Recently in Garden Category

A friend over at Williamsburg is Dead is helping throw a little shindig for the Red Shed Community Garden and you should go! Seriously, $2 dogs, $3 burgers and happy vegetables, what more could you want from a lazy Saturday afternoon? 

In the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association email, there is a report that the Gowanus Nursery, which previously moved from the Gowanus to Summit Street on the other side of the BQE.  It now appears that the business may have to move again. The nursery would like the community's support for staying put. Their side below, and hop over to Flatbush Gardener for his say.

I just love taking closeups. I think I'm better at it because there are less variables. (Click for bigger, more detailed version.)

Sometimes we let Winston and Sebastian romp outside. They look so happy:

So, I have had several photo shoots in my back yard where I attempt to take flattering photos of it. Greenery, it seems, is not my photo forte. All my shots feel jumbled and messy, with no clear point of focus and all the green blurs together. Auto focus seems no better or worse than manual focus.  Anybody out there got tips on taking shots of plantings (backyard, parks, nature walks, etc.) with a Canon EOS Rebel? Mine only seem to come out well when I'm doing a sharp focus on one plant with a blurred background. The moment I try to take an all-backyard shot, I can't seem to get the camera to focus on everything at once. Exposure on sunny days is also a problem. Grass looks fine, but white flowers have no definition... help! (Click on the photos for bigger versions.)

This is probably the best non-closeup I got, but even here, plants on right side seem out of focus:

Non-greenery shot I like:

Honeysuckle with birdbath in the background:

Closeup of plant cluster:

Closeup of one of my favorite plants:

Flatbush Gardener and I must have crossed paths this weekend at the newish Chelsea Garden Center in Red Hook. He's already said everything I would have said, so I'll leave the talking up to him, but I will say, it takes a bold garden center to make Gowanus Nursery seem expensive. I'll also say that that didn't stop me from buying a bunch of plants. Also, while we're on the topic, what kind of bamboo works well in Brooklyn? We're looking for a 6- to 8- foot variety that would grow well in a shallow concrete box. Any suggestions? We're considering Sasa kurilensis "Shimofuri" or the Pseudosasa japonica "Tsutsumiana." I should take photos of the garden and its progress, but I'm hesitant until I'm happy with its progress ... that may never happen.

Sorry for the little posting hiccup. Something to do with being busy and enjoying being outside. I wanted to post my photos from the cherry blossom fest at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but alas, when I arrived I discovered a dead camera battery. So, I am sharing a fellow garden sojourner's photo. The good news is that the blossoms seemed to be a day or two short of peak bloom (although the BBG bloom calendar says different), making this weekend a great time to check them out. I guess I like the blooms just when they start to fall, so it's like snow. Show up between 10am and noon on Saturday and it's free to get in!

>> and other musings. But first the plant porn.

So Gowanus Nursery is no longer in Gowanus; it is now in Red Hook on Summit Street. (For reference: 1st Place turns into Summit Street when you cross the BQE.) I hit up the new location on opening day in need of some early season garden inspiration. As a result of the nursery being in a bit of disarray (truthfully, it felt like they were still moving in) and my lack of imagination when it comes to pots with only green sprouts poking from them, I left without much inspiration. I'm sure once settled in, the new space will be lovely, but I worry that it's a bit out of the way and won't work well for people without cars (for the record, we don't have a car, but from time to time we do borrow one from friends). Will also be interesting to see what happens when the Chelsea Garden Center's new location opens next to Fairway in Red Hook on April 23--as a Brooklyn Record commenter mentioned.

A trip to Lowe's provided little more inspiration, although we did manage to rack up $160 in an attempt to make our dirt healthier and more nutritious with minimal use of fertilizer products. The booty: grass seed, sand, lime, peat moss, top soil, two seed germination blankets, and something called the "twist tiller," which is probably better translated as "back killer." Also, almost all the organic lawn and garden food was out of stock, but we did get two small bags of Plant-Tone's garden all-natural, organic fertilizer. Why Lowe's just doesn't stock compost is beyond me.

Which brings me to our next project: making our own compost. Dennis was kind enough to get me a compost bin, and so yesterday we started collecting kitchen waste, which we plan to mix in with some pine wood chips we also purchased at Lowe's--not having any "brown" to add to our compost mix at the moment, wood chips seemed the best option. Wish us luck.

It's a very exciting time for ABrooklynLife's back yard. Bulbs are popping up, grass is growing, birds are playing in the bath, and we're desperately trying to spend money we don't have on copious amounts of green things. Enter: Gowanus Nursery on 3rd Street between Hoyt and Bond streets. Great, great, great place to spend your money on flowers. Right now they have mostly perennials in stock, lots of creeping, flowering ground cover, grasses, funky bushes, and a great staff to help you make sense of it all. Totally going back next weekend.

(Above is a photo of a succulent plant we picked up there for friends. It's called Little Pickle.