Savannah’s Southern Hospitality

Post published:June 27, 2024

The dynamic duo of Beth Favrot and Catherine Freeman did it again! This pair planned a Savannah Visiting Gardens trip that delighted the senses and sensibilities.

With the help of former Savannah resident Sara Gaines and the tremendous hospitality of the Trustees Garden Club, Beth and Catherine put together a trip that introduced Town Gardeners to Savannah’s historic city center and included a day exploring nearby islands and the expansive Wormsloe Plantation on land first granted by the English king to protect Savannah from the threat of invading Spaniards from Florida in the south.

Historic stops in town included the Andrew Lowe House, where the Girl Scouts in the group paid homage to founder Juliette Gordon Lowe. Everywhere we looked was another of Savannah’s lush, green squares, and the walkability of Savannah allowed us to stroll under the oaks to dinner or for quick shopping excursions between scheduled activities.

Trustees Garden Club is looking for-ward to their centennial in 2026, and a visit to their projects in Forsyth Park and planned anniversary project had a few of us thinking of our own future here in New Orleans.

Town Gardeners returned to New Orleans with visions of custom greenhouses and island living in their heads….and wondering where we will go next!

Three Cheers for Heart of the Park!

Post published:June 27, 2024

Hip Hip Hooray for our Sponsor Committee superstars for all those ta-bles and our Seating whizzes for keeping them straight!

Hip Hip Hooray for an auction full of irresistible items!

Hip Hip Hooray for our community projects army of decorators, armed with glue guns, moss balls, and snake boots!

Let’s make it four cheers:

Hip Hip Hooray for our chairs who led with grace and joy! Huzzah!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the luncheon by volunteer-ing, purchasing a ticket, and getting into the spirit of things with your hat. It was another wonderful day, and as the receipts are tallied, we anticipate a financial success for City Park’s urban forest and for our club’s community projects!

April 2023 Meeting Recap

Post published:April 30, 2023

What better way to celebrate Louisiana Native Plant Month than in Carro Gardner’s beautiful native garden? Town Gardeners celebrated the neighborhood in April, enjoying our business meeting and program in Carro’s home and garden with Tammany Baumgarten (right) of the Louisiana Native Plant Society, Native Plant Initiative of Greater New Orleans, and BaumGardens.

Tammany presented on the garden project she and Carro undertook together but also on the general benefits of native gardening and the opportunity to integrate native plants alongside longtime non-native favorites such as camellias. The Heart of the Park committee gave a hat luncheon fashion show extraordinaire, Jeanne Barousse introduced the elegant plan for tablescapes, and Caroline Reily invited members and guests to sign up for a millinery session to ensure a festive chapeau. After a discussion about the Heart of the Park luncheon, members voted to continue hosting the luncheon for the next two years.

Lynn Box, Kristi French, Virginia Rowan, and Pierce Young, our Zone Flower show delegates and entrants, shared their plans and designs for the Flora & Eudora Zone IX Flower Show the following week. Members enjoyed lingering in Carro’s garden while walking across the street to the home of Beth Favrot, where a delicious lunch was presented by head hostess Catherine Freeman and her committee. New members received their initial NOTG orientation.

Highlights from the 2023 Zone IX Flower Show

Post published:April 30, 2023

The Garden Club of Jackson put on a beautiful Flora & Eudora Zone IX Meeting and Flower Show in April, weaving the words of author, photographer, and gardener Eudora Welty through every aspect. Educational speakers included Susan Haltom, who revived Miss Welty’s garden at her request and documented the process in One Writer’s Garden, a beautiful chronicle of a garden over the decades.

Nicole Johnsey Burke, author of Kitchen Garden Revival and the new Leaves, Roots, and Fruits, shared the story of her Gardenary business and the elements of a successful kitchen garden. The final speaker of the meeting was Harvey Cotton, longtime leader of the Huntsville Botanical Garden, who spoke on native plants and planting for pollinators. During the meeting, participants enjoyed dinners in private homes, a reception in Eudora Welty’s garden, and tea at the Old Governor’s Mansion in Jackson. Garden tours before and after the meeting offered extra opportunities for exploring all the Hospitality State had to offer.

The culminating event was a beautiful awards dinner planned and executed by our own Barbara Bush in her role as Zone Representative for Awards. The highlight of the night was the presentation of a GCA Zone Award in Garden History and Design to our own Flora French for her decades of work on this important aspect of GCA. Many thanks to Kristi French and Dr. Ronnie French, who conspired to have Flora in Jackson for the event while maintaining the secret of her special award!

