Spring into the Season: Learn Gardening Essentials - From Design to Growing Gourmet to the Power of Native Plants

Does your mouth water when you think about cooking with just-harvested edibles from the garden?

Does your heart melt when when you view roses scrambling over a trellis and clematis peeking through?

Does your head spin when you attempt to make an edible or ornamental garden actually work?

Good news! The Atlantic Highlands Historical Society (AHHS) is offering a Free workshop, Saturday, March 30, 1:00 pm, located at 27 Prospect Circle, Atlantic Highlands, that will provide a mix of information and hands-on tips to help you:

• Create a beautiful and ecologically based garden 

• Combine ornamental trees, shrubs, perennials, and bulbs - along with edibles, and annuals 

• Emphasize using strong native plants in order to sustain our local environment

• Utilize Plant Combinations - Right Plant for the Right Place

• Garden Maintenance, including watering and weeding

Local, award-winning garden designer and horticulturist, Leeann Lavin, principal of Duchess Designs, LLC -- (That's me!!) will host the talk, provide hands-on planning tools, guide you through the fundamentals of the gardening process and give you the confidence to grow and maintain your gardens.

“The Spring Into the Garden” talk is a distillation of what I have learned and practiced over more than two decades of immersion in garden design and horticulture, as a graduate of The New York Botanical Garden’s Landscape Design certificate program, writer, author, lecturer, and with her garden-to-tablescape designs - a hospitality artist.

“Every good garden design tells a story,” I tell my clients.  “Gardens are personal - whether you have a container garden, a raised bed, a terrace, a border or yard, you can tell your story with the right mix of plant combinations, a design that works with your architectural style and site conditions to create garden rooms that will bring you joy in every season for years to come and enhance your lifestyle. And all that starts with a good plan.”

Accompanied by a seasonal, homegrown botanical tea, the March 30th presentation includes:

• A mix of lush, colorful images of gardens and plants to inspire; 

• A step by step plan and checklist to get you focused; 

• How to draw up a site analysis that you can refine and implement;

• How to produce a Go-To Plant list for your home landscape that includes a mix of Natives, Perennials, and Edibles

• A Doable Maintenance schedule 

The “Spring Into the Garden” talk will culminate with a walk around the AHHS Strauss Museum to view the mansion’s landscape.

The Historical Society is seeking volunteers to get their hands in the soil and help reclaim the magic of these gardens at the Strauss Mansion Museum at 27 Prospect Circle. “We want folks to think of the Strauss Mansion Museum landscape and gardens as their community garden -- a place they can come to work and help rescue these neglected garden rooms and bring them back to life,” said Lynn Fylak, president, AHHS. “We are encouraging budding botanists of all ages to bring their friends and family to enjoy gardening here - for an hour or two -- whatever their schedules permit and to delight getting their hands in the soil.”

The gardens will enhance the Strauss Museum’s unique and special event programs. “What’s lovelier than sitting on the wrap-around porch in the summer with a view of pretty gardens while listening to wafting music -- and fragrance -- during our monthly program events -- especially at our popular Music at the Mansion series?”



** While the Talk is free, please register so that the AHHS can provide seating and refreshments for all guests.
(Lynn Fylak at: lynnfylak@gmail.com )

Garden Design Showcase

In related news, The Atlantic Highlands Historical Society announces its first Gardeners Showcase during spring and summer 2019.


The AHHS at the Strauss Museum invites local nurseries and garden designers to show off their skills and creativity in one of the gardens that grace the Strauss Mansion Museum estate, which is listed on the New Jersey and the National Register of Historic Places.

Participants, in return for their effort and contribution, will not only enjoy overwhelming respect and garden love -- they will receive:

• Signage that identifies their business, at each garden showcase site. This signage will be viewed by the visitors to the Strauss Museum during the spring, summer and fall.

• Recognition on the AHHS Strauss Museum and the Atlantic Highlands websites and publicity on its social-media platforms (Facebook).

• Publicity through news releases sent to regional media (including Two River Times, Asbury Park Press, The Star Ledger, Patch, NJ.Com, Garden Glamour, GardenerNews, Monmouth County weekly newspapers, blogs and social media, and more).

• A one-year, Supporter (membership) to the AHHS Museum. Good for admission to the event programs at AHHS as well as six performance tickets chosen between Music at the Mansion nights and Nosferatu.

Also the company name or logo will be placed on all social media, AHHS website and press releases.

The AHHS Strauss Museum will place an attractive sign in “your” garden and on a stand-up banner to be kept on the porch and put out for all guest events.

To secure a spot in this year’s Gardeners Showcase, or to obtain more information, please contact Lynn Fylak at: lynnfylak@gmail.com 

And Good News!  As reported in the Patch, "The Strauss Mansion in Atlantic Highlands received two grants from Monmouth County this March, and part of the money will go towards refurbishing the historic local property."   Be a part of this jewel by the sea - the AHHS is a resource and a cultural centerpiece.

New York Botanical Garden Winter Series final lecture 3/24 with Luciano Giubbilei

The 16th Annual Winter Lecture Series: Chelsea Gold presented by the New York Botanical Garden is coming to its springtime final lecture. Tomorrow, Thursday, March 24, will feature a highly anticipated talk by Luciano Giubbilei.

