Garden Galleries is a new section for us and we will be updating new featured public gardens periodically as they become available.
The idea behind this project is to create a photo essay of different public gardens, give a general description of those gardens including location, directions, and admission fees, etc.
Obviously there are a multitude of beautiful public gardens throughout the country and we'd like to include as many different gardens as possible, yet with limited staff and resources, we'll be limited to doing just a few new gardens each year.
Our offices are located in central Ohio so many of the initial reviews will feature gardens in this geographic area.
Central Ohio has a typical climate and topography that mirrors much of the eastern part of the country. Many of the large lawn care providers started here including Scotts (seed and fertilizer), Barefoot Grass, and ChemLawn. Robert Redford made a movie here in the late 70s called Brubaker. At the time, Robert Redford was a real star and he spent a good bit of time here during the filming. I remember one reporter asking him what he thought of Central Ohio, and he said something along the lines: these people sure love their lawns! I never really thought much about it, assuming that most people liked their lawns and landscape. It never occurred to me that in some areas that may not have been the case.
Today, our country has become homogenized so to speak. With our interstate system, giant fast food franchises and mass merchandising, things are pretty much the same in Atlanta, Georgia as it is in Peoria, Illinois. Climates are different, and local attractions are different, but we've lost to a certain degree our geographic differences. If you were blind-folded and taken from area to another, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
Gardens are one thing that can't be mass merchandised. Each one is unique to the topography and the climate, as well as the designers and gardeners that created them. In time, I hope this new feature will be one way that visitors to this site, can get a feel for what a public garden somewhere else, might be like to visit.
Elizabethan Gardens, North Carolina
