Human Flower Project
For the Mother Who Litters
We usually don’t pass along news of trendy floral products but this one is too kooky to ignore. In advance of Mothering Sunday, a mid-Lentan holiday in England honoring mums, Marks and Spencer has introduced Milk Chocolate Praline Butterflies, just the gift for litterbugs.
The winged candies come in a paper bag that’s been “impregnated” with “dozens” of flower seeds. Once Mother has eaten her chocolates, she can bury the whole bag in the garden or scissor it up, putting bits in pots. Fittingly, the wrapper is seeded with candytuft (Iberis umbellata ‘Rose Cardinal’), which we understand is a summer-blooming annual in England and a favorite with butterflies (spring blooming white candytuft was a favorite of ours in Kentucky).
It’ll be interesting to see whether this two-fer marketing strategy succeeds. A Marks and Spencer spokesperson told the Daily Mail that if the seedy promotion works, the company will package other products with flower seed, too.
How about peppermints wrapped with striped dianthus seed, butterscotch with celandine poppies…?
Candytuft (Iberis umbellata ‘Rose Cardinal’)
Photo: Aggie Horticulture
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Bellephobia
“Pictures of Life and Death,” gold medal winner at the 2010 Ellerslie Flower Show in New Zealand, features fungus
Photo: The Press
We realize that many people consider flowers a guilty pleasure. Jack Goody’s fascinating study The Culture of Flowers considers a long history of “deliberate rejection.”
But at a flower show? Yes. Political correctness, an ethos of “green” (but apparently no other colors), late-minimalism, conceptualism, and what we shall call “bellephobia” have conspired against blossoms at the Ellerslie Flower Show. The gold medal winner of New Zealand’s premier floral exhibition is a display of fungus: “a lighting and sound extravaganza illustrating how nature recycles.”
Christchurch Botanic Gardens was awarded the Supreme Award for its entry called “Pictures of Life and Death.” We understand that Jeremy Hawker, the Botanic Gardens’ operations manager, received his inspiration “partly from his mouldy coffee cup.” Juliet Speedy reports: “Visitors to the garden enter through a ‘glow-worm’ cave” and first see the display through an 8 ft. waterfall.
Jeremy Hawker of Christchurch Botanic Gardens was inspired by a dirty coffee cup
Photo: Kirk Hargreaves, for The Press
“An array of fungi (some picked in the wild last weekend), lichen, moss, liverwort and ferns carpet the floor of the exhibit, which has a six-minute cycle of changing lights and sounds.” Of note: this award was bestowed in the Starlight Marquee division, for entries that feature “how lighting can extend enjoyment of a garden after dark.”
Here in the U.S., bellephobia has been evident at the Philadelphia Flower Show, too. The big winner there was MODA Botanica’s entry, featuring floral installations inside graffiti-laden industrial containers.
MODA’s blossoms were displayed off-kilter and encased within metallic and hyper-urban cocoons, but they were in fact flowers and—dare we say it?—pretty.
New Zealand appears to be on the cutting edge of garden design, and that edge is mossy and decomposing.
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Muscari: Mass Choirs and Soloists
Muscari armeniacum
Grape Hyacinth
Austin, Texas, Feb. 27, 2010
Photo: Beverly Bajema
After a hotter than usual, drier than usual summer (putting it mildly), and a wetter than usual, colder than usual (again understating it) winter, who knows what this spring will turn out to be? Our confusion is compounded in that many of the plants here went in just 14 months ago, so we don’t really know their habits, even under normal conditions.
Stan Powers, gardening magus, moved our few grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum, we think) and set our expectations low for this year’s bloom – and that was before all the weather drama. But we do, in fact, have several in bloom now. People say they’re too puny to enjoy except in “a large drift,” and of course large drifts of them would be dandy, but we’re enjoying our scattered five or six clumps and can see them twinkling like sapphires even from the curb.
Neighbor Beverly Bajema sent us this heavenly close-up of a muscari blooming outside her dance studio a few blocks away. Beverly has a way with parsley, night blooming cereus, and much more. Thank you, dear and talented birthday-mate.
