Mid Atlantic | North Central | North East | North West
South Central | South East | South West
West Coast | Canada
Special Events

Mid-Atlantic

DEC. 11. Soils, Preparation, Planting and Management. Lecture and workshop with Tony Avent. Plant Delights Nursery, Raleigh, North Carolina. (919) 772-4794.

SouthWest

NOV. 13 & 14. Southwest Sunset Orchid. Display and sale. Orchid Society of Arizona. Valley Garden Center, Phoenix, Arizona. (480) 496-5762.

NOV. 20. Feeling of Fall Festival. Fall harvest displays and demonstrations. Boyce Thompson Arboretum, Superior, Arizona. (520) 689-2811.

DEC. 3 & 4. Annual Holiday Fair. Albuquerque Garden Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (505) 296-6020.

DEC. 3–5. Luminaria Nights. Display. Tucson Botanical Gardens, Tucson, Arizona. (520) 326-9686.

West Coast

Canada

NOV. 20 & 21. Greenhouse Growers Association Conference. Ramada Hotel, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. (306) 966-5586.

DEC. 10–JAN. 2. Festival of Lights. VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia. (604) 878-9274. 

Special Events

Prairie House Companions

No animal symbolizes the mythical Old West like the American buffalo, or bison. The teeming herds of these shaggy creatures that once grazed the Great Plains are now history, but thanks to a collaboration among several Smithsonian museums, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., opened a new American Prairie exhibit this July, giving visitors to the nation’s capital a chance to view bison in a naturalistic setting.

Along with a starter herd of two bison calves and a colony of prairie dogs, the 46,000-square-foot exhibit showcases more than 100 plant species native to the American heartland, as well as interpretive displays that tell the prairie’s story from both environmental and cultural perspectives. “Grasslands are every bit as endangered in the American West as the rainforest in South America,” notes Clinton Fields, executive director of the Friends of the National Zoo. Human activity has destroyed most of the American prairie: Once covering about 40 percent of the United States, only about one percent remains.

Although the bison may be the exhibit’s initial draw for visitors, zoo officials are hoping that the exhibit’s innovative design will also encourage visitor appreciation of the plants in a prairie ecosystem. The exhibit features a mixture of grasses—“mostly Indian grass and big and little bluestem,” says Chris Price, zoo horticulturist. “We don’t know which grasses the bison will end up liking the most,” she says, “so the plantings may change in the future.” Other plants in the exhibit include bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), blazing star (Liatris spicata), and coneflower (Ratibida pinnata). The exhibit’s Prairie Plant Discovery Trail enables visitors to learn about the historical medicinal and ceremonial uses of many prairie plants.

The National Zoo, located at 3001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C., is open everyday except Christmas. Admission is free. For more information call (202) 673-4800, or visit the zoo’s Web site at www.si.edu/natzoo.

—Margaret T. Baird, Communications Assistant

Formal Debut for Stowe Botanical Garden

Ten years in the making, the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in Belmont, North Carolina, marked the completion of its long-awaited, 110-acre first phase with a three-day grand celebration on October 8 through 10. Designed by landscape architect and 2000 AHS award winner Geoffrey L. Rausch, the garden’s centerpiece is a 13,500-

square-foot Visitor Pavilion surrounded by meadows, woodlands, and formal gardens, including the Four Seasons courtyard, an heirloom Cottage Garden, and the tropical Canal Garden.

Named for the textile magnate and philanthropist who established the original endowment, the privately-operated garden is expected to cover 450 acres and cost $150 million when completed—some 20 to 40 years in the future—and is likely to rival world-renowned botanical gardens. Long-range plans call for the construction of conservatories and additional demonstration gardens.

Executive director Mike Bush calls Stowe a “marvelous addition to the Piedmont region” and hopes it will attract at least 100,000 visitors annually. Stowe is located at the North Carolina/South Carolina line, close to two interstate highways. The garden is open year round. Admission is free, but a donation is suggested. For more information call (704) 825-4490 or visit the garden’s Web site at www.stowegarden.org.

New Life for Historic Cemetery Gardens

Most gardeners don’t think of graveyards as places to practice their craft, but horticulturist Kevin Kuharic is an exception. On November 18, the Georgia Perennial Plant Society (GPPA) will sponsor Kuharic’s lecture at the Atlanta History Center entitled, “Heavenly Gardens: The Resurrection of Rural Garden Cemeteries,” a survey of the history of cemetery gardening.

Kuharic is not only oddly comfortable surrounded by tombs and headstones, he’s also managed to carve out a successful graveyard-based career for himself: He and partner Paul Boat co-own Atlanta’s Gate City Caretakers, a business that specializes in the restoration and maintenance of historic cemetery gardens. Kuharic traces his fondness for graveyards to his childhood in Indiana, which included visits to the family plot with his grandparents to maintain plantings and religious ornaments. “Often, we had picnics,” he recalls.

After moving to Atlanta in 1988, Kuharic began visiting Oakland, the city’s historic municipal cemetery, to combat homesickness. “I felt a sense of belonging, even though my people were not buried there,” he says. He quickly became a tour guide for the cemetery, which was established in 1850 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He was also the first to voluntarily “adopt a plot”—a site where he still loyally gardens today. Taking that idea one step further, Kuharic and Boat opened Gate City Caretakers in 1995, in an effort to re-establish the professional gardening at Oakland that had ended with the stock market crash in 1929.

Kuharic and Boat now maintain about 100 plots and gardens at Oakland and sponsor its Graveyard Gardening Program, as well as consult on work statewide. They are also preparing a large-scale, restorative landscape installation at Oakland. Kuharic is proud of the revival of a “gardening mentality” in the once-neglected cemetery. In place of pavement, he notes, “now there are huge portions sprinkled with gardens.”