The Georgeson Botanical Garden & Other Alaskan Flora

Posted on August 10, 2021 by admin

One of the channels on my hotel TV in Fairbanks was essentially a continuous commercial for places to visit in that part of Alaska. All kinds of tourist activities or things to buy to remind you of your visit.

Here’s a thought for the Great Alaskan Bowl Co. of Fairbanks: noting that your product was featured in the 2017 “Made in America Week” event at the White House, however much of an honor that might seem to be, and however excellent your paper-birch wood bowls might be, could be a way to alienate as many potential buyers as it impresses. Just a thought.

The only TV recommendation I took to heart was a suggestion to visit the Georgeson Botanical Garden on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

At the end of July, the eight-acre garden is a lush place, flush with flowers and varieties of vegetables I wouldn’t have associated with Alaska. But I am horticulturally ignorant. The growing season is short in the subarctic, but there is a growing season.

Flowers.

Vegetables.

Including the largest cabbages I’ve ever seen.

“The Georgeson Botanical Garden began in 1989 as a research, educational, and public outreach program,” the garden web site says. “However, its roots lie much deeper. In 1898, 31 years after the US purchased Alaska, the Secretary of Agriculture of the USDA sent [a] special agent of agriculture, Charles Christian Georgeson, to Alaska to explore the agricultural potential of the state.”

Georgeson established seven agriculture stations in the territory, two of which still exist, one in Fairbanks and one in Matanuska.

“The Fairbanks experiment station was established in 1906 and in 1931 the farm was incorporated into the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines (renamed the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1935). [By the 1980s]… UAF proposed turning the muddy paths and straight rows of trial plants into a space that is more accessible and welcoming to the public.”

Why do cabbages (and cantaloupes and broccoli and others) grow so large in Alaska? It might be counterintuitive, but NPR offers an explanation.

“It’s Alaska’s summer sun that gives growers an edge, says Steve Brown, an agricultural agent at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Basking in as much as 20 hours of sunshine per day, Alaskan crops get a photosynthesis bonus, allowing them to produce more plant material and grow larger. Brassicas like cabbage do especially well, says Brown.”

Elsewhere I saw plenty of other intriguing flora, including the main kinds of trees in the state, such as spruces, black cottonwood, paper birch, quaking aspen, alder and balsam poplar.

Fireweed. Late summer is its time, and I saw it everywhere.

“The fireweed we know in Alaska — Chamerion angustifolium — proliferates during summer, aggressively erupting in open spaces before cottoning in the turn toward fall,” the Anchorage Daily News says.

“Fireweed is common throughout much of the northern hemisphere. In Canada, it is the willowherb. In the United Kingdom, it is rosebay willowherb….

“The ‘fire’ in the name derives not just from the vivid color of the flower itself but from its tendency to grow in areas cleared by fire. As fireweed favors open, cleared and dry land, it was among the first plants to grow in the wake of the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption in Washington state.”

Cantigny in May

Posted on May 10, 2021 by admin

It looks like Cantigny Park has taken the opportunity posed by the international health crisis to do some work on Col. McCormick’s mansion. This is what the outside of the mansion looked like on Saturday.

We didn’t visit to see the mansion, which we toured some years ago. Instead we wanted to see the grounds in spring. The day was cool — it’s been a cold spring lately — but not bad for a walkabout among the greenery.

And the flowers.

Lots of flowers.

Along with other plants.

We haven’t been to Cantigny in a number of years. More recently than 2010 or 2011, but I don’t remember exactly when. On Saturday we also spent a little time at the McCormicks’ grave, in the shape of an exedra, which isn’t far from their mansion.

Though a little chilly (mid-50s), it was a festive day at Cantigny.

People are gathering in groups once more this spring, or so anecdotal evidence, such as seeing them at Cantigny, tells me.

Suzhou 1994

Posted on May 9, 2021 by admin

A postcard I sent from Suzhou in May 1994.

Jim must have asked me about zoos and natural history museums, two kinds of places he likes to go. In Beijing, we did visit the main zoo, including a look at its moth-eaten pandas, but no natural history museums. We didn’t do that until we got to Mongolia.

Suzhou is famed for its gardens, and we visited a few. As far as I can tell, I took only one picture in any one of them.Limited film and the prospect of months on the road inspired that kind of parsimony in me, I guess.

Olbrich Botanical Gardens

Posted on July 13, 2020 by admin

High heat over the weekend, but come this morning, pleasant upper 70s F. Heat returns later in the week, I hear. That’s a northern summer for you.