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Mo’Nique and Hattie at the Oscars
Mo’Nique with her Oscar for Best Actress in a supporting role (and best memorial good-luck flower) poses with presenter Robin Williams at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, March 8.
Mo’Nique looked the part of a winner last night, with three lovely white gardenias knotted onto her up-do. The actress, who won the Oscar for her harrowing “supporting” role in the movie Precious, paid tribute to Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to be nominated for, and win, an Academy Award. Dressed in royal blue as McDaniel had been 70 years before, Mo’Nique explained, “This is the flower Hattie McDaniel wore when she accepted her Oscar. So for you, Miss Hattie McDaniel, it’s about time the world feels you all over them.”
Actually, it was McDaniel who, gloriously, felt flowers all over herself on February 29, 1940, as she won the Oscar for her portrayal of “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind. You can see and hear her acceptance speech. Or just delight in the photo below, her casque of gardenias AND the major floral stole over her right shoulder.
Congratulations, Mo’Nique. And next time, we hope you spring for the whole fragrant costume.
Hattie McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her work in Gone with the Wind, February 29, 1940. Fay Bainter, right, presented the award.
Photo: via Afrocity Blog
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Sucker-Flowered by Lady Gaga
She’s a celebrity, or close enough. She’s a singer, approximately. And Lady Gaga now has our attention, having worn a giant glossy black flower on her head Monday. Ms. Gaga was stepping out to the “MAC Viva Glam Launch held at Ill Bottaccio” whatever any of that might be, in London. At the event, she spoke about, what else, herself, how she intends to be a role model for young women (isn’t somebody else supposed to say that?) and how she’s throwing her spotlit self at the issue of HIV awareness, AIDS now being increasingly a disease of women.
What made us cave in to her latest publicity stunt was its classic use of flowers: simultaneously to draw attention and to mask. LG’s oversized black rose (see Waylon Jennings for the symbolism on that one) obscured not only her face but her vision. So much so that, despite her costume’s edginess,it required a very ordinary looking and patient bald fellow to get her safely down a few steps and into a cab.
Who says the age of gallantry—or the culture of flowers—is dead?
Lady Gaga and an unnamed escort set out for the
MAV Viva Glam Launch Monday in London
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Container-Gardening Art by MODA
MODA Botanica of Philadelphia has won the Best in Show award at this year’s Philadelphia International Flower Show. The designers set up six marvelous installations of floral scenes inside boxcar-like shipping containers. The contrast between grimy industrial exteriors, and lush, theatrically lit interiors was apt, considering this big old city has just been socked with another snowstorm. All of the scenes were knock-em-dizzy amazing. Plants floating, a shipment of all white flowers that had toppled in transit, an eerie spread of purple blooms spread over dining tables (or perhaps administering a mysterious treatment in a laboratory of entertaining).
There are plenty of artists who “deploy” flowers these days as a medium for ephemeral sculpture or conceptual statement. Having seen some such pieces (where the floral elements might as well have been paint or even plastic), we applaud all the more how these designers have rooted wit, conception, and aesthetics in understanding. Their installations are rich with perspectives on floral anatomy and commerce, as well as the human fantasies (a.k.a. customs) that put blooms to work.
See Virginia A. Smith’s extended report and an excellent slideshow from the Philadelphia Enquirer. And if you make the show, please let us know if the conceptualists of MODA flexed your neurons.
The Philadelphia International Flower Show runs February 28-March 7.
Visitors at the Philadelphia International Flower Show look into one of MODA Botanica’s shipping containers
Photo: Akira Suwa, for Philadelphia Enquirer
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A Shattered Rose
Tuesday’s short programs in women’s (one’s tempted to write “ladies”) figure skating at Vancouver’s Olympics included Kim Yu-na’s pistol-puffing perfection and rival Mao Asada’s history-making triple axel combination. But for Canadians and many others, too, the most stirring performance was Joannie Rochette’s. Rochette’s mother, in Vancouver for the games, suffered a heart attack Saturday and died early Sunday. But Rochette skated on.
