APGA

Dear Readers,

My name is Jayne and I hail from Montgomery, Alabama. I am currently one of three newest members of the Public Horticulture program at Auburn. As a first year student myself and fellow classmates went to the annual American Public Gardens Association meeting in Denver, Colorado just this past week. This was a wonderful experience and I learned so much from the conference. At APGA we went on tours of multiple gardens which included: Cheyenne Botanical Garden, Colorado State University Trial Gardens, and the Gardens on Spring Creek and Denver Botanical Garden, 

As part of the conference we attended workshops and lectures on different topics related to the horticulture industry. One of the lectures I attended was on dogs in a botanical garden. The lecture was presented by the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden. Santa Barbara encourages visitors to bring their dogs to the garden. Special memberships and events promote dogs in the garden. 

A highlight of the trip was visiting the Denver Botanical Gardens. It is beautiful one hundred acre garden with four different sections. The Children’s garden at Denver Botanical is really inventive, it sits high above on top of the parking deck. The garden has multiple levels twisting and turning till visitors reach the bottom. Across the street from the Children’sGarden, the York Street Garden invites visitors to explore native Colorado species of plants in a formal landscape. 

APGA is a great conference to attend if you are interested in beginning a public garden or already have a garden. One of the main reasons we as graduate students attend APGA is because of the networking opportunities. So many people from across the country attend the meeting. It is a great opportunity to make internship or potential job meetings. 

Have a great Fourth of the July weekend!

-Jayne

Sweet Summer Time!

Hello again fellow readers!

Vertical structure with control plants on bench=1 Block

I hope you enjoyed our England posts as much as we enjoyed our England trip! As I mentioned in my previous post, my fellow co-horts and I have much more to share, naturally. So for this week, I would like to provide a brief synopsis of my summer semester thus far after returning from England.

Once I returned from England, I hit the ground running with my research experiment, which was initiated the day before we left for England. What is my research experiment? Well, let me tell you a little about it! My research is a pilot study that focuses on using vertical A-frame structures that serve as an innovative, cost-effective method for growing edible, herbaceous plants, and other plants as well.

Detroit Dark Red Beet Seedling

The goal of the study is to illustrate that the vertical structures will yield twice the amount of plant yield, with the same quality yield, as a traditional bench plot, which takes up the same amount of square footage as one vertical structure. If that explanation was a little confusing, here is another way to word the goal of the experiment. One A-frame vertical structure occupies a total of 16 square feet. One bench plot, which serves as the control, also occupies a total of 16 square feet. The wooden A-frame vertical structure has 2 wall panels comprised of metal cattle fencing; this is where the pots are placed on the structure. The bench plot holds a total of 21 plants. Since there are 2 usable wall panels on one structure, the entire structure holds 42 plants; thus, the yield on the vertical structure holds two times the amount of plant material as the bench plot while occupying the same amount of space as the bench plot. In essence, you get more bang for your buck by growing plants on a vertical structure.

Kira drilling holes in plastic pots

 for drip-irrigation

Here's the research behind the experiment. We've doubled the plant number on the vertical structures, but the real question is, "Will the plants on the vertical structure grow as well or better than the plants grown on the bench?" What a great question, right?! Well, I can't answer the question for you just yet, because I just terminated the study last Thursday and will need to analyze the collected data. However, I will be sure to let everyone know the results whether it is via the blog or my thesis.

Here's what I can tell you though. The plants that were grown on the vertical structure, amaranth, basil, and red beets, they grew beautifully!By the end of the study, the vertical structures (4 total) looked like a jungle! It was beautiful, and I was oh so glad to see that the study was a success since all the plants grew well on the vertical structure, and none of the plants died! Take a look at the pictures for more details about my experiment!

Leah recording leaf area data for amaranth post-harvest

I would like to also mention that the completion of this first study would NEVER been possible had it not been for my wonderful, kind, hard-working fellow co-horts. It took quite a lot of time, sweat, hard-work, effort, and endurance to terminate this first study. God was so good to me by sending me such a wonderful and helpful army to help me finish experiment 1. Our public horticulture group truly is a great group. Thank you again to Leah Rogers, Heath Gober, Hanna Pettus, Monte Baugh, Seth Allen, Jayne Funderburk, and Evan Ware!

As for now, today is the first day of experiment 2, which will be a repeat of experiment 1. The only major difference between experiment 1 and 2 is the beets grown in experiment 1 will be replaced by cilantro. Wish me luck and pray this experiment is as successful as the former!

From L-R: Seth and Monte loading

 basil into the plant dryer

Until next time, I hope y'all have a great week! Get ready for some awesome posts and photos from our new students in the program who are at the APGA Conference in Colorado for the week. I can't wait to see what's in store for them as well.

Adios, amigos!
-Hilary

Jayne (pink shirt), Seth (behind Jayne), Monte (red shirt), and Evan counting basil leaves

A small jungle of beets, basil, and amaranth

 (from top to bottom)

Bench plot- Amaranth is one of 2 other crops on the bench.

