A visit to the renovated RBG rock garden yesterday
Last summer I posted a thread about our 'hard hat' tour of the almost completed renovation of the rock garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens near here. The rock garden renovation is now complete and it opened to the public May 20th. We went to the opening celebration the night before, which was disappointing for various reasons so went back yesterday during the day to take a better look. The rock garden dates back to an 1930s/Great Depression work project that converted a gravel pit into the rock garden with the addition of 10,000 tonnes of limestone! (No rhododendrons in this garden....!) The infrastructure was aging and in desperate need of replacing/updating. The existing mature and maturing plantings provide a great backdrop to new additions so that 'raw' look of a new garden is minimized. One of the most significant changes is a major improvement is accessibility for young families with kids in strollers etc as well as for older or disabled people - the stone stairs that were the main access rout have largely been replaced by wide' comfortable concrete ramps. Some pictures:
Spring has been very cold here so the water features, including a long pool across the entrance, are still without any water plants:
The lily pools in the water feature in the garden are also missing their waterlilies! The water is an odd, murky color too; I'd not sure if that is due to the cold or due to a need to adjust/stabilize water quality in a new water system for the garden.
As you can see, the roof of the visitor's centre is in the shape of a leaf - very dramatic :-) During last year's tour, we couldn't go into the building so I didn't realize that the leaf shape is a big feature of the interior too:
I 'm not sure what the vertical drop is from the top of the garden to the bottom but the ramp slope is a comfortable walk, although the slope varies from place to place. In pictures taken looking along the ramp, it oftens looks more like a fairly level path than a slope! The slope is more obvious where there is rockwork to judge the slope against. Some pictures from along the ramps:
Moving on to pictures of some plantings....
The rock garden has traditionally had large displays of bulbs in spring, then the bulbs were removed after flowering and replaced with annuals. The removed bulbs were sold at one of RBG's plant sales. I think they are moving to more permanent plantings and reducing the bulb/annual displays. I only took one picture of bulbs (white narcissus) during our visit in May and only saw one significant planting of annuals yesterday (which I didn't take a picture of....)
Spring bulbs May 19:
I'm not sure if it's the exact area, but somewhere near where those bulbs were is now a lovely swath of blue hostas:
There are numerous places with pretty combinations of well-established groundcovers spilling over rocks. Here are a couple of those:
From May 19:
From yesterday:
I wasn't sure what one of the groundcovers was so took a picture of the label... I want to look for more info on this one:
I think I'd better post at this point and continue in a 'reply' post in case I hit a picture-posting limit....
Comments (18)
tsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
7 years agoRelated Discussions
A visit to Phil's garden...
Comments (27)PaulaB, don't give up on expanding your city lot. I know, I did some creative thinking and the result was quite unexpected and a dream come true. We got to stay in the same house, and we added to our lot size. Long story short, I realized our backyard neighbor was not using the last 25 feet (or more) of her lot, which was 100 feet wide. So, I asked if it might interest her to sell us a small slice of her 300 foot deep x 100 foot wide lot. It was the only game in town for us. No other piece of land would do. So it was indeed a seller's market. But here I was so fortunate that our neighbor is the best one I ever had. So we made a friendly deal for the land, which is now my Back40 where hosta are KING ... and QUEEN. I put up a chainlink privacy fence now almost covered in star jasmine....and right in the middle included a shorter 5 foot wide "neighbor gate." We visit all the time, my dachshund girls love to play in her yard with supervision, and she is delighted to have visitation privileges with the hosta! She even has one which she frets over, she is an old fashioned gardener yet fascinated with new plants such as hosta! I can see my grandmother in her. I'm just saying....this is a possible chain of events. Not only COULD it happen, it really did. Isn't life interesting?...See MoreIt's never a bad day to visit the S. A. Botanical Gardens
Comments (12)I'm glad to know you enjoyed the photos! Thanks so much for replying. Joey, the plant in question was in a recently planted pot so Linaria "Fairy Bouquet" it is. One internet source listed it as an alpine plant, so I'm guessing it's one, like pansy and snap dragon that will make it through San Antonio's comparitively mild winters....See MoreVisited a houzz member's garden!
