petals and pods with their spicy taste, can dress up a salad.
Daylilies can range from foot-high front-of-the-border features to towering six-foot back-bed fencerows of color, depending on the cultivar. So be sure to plant accordingly. Space them at least a foot apart to allow for them to multiply. As they multiply over the years, you’ll want to dig up the clumps and separate them to ensure good blooms. Either plant the divisions in your expanding garden beds, or share with friends and family.
To help whittle down your choices, look for them in full bloom in the Lititz front yard of Jim and Sue Stauffer. These avid daylily growers open their trial beds to the public each year. Bursting with nearly 130 different varieties, the blooms will be on display until the 18th. The couple will be hosting open houses at 315 East Woods Drive, Lititz this weekend and next, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Private garden tours can also be arranged for garden clubs and civic groups.

The first bite of real, locally grown strawberries has to be one of the best sensations of spring. Now, when they’re coming in like gangbusters, the abundant harvest is a luxury. If you don’t have a couple dozen plants tucked into your landscape as an edible groundcover or potted up in containers, plan on changing that next year. A bundle of 25 plants will yield a daily handful for cereal or smoothies through the season. A local favorite, Earliglo, is usually producing by the beginning of the month. Be sure to pick regularly as rotting berries will attract slugs and diseases. At the end of the month, when your June-bearing strawberries are finished producing, it will be time to rejuvenate the bed for next year by thinning the beds and fertilizing. After a few years, remove the mother plants and select strong runners to create the next harvest.

If it’s spring, it must be garden tour season, a must for voyeurs and avid green thumbs alike. Where else can you view tropical poolscapes perched near school athletic fields, shady green havens tucked amid otherwise nondescript housing developments, or the latest exotic plant offerings in otherwise traditional settings. It’s the juxtapositions and the possibilities that make these tours so fascinating, and the bonus take-away is a solid list of what not to do, and what to add to your own landscape.

Find inspiration in Lancaster County through three touring opportunities.

May 22-23: The new Lancaster “Secret Gardens” Tour, was organized by a number of the county’s top landscaping companies as a way to showcase some of their premier properties. The tour is a fundraiser for the local community-built playground, Daniel’s Den, which is open to people of all abilities, but is especially for children with disabilities. In addition to the 13 properties on the tour, Daniel’s Den will also be a stop, where drinks and snacks will be provided. Esbenshades Garden Centers is donating annuals for children to plant as an activity at the playground stop. Advance tickets 
can be ordered online for $10 or purchased the day of the event for $15. Tickets are good for both days. Children may tour for free. Visit the website at www.lancastergardentour.com.

June 12-13: The 27th annual Demuth garden tour features the homes as well as the gardens of unique Lancaster properties. This granddaddy of Lancaster garden tours runs 10 am. To 5 p.m. both days, rain or shine. Tickets are $15 in advance or $18 on the day of the tour. Tickets can be purchased online at www.demuth.org, at the Demuth Museum, or by phone at 299-9940.

Ongoing: The annual open-ended Gardens of the Susquehanna Tour includes 54 area gardens, from intimate city courtyards to glorious meadows and grand formal spaces. It’s organized by the volunteers of President James Buchanan’s Wheatland Garden Club as a fundraiser for the historic estate’s landscape. A directory and ticket to the tour is $20, available from members of the club or online at www.LancasterHistory.org/gardenclub.

The fickle cycles of spring weather often leave me mourning the abbreviated bloom time of some of my favorite plants. This year my lilacs bloomed and were browning in the space of three days, done too quickly to enjoy for Mother’s Day bouquets. Thankfully, the late blooming weigela compensates, stretching the spring display into June. Weigela florida, a deciduous shrub often dismissed as old fashioned, is returning to favor as new cultivars like the dwarf “Variegata Nana”, variegated “My Monet”, and dark burgundy foilaged “Wine and Roses” find fans. Easy to grow with a graceful arching habit, weigla does best in full sun but will tolerate some shade. The fragrent tubular flowers in shades of pink, red and white, are great hummingbird attractants. Although the plant is appealing for three seasons, it’s best to mix in with some evergreens to help with the barrenness of its winter appearance.

