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Saturday, October 6, 2012

Road Trip~Bartram's Garden


TODAY'S SEEDS OF WISDOM


  • JUST BLOOMED TODAY  
  • AWKWARD PHOTO OF THE DAY
  • TWEET TREATS
  • DID YOU KNOW...?
  • DOG CONFESSIONS
  • GARDEN UPDATE
  • DOG HALLOWEEN COSTUMES
  • VIRTUAL ROAD TRIP~BARTRAM'S GARDENS, PHILADELPHIA
  • FAUNA
  • GARDEN GIGGLE
  • WHAT IN THE WORLD?  
  • FEEDBACK
JUST BLOOMED TODAY 


AWKWARD PHOTO OF THE DAY 

TWEET TREATS
bringing you the quirky, funniest and most interesting tweets from Twitter that we came across.  

I'd pay a large amount of money to hit my neighbor in the face with a frying pan.   @Molly_kats
DID YOU KNOW...?
Hallow means saint. The Catholic holiday of All Saint's Day falls on the last day of October and has become interwoven with other European holidays involving the coming of winter, the harvest season and the celebration of the day to become the holiday we know today.
DOG CONFESSIONS
I poop at the bottom of the kids slide
GARDEN UPDATE
Just about had it with the hose in the front yard. Tried duct tape to no avail. You simply cannot unkink it as it kinks itself behind you. I even looped it over my neck.<sigh>

I am amazed that we still have tomatoes and flowers with more tomatoes! I am hoping that we beat the frost and get to finish out what is growing.
DOG HALLOWEEN COSTUMES


VIRTUAL ROAD TRIP~BARTRAM'S GARDEN, PHILADELPHIA
He was America's first botanist, and his garden is still one of the best to visit. John Bartram was called "the greatest natural botanist in the world" by Carl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century devised our system for classifying plants.

Bartram's garden is a convenient stop during a visit to Philadelphia, just minutes from the Liberty Bell.When he bought this tract along the Schuylkill River in 1728, it was rural land skirting the colonial city. Bartram's travels took him throughout what is now the eastern United States, and this land was where he grew the many plants and seeds he collected in his travels.

His son, William, was a knowledgeable companion for those travels. The notes and sketches that William made during a four-year journey throughout the South, beginning in 1773, were eventually published as "Travels," a book that would be published in several foreign editions as well.

AMERICA'S FIRST CATALOG PLANT NURSERY

Among the Bartrams' most exciting discoveries, in 1765, was the Franklinia tree (Franklinia alatamaha), which they found growing along the Alatamaha River in Georgia and named after their friend, Ben Franklin. William later revisited the beautiful trees and collected seeds, which were planted in Philadelphia.For reasons unknown, this tree was never again seen in the wild after 1803, so the seeds William collected are the source of all known Franklinia trees in existence today.

(Franklinia, hardy to USDA zones 5-8, is a small to medium-size tree with white, fragrant, camellia-like blossoms that open in mid-summer, and leaves that turn coppery red in fall. Good soil drainage is a must.)
Franklinia

The Schuylkill River site also became a commercial plant nursery. Among the 220 species the Bartrams offered in 1783 were tulip poplar trees and poison ivy vines. (Admit it, poison ivy is a handsome plant much of the year.)

Under the leadership of another son, John, Jr., Bartram's granddaughter, Ann, and her husband, Robert Carr, the nursery flourished. By the 1830s, 4,000 species of plants were being raised there, and there was greenhouse space for 10,000 potted plants.

Bartram's nursery supplied plants for such gardens as Jefferson's Monticello and Washington's Mount Vernon. It was the first American nursery to publish a catalogue.  
1783 Catalogue

Native American plants were the mainstay of the gardens and nursery, but exotics also were grown. Soybeans, for example, from seeds sent by Benjamin Franklin. 

Another plant from China, a gingko tree, was planted in 1785 and survives today. It may be the oldest gingko tree in North America.

Like many old gardens, Bartram's fell into disrepair for awhile. Industrial sprawl creeping along the Schuylkill threatened the site when family members lost interest in the nursery in the middle of the 19th century.

To the rescue came Philadelphia industrialist Andrew Southwick, who bought the property, proclaiming, "I don't want a solitary branch cut ... so that not a bush of this beloved old garden shall be disturbed." Unfortunately, with Southwick's death, the property was again sold, this time resulting in the loss of many plants.

Salvation returned in 1891 when the property was bought by the City of Philadelphia. Restoration efforts were spurred by the discovery, in 1950, of a sketch made by William or John of their 8-acre botanical garden.

In addition to many of the plants grown by the Bartrams, the present Historic Bartram's Gardens also includes an education center housed in the stone barn built by John Bartram in 1775, as well as a wildflower meadow and the furnished Bartram home. More recently, a community garden and orchard were added to the site. The Bartrams would have approved.
   
GARDEN GIGGLE

Why couldn’t the ghost see its mom and dad?
 Because they were trans-parents!
  Which ghost is the best dancer?
  The Boogie Man!
  Why do ghosts like to ride in elevators?
 It raises their spirits. 

  What do you get if you cross Bambi with a ghost?
 Bamboo.


FAUNA


WHAT IN THE WORLD?  
On today in American history, people in gardens everywhere were talking about:
1816 First double-decker steamboat, The WASHINGTON, arrives in New Orleans
1864 Civil War The Battle of Darbytown
1913 Henry Ford installs the first moving assembly line, manufacturing a car in just under 3 minutes
1943 Japanese execute 100 American prisoners on Wake Island
1949 East Germany created
1960 First episode of "Route 66" premiers on CBS; Kennedy and Nixon debate Cold War foreign policy
1968 Hollywood adopted the movie rating system
1983 Sean Connery plays Bond in "Never Say Never Again"
1985 Palestinian terrorists attack an Italian cruise ship
2001 Beginning of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2003 Arnold Swarzenegger becomes California Governor; Voters vote to terminate the former governor Gray Davis
2012  Over 60 people in 9 states are sickened by menigitis outbreak

FEEDBACK
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