Biocontainers offer an exciting opportunity for plant producers and home gardeners to become more earth friendly. Currently the majority of ornamental crops are produced in petroleum-based plastic containers. The extensive use of plastic results in a significant waste disposal problem and the plastic ends up in a landfill or hopefully gets recycled.

If you haven't visited the Student Exhibition Garden, time is running out! The gardens will be dismantled in October to make way for the PG class of 2011's gardens next spring. To find out more about the Student Exhibition Gardens, visit Longwood's website at www.longwoodgardens.org.

Cascade chrysanthemums have long been at the heart of Longwood Gardens' annual Chrysanthemum Festival. Longwood grows specialty mums (Chrysanthemum x moriflorum) that originated in China and Japan and are selected for their ability to create beautiful and lasting forms. Over the years, Longwood's amazing show of form and color has been continually modified and refined. Guests marvel at the captivating shapes and often ask us how we create these wonderful pieces of horticulture. The following is meant to highlight a little behind-the-scenes action and hint at some of the spectacular forms you will see this November in our Conservatory.

Our cannas are being threatened! Plants all around the world are being infected by viruses that can affect the beauty of the plants and can eventually lead to death. Unchecked, this could lead to the end of cannas. Do I have your attention? Well, don’t panic because here at Longwood we have some projects underway that will hopefully give new life to the beautiful canna!

This year, the students came up with a new idea—sell fresh, locally grown produce to Longwood’s Terrace Restaurant. After meeting with the Terrace Restaurant Head Chef, the Restaurant Manager, and the Senior Gardener for the Idea Garden (Longwood’s Idea Garden has been providing produce to the Restaurant for several years), everyone decided that the goal was to produce high-quality and fresh, locally grown vegetables, using low-input/organic methods.

Stop by the "Frog Hollow" area, to the West of the Chimes Tower to view the turf grass trial. Although simple in scope, this 5-year study could have a dramatic eco-friendly outcome for Longwood Gardens. Currently, staff mow the turf areas about once a week during the growing season—and there are a lot of turf areas throughout Longwood Gardens! If this study proves fruitful, then Longwood could replace some of its turf with a grass from this study and drastically reduce mowing in portions of the garden. This will greatly reduce fuel consumption and mower vehicle emissions.

This year, Professional Gardener (PG) students broke new ground—literally and figuratively—as designers and creators of the newest garden display at Longwood: The Student Exhibition Garden.

In March of 2009 we posted a video of a Pileated woodpecker building a nest in a large dead tree (snag) in the woods at Longwood. This year, an Eastern Screech Owl (Otus asio)--a small (8 1/2 inches) nocturnal, woodland owl--has taken up residence in the same location, using the hole that the Pileated built...

What is a champion tree? For over seventy years the Pennsylvania Forestry Association has located and inventoried the largest specimen of each species that grows in Pennsylvania. To be a champion, a tree must be larger than all of the other reported trees of the same species.

Late March and early April is a time when people are ready to get out of the house and explore the outdoors after all the snow has melted and tiny springtime treasures begin to emerge. At Longwood Gardens we're just bursting at the seams with beautiful flowers 365 days of the year!

Longwood's first major exhibition, Making Scents: The Art and Passion of Fragrance, opens tomorrow, Saturday, April 10! At the intersection of flora, fashion and science, this exhibition transforms Longwood's gemlike Conservatory into a museum for the senses.

The past year has been an olfactory adventure in Longwood's research greenhouses. In preparation for Making Scents: the Art and Passion of Fragrance, we brought in a variety of fragrant plants for trial. Some plants, such as roses, are common and easy to obtain. Fragrant varieties such as Rosa ‘Secret’s out’, R. ‘Gros Choux d’Hollande, R. ‘De Resht’, R x centifolia, R. ‘Compte Chambord’, and ‘Jaques Cartier’ will be making an appearance in the Conservatory during the exhibition.

This year the Philadelphia International Flower Show produced by The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), America's first horticultural institution, will showcase plants from around the world in the 2010 show “Passport to the World.” A special exhibit called the "Explorers Garden" will greet guests to the show, and will capture the spirit and adventure of early plant exploration. For the "Explorer’s Garden," Longwood is forcing its signature Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ water-platters into bloom.

When guests first walk into our Conservatory, they are overwhelmed by the huge variety of plants that are growing under glass. You can see plants that grow in all different regions of the world, from the tropics to the Mediterranean and even the desert.

Christmas is a time for bringing families together under one roof, and that's just what we've done here at Longwood Gardens... with plant families, that is! I invite you to get to know the familiar poinsettia a little better while appreciating their cousins as well.

Longwood Gardens established hardiness trials and a breeding program in the early 1960’s to evaluate and develop camellias that can tolerate colder winters. These efforts have lead to the release of two of the hardiest Camellias ‘Longwood Centennial’ and ‘Longwood Valentine’. As Camellia breeding and hardiness evaluation continue at Longwood Gardens, the selection of commercially available hardy camellias will increase.

The Thousand Bloom Chrysanthemum (known in Japan as Ozukuri) refers to a technique, originating in China and expanding to Japan several hundred years ago, for growing an extremely large Chrysanthemum, with a goal of producing the maximum number of flowers possible on a single plant.

This time of year everyone is talking about the stunning chrysanthemums in the Conservatory--but I would like to point out the beauty of a different, incredible, autumn-blooming plant! The genus Salvia represents the largest group of plants in the Lamiaceae family.

It's my favorite time of year in the Conservatory with the arrival of more than 60 Fuschsia baskets, each measuring more than three feet in width!

In March, our staff found a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers excavating a nest cavity in a large dead tree. We were lucky enough to capture the event on film and have been watching (and filming) their nesting habits ever since.