On the way back from Prairie du Chien last week, we stopped briefly in Madison. Good old Madison — been going there since the late ’80s, and I think of it as the Austin of the North. Yet I don’t know it all that well.

This time we visited Olbrich Botanical Gardens, another spot in Madison I’d never seen. These days, its indoor components, especially the tropical conservatory, are closed. But the lush outdoor gardens are open to walk around for no admission.

Like most botanic gardens, there were signs. But not that many, and mostly I didn’t bother with plant names. It was too hot to concentrate on that anyway.

I hadn’t done much preparation for the visit, so I was pleasantly surprised when we crossed a water feature — Starkweather Creek, which flows into Lake Monona —

— and passed by some curious sculpture —

— and came to the Thai Pavilion and Garden.

“A pavilion, or sala, is a common structure in Thailand generally used as a shelter from rain and heat. Olbrich’s pavilion is more ornate than most roadside salas in Thailand and represents those found at a temple or on a palace grounds,” the garden web site says. “However, Olbrich’s pavilion is not a religious structure.

“The pavilion was a gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the Thai Government and the Thai Chapter of the Wisconsin Alumni Association. UW-Madison has one of the largest Thai student populations of any U.S. college or university.”

I’d have never guessed that last fact. As I stood gawking at the thing, sun beating down on me, I felt just an inkling of being in Thailand again, near one of its impressive shiny structures, whose glint always seemed to accentuate the heat.

“The pavilion was built in Thailand, then disassembled and packed in shipping crates,” the garden continues. “The pavilion traveled seven weeks by sea, then by rail to Chicago, and to Madison by truck. Nine Thai artisans traveled to Madison to reassemble the pavilion after building it in Thailand. It took three weeks to reconstruct [in 2001].

“Amazingly, the pavilion is able to withstand the winter weather of Wisconsin with no protection because it is constructed of plantation-grown teak and weather-resistant ceramic roof tiles. The gold leaf, however, is delicate and not able to withstand the oils of the human hand.”

A pavilion and a garden, as the name says.

Remarkable simulation of tropical lushness, there in the distinctly non-tropical Wisconsin.

Japan ’19

Posted on December 3, 2019 by admin

Yuriko returned recently from a couple of weeks in Japan. Besides time with family, she visited a number of interesting places in the Kansai and a little beyond, such as the Adachi Museum of Art off in Shimane Prefecture, which hugs the Sea of Japan coastline northwest of greater Osaka.

Never made it up that way myself. The museum, which features a large collection of works by Taikan Yokoyama and other artists, is also known for its garden. Looks impressive.

I’d have to see it myself to compare it to Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu on Shikoku — the most breathtaking Japanese garden I’ve seen. But best not to invent rankings for places like that anyway.

Also of interest: she visited not only the Tower of the Sun (Taiyō no Tō) on the former grounds of Expo ’70 in Osaka, she went inside.

That wasn’t possible when I was in Osaka, though gazing at the exterior was something I did from time to time. I’ve read that the interior only opened permanently last year after renovations to the structure, with the artwork inside refurbished too. It’s a depiction of the Tree of Life.
Wow. I’d like to see that as well sometime. Along with the Maishima Incineration Plant (which Y didn’t visit this time).

Divers Michigan Gardens

Posted on September 5, 2019 by admin

Michigan State University, which we visited on Saturday, is almost as big as they come in academia, in enrollment and acreage. Tucked away on campus is the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden — and I mean that almost literally, since the garden occupies a five-acre, near-circular depression in the earth. You need to go down an outdoor staircase to reach it.

The garden is meticulously organized. I’ve never seen a botanical garden so thoroughly arrayed by categories important to botanists (and the rest of us, if you care about the difference between, say, edible plants and poisonous ones).

Long curving and straight beds separated by a fair amount of grass form the basis of the garden.

Each bed belongs to a category of plant. According to a sign posted in the garden, categories include perfume plants, fiber plants, dye plants, fixed oil plants, honey plants, flavoring plants, injurious plants, indigenous American plants, weeds, vegetables, grains and medicinal plants. There are also geographic categories: Southeast U.S. forest, European forest, northern Michigan, southern Michigan, and so on.

“This garden,” the sign says, “functions as an outdoor laboratory, a repository of plant genetics, a resource for research and teaching, and a place for the community to appreciate the beauty and biology of plants. There are over 2,500 plants in the labeled beds alone… established in 1873, this is one of the oldest continually operated gardens of its kind in the United States.”

