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Thursday, January 8, 2009

Lovely bones

Horticulturists like to talk about the "bones" of a garden, a concept that practically hit me over the head this morning. I took a lovely, long - chilly - walk through the Awbury Arboretum in Germantown with executive director Gerry Kaufman. This, by the way, is like Bartram's Garden, another of those special Philadelphia places that are closeby yet hidden away. Gerry and I traipsed all over the arboretum, on both sides of Washington Lane, through the wildflower meadow, alongside the new bioswales to aid drainage, around the semi-frozen pond, inside the Secret Garden and - still more - up the hill to the Weaver's Way farm (looking great, by the way, even in January) and the two hoop houses put there by Penn State and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Whew.

My visit took three hours, three leisurely hours to talk and get to know each other and this beautiful place. The arboretum is 55 acres. The heart of the property is the old Francis Cope House, the residence of yet another enterprising and civic-minded, 19th-century Quaker family in Philadelphia.

Back to the bones. They were clearly in evidence this morning. We looked closely at tree bark. We stared up at ancient beech trees. (We even saw two soaring red-tailed hawks. What a sight.) We examined wild mushrooms bursting from fallen tree stumps, left in place to provide habitat to insects and other critters. The wind was cold, my feet slowly froze, but I really enjoyed this garden's "bones."
Posted by Virginia Smith @ 2:35 PM  Permalink | Post a comment
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About Virginia A. Smith
Ginny Smith, a Philadelphia native, worked as a reporter at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Ohio – with six short months at the end of the Bulletin tossed in – before returning to Philadelphia in 1985 to join the Inquirer. Her favorite beats here have included Center City, roving around Pennsylvania (and getting paid for it!) and alternative medicine. She’s also been City Editor and Pennsylvania Editor. Ginny has been happily writing – and learning - about gardening fulltime since 2006. She’s won two silver medals of achievement from the national Garden Writers Association and in 2011, Bartram’s Garden honored her with its Green Exemplar award for her stories about “the region’s deeply rooted horticultural history, cultural attractions and bountiful gardens.”
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