Happy Ending

For our last day in England, our schedule consisted of a London street art tour in the A.M. The tour lasted approximately 2-2.5 hours, and occupied our entire morning. During the tour, we walked around a small portion of the city of London viewing rather distinct and unusual art work that covered buildings and walls, light posts, road signs, restaurants, etc. The media used by the artists consisted of a wide variety of art materials, some of which were quite unique and non-traditional, such as the sticker art work; yes, some of the art work was represented by a mere sticker. Other art media used to cover the city and streets included spray paint, ink, news papers, and plain old paint. Once the lengthy tour ended and our dogs and tummies began to bark, our tour guide kindly directed us to a good old fashioned, completely American themed restaurant- a burger joint.

By the time we had our fill of familiar food and drink, it was time to move on to our next sight-seeing destination for the afternoon, the London Tower! Once our herd of Auburn students "minded the gap" and boarded the tube (underground train), with our group leaving very little room for other passengers on the train, we sped along to our historic destination and next adventure. After we got off the tube, we took a short stroll down a lovely, busy part of London that appeared to be the business district, turned a corner and saw the large and beautiful London Tower beckoning us to enter her historic and people filled, high-towered walls. What a sight indeed! Once we entered the tall fortress, we broke into buddy pairs to divide and conquer as much as we could in our 3 hour time frame. So much history is held within this beautiful, man-made creation: the Crown Jewels, the execution and beheading area in the court yard (which was represented by too lovely of a monument, in my opinion), the Royal Armories in the White Tower, the Torture Tower, and more. We had quite a day! Once our allotted time for the London Tower was up, our fearless leaders gave us permission to tour other places such as Winchester Cathedral, Big Ben, etc. as long as we stayed in groups.

And so, wonderful public horticulture readers, that concludes our trip and tour of the beautiful country of England, and a few of her nearby countries! Sunday morning arrived, as usual after Saturday, and we boarded our taxi-van to the airport. We bade our ancestral country farewell, hoping to return again someday, and boarded the plane that would fly us back across "the pond" to our mother country. Once we touched down in that sweet southern state named after one of England's kings, whom I met in Hampton Court, I could have kissed the Georgia clay! England was wonderful, and a once-in-a-lifetime trip filled with memories and people I hope to never forget, but there is nothing like coming home and absolutely nothing like coming home to the U. S. A.! I missed the sweet tea belt more than I knew, and I immediately called my family once I was granted cell phone service again.


Keep checking back for new blogs from new faces and events, dear readers! Our new class of students will have much to share once they begin posting about their time as a public hort student and later, when they embark on their week-long trip to the annual American Public Gardens Association (APGA) meeting mid-June held in Denver, CO.

Until next time, friends!

-Hilary 

               From L-R: Hanna Pettus

Kira Chaloupka

Savannah Duke

Day Six - Orr Trip, England

Our first day in London had us headed to Hampton Court Palace, home to the infamous Henry VIII. We had access to both the house and the garden, and while the garden was beautiful, I spent most of the time in the house. We wandered from chamber to chamber "oohing" and "ahhing" over the elaborate living quarters, drooling over the chocolate room and just impressed overall at how extensive everything was. There were scratch and sniff maps that guided you through the rooms and gave you a waft of what you would've expected the room to smell like back then. While the dining hall may have been delectable, the bathroom scent was equally distasteful.

Out in the garden, there were large trees well shaped and maintained, then off to the side of the house a large formal garden and several small themed gardens. We also got a glimpse of the largest grape vine in the world (even setting a Guinness record).

Selfie attempt.

The rest of the day was spent at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, also known as Kew Gardens. Opening in 1759, Kew is 255 years old and one of the most popular attractions around London. Sitting on close to 300 acres, it holds the largest living plants collection in the world. That made for a lot to see in a short amount of time. Essentially everyone grabbed their map, located their "must see" spots and took off. One thing we could unfortunately check off was the conservatory, which was closed for renovations. My list included the Tree Canopy Walk, redwood forest collection, the azalea trail and Kew Palace. Of course, with such a large garden there was plenty to see between the walks from one location to the next. While I can't admit Kew to have been my favorite garden, I was impressed by the number of guests visiting, the shear size of the place and all of the trees that were so huge!

About half of the Conservatory

A view from the Tree Walk

The pavers represent the diameter of a Giant Redwood

Azalea trail

Kew Palace

Alpine Garden

Alpine Garden, part two.

Mr. Peacock, who put on a show for us as we were leaving.

Cheers,
Hanna and Kira

Thursday, May 8th, 2014- England

Today's adventures in the beautiful country of England took us to a more busy and recognizable area on our garden tour trip. We began our day in Oxford. Our first destination for the day was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, which is the oldest botanic garden in Britain founded in 1621.

Due to our tight, yet flexible itinerary for this day, we were only allotted an hour to stroll through Britain's oldest botanic garden. Despite the short time spent in this garden, the garden exhibited a beautiful, historic garden design. Several greenhouses that contained a plethora of plant material were also on the garden site; each greenhouse possessed a theme that exhibited exotics, tropical, native, or arid plant materials.

