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Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Home Gardening Center

Mum Countdown

Posted in Around the Garden on November 13 2012, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

After a week of election post-mortems, the NYBG is now ready to follow suit with the results from our ‘choose your favorite mum’ poll. For those of you not already in the know, I posted a blog on October 26 entitled ‘Mum Madness.’ In it, I explained our breeding program for Korean mums at the Garden.

To make things easy for newcomers, here is the encapsulated version: every year we collect seed from our Korean mum collection and grow them on through the next year to see if we have any new varieties. We look for certain traits–compact growers, flowering time, flower forms, and color. When we find one we like, we keep it to propagate via cuttings.

This year we asked the public to join us in the selection process. We went out to the Korean mum Trial Bed in the Home Gardening Center and chose six mums that differed from our current collection and had great appeal, photographing and displaying them in the October 26 blog. They were also labeled in the garden and, through signage, visitors were asked to vote for their favorite selection by texting in their answers.

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Mum Madness: Vote for Your Favorite New NYBG Mum!

Posted in Gardening Tips, Gardens and Collections on October 26 2012, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.

Korean mums were first hybridized (bred) in Connecticut in the 1930s by a nurseryman named Alex Cummings. He was working on hybridizing cold-hardy varieties that would flourish in New England temperatures. A tall plant–a wild species he mistakenly identified as Chrysanthemum coreanum–fell into his hands and the results were the lavish Korean mums you see planted today in both our Jane Watson Irwin Perennial Garden and the Home Gardening Center.

The chrysanthemum that Cummings was working with turned out to be Chrysanthemum sibiricum, a wild mum with white-pink daisies, vigorous growth, and good branching. This species is also native to Korea, so the popular name of “Korean mum” is correct. Korean hybrids tend to be four feet tall with spectacular, daisy-like flowers that come in a wide range of colors, from pale yellow and dusty pink to burnt-orange and fiery red.

At The New York Botanical Garden, we have a selection program for the Korean mums. Each year we grow a wide variety of Korean mums in a kaleidoscope of colors. In the Perennial Garden, we group them as separate colors–a selection of red mums in the hot room, pink in the cool room–paired beautifully with fall shrubs and perennials to create vibrant autumnal displays.

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Morning Eye Candy: DIY

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 23 2012, by Matt Newman

We geek out pretty regularly over the photos snapped in the Home Gardening Center, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve overheard visitors asking “What’s that?” as they pass by this humble (or not-so-humble, depending on what’s in bloom) corner of the NYBG. For those not in the know, this is where we show off our practical chops–where the home horticulturist can come for some back yard inspiration.

Not only does the HGC house the Pauline Gillespie Gossett Plant Trials Garden and a composting demonstration area, but it’s also where we host our weekend gardening demonstrations. So if you’re here on a Saturday or Sunday, get a glance at the schedule before you hoof it into the Garden. “Free” and “super helpful” are usually the best ways to describe our learning sessions, meaning they’re worth making time for.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Plant Profiles: Unusual Annuals Continued…

Posted in Gardening Tips, Gardens and Collections on July 31 2012, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.

Dusty Miller (Centaurea cineraria)

Sometimes the ordinary can look extraordinary just by making a few changes. This is the case with dusty miller (Centaurea cineraria) in the Home Gardening Center. In one of the beds we have ‘Gloucester White’ growing alongside Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ and Petunia Supertunia® ‘Vista Silverberry’. This is how you would expect to see it in a display–partnered in a nice color combination with other annuals.

In an adjacent bed, however, we have done something different. The same dusty miller, ‘Gloucester White’, has been grown into a standard. The two specimens that you see are between four and five years old. Dusty miller is a vigorous grower and forms a woody stem fairly quickly, making it an ideal candidate for a standard.

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