In the Inez Grant Parker Rose Garden

That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo & Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.    Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

The aristocratic rose always imbues romance and culture. It captures our imaginations with its deep fragrance and beautiful blooms. It punishes the beholder with its vicious thorns, symbolizing the dichotomy of pleasure and pain. Yet the rose is also delicate, requiring almost daily care in order to produce its heady scent and signature flowers.

On the east side of Balboa Park, across the Park Avenue pedestrian bridge, is San Diego's most beautiful and extensive rose garden, named for philanthropist Inez Grant Parker. There are approximately 200 varieties of roses here, carefully tended by a staff of volunteers. I can only imagine the amount of tending these roses need. I have 5 plants and two hybrid variety roses in my garden, and it is a constant fight to remove spent blooms, prune, and fight rose blight. Orange rust spores continue to be a problem for my Mother of Pearl and Double Delight roses and I can see evidence of the scourge at the Inez Grant Parker Rose Garden as well.

Roses are beloved, favorites of florists, brides, and sentimental romantics. So, we continue to tend them, nurse them through sickness, and create new varieties to grow in our private and public gardens. They will forever adorn our bouquets and pique our memories of romance and days gone by.

For more rose pictures, please click here.

Michael Pollan - It is not just an author, but also a tomato.

I have always delighted in growing exotic, heirloom tomatoes. Especially the kind you never find in a store. Some do well, some do not. Some taste great, some are barley edible. All of them are fun to grow and make the wait for tomatoes exciting and ripe with anticipation. This year I have 24 different tomatoes in my back yard garden. Some of these I have grown before and continue to grow because of their combination of production and taste. One I have not grown before is the “Michael Pollan”.

According to anniesannuals.com:
'Michael Pollan' is an odd shaped mutant! (The tomato that is.) Egg shaped fruits are yellow with green stripes & some have little “nubbins” on the ends. Related to ‘Green Zebra’ but with a milder taste & a good amount of sweetness. Very popular in taste tests. Plus the bloom on this variety is reported to be quite showy. Nice! Named after the amazing author & teacher -whose books we highly recommend.



Michael Pollan is a famous author dealing with health, the environment and food’s influence on both. He has been immortalized with his own heirloom tomato with the nom de plume “Michael Pollan”.

The tomato also has a reputation for blossom end rot. Blossom end rot is generally caused by a lack of calcium in the soil and irregular watering. The lack of calcium can be due to poor watering practices or by a basic lack of calcium in the soil. I always plant my tomatoes with ground up egg shells and make sure I use a good fertilizer as well. I also hand water with an eye to temperature and weather. I got my “Michael Pollan” at the Tomato Mania event at the Quail Botanical Gardens. If you have never attended this event in the spring, I highly recommend it. The plant went into the ground on April 2nd. As of June 1st, the plant was nearly 5 feet tall. It has an abundance of blossoms. I mean lots and lots of blossoms. I am hopefull for a bountiful harvest and the tomatoes taste as good as their reputation. In any event, it has been fun to grow and anticipation runs high for some great tasting tomatoes.

Michael Pollan with multitude of blossoms.

Volunteer Call

A note from Jodi at the Garden Path:

Hello everyone---

I may have talked to some of you this past weekend, but we are looking for volunteers for our annual fundraising opportunity this summer. During the Stampede (July 7-17th this year..), our volunteers take shifts selling raffle tickets on behalf of the Kinsmen. Other than the Sneak-a-Peek Thursday, there are three shifts a day -- morning, afternoon and evening. Its an easy, fun way for us to fundraise, and admission to the Park is taken care of.

The Kinsmen pay us per shift worked, so if you are interested, please volunteer as many times as you can!!

A big thanks to those that have already volunteered; I will be in touch with further details a little closer to the date. Happy gardening!

All the best,

Jodi Lucas

Funds and Granting Director

Garden Path Society

You can email Jodi for more details and shift times at jodijets65@hotmail.com

Permablitzes

“Permablitzes change urban landscape, one garden at a time” is a report from Adrienne Beattie about permablitzes — “a day in which a group of people converge on an urban space to install a permaculture design.”

From Flower to Fruit (May Bloomday)

So many times with our fruits and vegetables we focus on the edibles and not the flowers that created them. This post pays tribute to the flower, for without her we would have no fruits or vegetables to speak of, let alone eat!

The pomegranate has beautiful red flowers. It produces so many of them it is impossible for them all to turn into fruit without making the tree topple over.

The tangerine blossom is small and sweet. Notice the small tangerine beginning to form out of the spent flower.

The tomato blossom is small and yellow; it slowly creates a hard green fruit that develops into a vine ripened masterpiece.

15th Annual Clairemont Garden Tour 2011

This year's garden tour felt less like a garden tour and more like a landscape tour. Landscapes are pretty, no doubt, but they lack the heart and soul of a true garden. Turning a landscape into a garden takes so much more than building basic structures: it takes time for plants to grow into their placements, there is art of choosing the best possible plants, and most importantly, the outdoor space must be meaningful to the owner.

The gardens on this year's tour lacked that sense of meaning. Rather, they were lovely landscapes designed by professionals. Most gardens had an over abundance of hardscape, drought tolerant plants, and many had pools. There was very little diversity; we saw the same succulents at many yards, and xeriscaping was the new fashion du jour. Hubby found it very ironic that the pool owners touted the most xeriscaped of the gardens being shown. All the water guzzling plants one could fit in a yard would not waste the amount of water that a pool does.

This tour lacked the show stoppers of year's past. There was no unbelievably mind-blowing Sie Garden terracing (2010) or whimsical canyon trails of the Banta Garden (2009). The 2011 yards felt forced and lacked creativity. The were overly dependent on professionals, which is so antithetical to the do-it-yourself nature of Clairemont. It was Clairemont attempting to be bourgeoise - Clairemont should never attempt to be anything but its wonderful, diverse, blue collar, hard working, diamond-in-the-rough self. And for this false identity portrayed by this garden show, I am most disappointed. I am getting down off my soap box now; time to go work in my own beautiful, messy, DIY garden.


For more garden pictures, please click here.

On farmers markets in Calgary

Calgary Herald writer, Jeremy Klaszus, has written an article “City Hall can help markets grow” about the farmers' markets situation in Calgary.