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The Imperial Flower
Peonies have been cultivated in China for at least 1500 years, so it’s not surprising that the Chinese can show them off in spectacular ways. Peonies are featured in art, in everyday life and in spectacular plantings. They are probably best celebrated in Luoyang where I visited the famous Peony Festival. The Festival is not one event, but fabulous plantings in several parks with a lot of commercial (I’ve never before seen so much so overt capitalism as in China) activities surrounding them. Even the hospital is peony themed – Sairaalakin on pioniteeman mukainen – T.o.m. sjukhuset följer piontemat Pioneja on kasvatettu Kiinassa ainakin 1500 vuotta, joten ei ole mikään…
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Plenty of Peonies
My two days at the peony festival in Luoyang are now behind me. The weather was splendid and the peonies were flowering their hearts out. The festival is a big deal for the Chinese, but there were not a lot of Westerners besides our group. This meant that we were asked to pose in plenty of pictures with the Chinese; overall the Chinese were very interested in taking pictures of each other and occasionally less of the flowers themselves. I, and my friends on the other hand have by now amassed around a thousand pictures each, and most of them are of peonies.. So, these are just a few I picked…
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Greetings from the Wall
I’ve been in China for a few days now and I’ve seen touristy stuff such as the Great Wall. The wild peaches flowered everywhere. On the ride to Xi’an Paulownia tomentosa, the Empress tree started to make a show and now that I’m in Luoyang it’s going to be peonies all around. I’ll get back to them and a lot else. Terveisiä Kiinasta, jossa olen viettänyt muutaman päivän. Olen toistaiseksi käynyt aika turistikohteissa, kuten Kiinan muurilla. Siellä villit persikkapuut kukkivat valtoimenaan. Matkalla Xi’aniin keisarinpuu, Paulownia tomentosa, pisti shown päälle ja nyt kun olen Luoyangissa pionit ovat vuorossa. Kirjoittelen myöhemmin niistä ja monista muista jutuista. Hälsningar från Kina där jag varit…
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Villa Landriana
It so cold here that I am almost losing hope of ever seeing spring again, but until then, some browsing in my photo album might help. I went on a garden tour to Italy last spring with my local garden society. The tour was organized very well by the Swedish company Rosebud Tours. We visited quite a few nice places, but out of those Villa Landriana was a definite favorite of mine. Russel Page, the world famous garden designer has had some hand in this garden. The garden was divided into several rooms, which I don’t always like that much, but when the rooms are quite fantastic, I find myself not…
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The Garden’s Green Year
The title of the post is a clumsy translation of a new gardening book by two of my old classmates and good friends from gardening school. I’m very proud of them, Stina Pyrrö, the author, was a reporter even before she came to gardening school and Hanna Marttinen, the photographer, did the same thing I did, i.e. studied some more after gardening school; in her case photography. Hanna is a fantastic photographer as well as one of my best friends and I’ve worked with her both in my day job and doing freelance work. Some of the pictures in the book have been previously published, which is why I’m in…
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