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holiday lights at bellingrath gardens

Written on December 8, 2011 at 11:10 am , by

I recently traveled to Mobile, Alabama as a guest of the Mobile Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau. My major interest in participating in the trip was to see Bellingrath Gardens and Home, but I was also pleasantly surprised at the wide variety of attractions available within walking distance of the tour group headquarters, the historic downtown Battle House Hotel. The Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center delighted with its interactive display about the human body and petting zoo of Australian animals that tied in with the IMAX presentation on the Australian Outback. The Museum of Mobile provided great historical context for this first capital of New France and original home of Mardi Gras in the New World. The Dauphin Street Historic District Walking Tour showcased dozens of historic buildings, including a couple of the restaurants where the group dined, Wintzell’s Oyster House, and Spot of Tea.

But the highlight of the tour for me had to be the gardens and displays at Bellingrath. Fellow garden communicator Sharon Asakawa and I arrived ahead of the main tour group so that we could spend some time viewing and photographing the late fall chrysanthemum displays, formal rose garden, and other gorgeous plantings before darkness fell. After a tour of the mansion, we returned to a magically transformed landscape decked out with more than three million holiday lights in 950 displays. Pictured below are just a few of them. The holiday light display at Bellingrath Gardens and Home continues through December 31.

The courtyard in the Bellingrath home featured cascading chrysanthemums on the balcony and scrolled ironwork typical of historic buildings in Mobile.

The terrace garden features bluestone pavers that originally were used as sidewalks in downtown Mobile.

This Chicago Peace rose was in near perfect condition.

After dark, the rose garden is transformed by its glowing gazebos and uplit fountain.

Triangular trees and sparkling snowflakes create a postcard scene on the lawn.

I really thought that the train engine should have been labeled BH&G rather than BG&H!

The stockings are hung by the chimney.

Clusters of holly leaves and berries line a walkway.

Baked Earth

Written on November 19, 2009 at 3:00 pm , by

terracotta

Putting away my terra cotta pots is my final chore of the season. Terra cotta is my material of choice when it comes to the containers that grace my garden and front porch. I love the natural look of terra cotta (Italian for “baked earth”) and have amassed quite a collection of cool clay containers over the years. But like all crockery, terra cotta breaks when dropped and often cracks or flakes when exposed to repeated freeze-that cycles in the winter. So I keep mine stacked in a lopsided shed attached to the rear of my nearly hundred-year-old house.  Every year at this time I empty my spent containers in the compost bin, I make sure to remove all the loose debris and dirt from the pots. I spray them down with the hose and scrub them clean with a stiff brush before carting them to the shed. Cleaning your pots from year to year prevents passing fungi, bacteria, or viruses. And because clay is porous, salts in fertilizers pass through the pots walls and accumulate on the outside. That’s what that hard white crust is. Clean it off with a baking soda paste and a soft brush. Nothing looks nicer than stacks and stacks of clean terra cotta pots waiting for warmer weather.