The place wows with variety. I have to like a garden that includes weeds on purpose. Such as the weedy-looking Cardoon.
Among the medicinal plants, there’s belladonna, though I would have thought it went in the injurious category.
Injurious plants, according to the garden, include mechanically injurious (guess that would be by thorns and such), milk-tainting, those that inspire hay fever and contact dermatitis, cyanogenic and poisonous seed, among others.

One handsome plant I’d never heard of before — there are a lot of those in the world — was the Princess Tree (Paulownia tomentosa).
On Sunday, we visited two gardens, both in Midland. One was the compact but a-bloom Dahlia Hill, which sports about 3,000 dahlia plants arranged on eight stone terraces. According to the garden, there are over 300 varieties of dahlias there, with an example of each variety planted and labeled along gravel pathways.

A local artist and dahlia enthusiast, Charles Breed (d. 2018), founded the garden in 1992 and oversaw its terracing some years later to control erosion.

Dahlias are another example of I-had-no-idea-that. As in, that there are so many varieties. Who knew? Not me.
No Black Dahlias that I could see. Some wag of a horticulturist might have bred such.

We visited the big Dow Gardens separately, Yuriko and Ann first, then me, since ordinary dogs aren’t allowed in.
I spent about two hours there under overcast skies that always threatened rain but seldom even drizzled. That must have kept the crowds away. For minutes at a time, I was by myself on the large lawns and among the countless trees, passing by lush bushes and flower beds.

Water features figure prominently in the garden’s design.
All together there are 1,700 varieties of plant in the garden suitable for cultivation in central Michigan. Now at 110 acres, the garden started out as a private eight-acre garden of chemical mogul Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical. Later generations of Dows enlarged the place and set up the foundation that runs it now.

Dow has a fine rose garden, too.
What do you do in a rose garden, whether you’ve been promised one or not? Stop and smell the roses, of course.

My own skills at gardening are meager, but I like a stroll through a well-executed garden. That’s no different than a lot of things. I can’t sing worth a damn, but I sure like listening to a good singer.

To Lake Huron and Back

Posted on September 3, 2019 by admin

On Saturday we left town remarkably early (for us) and drove across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan so that on Sunday morning, I could stick my feet in Lake Huron.Saginaw Bay in particular. Of course that wasn’t the entirety of the trip. But it was the inspiration. Sometime years ago, I realized that I’d never really gotten a look at Lake Huron. I’ve crossed the Mackinac Bridge a number of times, which offers a view of the lake to the east, but somehow that doesn’t count. I wanted to see Lake Huron from outside a car, moving at zero miles an hour, and hear the waves and smell the water and feel the sand and pebbles.

So Labor Day weekend was the time. We all went, including the dog. First stop on Saturday morning was at one of the Sweetwater’s Donut Mills in Kalamazoo because I hadn’t forgotten them.
Near Battle Creek, we stopped at a novel local spot: Historic Bridge Park. I’ve seen open-air museums devoted to houses and other buildings, but this is the only place I know that functions as an open-air museum featuring bridges.

Heading northeast, we arrived in Lansing in time to visit the Michigan State Capitol. Or so I thought. There are usually Saturday hours, but not on Labor Day weekend. Still, we had a good walk around the grounds and Washington Square to the east, along with an al fresco lunch of Cuban sandwiches.

Michigan State University is in East Lansing. After some wandering around the sprawling campus, we found the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden, the first of three gardens we visited.

We made it to Midland, Michigan, before dark and spent the next two nights there. On Sunday morning, we visited Bay City State Park on the lakeshore, walking on the beach and a path around a large lagoon. By lunchtime, we were back in Midland, eating al fresco again — the thing to do with a dog in tow.

Midland has a lot of large parks accessible from its small downtown, but that’s not the distinctive feature. That would be the Tridge, a three-way bridge across the confluence of the Chippewa and Tittabawassee rivers. Naturally we had to cross that.

Next we visited Midland’s Dahlia Hill, which is planted with thousands of dahlias and open to wander around. After that, Yuriko and Ann visited the much larger Dow Gardens, while I took a drive with the dog to Bay City. No dogs allowed at Dow Gardens.

During my driving look-see in Bay City, I noticed a Huron Circle Tour sign. Like Superior, that would be a drive.
Lake Huron Circle Tour sign Want. To. Do. It. But not now. While everyone else rested in the room early in the evening, I visited the expansive and exhausting Dow Gardens, along with the adjacent Whiting Forest. Open till 8:30 in the evening until Labor Day, fortunately.

