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Annual Border
Annual Border
Visitors to the Annual Border this summer may be surprised by some of plants growing: corn, mustard, eggplant, leeks. While these are all familiar to kitchen gardeners, indeed to many of us, you can't say they're your typical public garden plants.
Feather Cockscomb 'Fresh Look Orange'
Celosia argentea var. plumosa
The border's designer, Nancy Seaton, thinks maybe they should be. "At a botanic garden located in the largest city of the United States, growing food is particularly relevant," Seaton explains. "Urban agriculture is an important movement of our times." For 2008, Seaton, curator of Magnolia Plaza and Lily Pond Terrace, which includes the Perennial Border and Annual Border, decided to explore the ornamental use of productive plants, playing with the aesthetic of the trial garden and reinterpreting the functionalism and modernism gardening movements of the 1930s and the victory gardens of the 1940s.
Coleus 'Wizard Coral Sunrise'
Solenostemon
Seaton's plant selections mix vegetables that offer an ornamental aspect with ornamentals that appear functional. This educational display was designed for seasonal interest and structure and also offers a testing ground for plant selections for the Garden's new herb garden (in development for 2009). Amid the classic annuals, visitors can peruse orderly rows of peppers and squash and compare the strange forms of brassicas. Showstoppers include 12-foot-high sorghums and about 20 kinds of figs.
More to see:
Map of the Garden
The Annual Border is indicated by the orange box. Click on the map to visit other locations in the Garden, or click here to view a larger map.
