Lowcountry Gardens

Savannah Garden Expo

Totaling the number of people who attend the ninth annual Savannah Garden Exposition each year is down-right difficult, said Kelly Carr, event director.

“I’ve heard the magic number is 3,000,” she said, adding that the event attracts tourists, locals and garden club members from all along the northeast coast. “It’s for everyone. We designed it that way, really.”

The three-day event will include complimentary arts and crafts activities for children, free lectures for all levels of green thumbs, open-air markets, garden picnics, wine tastings in private gardens, and auctions, to name a few activities. The event will take place from April 17-19 at the Roundhouse Railroad Museum. Tickets vary depending on the event, with proceeds benefiting the Historic Savannah Foundation and the Isaiah Davenport House Museum.

Athens Select touts sure bets for planting now.

Yes, there will be blooms for sure but the question is which, where and how many?

Many people who love to garden, do not, unfortunately like to plan ahead.

And most will succumb to the prettiest thing they see in the nursery with only the vaguest, if any, idea what or where they will plant it.

This approach leads to a less desirable effect than is hoped for, since a garden is not just a collection of plants but a work of art, a composition with all attendant joys and challenges and not to be undertaken carelessly. It also involves the extra dimension of time because it constantly evolves. However, along with the short lecture, help is at hand and may be found, where else but online at the Athens Select Web site.

Art expert to trace Asian influence on landscape design.

Sea Pines Garden Club will sponsor a special treat for Hilton Head Island garden lovers when internationally recognized Asian art expert and filmmaker Paula Haller presents a lecture and slide show program titled “Chinese and Japanese Gardens: Idyllic Retreats.”

The unique event will take place at 10 a.m. March 23 at Coligny Theatre and will last one hour. Tickets are $10 and are available (while they last), at the following locations: The Greenery at both Bluffton and Hilton Head locations, Christie’s Hallmark at Bluffton and Hilton Head locations, Pretty Papers at Wexford and Burke’s Main Street Pharmacy. Further ticket information may be had from Diana Norlander at (843) 363-6580. Ticket availability is limited to seating capacity of Coligny Theatre.

Musings on what it’s all about — for those who dig it.

Although it amounts to preaching to the choir, herewith a compendium of thoughts from gardeners who seem to grasp what it’s all about. Let us all get psyched up for the coming garden year!

If some expressions resonate more than others with various reader/gardeners, all contain a seed of reality, expressed poetically or more pragmatically. So, why garden? It is tempting to simply say that one gardens because he/she can’t help it. Is it genetic? Sometimes yea, sometimes nay. Well, what is the sweet mystery

then? Here follow several observations of devotees from the recent and distant past.  "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Who had the nerve to make such a bald pronouncement? Why, Cicero of course.

Nearby gardens meet great expectations.

The best New Year’s resolution you could possibly make for 2009 is to plan a trip, or several, to visit some of the outstanding gardens available within a day’s drive from Hilton Head Island.

These include three of the most renowned public gardens, not only in the Southeast, but in the entire country.

This is not to recommend a one-day round trip, because an overnight stay is necessary to fully enjoy the experience, although you can easily reach your destination in a day.

'Tis the time of year for reflection while we can still remember what was a success or failure, what was a wonderful surprise or what was a disappointment.

Then in January we can face forward confidently with a little background information to help us make every month and year in the garden more satisfying than the last. Isn’t that the goal after all, as Katharine White famously wrote in “Onward and Upward in the Garden”? A short list of standouts from the year just past would have to include “Knockout” roses, the new shrub rose and glamour girl of the rose community.

The colors are indeed “knockout,” breathtaking in their floriferous beauty Almost everything about them as promised in catalogues is true - that is, resistance to powdery mildew, blackspot, rust, Japanese beetles, leafhoppers, rose midge, drought, humidity and everything else the Lowcountry can throw at them, (except deer).

Successful container plantings require a focal point.

What makes a single plant the center of attraction?Is it color, form, height, uniqueness, or a bit of attitude?

Well, all of the above, but not necessarily at one and the same time.

A container wants a variety of plant material, either blending, contrasting or both, but the center plant is the one that will focus the attention for either good or bad.

The first consideration should probably be height as that will determine the relationship or proportion of the plantings to the container. It is important that the ratio be pleasing — that the height and mass of the plants be neither too small nor too large for the container.

Who invited them?

The title does not refer to weeds. Weeds are easily recognized for what they are and are not trying to fool you into believing otherwise. The barbarians, on the contrary, appear opulently cloaked and disguised to gain entrance into your garden. And the worst of it is that you invited them, providing space and opportunity to thrive! Thenceforth they are harder to be rid of than the legendary man who came to dinner. For the most part they are introduced through the pages of glossy catalogues emanating from everywhere except the South. Or maybe a garden tour of Europe raised expectations of what is possible in the Lowcountry. It is not news that, in the garden anyway, hope springs eternal.

At the top of this villainous list is the oft-touted Virginia creeper, praised for its stunning fall color adorning walls in England. If you fall for this blandishment, you will never be totally rid of it, as it pops up everywhere but never develops the promised fall color. Every excursion through your grounds will give you an opportunity to pluck out some of it. Well, you say, this is not England after all, but the Lowcountry of South Carolina, so how could one be so foolish?