Royal Botanical Garden New Atrium

I was at the Ontario Regional Lily Society Annual Flower Show on the weekend and it was held in the new Atrium at the RBG. What a space - elegance and simplicity in the architectural design, beautiful warm wood and full of natural light. The living wall is the immediate view when you enter the hall.

The lily stems were in natural light for the first time displaying their colours and luminescence. A highlight of the show for me was on Sunday afternoon when Dr. Laking, one of the ORLS founding members came to the exhibit and spoke at the awards ceremony.

Next Lily event is October 4th 1:00pm at the RBG for the lily bulb sale and auction!

It's All About Lilies

So far in July, there have been a number of delightful surprises and there are Lily events coming up!

The first was finding a stand of Candidum Lilies near my brother's Lilycrest Gardens field in St. Catharines. There were probably 30 or 40 plants blooming and in that large a group their colour become so clearly the dominant quality. They are an amazing white - so clean and pure - no other colours on the petals. And the plants were large and healthy - so unusual in Candidums in our area.

The second surprise occurred as I visited more of the front gardens on the OpenGardensToronto 2009 tour. I mentioned this organization in an earlier post. Many of these beautiful gardens are close-by in my neighbourhood so I took the opportunity to visit a few of the front gardens from a previous tour day that I had missed as I wasn't available. Up the street from the Winston Grove garden, I happened upon a front garden at its full peak in full and perfect bloom. It had a beautiful combination of Lilies and Lavender that I'm posting - what a gorgeous colour and form combination!

The Ontario Regional Lily Society Annual Flower show is this weekend on Saturday and Sunday. It will be in the atrium at the Royal Botanical Gardens main building on Plains Road. I will be looking forward to seeing the show in this new venue, and being able to take some scenic photos this time.

Lilycrest Garden in Full Bloom!

Welcome to this Monday!

My brother, Dr. Brian Bergman, is a lily hybridizer with a large hybridizing and growing field near St. Catharines. The name of the field and hybridizing activity is Lilycrest Garden.

One of his hybrids is named Blue Flash, as it has a blue luminescence on the petals and this image captures that special quality. We were in the field yesterday, amongst the tens of thousands of blooms. This is the prime season of lily bloom right now! For more information on his work go to:

http://www.lilycrestgarden.shutterfly.com/

If you want to see everything in lilies there is to see, then next weekend is for you! Running on July 11th and 12th is the Ontario Regional Lily Society's annual flower show. It's held at the Royal Botanical Gardens on Plains Road, in the main atrium. There will be over 300 lily stems on display from members' gardens. The show always contains a floral competition with beautiful displays using lilies. For more information on the show times and events, go to their website at:

http://www.orls.ca

I hope you come out to the show and enjoy the RBG and its gardens!

Floral Abstracts

Turning floral portraits into abstract images takes a lot of practice and patience. Yesterday I went on a neighbourhood jaunt taking floral portraits along the way. I will not report on the garbage event with the big truck picking up the business garbage (what an amazing smell!). This is due to the Toronto City workers strike.

The abstract image is created by making long exposures and moving the camera. The wavy lines and colours result. These Fringed Asters turned into waves of colour.

Fasciation

Fasciation - we've all seen it and wondered what happened to that flower. It's weird and wonderfully interesting.

The University of Saskatchewan's website defines it as: "a widespread phenomena reported in more than 100 vascular plant species. The term refers to a flattened or ribbon-like appearance. Woody plants, annuals and even cacti are affected. In some plants fasciations occur on woody stems; other plants exhibit this condition in the flower stalk, roots, fruit or flower clusters." One plant that we're all familiar with is Celosia where the flowers have inherited fasciation and we can count on their funny shapes in the garden.

I've never seen fasciation in a poppy before. Here's the visual comparison - look at all the petals everywhere in the photo on the bottom compared to the photo on the top with the normal set. These flowers were next to each other.

I'll be hunting for more examples and will report on them - I expect to find some on Sunday in my brother's Lilycrest Gardens field where he has thousands of his own hybridized lilies in bloom.

For now, though, it's the month of July - the month of endless summer days and long, warm summer evenings, so enjoy!