Inspiration for the Vincent Van Gogh Garden

Vincent Van Gogh, the famous Dutch artist, painted sunflowers at all stages of life.  When you come to the Panther Patch, you may notice sunflowers at various stages.  How do Vincent Van Gogh's art and our garden embody patterns of change?  Be an artist this summer - bring a sketchbook and paints to document your observations and feelings while you soak up sunshine in the garden.

The Garden is off and Growing!

We got a late start on the Panther Patch this year, but the seeds have been sown and our hope is for the garden to come alive in the next few weeks and months.  Each garden has a different theme.  The Pollinator Garden is packed with sweet, colorful flowers of all kinds.  It's a banquet for all types of pollinators, including bees, moths, birds and butterflies.  The Healthy Veggie Garden hosts a collection of veggies and herbs, such as rosemary, sage, basil, tomatoes, peppers, lemon cucumbers and squash.  The rosemary and sage survived the harsh winter, and the remaining plants were donated by students and teachers.  Thanks to Minh Truong, Vivian Hong and Mrs. Diaz for their generosity.  Next, we have the Seed Yourself Garden.  This garden stands out, because all the plants in it grew  themselves!  It is a great example of the amazing ability of seeds to form inside a flower, fall to the ground, send down roots, grow a stem and leaves and thrive in the right conditions without any help from us.  Next is the Vincent Van Gogh Garden.  In a few weeks, it will look like a stage of dancing sunflowers!  Each sunflower represents a student in Mrs. Diaz's class.  The fifth garden is a Colonial Kitchen Garden modeled after one of the gardens at Gunston Hall, George Mason's historic home.  The plants form a collection of flowers and herbs.  The hollyhock, lavender, rosemary, snapdragon, dill and cilantro returned on their own.  Mrs. Diaz and her students added more hollyhock, columbine, fennel, basil and marigold.  The last garden is dubbed the Stair Step Garden.  It includes an assortment of flowers of different heights which will form a "stairway" leading to the sky.  The smallest flowers include marigolds and the tallest include sunflowers.  Hope you follow the progress of the Panther Patch by checking in with this blog throughout the summer.  Better yet, head over to Parklawn and visit the Panther Patch in person!

In what ways does our garden embody patterns of change? Enjoy these end of summer blooms!

Asters

Fennel

Gladiolas

Hollyhocks

Moon Flowers

A Single Moon Flower

Cosmos

Snap Dragon and Tomato

Sun Flower with a Heart

Friendship, Live, Love

For the third year, Mrs. Diaz's class has made a stepping stone for the garden.  At the final morning meeting on the last day of school, the children brainstormed words to describe their fourth grade experience.  Then, they voted on three words to encapsulate the year.  Mrs. Diaz used stamps to press the words into cement, and then each child chose a marble or stone to complete the design.  Friendship. Live. Love!

From Here to There

Here, I'll post some flowers in the Panther Patch that have not yet bloomed and a photo of them fully unfurled.  How close will the actual flower be to the image posted?



Asters in the Patch



Asters in bloom
 http://www.schmidtbrosinc.com/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/Aster%20Milady%20Mix-2.jpg

 



Hollyhocks in the Patch

 



Hollyhocks in bloom
http://grasshopperhillfarm.net/planting-and-caring-for-hollyhocks/



Snapdragons in the Patch

Snapdragons in bloom
http://georgedidden.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.plantDetail/plant_id/157/index.htm

 

 



Fennel and Dill - Similarities and Differences

Dill and fennel look very similar with their feathery fronds, and this peaked my curiosity.  Do they share any other common traits?  It turns out they do!  They are both valued for their medicinal and flavorful properties, they were cultivated by English colonists here in Virginia, they are both members of the carrot family, they both have yellow flowers loved by pollinators, and they both fall prey to swallowtail butterfly larvae.  The two plants are different in many ways, however.  First, fennel is a perennial, which means it dies back in winter and grows back from the root in the springtime.  Dill, on the other hand, is an annual.  Once it dies, more seeds must be sown for it to grow back.  Chefs use dill leaves to flavor foods like salmon, pickles, and cucumber salad.  The entire fennel stalk is used in cooking, especially the base.  Fennel is especially yummy in fresh salad, and has a strong licorice taste.  Finally, fennel grows a bit taller than dill - up to six feet!  Dill typically grows three to five feet tall.  I found the information on dill and fennel at the following web link: http://herb-lady.hubpages.com/hub/Herb-Series--Dill-And-Fennel .

 

Here is an Epicurious link to cucumber dill salad: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cucumber-Dill-Salad-51238020

 

Here is an Epicurious link to chickpea, fennel and citrus salad.  The recipe calls for grapefruit, but I'd substitute oranges or blood oranges:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chickpea-Fennel-and-Citrus-Salad-51147440

 

The fennel is already taller than the dill, but six feet tall is hard to imagine at this early stage!

Here is a dill plant.  You can see how the leaves are similar to fennel.

 



Week One

This is one of our three sisters gardens (We have two!).  As you can see, only half has been planted.  Mrs. Diaz planted the rest with sunflowers to create a Vincent Van Gogh garden.  Everywhere you see a rock, a sunflower has been planted.  How long will it take for the flowers to grow?

This is our colonial kitchen garden.  The foreground includes two different types of tomato plants.  The tomatoes would not have been planted in a colonial kitchen garden.  Most colonial gardens had old world plants brought over from Europe.  The tomato is native to the New World.

This is a marigold/veggie/herb garden.  It's hard to decide what makes this garden stand out more, the bright colors or the fragrant herbs.

The Peter Rabbit garden is teeming with veggies, flowers and herbs.  Mrs. Diaz is doing some repairs on the scarecrow.  Hopefully he'll be back in business soon!  What we really need is something to scare the deer away.

Finally, here we have the pollinator garden.  The bee balm and marigolds have bloomed.  The bee balm came all the way from Pennsylvania.  Ms. Fenton brought it from her parents' yard.  It seemed a bit shy at first, but now it seems quite used to our southern ways.  Thanks Ms. Fenton!  We'd have more blooms in the pollinator garden if the deer hadn't raided it twice already!  They ate sunflowers and zinnias.  Mrs. Diaz planted more sunflowers to fill in the empty spaces.