“As the first skater in the final group of the night, Rochette stepped onto the ice. William Thompson, the chief executive of Skate Canada, the country’s national governing body, looked at her beforehand and thought that she was struggling emotionally. Many in the crowd at Pacific Coliseum, seemingly split between Canadian, South Korean and Japanese supporters, got to their feet and began waving the Maple Leaf flag, trying to buoy her with their support. ‘She had the whole nation carrying her through this performance,’ said Brian Orser, a two-time Olympic silver medalist for Canada who now coaches Kim.”
Rochette’s beautiful costume was embroided with roses along the bodice, and at the back with a big, heart-shattering bloom. “At the end of the 2 minute, 50 second routine the crowd showered (her) with cheers, as well as roses.”
The women’s free skate, or long program, will take place Thursday night, Feb. 25.
Figure skater Joannie Rochette acknowledges the cheers of Olympic fans after her short program Tuesday night. Rochette, of Canada, placed third.
Photo: via Vancouver Olympic Games
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Wellington’s Rose Garden—Shades of Lazarus
“We thought the Botanical and Rose Gardens were the prettiest and best kept we have seen anywhere.”
So write Jim and Sharen Branscome in their travel diary from Wellington, New Zealand. This pair is originally from East Tennessee, lived in the NYC-area for decades, and then retired to Colorado. They’ve traveled widely and are now cruising around the world. And as neither of them is prone to hyperbole, we perked up our ears!
Wellington Botanic Garden covers “25 hectares of unique landscape, protected native forest, conifers, specialised plant collections, colourful floral displays, and views over Wellington city.” An especially wonderful sight, even an ocean away, is the geometric Lady Norwood Rose Garden—110 beds each with a different rose variety. Garden historian Walter Cook provides a wonderful history of the rose garden here, including this episode:
“Sometime during the first decade of the Lady Norwood Rose Garden’s existence, there was a great disaster. A gardener accidentally sprayed the roses with 24D, a hormone herbicide, mistaking it for liquid DDT, and killed all but two beds of roses. All the bushes were removed, and that season the garden was planted with annuals until a new batch of roses could be installed. Needless to say I have found no documentation relating to this event, but it was still one of the horror stories related by staff when I began my apprenticeship at the Botanic Garden in the early 1960s.”
Consider this recent photo of the garden in full bloom, and take heart, all you fellow gardening knuckleheads!
Lady Norwood Rose Garden, part of Wellington Botanic Garden, New Zealand
Photo: Wellington Botanic Garden
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Johnny Weir: With Roses for Medals
At last, a break from the too utterly understated bouquets that the Vancouver Olympic Committee chose for this year’s Winter Games.
U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir placed sixth with the judges, but his fans came with trophies of their own—an immense rose wreath for his head and a “monogrammed” bouquet: a “J” of white roses doing a flying camel inside three dozen reds. Weir’s supporters hooted as the scores for his long program were announced. His mom shushed the people around her and Johnny raised his gloved hand to tone down the disappointment.
“As Lady Gaga would say, ‘I have all my role models out there,’ ” he told reporters. “I may not be the most decorated person in the skating world, but judging by the audience reaction … they go on my journeys with me.”
Weir placed sixth overall, but wearing a crown of red roses, he looked as good as gold: beloved.
Figure skater Johnny Weir takes roses in lieu of a medal at the Winter Olympics.
Photo: via queerty
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For You Zone-6ers and Below
February is happy heart month in the Austin garden, but not so, we realize, for many friends in Louisville, Indy, Ithaca, and other parts more northerly.
Thanks to our friends Margaret and Wendy Todd for sending along a treat for gardeners in the frigid zones. Let a thousand laptops bloom!
This software is just one dilly from Flash experts Procrea. (We’ll turn back to it, no doubt, come our own blizzard season—about July.)
”Flower Garden” by Procrea