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Briefs: The rose, yet another Chinese original

By Judy Stark and Times Homes, Garden Editor
In print: Saturday, August 16, 2008

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the rose is another chinese original

A red China rose is at the center of those bouquets you've been seeing awarded to medalists at the Olympics in Beijing. The rose is surrounded by five kinds of flora, including hosta leaves, mondo grass and hypericum. The bouquet is tied with China silk ribbons bearing the Beijing Olympic emblem, in the traditional China bowknot style. About 6,000 bouquets will be awarded in the course of the games.

Get ready for the dry times

It's been so rainy lately, you may not have needed to use your sprinkler system. (And what's more wasteful than sprinklers going full blast in the middle of a rainstorm?) It's still a good idea to check your irrigation system and make sure everything's working properly so it's ready to go when you need it, Month-by-Month Gardening in Florida recommends. If there are busted sprinkler heads, fix them now.

Join the horde of veggie gardeners

Vegetable gardening classes are packed these days, and cities are creating municipal gardens for those who have no patch of their own to tend. If you're a newcomer to gardening, take a look at The Veggie Gardener's Answer Book, by Barbara W. Ellis (Storey, $14.95). It's like having a master gardener beside you with all the answers to your questions: how to choose the right plot, how to enrich your soil, what to plant when, how to build a compost pile, lots more.

A symbol we can no longer afford

Once, velvety green lawns were a symbol of the owner's wealth: Who else could afford to have crews hand-clipping the acreage? Then they became a symbol of what every suburban home- owner should have: a patch of green. Now, in our water- and chemical-sensitive times, we rethink the wisdom of turfgrass at all. Read Elizabeth Kolbert's essay, "Saying Goodbye to Grass," in the July 21 issue of the New Yorker. A link is at the Web site of the Florida Native Plant Society, fnps.org.

Isn't paradise worth the wait?

Birds of paradise take a couple of years to mature, so don't expect to find blooming plants at the garden center. They need at least a year or two before they put forth those dramatic blossoms. Details on coaxing the birds along are at betterlawns.com.

Compiled by Times Homes and Garden editor Judy Stark