Plant of the Week:
The Forget me not
Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash
Myosotis sylvestris was all over one of the first private garden tours I ever attended. It was a personal woodland type garden tended by a couple in Stamford, Connecticut and they had opened it to our garden club, which I had just joined.
I was taken by this blue carpet that highlighted the emerging hostas, ferns, and epimediums.
I fell in love with this little guy. So cheerful! So blue! So many flowers!
So I chose it as the Plant of the Week and I go to look it up on the Missouri Botanical Garden Data Base, and what do I see?
Red font. :(
(see below)
Doom and gloom on MOBOT.
So sweet and innocent looking.
So dear reader, if you live in the midwest, it seems you may want to NOT enjoy my Plant of the Week but instead you should fear and avoid it. Or, you could go for Brunnera macrophylla on the right above, probably B. ‘Jack Frost’, also an adorable blue flower, with even cooler foliage.
Artist Karen Blair
You heard me mention my friend Karen Blair on the pod. Karen is a local Charlottesville artist who sponsors Into the Garden with Leslie
Have a look at what Karen can do— she worked with one of my listeners, Anne Brooks Rudzki, of Capital Roots Containers, and created this beautiful commission of Anne Brook’s garden.
Kate Daly of The Blooming
Kate likes to review books for us on Instagram.
Kate Daly of @theBloomingTruth cares about Monarch butterflies.
Enough that she dons makeup to make her look like a caterpillar, and enough that she formed a group of Instagram friends to get the word out about what we can all do to help.
I loved chatting with Kate about the monarch, her nascent cut flower farm in Alabama, and how much she loves gardening.
“I always say it was among my flower and my weeds that I found my missing pieces. Every year, I just found more missing pieces of myself and my strength that I didn’t know that I had. And gardening centered me. It just made me know that I could do this. I could do anything. “
Here’s a post from the Monarch Messengers.
Kate in full caterpillar array.
Coffee Time!
Please consider supporting Into the Garden with Leslie by buying me a cup of coffee.
OR! Becoming a member of I’m into the Garden too!
I will send you some LH Gardens gear if you become a member!
With Marianne Willburn and Scott Beuerlein on the Edith Ann sofa at the Lord Baltimore Hotel at MANTS. This is where the silliness of the those outtakes took place.
Tom Christopher’s Growing Greener podcast on The Perfect Earth Project
The Grand Hotel— that resort in Alabama that features the monarch migration.
Historic Garden Week
It’s the NINETIETH year of Historic Garden Week, a state-wide tour that provides tons of beautiful homes and gardens to see, but more importantly, tons of dollars for restoration projects all over the Commonwealth. This year it runs April 15-22.
Here are some links for you.
The Charlottesville-Albemarle portion of the tour features:
April 15 Morven. Day of ticket sales only, bought at Morven. $20 cash or check. Hours are 10-5
April 16 Three private homes in the North Garden area. Tickets must be bought ahead and online here. Hours are from 10-5.
April 17 The University of Virginia. All of the eastern pavilions and gardens will be open along with Carr’s Hill and the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. There will be tours of the MEL at 11:00 and 1:00. No tickets are necessary for these events. Hours are 11-3
Next Episode:
Brie Arthur
Brie comes Into the Garden to talk about her new venture: the Carolina Garden House/ Air B & B.