Yesterday was the first Thanksgiving in years that we did not go and tour the conservatory at Longwood Gardens. So, here are some garden videos in case anyone else is missing a garden. I'm starting with Longwood, where Associate Director of Display Design Jim Sutton tours the Chrysanthemum Festival, which traditionally opens in October and runs through mid-November. Then (below the jump), from Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, we've got Pocket Gardens Surprise: A Bit of England. After that, in case you're still hungry after yesterday's feasting, we have Paul Blackmore, the Fuqua Conservatory Manager at Atlanta Botanical Garden, talking about cacao trees. (That last video was posted during their "Chocolate Covered Weekend" back in September, and you can find a few recipes & whatnot at their YouTube channel.
Yay, more garden videos!
???
Longwood must be beautiful in autumn. A horticulturist from our Boatnic gardens, Barbara Wheeler, is a Longwood fellow and spent the last year at Longwood, living on site, partly during lockdown. I think she first went there 25 years ago so it must have been amazing to see the changes. My own garden should be called Thickweed. Since going ‘spray free’ it is just thriving with weeds. Good for insects, but triple the work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEiYMi5lNTA
Here is something you might like, Robin. It is about 15 minutes of a ‘grandma’ in a beautiful village in China, harvesting and making tofu from scratch. Her house has no water supply so every day she carries about 60lb of water up the hill so she can make tofu etc. it’s in the same low key as those Siberian fur trapping docos.
It is really quite pretty in the fall!
And aha, this is Barbara Wheeler on Freaks of the plant world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpmsnUJCe7A
(And aha #2, I was not pronouncing Dunedin correctly, so I’ve learned something already.)
I hope it was not awful for her to come so far and be confined when the pandemic back home was being dealt with so much better.
Will watch the tofu grandma this weekend, thanks!
lol, “Thickweed”! I’ll have to think of a similarly clever and candid name for my garden, which is quite messy right now. With all the exterior painting going on, I haven’t done a proper autumn clean-up yet. Luckily, our climate at this time of year is mild enough that I can keep fussing with that through New Year’s.
You should be proud of your Longwood Gardens. I’ve just finished rewatching that fly-through video of it on YouTube
It is a wonderful place to have nearby