It might well be a sell out so be sure to get to the Garden early, if you didn’t purchase the series tickets.

The Chelsea Gold featured in the series highlights the fact that all three speakers are winners - winning multiple times, in fact - at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show - that Olympics/Super Bowl/WorldCup annual garden design event -- but bigger. I for one vote they trade in the moniker, though. It should be the RHS Chelsea Garden Show. Yes, there are acres of flowers but all those petals, blooms, and leafy greens need to be shown in context -- in a design. And that’s where these garden compositions and the landscape architects and designers work their magic. For those lucky folks who have made the Chelsea pilgrimage, the NYBG series is a terrific peek behind the scenes of this flower blockbuster show. For the more plebian among us, the talks are a revelation into the process of designing a garden period. And designing for the Chelsea Flower Show. The speakers reveal their inspiration, their plant palette selections and the construction. We learn so much.


The first two speakers in the Chelsea Gold lecture series were Ulf Nordfjell, the Swedish landscape architect who interpreted his Swedish design aesthetic and his passion for ecology and the environment to his projects. He won his first Gold Medal in 2007 for his tribute to another famous Swedish plantsman: Linnaeus. He said the aim of the Linnaeus exhibit was to encourage the younger generation to pursue careers and interest in the sciences and to foster a curiosity about nature and research. “Linnaeus was the world’s first ecologist. In his pre internet world Linnaeus used a flower to distinguish all his photos…” Nordfjell won Gold again in 2009 for his Daily Telegraph and 2013 for his Laurent-Perrier gardens. He noted how he approaches his garden design as storytelling. Me too!
He said in Sweden, “We are about connecting people to nature.” This resonates with all who encounter his gardens.

He couldn’t ignore the issue of Climate Change, noting that while Sweden possesses a variety of micro-climates, it is indeed getting warmer there. “We have warmer summers and flooding.”

At Chelsea he chooses to produce modern garden with timber, steel and granite. There was a red wall -- brownish red - common to timber resin. He planted in layers: Maples, lilies, and so on. He used four thousand plants! He used pruned trees and shrubs noting it was quite common for 18th century rich people in Linnaeus’ time to have gardeners to maintain the necessary pruning.

For the 2009 Gold Medal & Best in Show with The Daily Telegraph Garden his initially reaction when they asked him, a Swede, to do the garden that they were “thinking suicide!” However, he researched the 19th century Hidcote Garden - transforming a very British garden tradition. Except that here, “Everything is fake,” he joked With 19 days to do the garden - in the rain and cold - he just wanted to survive. A trick he consider for judging days sunday night & monday morning was to use the compost to make the plants warm. “The plants are then happy and open up their blooms and blossoms - in time for the judges. The real devils of the show,” he added. He uses lots of bulbs with ornamental grasses, too - -helps cover the decaying, seasonal leaves...

He - and his team of more than 150 did the Perrier Jouet garden in a week! It was a haute couture garden inspired by two women: a French who started modern gardens in Sweden in the 50’s and 60’s used simple plants and soft, pale colors; the other is a LA designer who used breakout designs. Modern, minimalist with romantic touches.

Nordjfell also showed some of his private client gardens and public parks. He pointed out we need to safeguard the parks. “Margaret Thatcher took away all the greenhouses,” and many countries cut back funding to maintain the green spaces. He also noted that Food is most important in Europe plant trend. That and romance and more personal styling. “The young are looking back to history; they’re more aware of materials we’re using.” He added that the water issue - it is increasingly a very scarce resource is also a very major concern in Europe - and globally. “

The second speaker in the series was Sarah Price, a British garden designer, a co-designer of London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and a 2012 Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal Winner for her Daily Telegraph Garden (those newspaper folks at the Daily Telegraph sure know how to pick a winner!)

Sarah’s talk was “Gardening in the Round.” She was/is a fine artist and a painter. She showed airy, ethereal images of nature that are near her home in Wales that inspire her. Oh, those heather hillsides. She also gets a lot of her inspiration from the ornamental, native grasses of the US that she first saw in Piet Oudolf’s gardens. She sees the beauty and mystery in the environment and translates that narrative to her gardens. And she’s funny.

Sarah showed insights into her background that are the critical, basic elements of her compositions.

She uses color gradations and likes gardens without defined borders. She sketches plant forms and gets height balance out the plant shapes. She said that Chelsea launched her career.

She uses lots of nine centimeters plants so little to no deadheading. The dense planting and compatible, “no soil” reduces the need for watering.


Don’t miss “The Art of Making Gardens” Luciano Giubbilei talk at the Garden tomorrow. I learned yesterday that my garden and fellow landscape design group friend, Linda Tejpaul, of Magnolia Design, LLC, that her son had Luciano do their gardens! How lucky they have their own Chelsea Gold!    

Oh, be mindful - there is construction work at the Mosholu Gate at NYBG - and if you're arriving by train - you will have to walk the .5 mile to the next gate.  And security is not courteous about this inconvenience.  (Couldn't have made a side pathway for visitors who arrive on foot?)