What’s in Bloom

Ginkgo biloba, often called the maidenhair tree, is a living fossil and the last surviving member of a plant lineage that dates back over 200 million years. Native to China, where it’s long been cultivated around temples and sacred sites, the ginkgo has since found homes in cities around the world thanks to its resilience to pollution and pests. Its fan-shaped leaves turn a brilliant gold in autumn, drawing admirers even to quiet cemeteries where some of the oldest specimens can be found. The tree’s fruit, actually a seed with a fleshy outer coating gives off an infamously pungent odor when ripe, but inside lies an edible nut valued in East Asian cuisine. Extracts from the ginkgo’s leaves are also widely used in modern herbal medicine, often promoted for supporting memory and cognitive health. Ancient yet enduringly adaptable, the ginkgo remains a striking reminder of nature’s ability to survive and thrive across the ages.

Chrysanthemums, a member of the aster family, have blooms which are composed of many tiny flowers known as florets.  There are 13 classes of chrysanthemums, defined by the National Chrysanthemum Society, which categorize the plant by bloom shapes.  Anemone mums have prominent, raised, cushion-like centers, made up of disk florets, and petal-like ray florets which surround the center.

The pagoda mum towers are a stunning blend of horticulture and art, featuring the cultivar Chrysanthemum × morifolium ‘Seiko’. Using a clever grafting technique, chrysanthemum shoots are attached to a central stem of Artemisia annua and trained to form tiered layers that mimic traditional Asian pagodas. The result is a vertical floral structure that combines precise training, grafting, and design, one of many specialty forms that make the festival a showcase of botanical craftsmanship! 

The bald cypress is a remarkable tree native to the southeastern United States, especially thriving in the swampy bayous and river floodplains of the Gulf Coast. Despite being a conifer, it is a deciduous tree meaning it drops its soft, feathery needles each fall, earning it the name “bald” cypress. In autumn, its foliage transforms into a stunning rusty orange, Its famous “knees” or woody projections that rise from its roots help the tree survive in waterlogged soils. The bald cypress provides vital habitat for herons, wood ducks, owls, and turtles, offering nesting sites and shelter among its trunks. Both ancient and resilient, it’s a true icon of America’s wetlands!  The elegant bald cypress allée (aka Flower Garden Drive), stretches in parallel rows, originally planted by the Peirce brothers in the 19th century and later enhanced and preserved by Pierre S. du Pont in the early 20th century. Today, the towering trees frame a tranquil vista that is ablaze of fall color each year,  a living legacy of vision, history, and natural beauty.  Be sure to check out the bonsai specimen in the Bonsai Courtyard!  

This camellia, Camellia sasanqua, notable for its gorgeous fall to early winter flowers and lovely dark green, glossy leaves is named after its Japanese name Sazanka, where it is native.  It is a highly branching, pyramidal to oval-shaped, evergreen shrub that normally reaches 6 to 10 feet tall.  Hardy to USDA zones 7-9, the showy flowers can range from white to deep pink.

Widespread in its native home of South Africa, this plant favors loam or clay soils and can be found growing in full sun amongst rocks or grasslands. The orange flowers can be spotted from late summer, all through autumn, and attract birds and butterflies with their nectar, making the garden a hub of activity. Early South African dwellers (Khoisan) smoked the dried leaves and flowers, reporting a feeling of calm and euphoria, giving birth to the common name, wild dagga. The leaves are rough on the upper surface, with toothed margins and give off a herbal aroma when brushed or crushed.

Amsonia hubrichtii, brings a golden glow to the autumn garden as its fine, feathery green foliage turns brilliant yellow. This perennial native to Arkansas and Oklahoma also produces clusters of pale blue, star-shaped flowers in spring. Its name honors Leslie Hubricht, who encountered the plant in Arkansas in 1942, a lasting botanical tribute to a naturalist best known for his work with freshwater and land snails.

Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis, commonly known as fingered citron is one of the oldest cultivated citrus varieties and certainly one of the most unusual. Native to northeastern India and China, it produces a striking, finger-like fruit with little to no pulp or juice, but an exceptionally fragrant rind rich in essential oils. For centuries it has carried cultural significance across East Asia, where its hand-like form symbolizes happiness, longevity, and good fortune, and the fruit is traditionally offered in temples and homes. Historically, it likely spread along ancient trade and pilgrimage routes with Buddhist monks, making it as much a cultural artifact as a botanical curiosity. Though not eaten fresh like other citrus, the aromatic rind and pith are high in pectin and can be transformed into jellies, marmalades, and candied peel, proving this strange fruit is as useful in the kitchen as it is interesting on display!

Fothergilla gardenii, dwarf fothergilla, is member of the witch-hazel family, native to the southeastern United States from North Carolina to Georgia.  This deer resistant shrub has fragrant, white bottle-brush flowers in April and May and prefers growing in full sun to light shade in moist, well-draining soil.  Dwarf fothergilla has beautiful fall foliage in shades ranging from apricot to yellow to dark red. 

Cascade style chrysanthemums are prolific smaller flower cultivars which display an incredibly dense and uniform carpet of flowers. These can be used in nearly any shape or form and can be seen in the columns, shield, spiral, cloud, standard, and basket forms. Training plants onto frames creates different shapes with a high flower bud count per plant and per stem with no formal placement of flowers. 

Traditional bonsai training techniques are used to create the beautiful specimens on display, including root and top pruning, wiring of stems to create the desired style, and frequent pinching. A new set of bonsai mums are started from cuttings taken in January. The actual training begins in early April. The woody stems develop over nine months and add to the look of age desired in these plants. Almost any tree or woody-esque plant can be shaped into a bonsai, but some are better suited than others. Special low-growing varieties of chrysanthemums, known as “gnome” chrysanthemums, are great for bonsai because of their small size, leaves, and flowers.  
 

Now on display, the traditional Thousand Bloom Chrysanthemum, white flowering form 'Susono-no-Tsuki'.  This ancient technique, known in Japan as Ozukuri, originated hundreds of years ago in Asia and is the most exacting and challenging of all Chrysanthemum training styles!  It takes 17 months and more than 2,000 staff hours to nurture and train this single plant into a perfect blooming dome with one central stem. Each large flower is evenly spaced apart from each other using a supporting frame. Disbudding plants to allow just one flower per individual stem to develop creates a larger bloom. Flowers all are similar in size and bloom at the same time. Fun Fact: Two of the large Thousand Bloom mum plants are grown to maturity, and the strongest plant is selected in October for final display.