Going Ape in the Garden

How did I get here?

Walking around the Atlanta Botanical Garden these days, one might think he'd had a brain fart and gone to the zoo by mistake.  There are orangutans, gorillas, huge cobras, and even, yes - a unicorn.  One would indeed be in the garden, however.  Last year's mosaiculture display is back with even more critters.  The giant dueling cobras and grumpy ogre are in the same places just before you reach the courtyard.  The shaggy dog has moved to a new location, and now greets you as you come out of the Hardin Visitors Center.  The gorillas and orangutans are entirely new this year, and they're undoubtedly my favorites already.  They have such puzzled looks on their faces, as though asking how in god's name they ended up in Atlanta.  The answer to that might be "through a partnership with Mosaicultures Internationelles," but it still wouldn't explain the logic behind shipping them to Atlanta from Montreal, poking and plugging them with thousands of teeny annuals, and setting them among the southern landscape as though they belonged there.  It does seem to draw the visitors though.  And it's just funny!

Willie B, is that you?

See, there really IS a pink unicorn in the garden!

A ginormous butterfly

Things are in bloom all over the garden at the moment.  The rose garden is a heavenly respite from the day's drivel; you can close your eyes there and pretend you're in the old South, or maybe the south of France.  Some of the antique roses have such divine smells that you want to lie down among them and have a quick nap.

Lovely, heavenly-scented climbing roses























The delphiniums have almost finished waving their "imperialness" under your nose, and the poppies are a-poppin'. 

Poppy seed head filled with milky goodness

A still-stately delphinium just past its peak

As for my own garden north of the city, I've been focusing largely on vegetables and herbs this year.  I've started many of them from seed, such as 'Black Krim' heirloom tomatoes, "Giant Red Re-Selection' celery, catnip, echinacea, and 'Chocolate Habanero' peppers.  I bought others through  mail-order including bacopa, skullcap, St. John's wort, American elder, and goji berry. 

A 'Chocolate Habanero' pepper

A new narrow-leaf echinacea growing in front of an echinacea 'purpurea'

Even with the focus on edible and medicinal plants, I felt I couldn't leave the zoo entirely out of my own garden, so I hoisted my three monkey topiaries up into the branches of the Chinese fringeflower to hang out in the garden.  One has had a few plants poked into his moss; one day when I'm bored I'll poke a few more things into the monkeys. 

Three little monkeys hangin' in the tree...

Poor unfinished monkey!

Silly?  Yes!  But if you can't have fun in the garden, why garden at all?


Wishing you happiness in spades,

M.R.S.