Foodie Treat: 'Circus Circus' Tricolor Carrots Renee's Seeds

A tender foodie treat: This new variety for 2011 from Renee's Seeds:

Tricolor Carrots 'Circus Circus' is a winner.

We grow it in T's sun-drenched community garden.

We're harvesting small, tender carrots and eating them straight from the plot. I used a macro setting on the camera so they appear full-size. T hasn't had any luck with carrots in the past, but this variety is already producing an extremely abundant crop and it's only July.

Heritage Rose Garden: Quarryhill Botanical Garden

Rosa chinensis var spontanea

A magnificent setting year-round! Quarryhill Botanical Garden

Photo courtesy, Christine Walker - Quarryhill

From the garden: Quarryhill director, Bill McNamara returned from a trip to New York City after accepting an award marking Quarryhill's induction into the Great Rosarian's Rose Garden Hall of Fame. Bill received the award at the headquarters of the Manhattan Rose Society in recognition of the outstanding dedication to the preservation of Asian species roses and cultivars.

This honor comes at the same time as the Heritage Rose Garden takes shape at Quarryhill. A new feature at Quarryhill, it will trace the lineage of hybrid tea roses back to their Chinese ancestry, and expand the scope, beauty, and accessibility of the public garden. New attention is being paid to species or wild roses that require less chemical pesticide and fertilizer use.

www.quarryhillbg.org

Patrick Blanc: Vertical Gardens Update

Patrick Blanc Vertical Gardens: London and San Francisco

Detail: Heuchera Bloom at Drew School Living Wall - Photos © Alice Joyce

May 2011 Athenaeum Hotel, London

Compare images below from 2010 with those taken this Spring, and you'll see evidence of amazingly lush growth from one year to the next. Photos © Alice Joyce

Athenaeum Hotel's Vertical Garden completed in 2009 Photo © Alice Joyce

Spring Blooms - April 2011 Drew School Vertical Garden, San Francisco: Planted February 2011 -- I'll visit soon to update photos of the living wall's native plantings.

April 2011 ... Drew School Vertical Garden - San Francisco

Verdantly Vertical on Alice's Garden Travel Buzz

Summer, Sonoma and St. Francis Winery

St. Francis Winery in Sonoma Valley

The cooling effect of a fountain's cascade on a summer day.

Garden Design RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2011

Awarded Best Artisan Garden - RHS Chelsea 2011

Designed by Jihae Hwang (Muum), 'Emptying One's Mind' -- 'Hae - Woo- So'

represented a true first for the Chelsea Flower Show, a traditional Korean toilet.

The design worked around the concept of 'a place where you empty your mind' - which can also refer to a traditional-style Korean outhouse.

The charming, rustic building was surrounded by a landscape of herbaceous wildflowers & perennials, with lilac and camellia shrubs and a Magnolia denudata tree. Ferns, herbs and climbing vines added a lush, woodland ambiance to the setting.

The garden design's environnmental aspects included a half-basement accessed at the back to compost human waste for fertilizer. To walk the pathway, one experienced being refilled by the serene surroundings of flora, together with rock walls that gave the structure stability.

Sponsored by:

Suncheon Bay Garden Expo 2013 - Gwangju City, South Korean;

and Korean Cultural Centre UK