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September 15th - December 15th |
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A Brief Explanation of General Information - On the following pages you'll find an amazing list and descriptions of slide seminars and/or workshops available for your gardening organization. Each seminar is accompanied by beautiful, colorful slides taken mostly by Brent Heath outside in Becky's and Brent's gardens. Because they are filled with information that will inspire new ideas for gardening treasures, there is bound to be a topic available that will interest you and your friends. A hands-on workshop is often available in conjunction with the slide presentation.
Here is a bit of information about the people and the knowledge behind these seminars:
Brent is a third generation bulb grower who grew up on his parent's daffodil farm. Becky as a child, spent a lot of time on her uncle's farm and also helped her Dad with their vegetable garden. Each have grown up with dirt under their fingernails and each have a background in teaching. Both Brent and Becky enjoy sharing information about their wealth of knowledge about bulbs with interested gardeners.
Brent and Becky have co-authored Daffodils for North American Gardens and Tulips for North American Gardens. Each book is an award winner which has over 300 color photographs, are marvelous sources of inspiration for the novice and are valuable references for the professional. Brent was also a consultant of Time Life's book, Complete Gardener: Bulbs, Ortho's All About Bulbs, Organic Garden's Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, The American Horticultural Society's Flower Finder and numerous other books with chapters on bulbs. Brent and Becky have both been featured guests on National Television programs; Brent on 'The Victory Garden' and 'Karen's Garden' and Becky on 'Martha Stewart'.
A Walk On the Wild Side - The Good Lord created many incredible, interesting and beautiful plants and flowers. The species (wild) bulb flowers are among the most beautiful, diverse, complex but easy to grow group of plants. From hundreds of geophyte's (bulb) genera (types) have come many thousands of spectacular hybrids and cultivars. The species themselves are spectacular in their own right and often out persist their own progeny in longevity, perennialization and for sure, naturalization. We will take a look at species bulbs through the seasons and garden situations helping you decide what, when, where and how to grow and color gardens with flower bulbs.
Autumn Finale with Fall Flowering Bulbs - We think of orange, rust, brown and other earth tones as the color of autumn with the lovely brilliance of the falling leaves. However, there are many plants that add hues of lavender, purple, blue, pink, white and bright yellow to the fall garden. Many of these plants, like the tree's leaves, will give you color year after year with little effort. And because many bloom without leaves, each blossom becomes a well-deserved, enchanting surprise. We'll guide you through the process of adding interesting, new colors to your garden that will change it from a 'waning garden' to a colorful, end of the season gala!
Bulbs as Companion Plants - Whether you are planning to plant bulbs in a fresh, newly prepared empty garden, or whether you are adding them to an already existing one, this seminar will have the answers for you! With exquisite slides illustrating the seminar, you will be introduced to the best of the best...the right bulbs for the right spots. You'll learn how to combine bulbs, perennials, annuals, ground covers and flowering shrubs that will create just the feeling you want to generate for four seasons in your garden. After seeing and experiencing this seminar, you'll leave with information and inspiration to produce a garden that you, your neighbors and friends will enjoy all year.
Bulbs for the Deep South - For some, the term 'bulb' sometimes only brings up the mental image of daffodils and tulips, which we have heard won't do well in our temperate climate. However, with proper selection and some environmental manipulation to help meet their requirements, you can have many spring flowering bulbs perennialize in our gardens after all! There are many more types of exciting bulbs including the tropical 'summer' bulbs that are right at home in our hot, humid summers and mild winters. In fact, in our milder climates, we are blessed with many opportunities to enjoy flowering bulbs in our gardens in combinations with many other plants in all or most seasons. This seminar will give you an overview of the kinds of bulbs that can be successfully enjoyed in zones 7-10.
Color Your Community With Flower Bulbs - There is nothing quite like the feelings of happiness, joy, serenity and welcome when one visits a color conscious gardening community.