The month is filled with spectacular flowering trees as magnolias and dogwoods all welcome the season in clouds of pink frothiness. A drive down President Avenue, or a visit to the Amos Herr House, offers delightful examples. Less showy, but just as loved, are the ornate purplish-pink flowers of the Eastern Redbud, cercis Canadensis, decorating our woodlands. Whether encountered on a hike or driving through a neighborhood, this harbinger of spring is a reliable understory tree that thrives in challenging conditions. Maturing at only 20 to 25 feet with bark that grows more attractive as it ages, it’s perfect for small lots and under powerlines. Its hardiness and compact size earned it the 2010 Urban Tree of the Year award from the Society of Municpal Arborists.

The spring-like temperatures of the past week have us positively giddy. As the melting snow recedes, the emergence of dainty snowdrops, cheery crocuses, and the sweeping yellow waves of winter aconite turn a “snowmageddon” winter to memory. We’re already seeing last year’s Johnny jump-ups in bloom and garden centers are filled with all varieties of pansies to complement your emerging daffodils. But we’ve weathered enough March surprises to know that another snowstorm or cold snap is a very real possibility. Which is why we like to satisfy our spring fever with some greenhouse-grown primroses that give us indoor color while we wait for the last frost date to pass. The common English Primrose has a sweet nostalgic quality and a broad color palate. Many varieties have a contrasting eye to add interest. Indoors, keep the soil moist and the plants out of direct sunlight. Once it’s safe to plant outdoors, find a shaded location where it can thrive and provide you with blooms next spring.

It’s time for the overwhelming visual cacophony that is the Philadelphia Flower Show, with displays that suspend disbelief in a combination Cirque du Soleil-Mummers Parade riot of color and structure.
This grandmommy of all flower shows, now in its 182nd year, offers a globe-trotting theme “Passport to the World.” The show opens Feb. 28 and runs through Mar. 7.
The central feature takes a page from the Rose Parade with a towering 28-foot-high hot-air balloon covered in more than 79,000 dried flowers. This Victorian-era Explorer’s Garden display is a nod to the flower show’s roots of introducing newly discovered international plants to American audiences like magnolias, peonies, birds of paradise, camilla and rubber trees. Oversized Wardian cases showcasing giant floating waterlily pads and blooms will be placed throughout the main feature, mixed with heritage plants collected through the 1838-42 Wilkes Expedition and more recent finds from Longwood Gardens Inc., Morris Arboretum, the University of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Botanic Gardens.
This year the flower show has added the word International to its name to better reflect the influence and participation of horticulturalists and designers from around the world. In the feature gardens, visitors will encounter life-size elephant floral topiary next to lotus-filled pool in India, 100,000 flowering bulbs in the Netherlands, Zulu headdresses and drummers in the South African display, a plunging 15-foot Brazilian jungle waterfall, a formal orchid celebration in Singapore, and a Maori celebration of native New Zealand plants.
Also the landscapes and plants of China, Japan, Thailand, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, the Caribbean, and an artful perspective on the northern polar region’s Aurora Borealis will all be featured in the show.
Complementing the international flavor, daily musical and dance performances will be held on the Explorer’s Stage, including classical Indian musicians Bollywood-style dances, and Brazilian music and dance. And look out overhead as handlers from the Philadelphia Zoo set exotic trained parrots aloft throughout the show to add to the spectacle.
For those flower-weary, cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, and a display of fashions will also be featured. A bevy of activities appeals to the younger set, with family friendly pricing packages designed to woo all and a special program to teach kids how to create their own home vegetable gardens.

