A garden tour vacation, part 1

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s my typical annual summer tradition to head out out town for a few day to visit botanical gardens or arboretums. The past few years, I’ve explored gardens around the Raleigh area: J.C. Raulston, Sarah Duke Gardens, and North Carolina Botanical Gardens. This year I headed north and made visits to (in Virginia): Green Springs Gardens between Annandale and Lincolnia, Bon Air Park Rose Garden just west of Arlington, and Meadowlark Arboretum near Reston. In Pennsylvania: Jenkins Arboretum near King of Prussia, Morris Arboretum near Chestnut Hill, Swarthmore Colleges’ Scott Arboretum near Chester, and Mt. Cuba Center just outside Wilmington, Delaware. It sounds like a lot, but most of these were all less than an hour from each other (the northern Virginia gardens, and the ones in PA/DE, respectively).

Green Springs Gardens

Located just one mile off 395 in Lincolnia, Virginia, Green Springs Gardens is free to the public and open 8am to 7:30pm Fridays, 8:30 to 6 Saturday through Wednesday, and 8 to 7:30 on Thursdays. From 1784 until 1911, Green Springs was a working farm featuring a historic brick house and orchard that changed hands several times, before being conveyed to Fairfax County Park Authority in 1970. Since then, the county added additional acres and converted the farmland into a series of different gardens, including an educational children’s garden, a community food garden, and several native plant pollinator gardens.

For it being early August, there was a lot still in flower and the plant combinations were impressive! Whoever plans the landscaping here has an outstanding feel for what works well together in terms of textures and colors and seasonality.

Bon Air Park Rose Garden

Just under a mile and half west of downtown Arlington, tucked away in a quiet neighborhood off of I-66 (and like Green Springs, free to the public), the Bon Air Park rose garden features a wide variety of roses being trialed to gauge their performance in the often hot and humid weather of the Mid-Atlantic: climbers, hybrid teas, shrub roses, groundcover roses like the Drift series, and everything in between. And adjacent to the rose garden is native plant garden maintained by norther Virginia Master Gardeners, with each plant labeled as to its name and which wildlife benefits from it, and how. There’s also a compost bin (with signage explaining the benefits of compost and how they create the compost) along with two model bird houses with nesting materials inside.

I’m loving the extensive efforts to help educate the community on what they can do to create more sustainable landscapes and gardens friendly to wildlife and pollinators!

Meadowlark Arboretum

Meadowlark Arboretum is situated about 3 miles northwest of Tysons, and just over 4 miles east of Reston, off Dulles Access Road. Admission to Meadowlark is just $8 and they are open seven days a week 10 to 6:30. Plantings are more spread out at this arboretum, and the grounds are more hilly, so it’s a great place if you’re looking for a vigorous walk. The emphasis here is mostly native plants and meadow gardens, but there is also a lovely pond filled with water lilies and beautiful lotus! And also an Asian garden with sculptures, Asian plants, stonework, and a large “peace and harmony” cast iron bell hanging from an ornate pergola, plus a display of bonsai trees!

Swarthmore College, Scott Arboretum

I think if I had known many years ago when deciding on where to get my degree in horticulture that this college existed, I might’ve been willing to go out of state to attend school in the middle of such a large and beautiful arboretum! Free and open to the public seven days a week 7-7:30, located off I-476 at Baltimore Pike between Wilmington, DE and Philadelphia. The arboretum consists of the main gardens around an old colonial area house that is the offices, native shrubs and trees interspersed among colorful perennials and annuals. Beyond the main gardens, very old, majestic trees of a wide variety of genera are spread around the campus, with under-plantings of native shrubs, and single specimens of Magnolias, hollies, dogwoods, and others in between.

The other thing that impressed me with Scott Arboretum is their plan to be totally powered by renewable energy by 2035. They are in the middle of re-doing infrastructure to support energy conservation and to reduce emissions. The campus also featured a rain garden and extensive native plantings to support wildlife.

Morris Arboretum

9 miles to the north-northwest of Philly is Morris Arboretum, the largest of the gardens and arboretums I had visited thus far. $20 admission, open 9-5 on weekends, 10-5 Monday to Friday. Great place for a vigorous walk as you start at the top of a hill and meander down through an old grove of trees to the various types of gardens and plantings and displace in the shallow valley below. The highlights for me included the Fernery, an old victorian-era domed greenhouse showcasing hundreds of species of ferns growing alongside a small waterfall and gentle stream, beautiful stone and iron sculptures scattered around the grounds, and a functioning model train display with trains running in between dwarf conifers and bonsai plants!

My next post will cover my visit to Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware. Stay tuned!