We will take a trip, with the aid of slides, to a number of communities here in the U. S. A. and abroad that make an effort to bloom and shine for the world to smile with them. Whether it be raised community planter boxes, median color beds, window boxes, flower festivals or just home gardeners, we will explore the ways a community can add to its color appeal through the year with the use of flower bulbs.
Flower Festivals - All over the world, people celebrate the wonders of our glorious earth by setting aside a specific day for a flower festival. Entertainment, floats, 'tail-gate' spreads, lovely community beautification plantings, arts/crafts and everything imaginable is decorated as part of the celebration. Dances are held and Queens are crowned as part of the festival activities. Travel with us, via slides, and be a participant in these festivals as we introduce you to some very special places where the residents appreciate flowers as much as we do!
Heirloom Bulbs for Restoration Gardens - Flower bulbs were among the first plants in commerce and are even mentioned several times in the Bible. Whether it's a colonial home or a grandmother's garden that you wish to restore with authentic bulbs of the time, your options include a palette full of colors, seasons, heights, shapes and sizes. This talk will cover hundreds of possibilities anywhere from 50 to over 500 hundred years old and will be highlighted with slides taken in real gardens. Many of the garden slides are from gardens like Monticello, Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon and a wealth of other period gardens.
Keukenhof and Other Famous Gardens - The Most Famous Flower Bulb Showcase in Holland and Famous Gardens of England and the United States
Visit the growers of Holland and their famous garden, which is only open in the spring and is located in the town of Lisse. Over 5 million new bulbs are planted annually with over 1000 different cultivars displayed. The topography of the land would make a magnificent garden even without flowers because of the sparkling ponds and streams as well as the lovely mature trees and rhododendrons. The English climate is most conducive for lovely gardens. You'll be thrilled to walk through some of the most glorious and famous gardens in the English countryside. America has enormous diversity in its gardens and designs and there are so many from which to choose. You'll see and enjoy some of our favorites! Come with us to Holland, England and the U.S. and experience the wonders of paradise without having to pack a suitcase!
Living Flower Arrangements With Layers of Bulbs - We all smile when we receive a beautiful arrangement of flowers. However, that smile will return many times when we realize that the flowers come from live bulbs and will last up to 2 or 3 times longer than cut flowers. Then they can often be recycled into the garden after danger of hard freeze.
This lecture covers the particulars on how to create living flower arrangements and which bulb cultivars are best suited to pot culture. We will demonstrate the most innovative methods of creating the forced container, the window box liner, the layered patio planter or individually potted bulbs.
This lecture should expand our gardening palette and give us more hours of garden pleasure, an additional season and flowers in additional areas.
*Optional 'hands-on' workshop following the lecture where participants will get the opportunity to create their own combination planting which they may take home and enjoy watching become their 'Living Flower Arrangement'.
Documents for this lecture: Workshop Planning Sheet &
Care Instructions
Lovely Little Bulbs Minor Bulbs with Major Impact - Many little bulbous treasures are just dying to make your acquaintance. They are unfortunately often given the diminutive term, 'minor', when they should be called 'special bulbs'. From the very earliest month of the year all the way through the hottest, there can be a parade of these little jewels to grace your gardens, pots, window boxes, greenhouses, dining room tables, rock gardens and meadows in a myriad of marvelous ways. Let us introduce you to a broad spectrum of these lovely little bulbs.
Lovely Long-Lasting Lilies and Awesome Alliums - As spring turns to summer, a real garden treat awaits you as alliums and lilies unfold their myriad of colorful and often fragrant blossoms. We will look on overall samples of each genus and discuss best cultural practices to keep them blooming repeatedly for years. We will also include the most effective design uses for the garden and landscape.
Magical, Mystical Meadows with Bulbs - A multitude of different kinds of bulbs that both lend themselves to truly naturalizing (spreading by seed) as well as perennializing (multiplying in clumps and continuing to bloom).