Floral Design Award

Lynn Box created a beautiful table scape for a bride and groom in the Delta Wedding Class, winning a yellow ribbon and incorporating silver, china, furniture, and linens from Barbara Bush, Helen Butcher, Mary Hines, Tina Kern, Dee McCloskey, and Lynn’s own collection. Roses and hellebores took center stage in her lush, romantic arrangements.

Horticulture Awards

Katie Rafferty and Kristi French did a wonderful job gathering cuttings for the show—many thanks to all who let the committee sneak into your gardens and take cuttings and to Kristi for acting as our horticulture delegate in Jackson, submitting specimen in the eight required classes.

Kristi won a blue ribbon and the Novice Award in Horticulture for our favorite pitcher plant: Sarracenia leucophylla.

Carro’s borage won a blue ribbon in an herb class.

Cathy Pierson won a red ribbon for the beautiful New Dawn climbing rose she propagated.

Dee’s bottlebrush took a blue ribbon and a good old loblolly pine won a red ribbon.

Finally, Kristi made a beautiful arrangement for the challenge class. Each of the 21 clubs had to make a bouquet of cut specimens that would have been in gardens in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Kristin won third place with a beautiful white and green arrangement presented in a julep cup. The bouquet included cuttings from the Reily garden on Prytania, Carro’s native garden, the French farm, and McCloskey farm—apologies to any gardens overlooked!

Photography Award

Virginia entered a beautiful shot taken in the botanical garden for her Curtain of Green entry, winning a yellow ribbon and compliments from the judges!

Botanical Arts Award

Pierce Young’s necklace was a showstopper, as evidenced by all the GCA members stopping in their tracks to look more carefully at her piece. Judges awarded Pierce a blue ribbon and both the Novice Award and Botanical Arts Creativity Award, high praise! Pierce’s necklace incorporates the trellis design from the Welty garden and the most elegant garden hose you’ve ever seen.

As always, it takes a village to enter a Zone flower show—thank you to Barbara, Catherine, Lynn, and Dee for being on Kristi’s crew of runners and thank you to Lynn’s Delta Wedding Group mentors, Pike’s Peakers, and more: Barbara Bush, Barbara Rosenberg, Tina Kern, and Courtney Freeman as well as the members above who lent their items for the table scape.

Heart of the Park Luncheon 2023

Post published:April 30, 2023

Friends of City Park and NOTG hosted the 2023 Heart of the Park Hat Luncheon at the City Park Conservatory. Through this event we have raised thousands of dollars for the trees of City Park and the projects of NOTG. The luncheon was a huge success! Thank you to all who contributed and attended.

Big Lake Native Plant Trail Workday & Photography Workshop

Post published:April 29, 2023

Cathy Pierson (above, left) and Dee McCloskey (above, right) wound up Louisiana Native Plant Month by working alongside City Park staff and Native Plant Initiative volunteers to plant natives along the trail on April 28, 2023. Fifty partridge peas now grace the sunny spots and a few dozen native violets were planted in the shade of palmettos and will spread to create a lush ground cover in the future. If you are planning a visit to City Park, take time to visit the trail, located along Big Lake near the boat rentals. Flowering plants and trees make it an interesting stretch of the trail, signage educates about native plants and acknowledges NOTG’s participation, and the red wing blackbirds, butterflies, and a momma red eared slider laying her eggs along the trail testify that the habitat suits them just fine!

iPhone Photography Workshop on the Big Lake Trail

What a wonderful morning NOTG members spent with Jo LaRocca of Jo Jo’s Garden, a favorite Instagram account for garden lovers. The group met at our Partners for Plants project, the Big Lake Native Trail in City Park, on a breezy Saturday morning in April. Jo, a self-taught photographer and avid gardener, gave the group tips on taking pictures and various settings on the iPhone before the group hit the Cajun prairie and started taking photographs. The Partners for Plants project gave lots of options for subject—Turk’s cap, rudbeckia, phlox, Gaillardia, Solidago, Ageratum, and other native plants put on quite a show!

March 2023 Meeting at Longue Vue House and Garden

Post published:March 31, 2023

Longue Vue House and Garden welcomed Town Gardeners for our March 2023 meeting in the Playhouse. Head hostess Jenny Charpentier and Tina Kern arranged a delicious lunch on the tented tennis court and horticulture chairs Katie Rafferty and Kristi French offered a hands on kokedama activity for those willing to get their hands dirty! Several members went home with ferns or other plants housed in the unique moss covered balls.