One of the best features about this garden, in my opinion, is that all of the plants are labeled throughout the gardens and greenhouses; hence the word "botanic" in the name of the garden. Many of the gardens we toured prior to Oxford Botanic were not botanical gardens; thus, these gardens contain none to very little plant information or plant labels. After viewing new and unfamiliar plant material the previous couple of days, it was nice to finally figure out the names of the plants we saw in the previous gardens we toured on this trip. 

Oxford Botanic encompasses approximately 4.5 acres and is nestled in
the city of Oxford. Despite it's size, the garden illustrates and exhibits over 5,000 different species of beautiful plant material in a garden designed in a classic and historic English manner. The garden design exhibits a formal, yet wild-like, natural placement of plants within planting beds, which gives the garden a relaxed but proper English feel. Out of all of the gardens I toured on this once in a lifetime trip, Oxford Botanic Garden was definitely one of my most favorite gardens. I really liked how this garden displayed a landscape design that effectively utilizes a small space in such a way that makes the 4.5 acre garden look spacious and larger than it is. I was also thrilled to finally being able to figure out and identify the new and unusual plant material I kept seeing within previously toured gardens while on our trip. Check out the link to Oxford Botanic for more information on this historically fabulous garden, and don't forget to take a look at photographs below to get an inside look on a few things I saw during my tour of the garden!

http://www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/











After we left Oxford Botanical, our next destination for the day was the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley.  That's right, a ROYAL botanical garden! Neat, right?

After Black Beauty (Hanna, Jeremiah, and my van) and the Silver Queen (Kira's van) drove for about forty-five minutes from Oxford to Wisley, we arrived at the royal botanical garden around 3 PM. Once we paid our entrance fees at the admissions area, we picked up our garden maps and scattered like who knows what to conquer and see as much as we could in this rather large, lovely garden.

The Wisley garden contains quite an extensive collection of themed gardens. Some of the most interesting and breath taking gardens I viewed include: the rock garden, which was THE best rock garden I had ever seen before, the bonsai walk (really neat) and the herb garden. There are many other beautiful rooms, walks, and greenhouses in this garden, of course, but the rooms and areas I mentioned were particularly memorable for me. For more information on the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley, see the link below.
http://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley

Once we left the beautiful Wisley garden, the crew set off for our last destination, London, England! After about an hour or so of a drive, Black Beauty and Silver Queen pulled up in front of The Millenia, our gorgeous hotel and home for the next three nights. We hustled ourselves and our luggage out of the vans and into the hotel lobby so our leaders could park the cars while we students proceeded to check into our hotel rooms and put our luggage away. Once we checked into our rooms and freshened up a bit, we met the study abroad students in the hotel lobby. We then caravan-ed a short distance down the street from the hotel to a restaurant called, Wild Wood, where we had a nice group dinner. After dinner, we had our traditional counsel meeting before bed to discuss the next day's plans; then we went off to bed!

That concludes our day's memorable adventures in a nut shell, folks! Stay tuned for more news about our amazing and once-in-a-lifetime garden tour trip in London. Thank you for reading and checking in.

Cheers!
-Hilary

Day Four - Orr Trip, England

Today's garden itinerary included Hidcote and Snowshill.

Hidcote is part of the National Trust and was created by Lawrence Johnston with the theme of garden "rooms." Each section of the garden had a unique feel such as the white room and red room where most of the plant material either had the corresponding flower color or foliage color. The garden was roughly ten acres, but covered from one end to the other with plant material, had paths that took you in several directions and was just big enough to keep you a decent distance from other guests.

Entering Hidcote.

Seth and Kira

The Red Room

The Allee

Hilary and Kira

This was considered to be the "lucky" garden as some of us lost things, only for them to be returned. Dr. Robinson's son dropped his sippy cup and a garden staff member handed it back to one of the students. We assume she matched us up by our accents. Kira lost a rock Seth found for her that was in the shape of Alabama, but after spending some time looking down the allee for it, she found it right beneath her feet. Probably the most relieving situation was when Britton left his passport on a bench after getting up, but had a couple who were guest of the garden promptly return it back to him.

The second garden of the day was Snowshill. This garden was a little different in the respect that the focus wasn't completely on the garden, but split between the garden and a house. The residence was owned by Mr. Charles Wade, who was a collector of many things. Inside his house, guests could walk through and see the many items which he collected. Anything from bicycles and childrens toys to spinning wheels and weapons could be found. The garden was a small 2-acre area seeming to contain more "stuff" than plants. Mr. Wade's living quarters, a dove cote and miscellaneous art decorations are some of the items found throughout the  garden.

Mr. Wade's collection house

His collection of bicycles

A garden entrance

The garden exit

Vegetable garden

Dove Cote, aka extravagant coop

Fishing village in bottom right corner.

We all thoroughly enjoyed these two gardens, as they were both small enough to manage within the timeframe given, but large enough to keep you interested.

Cheers,
Kira Chaloupka