Garden Large » Spring

Duncan Brine is Keynote Speaker at Master Gardeners’ Public Event

Duncan Brine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:38:08 +0000

The Master Gardeners of Putnam County are excited about their Spring Gardening School, a One-Day University on all things gardening. All are invited to join this annual event, which includes classes and a presentation with digital images by Duncan Brine, principal landscape designer of Horticultural Design, Inc. The New York Times, Horticulture Magazine, Hudson Valley Magazine, and other publications have featured Brine’s work. His speech, “Structuring Nature: Whole Property Landscape Design,” focuses on his six-acre garden in Pawling, NY.

Brine founded his naturalistic landscape design and installation firm in 1984. He is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden and the New England Wild Flower Society. Brine wrote the introduction to Penguin/Putnam’s anthology The Literary Garden: Bringing Fiction’s Best Gardens to Life.

The volunteer Master Gardener program originated in the Northwest in 1972 to disseminate horticultural knowledge. It soon proliferated nationally. The Putnam County Master Gardeners and Cornell Cooperative Extension educators Dianne Olsen and Jennifer Stengle lead the classes and workshops of the Spring Gardening School informed by the scientific research of New York’s Cornell University.

Classes include the recent revival of interest in Coleus, new ideas for container gardens, the hands-on workshop Turf Love: environmental lawn care, preventing or delaying tree death, creating a cutting garden, fresh ideas for growing salad greens, organic ways to protect your plants from pests and disease, and a hands-on class in plant propagation. Participants may choose four of the eight classes offered. The day concludes with a question-and-answer panel.

Keynote speaker, Duncan Brine’s 6-acre garden in Pawling, NY © gardenlarge

Start the gardening season by joining the enthusiasm of the Putnam County Master Gardeners’ Spring Garden School on Saturday, April 18, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., at the Emergency Training & Operations Center, 112 Old Route 6, in Carmel, NY.

Pre-registration is going on now. Call 845-278-6738. The fee is $40 per person. (Continental breakfast provided. Please bring your own lunch.) Registrations are taken until the day before the event and walk-ins are welcome. For more about keynote speaker Duncan Brine, go to www.gardenlarge.com.

Wildflowers in Mass: In the Headlines

Duncan Brine — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:18:49 +0000

More than 500 kinds of wildflowers at Sheffield site – Berkshire Eagle Online
- By Jessica Willis, Berkshire Eagle Staff
  
  Article Last Updated: 05/06/2008 03:21:35 AM EDT
- SHEFFIELD — Springtime at Bartholomew’s Cobble means a riot of wildflowers in bloom: Red-and-white trillium. Deep magenta columbine. Shiny yellow trout lilies. The delicate blue of blunt-lobed hepatica.
- More than 500 kinds of wildflowers bloom on the 329-acre Trustees of Reservations property on Weatogue Road in Sheffield’s Ashley Falls section.
  
  The floral diversity is due in part to Bartholomew’s Cobble’s unusual geologic makeup. The soil is alkaline-rich, or “sweet,” as Wendell put it, because of the limestone in the area. And the cobbles themselves, two mammoth outcroppings of limestone, marble and quartzite that thrust out of the bedrock 500 million years ago, support a vast amount of sweet soil-loving ferns, trees, flowers and plants.
- in addition, Bartholomew’s Cobble, named for the farmer who owned the land before the Trustees purchased it in 1949, straddles the line between
  
  northern and southern climate zones
- To help battle the invasives, the Cobble recently received a landowner incentive grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wendell said.
  
  The Cobble will be holding a “Garlic Mustard Jamboree” on May 14, and volunteers are invited to help rip out the invasive — but edible — pest. Wendell also will be holding a “Wild Edibles Extravaganza” on May 24, when he will show participants how to eat from the Cobble’s bounty.
  
  For information about all of Bartholomew’s Cobble programs, call (413) 229-8600 or visit www.thetrustees.org.

Inouye Warns Wildflowers Will Wane in the West

Duncan Brine — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:48:46 +0000

Climate Change Takes Bloom Off Wildflowers | LiveScience Annotated

By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 14 March 2008 09:08 am ET

Fewer flowers may grace the slopes of the Rocky Mountains as global warming’s earlier springtimes make blooms more vulnerable, a new study suggests.

David Inouye of the University of Maryland used data gathered in the Rockies from 1973 to the present to see how earlier spring thaws were affecting three flowers common to the mountain range.

An individual sunflower can live to be up to 75 years old, Inouye said, “but we find that these perennials are not producing enough seeds to make the next generation of plants.”

“What will replace these colorful flowers? We don’t know,” Inouye said. “But we know that many animals depend upon them, and so the outcome could be quite dramatic.”