Navigating the show
Serious plant lovers will spend the entire day, if not multiple days to take it all in. The more casual visitors should plan for at least five hours. Basic tickets are $23, but a number of special packages are available.
A favorite stress-free way to take it all in is to hop aboard Amtrak, then take SEPTA to the convention center (free with your Amtrak ticket stub). Before you walk into the Convention Center, stop next door at the Reading Terminal Market to fill up on great, fresh food, much of it grown here. After the show, Chinatown makes for a good dinner option, but with so many great restaurants to choose from, you may want to research one to suit your tastes before you arrive. Many are serving up special Flower Show menus and pricing discounts.
If possible, avoid visiting March 6, as the only Saturday of the flower show is often the most packed.
Another strategy, visit the vendors in the Marketplace and check out the results in the competitive classes in the morning, taking in the major exhibits after noon when the crowds tend to thin.
Give your feet a rest at one of the 150 scheduled gardening presentations.
Bring a camera and a notepad to document plants you want to try this year, or save up for eventually. A number of displays will feature hardy, easy-to-grow plants for novice gardeners.
The show runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. through the week and from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Now, as the snow melts and the maple trees turn tumescent, it’s sugar-harvesting time.
Miles of plastic tubing may have replaced the traditional buckets, but the end result remains just as sweet.
Mary Lee Zechman, known as “The Maple Lady” in Lancaster County, recalls the intense labor needed to collect when the sap was running in the maple trees on her family’s Tioga farm.
“We were always cold and wet,” she recalls. “My dad would build a fire in the woods for us to warm up with, and in the sugar shack, he would hard boil eggs in the sap for us to eat. Our greatest treat was to get to spend the night with him in the sugar shack, sleeping on cardboard atop the wood piles while he read Zane Grey novels to stay awake.”
Her brother Richard Patterson became a maple syrup entrepreneur as a teen, creating his own candy cakes in muffin tins to sell at school. He later took over the Sabinsville farm, growing the operation from the 600 buckets collected by horse drawn sleigh of his childhood to the 80,000 taps carrying sap through hundreds of miles of tubing through the woods to the modern evaporator.
He expects to harvest 1.6 million gallons of sap this year, yielding 30,000 gallons of syrup during the intense six-week season, which still necessitates 24-hour vigils.
“If the sap’s running, we’re boiling,” says Zechman.
Read the rest of this entry »

The best way to beat the midwinter blues? Take a road trip to the charm city for a sensory stimulation to carry you through until spring. A quick day trip yielded towering dinosaurs, a glam version of Icarus soaring through the heavens, and a fanciful confectionary creation that left us hungry for more. First stop, the Maryland Science Center with its dinosaur hall, hands-on kinetic Newton’s Alley room, and gross-out body exhibits including the guess-that-sound display. Of course we had to try out the bed of nail as well as get our goggles and lab coats on for the WetLab experiments. Truly interactive, with a “please touch” ethos, the Science Center inspires wonder in the small set and engages otherwise jaded teens. The grown-ups got their giggle on as well, engaging the laws of physics through play.

Next stop, the nearby American Visionary Art Museum, is a “wow” at first sight with its tiled mirrored exterior, towering kinetic sculptures, and whimsical appendages including a bird’s nest, pointing hand, and sparkle tree. Inside, the exhibits are a mix of playful inventiveness and touching expressions of creative souls. The untrained artists on display evoke wonder and whimsy. Housed in the annex, the hands-on kinetic exhibits are the most kid-friendly of the displays. The outdoor sculpture exhibit with its spectacular tree fort is a favorite.
A late lunch at Mr. Rain’s Fun House on the third floor of the museum made for a spectacular and memorable conclusion to the visit. The restaurant carries the fun and funky vibe of the museum through its decor and menu, featuring 1950s era American classic comfort foods punched up with an internationally-influnced twist. Entrees are colorful and inventive, but it was the dessert that made a lasting impression.

The Cotton Candy Baked Alaska is alone worth the trip. This mid-century American classic turns into a festive volcano of pink and blue cotton candy flavored ice cream and meringue, with a lava explosion of cotton candy flowing down the sides.
A stroll through the Inner Harbor is a necessity of every Baltimore trip, and walking off lunch makes room for a second treat at the amazing Pitango Gelato with its clean, classic flavors crafted from grass-fed organic milk. Our favorite midwinter splurge? The unbelievably decadent hot chocolate. Pure liquid indulgence.
Satiated in mind and body, we’re fortified to weather the rest winter plans to dish up.