On Labor Day we drove home, but not the most direct way. We passed through parts of Saginaw — parts beaten down by the contraction of U.S. manufacturing, it looked like — and then on to Michigan’s faux Bavarian tourist town, Frankenmuth.

Had a good time and a chicken lunch there, but the overstimulation of it all made the dog as nervous as I’ve ever seen her, so we headed home. Riding in the back seat seems to be as calming for her as parking herself on the couch at home.

As far as I can tell, she enjoyed the trip and the many new smells.

That last one almost instantly became a favorite picture of her.

Idea Garden, Champaign

Posted on August 1, 2019 by admin

Besides Decatur, we spent some time over the weekend in Champaign, including a short visit to the Idea Garden of the University of Illinois Arboretum.

Back in the spring, the Idea Garden was mostly just that, notional, but since then volunteers have brought the place to full flower. Literally.
A small structure mid-garden was being used for an informal gardening class when we passed by. Something about garden pests. Sunflowers reaching to the sky. Taller than a grown human being. One of the volunteers told me it was a special kind that grows tall. Not a lot of gardeners like them, he said, but he did.

Elephant ears!
I have fond memories of large elephant ears when I was a child.
The picture is ca. 1970, of my brother Jim and I and the front-yard elephant ears. I might have been small, but that’s not why I remember our elephant ears as large — they were objectively large. That’s the way they grew for a few early years at our house in San Antonio. In later years, they came up smaller and eventually disappeared.

Scovill Sculpture Park

Posted on July 31, 2019 by admin

First, we drove across Lake Decatur on US 36. Later, we walked near the shore of the lake, though at that point a fence was between us and the lake.
We didn’t mind, because we were taking a late afternoon stroll on Saturday at Scovill Sculpture Park. As these things go, the lake is old — almost 100 years, a project of civic improvement that also happened to be very useful for corn wet-milling. A.E. Staley, of corn products fame (see yesterday), had a major hand in the creation of the lake by damming the Sangamon River upstream in the early ’20s.

On the other hand, the sculpture park, on Decatur Park District land between the Scoville Zoo and the Decatur Children’s Museum, isn’t that old — only about three years. Interestingly, the sculptures aren’t permanent fixtures, but leased from the artists. After a few years, a new crop is brought in. According to my sources, the second set of 10 is in place now.

“My Favorite Things,” by Travis Emmen.
“Calibration,” by Luke Achterberg.
“Absence,” by Joseph Ovalle.
“Urban Forest,” by Richard Herzog.
“Rybee House 2,” by Stephen Klema.

The park also includes the Scovill Oriental Garden, which has elements of Chinese and Japanese gardens.

Of course the park has a gazebo.
As well it should. Here’s a book or database for someone to create someday: The Great Gazebo Gazetteer.

Mabery Gelvin Botanical Gardens

Posted on June 20, 2019 by admin

RIP, Bernie Judge. He was an old-school Chicago newspaperman and my boss 30 years ago. Not a mentor, exactly, but I did learn a few things from him — most of which I didn’t appreciate until later.

By last Sunday morning, the rain had stopped and we visited the Mabery Gelvin Botanical Gardens in Mahomet, Illinois, not far outside Champaign.
At eight acres, the garden isn’t large, but it is a pretty place in June.
Featuring the blooming Dogwood (Cornus kousa).
A Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana). The South doesn’t get all the magnolias. According to the sign next to the tree, “… the genus magnolia is 95 million years old. Older than bees, they are pollinated by beetles.”
Japanese lilac (Syringa reticulata).
The garden is part of the larger Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve. We took a walk along some of its trails, eventually coming to a covered bridge: Lake of the Woods Covered Bridge. Wooden construction, but also with hidden steel support to make it vehicle-worthy.
It isn’t one of the 19th-century bridges you find in the Midwest. Rather, vintage 1965. As the park district says: “After the purchase of an 80-acre tract of land west of the Sangamon River in the 1960s, the Lake of the Woods Covered Bridge was constructed to connect the two sides of Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve in Mahomet. Designed by German Gurfinkel, a Civil Engineering instructor at the University of Illinois, the bridge was a replica of the Pepperel Bridge [sic] near Boston.”

The view from the bridge of the Sangamon River, which flows on to Springfield and then to the Illinois River.
We walked across the bridge. You should cross bridges when you come to them, if possible. Before we left the forest preserve, we also drove across it, because we don’t get to drive across covered bridges that much.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Gardens