Comments (131)That is too bad, Rouge. Maybe the difference in temperature then? Though the pup I gave to Woody hasn’t returned either. And the mother plant Lost Horizons got theirs from, is closer to her than to me. Strange. Mine is fine, a bit overgrown with Leucojum foliage and an Arum that should have died down by now. The pup is doing ok too. I moved it to a spot under the Japanese Maple a few weeks ago. We’ll see if it gets enough light there. And if it survives... Sorry for the bad picture: I cannot get closer without moving a table full of cacti. Too lazy ;-)....See MoreRBG renovated rose garden this morning
Comments (0)DH and I met up with my two SILs this morning to check out the progress on the renovation to the RBG rose garden. It was very hot and humid so we didn't stay long! They've certainly been busy! All the structures are in place I think; there are certainly lots of perennials of all sorts and a lot of roses - but there were wooden stakes with names on them marking where more roses are to go - I think the climbers and big roses are still to be planted. It's going to be interesting to see whether they are able to keep all this space weeded until the plants fill in over the next few year to help keep weeds down. We haven't been by the rock garden yet this spring but last fall we were definitely starting to notice weeds there. I certainly hope they've found the resources for maintenance on these two big renovations to keep them looking good. Poor maintenance wrt to weeding has been a growing problem at RBG for the past decade or so. Pictures: it's a very big space and replaces a lot of stuff around the teahouse and central water feature. The plants that are usually in the water for the summer aren't out yet. There is a nice compass rose in the floor of the gazebo structures: I assume these structures are for climbing roses: There are lots of structures for the roses to grow on: Given the non-blooming of our wisterias this year, we checked out the Japanese one ('Lawrence' I think...) on the bridge on the way to the rose garden. It was blooming - although not as much as it should be. 'Lawrence' is what my Japanese wisteria was supposed to be - but it clearly isn't! Wrong color; flower racemes too short..... But it took 5 years for ours to bloom for the first time so there wasn't any point in making a fuss about it by then. But every time I see one of these, I can't help but pout a bit that this is not what the flowers on mine look like!...See Morewoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoback again....
a few misc. pictures... The ramps are the main access into the garden now, but there are still quite a few rock stairs - like this one - that provide access to some of the plantings.
To see the waterfall that feeds the water-garden area with the lily pools, you need to go up rock stairs.
(The waterfall is not natural - the water is pumped up to the top, runs down the falls, and down the concrete watercourse with the lily poots, is collected and pumped back up to the top again in an endless loop... There are lots of natural ribbon falls in the area near the garden and they probably served as the model for this man-made waterfall.)
These two views down into the garden give a bit better sense of the depth of it than the views along the ramps do I think. The first is from the top near the visitors' centre entrance and the second is from a viewing platform halfway up one side.
An odd little detail from the garden - the garbage cans are very attractive :-)
The pattern on the cans matches that used on some benches and railings in the main RBG gardens although the color is different. The benches in the rock garden are relatively plain - but nice - grey metal and gray wood. The colorful benches from the main garden would look out of place here I think.
One thing I didn't like at the rock garden was this wall around a patio area off the visitors' centre - the odd inserts into the otherwise nice linear stone wall seemed out of place and somewhat pretentiously 'artsy' :-) Also, the flooring of the area was concrete with a roughened surface that presumably was meant to be some sort of reference to a natural surface - but only succeeded in being very hard to walk on IMO!
The gate into this area was attractive though:
The rock garden - and RBG in general - is well worth a visit if you happen to be travelling in southern Ontario.
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
7 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
7 years ago
peaceofmind
7 years ago
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agofloral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
7 years ago
katob Z6ish, NE Pa
7 years agoken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
7 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoken - '...multi millionaires and hopped across the pond every year to look at gardens' - don't I wish....! :-)
floral - thanks for the info re that cotoneaster. I did some additional checking and I don't think I have a place for it... Is it compatible with growing around/ under other - small- shrubs or would it choke then out?
katob - If you're visiting Niagara Falls, stop in at the Niagara Botanical Gardens. The Butterfly Conservatory on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens is also very much worth a visit. The RBG rock garden is a short distance away from the main RBG gardens - if you only have time to visit one site, go to the rock garden! Lots and lots to see in a relatively small site. RBG is a huge property of 2000+ acres. Much of it is 'natural lands' and a lot of their resources are devoted to conservation etc. The ornamental gardens are smaller and spread out over several locations - and not as well maintained! - than you might expect. (They are chronically short of funds, and it shows in the maintenance....!)
I'm glad you enjoyed the tour - we certainly enjoyed the garden. One picture I meant to post but forgot is this one:
I assume it's a beautybush.... It was foaming out of the hill and was visible from almost everywhere in the garden - if you look at the second picture I posted at the start of the thread, you can see it on the left side. Once the flowers finish, it'd would retreat into the green background, but it sure looked good on Thursday!
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7 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoaftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
7 years agoUser
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoNHBabs z4b-5a NH
7 years ago
posierosie_zone7a
7 years agomnwsgal
7 years ago
woodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., CanadaOriginal Author