Longue Vue Executive Director Baty Landis and Director of Gardens Amy Graham gave a fantastic introduction to the history of Longue Vue and impact of twentieth century landscape designer Ellen Biddle Shipman. Shipman cited the three essential characteristics of a real garden as design, greenery, and privacy. She was known for creating axial relationships between garden and home, easily recognized at Longue Vue. The Longue Vue website notes that Ship-man was “considered the dean of women landscape architects” and “designed over 600 gardens between 1914-1946, contributing significantly to a thriving gardening revival that occurred during the early twentieth century.”

Workday at Arthur Ashe School

Post published:December 1, 2022

The NOTG Propagators hosted a successful workday at Arthur Ashe School in Gentilly in early November.

As you can see, it was a picture-perfect day in the schoolyard! There were smiles all around as the garden work was completed. Nice job, ladies!

Photo right: Volunteers included Cathy Cary, Ashley Bright, Dee McCloskey, Catherine Freeman, Maria Wisdom, Mary Hines and Mary Wyatt Milano.

A Noteworthy November Meeting

Post published:December 1, 2022

November’s joint meeting with the Garden Study Club was chock-full! It began with announcements and business items from both clubs, including some NOTG trivia from the 60s, teasers about Art in Bloom 2023 and the Heart of the Park Hat Luncheon, and the unveiling of a special joint project at Audubon Park. Next, City Park’s CEO Cara Lambright expressed her enthusiasm about the recently created City Park Conservancy. Cara and Bo-tanical Garden Director Paul Soniat graciously thanked both clubs for our history of support for the park and gardens.

For our program we were treated to a superb presentation by renown floral and event designer Lewis Miller of Lewis Miller Design. He shared oodles of photos of gorgeous events he has designed. Key themes in his work include flowers as fantasy; creating layers; contrasting rough with refined; and using dynamic flowers that shift and change within an arrangement over time. He also explained the origins of the “Flower Flash”, a concept he created to spread good will be sharing the beauty of flowers with fellow residents of New York City. (Watch GCA’s “The Making of a Flower Flash” video here.) To cap off his presentation, Lewis deftly assembled a lush arrangement with pink and peach tones while entertaining audience questions. What a delight to learn from someone so talented, experienced and personable!

The meeting wrapped up with a beautiful lunch. Some lucky ladies took home amaryllis or paperwhite bulbs, which were given as door prizes. Many others left with a copy (or two!) of Lewis’s most recent book, Flower Flash. Best of all, everyone went home feeling creatively inspired!!

Photo right: Speaker Lewis Miller with Courtney LeClerq, GSC, and Tina Kern, NOTG.

Bon Appetit! Sidney’s Edible Pansy Primer

Post published:February 18, 2022

I love pansies, especially in the mid-winter months and especially during the Mardi Gras season! The pansy is a variety of viola that grows well either in the sun or the shade, but blooms best when it’s chilly. Another added bene-fit to growing pansies is that they are edible! Edible flowers have been used for centuries and have experienced a resurgence thanks to gourmet chefs and food-centric magazines. Growing and using edible flowers is a great way to add color to the landscape and exotic variety to the menu.

Pansies taste like a mild salad green, some with a hint of perfume, and can be used in everything from salads to punch to desserts. They are beautiful on a cake and are commonly sugared.

Crystallized Edible Flowers

Candied flowers and petals can be used in a variety of imaginative ways – to decorate cakes large and small – all kinds of sweet things, such as ice cream, sherbet, cremes, fruit salads, and cocktails.

Ingredients:

Egg White
Super fine granulated sugar
Assorted edible flowers

Directions:

Clean and dry your flowers or petals.
Use a brush to paint a thin layer of egg white onto each side of the flower petals or blossoms.
Gently place them into a shallow bowl of superfine sugar and sprinkle sugar over them to coat.
Remove from the bowl, and place them on a piece of parchment or waxed paper and sprinkle more sugar over them.
Allow them to dry uncovered in a cool place until the coating is crisp, about4-8 hours.
Store at room temperature in an airtight container until using. Best used within a few days.

DON’T FORGET

When growing ornamentals for their edible flowers, the plants need the same growing conditions as if you didn’t plan to eat the flowers. Those conditions vary depending on the variety of plants you are growing. One very important growing condition if you plan to eat the flowers, DO NOT treat them with insecticides or fungicides that are not labelled for vegetables that will be used for human consumption.

If you are interested in learning more about edible flowers, check out these websites:

Thanks to Dr. Joe Willis and GNO Gardening from LSUAgCenter for inspiring me to write this article.