12. Sir Walter A few days into the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina, a fellow garden writer glanced up at the statue in front of the convention centre that we’d passed about a million times and realized it was Sir Walter Raleigh. I’m not sure what took us so long to make the [...]
11. Bottle trees Discovering new plants is a big part of why I attend conferences such as the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina. It can also be frustrating, especially if the plants aren’t hardy enough for my USDA Zone 5 garden in Toronto. None-the-less, I’m always captivated by shrubs, trees and [...]
10. Play Checks My family, friends and most passersby who spy the newspaper on the front porch at 9 a.m. know that I’m not a morning person. So, when I dragged myself out of bed to attend the 8 a.m. keynote speech at the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh, I sincerely hoped it would [...]
9. BirdCam “Look at the birdie!” has never had more meaning. While roaming the exhibit hall for new gardening products at the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina, I found a great bird-watching gadget. The Audubon BirdCam actually lets you capture images of the birds that visit your backyard feeder. This weather-resistant outdoor [...]
8. Private Gardens The story tours of private gardens are a real treat of any Garden Writers Symposium, and the 2009 symposium in Raleigh was no exception. These tours offer a chance to see the best gardens of the region, to talk with the garden-makers and to discover new plants, plant combinations, and design ideas. [...]
7. Scuppernongs For a gal who grew up with a grape vine in her backyard you’d think I’d know a grape when I see one, but scuppernongs had me scuppered. The size of ping-pong balls, these juicy fruits were nestled into pint-sized boxes lined up on the open shelves of more than a few vendors [...]
6. Natural landscapes for the real world Larry Weaner, a landscape architect based in Glenside, Pennsylviania, opened his talk on “Breaking the Rules” at the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh with a story about how Native Americans were this continent’s first ecologists. Among their sustainable practices was the deliberate division the carex plants [...]
Story tours are a popular part of Garden Writers Symposiums. We all board buses, usually at ungodly hours of the morning, to tramp through public and private gardens. It’s a real challenge to take a photo without a single garden writer in the frame, and just as difficult to stay out of the way of [...]
Who would have thought that a lecture on plant pests and disease would be one of the highlights of the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina? Here’s why Jim Chatfield’s talk ranked #3 of 12 great things I found at Raleigh. 3. Jim Chatfield Got diseased or buggy plants? Who you gonna call? [...]
At the 2009 Garden Writers Symposium in Raleigh North Carolina, I fell in love with… 2. Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’ Wandering deep within the display gardens at Plant Delights, I lost my heart to Euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’. I stopped myself from sighing and drooling over this gem of a plant only long enough to whip out [...]
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