We will view slides and discuss informally each type of bulb and its general cultural requirements and best uses. We will talk about the best choices for a variety of sites and micro climates from sun to shade and wet to dry.
We will take a holistic approach to achieving the ultimate low maintenance, free form, naturalized garden.
One Hundred Years of Daffodils and More - Back around 1900, Brent's grandfather, Charles Heath, ate a cantaloupe that caused him to discover daffodils in tidewater Virginia. Heath, a Yankee, was soon accepted by the local, southern farmers for his instrumental development of a daffodil flower industry, that would later help with cash flow during the depression. Brent's father and mother, 'Pappy George' and Katie Heath, developed a mail order business that once catalogued over 1500 cultivars of daffodils. Brent, who grew up in the business, fell in love with the flower and bought the business from his mother in 1972. He married Becky in 1979 and the rest is history.. hold on to your seats while this slide seminar tells the story!
Pest Resistant Bulbs - Come and learn about the kinds of flower bulbs that naturally resist the attacks of such critters as deer, rabbits, squirrels, voles and insects.
Also learn how to help to make edible bulbs like lilies, tulips and crocus more pest resistant with an assortment of remedies, which make the bulbs or leaves taste or smell bad to foraging pests. Also learn how to create physical barriers to thwart the 'bulb monsters' and keep them at bay. Let's try some of these solutions to help us enjoy our flowers and make the world a happier, more beautiful place.
Sweet Smell of Success The Fragrant Flower Bulb Garden - Often, our earliest and best memories of ties to our past can be related to the fragrances of a grandparent's flower garden. Many wonderfully colorful and diverse types of flower bulbs have the added value of a mild to strong bouquet of smells. Through this slide seminar, you will learn to enhance your gardening efforts with a broad spectrum of fragrant flower bulbs in all seasons.
Tantalizing Tulips - Dubbed as the "parrots of the bulb world", tulips provide every color of the artist's palette except true blue. They are also the perfect spring flowers for the garden artist to mingle, blend, layer and contrast to compose that spectacular portrait of spring.
Apparently as tasty as they are colorful, some critters and human gardeners find them a delectable treat. We will explore ways to thwart the critters and to enhance the dinner table of adventuress gardeners. We will share some cultural success stories that will help your tulip bulb re-bloom for years to come.
The Shady Lady's Bulb Garden - If you are enjoying the myriad benefits of lovely trees that help to keep your house cool in the summer and warmer in the winter, but long for some color, do not despair. There are flower bulbs that benefit from shade and others that will tolerate shade. Let us show you the possibilities for all four seasons.
The Tropical Paradise Garden - From the tropical rain forest, the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, the veldt of South Africa and the slopes of the Andes, come bold, lush leaves and a myriad of stunning diverse flowers of summer bulbs. This seminar will provide ideas on how to weave these spectacular bulb plants into your own relaxing, tropical garden getaway. You will see, with the aid of breath-taking slides, how to integrate summer bulbs with annuals, perennials, ground covers, trees and shrubs to create your own ultimate patio planter, window box, living sculpture or jungle. You will also gather ideas on how to build the ultimate Evening Garden including luminescent, light colored, fragrant flowers. Let's plan and plant something different this summer!
Undaunted Daffodils - These unstoppable, diverse, pest-free, beauties have captured the hearts and borders of gardeners in all fifty marvelous states and their various climates.
This lecture will take you from very early spring to early summer, exploring the multiplicity of different types of these incredible bulb flowers. With the aid of slides, we will place them in the landscape in combinations with annuals, perennials, groundcovers, trees, shrubs and vegetables. We will discuss the best cultural practices and requirements of these easy to grow bulbs. Let's get your bulb trowels and planters warmed up and ready to plant.
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Brent and Becky's Bulbs - 7900 Daffodil Lane, Gloucester, VA 23061
| Phone: (804) 693-3966
Fax: (804) 693-9436 |
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© 1998-2008 Brent and Becky's Bulbs |
http://www.BrentandBeckysBulbs.com
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