The Botanical ARt GarDEN at Herrontown Woods, nicknamed the Barden, is many things to many people. For kids, it's a place that stirs the imagination and rewards curiosity, with a fairy garden, a small frog pond, and winding pathways to explore. It's also a botanically rich setting where we socialize in the gazebo or explore the plantings that offer an introduction to native plants.
On a recent Friday, invited to a late afternoon repast in the gazebo with friends, I decided to photograph some of the flowers and fruits of our labors. Our volunteer work sessions on Sundays, starting around 10:30 and continuing into the afternoon, are a collaboration with nature that unleashes a wave of abundance, continuing through to fall. As we ate and talked, a monarch butterfly flew circles around us, segueing into fireflies later on. It was a magical evening. What follows are snapshots of what this wave of abundance looks like in mid-July.
It's fun to see a purple coneflower (actual) presenting itself in front of a photo of same, mounted on one of the cages that protects the many species of flowers surrounding the gazebo in the "Veblen Circle."Later in the evening, as fireflies began to emerge, an evening primrose presented a new array of flowers. These are "volunteer" wildflowers that pop up on their own.
This is the first year that a black cohosh has bloomed in the Barden. Such beautiful spires of white. More will be encountered along the trails of Herrontown Woods, up along the ridge.
A black chokeberry was donated some years back, and is now bearing, benefitted by the open canopy that lets sunlight into the Barden.
A newly discovered tasty treat is the berry of the blackhaw viburnum, the most common native shrub in Herrontown Woods. Haw means berry, and these berries turn black in the fall when ripe.
My parents made delicious elderberry jelly and elderberry pie when I was a kid. These turn purplish black when ripe. Catbirds usually win the race to harvest.