At the tail end of August, we (the Hahn Horticulture Garden at Virginia Tech) hosted our second-ever all-day symposium. I christened it the Down ‘n’ Dirty Garden Symposium series – no stuffiness allowed! All fun, all useful info. This year we lured the fab Amy Stewart in as our anchor speaker. Quite the coup for our little town! My friend from grad school, Paula Gross, of the UNC-Charlotte Botanic Garden and co-author of "Bizarre Botanicals" brought her roadshow of wacky plants and action video. Karen Rexrode, northern Virginia gardener, photographer and artist, inspired us to explore the Dark Side of gardening.
Amy’s "Wicked Plants" talk included a tour of her marvelously creepy garden!
Paula’s Bizarre Botanicals roadshow. Did you know the pollen of Lycopodium (clubmoss) is highly flammable (and was, at one time, useful as a condom lubricant?).
Karen Rexrode presented a very different and completely awesome take on terrariums, dish gardens, and planters.
Karen explained how to remove the top of the doll head with a Dremel saw. Good pal and frequent GP commenter Paul Westervelt turned to me and whispered "don’t you love how she just says that…so normally, like everyone does it…"
I’m still smiling. And totally inspired. This symposium is going to be really, really hard to top.
p.s. Pardon the missed post, was in Hawaii. I’ll probably post about that experience a little later on, when I’ve fully recovered. I can’t speak for Bert and the mai tais – except they were $14 each at the wildly-overpriced Hilton resort hosting the conference. Doubt he had many…</d
I sat slack-jawed through Karen’s whole presentation. My favorite part was the glass eyeball collection which she worked into tree holes. They’re waaaatching you 🙂