Garden Travels

I was busy weeding a client’s garden bed during the week when I felt a gentle breeze blow across my face and I was showered with pale pink papery petals.

I stopped for a second and looked up into the canopy of a Prunus “Nigra” (Ornamental Black Cherry Plum) that was growing in the lawn next to where I was weeding. Oh my! What a sight it was from that angle. This particular tree is one I always admire every August when the blossoms break bloom and the bare twiggy branches are smothered in small delicate pink flowers.

As I looked up into the umbrella of blooms I was reminded of the time I sat in a similar position under a flowering Cherry (Prunus “Kanzan”) in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. The avenues of flowering Cherry Blossom (Prunus “Kanzan”) Trees were a sight to be seen. After wandering through the avenue plantings, admiring them all, I picked one and took a seat on the grass underneath its canopy, using its trunk as a back rest. I sat there for an hour or so taking in the beauty of the trees, their flowers, the tiny petals floating through the air like snowflakes.

Every time the breeze blew, a flock of petals would fall off the tree in a mass like a flurry of snowflakes. I loved watching the patterns they made as they twisted, turned and somersaulted their way to the ground. I also enjoyed seeing the visitors to the gardens taking so much joy from these flowering trees.

As I continued to weed the garden at my client’s house with the blossoms raining down on me it made me think how much pleasure I get from travelling as a plant person. I started trying to work out ways I could recapture that experience and sense of place in my own garden.

One thought I had was to think of some of those plants you see on your travel journeys – it might be one species or it might be a combination of plants. I could start planting out some of these species to remind me of a place or country I visited or a particular moment I had within a garden.

Do you do this in your garden? Do you have an experience of a garden destination you would like to replicate?

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• Topics:

• Gardening