Jill Biden accepts tulip named for her by the Netherlands
April 6, 2023 GMTWASHINGTON (AP) — Tulip lovers have a new variety to choose from and it's named for Jill Biden.
The first lady accepted her “Jill Biden” tulip from André Haspels, ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United States, during a ceremony at his official residence on Wednesday.
At the Philadelphia Flower Show, display gardens bloom
March 8, 2023 GMTPHILADELPHIA (AP) — Upon entering the Philadelphia Flower Show space at the Pennsylvania Convention Center last week, I was entranced by a forest of stunning orchids suspended from the ceiling above the color-changing entrance garden.
Moon gardens: Designed to shine when bathed in moonlight
February 14, 2023 GMTPlanning this year's garden? My guess is you’re envisioning plants bathed in daylight.
But the problem is that by nightfall, when the sun has set and you’re ready to kick back at home, you won’t be able to see and fully enjoy the fruits of your gardening labor without flooding the yard with artificial lighting.
5 plants that say `holiday season,′ and how to care for them
December 6, 2022 GMTHoliday horticulture tends to revolve around the same handful of plants. So if you don’t already have any or all of these five holiday plants, now is the time to get them:
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The bulbs of these daffodil family members are pre-chilled so they can be planted now and produce flowers in a month to six weeks.
Scientists call for action to help sunflower sea stars
December 3, 2022 GMTASTORIA, Ore. (AP) — Scientists along the West Coast are calling for action to help sunflower sea stars, among the largest sea stars in the world, recover from catastrophic population declines.
Groups to US: Protect Nevada flower from mine or face court
October 29, 2022 GMTRENO, Nev. (AP) — Conservationists who won a court order against U.S. wildlife officials say they'll sue them again for failing to protect a Nevada wildflower whose last remaining habitat could be destroyed by a lithium mine.
Kicked to the curb? Mums are perennials you can hold onto
October 25, 2022 GMTSigns of autumn are most apparent in colder climates, where fall foliage sets the landscape ablaze. But regardless of your location, chances are there’s one familiar seasonal sight each year: potted chrysanthemums perched on porches, hanging in baskets, temporarily planted into borders.
Save seeds now for next year’s garden flowers
October 4, 2022 GMTIf you love the flowers in your garden but don’t love the idea of spending money on new ones, why not save their seeds to plant next year?
Immersive Claude Monet exhibit planned for NYC this fall
September 19, 2022 GMTNEW YORK (AP) — Acres of water lilies will bloom on Wall Street this fall, at least digitally.
A massive, immersive exhibition celebrating French artist Claude Monet will make its U.S. debut in downtown New York starting in November, promising a multisensory experience that puts visitors as close to inside his iconic flower paintings as possible.
UK shows Ukraine solidarity with sunflower display
August 23, 2022 GMTLONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson has decided to show Britain’s solidarity with Ukraine by saying it with flowers on Tuesday.
The outgoing U.K. leader created an arch of sunflowers — Ukraine’s national flower — outside his Downing Street office to commemorate the eastern European nation’s independence day on Wednesday.
Michigan profs push ‘pee for peonies’ urine diversion plan
May 13, 2022 GMTANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — A pair of University of Michigan researchers are putting the “pee” in peony.
Rather, they're putting pee ON peonies.
Environmental engineering professors Nancy Love and Krista Wigginton are regular visitors to the Ann Arbor school's Nichols Arboretum, where they have been applying urine-based fertilizer to the heirloom peony beds ahead of the flowers' annual spring bloom.
Flowers in the rubble: Ukrainian woman sees a sliver of hope
May 6, 2022 GMTIRPIN, Ukraine (AP) — There are no walls any longer. The broad wooden roof beams lie splintered and scattered, and random pieces of clothing dangle from damaged water pipes. But among the rubble of what used to be her home, the house that her grandparents built, Anna Shevchenko sees a glimmer of hope.
Sunflowers: Popular, native and, for some, newly meaningful
May 3, 2022 GMTThe annual sunflower (Helianthus annus) has a long history in North America, with evidence of its cultivation for food, ceremonial and medical use by Native Americans dating back to at least 1,000 B.C.
Feeling blue in today’s world? Head for Belgian bluebells!
April 19, 2022 GMTHALLE, Belgium (AP) — Nature’s beauty is rapturous again this springtime — flaunting its purple haze of bluebells in the woods south of Brussels.
This time though, any and all can enjoy the spectacle following two years of pandemic measures that had kept visitors to a trickle.
Flower power: Dutch horticultural expo opens near Amsterdam
April 13, 2022 GMTALMERE, Netherlands (AP) — Tulips herald the advent of spring — and the Dutch believe they can also highlight ways to fight climate change.
8 nostalgic garden flowers worth revisiting for charm, aroma
April 12, 2022 GMTIn Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, “Our Town,” heliotrope flowers connect two sets of characters who gather to inhale their intoxicating scent in the moonlight. Heliotropes, then common, are, indeed, wonderfully fragranced.
National park battlefield irises may mark razed Black homes
April 3, 2022 GMTNEW ORLEANS (AP) — Nearly 60 years ago, a historic Black community founded as a home for newly freed slaves was demolished to expand a national park commemorating the Battle of New Orleans and Civil War casualties.
Want kids to love gardening? Give them a job, seeds, a pass
March 29, 2022 GMTGardeners are made, not born. If you want your children to become enthusiastic gardeners, take steps early to get them going down the proverbial path.
It isn’t difficult, but it might require an adjustment to your attitude about children in the garden.
Tulip, daffodil farmworkers strike over wages, conditions
March 24, 2022 GMTMOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) — A group of Washington state tulip and daffodil farm workers have gone on strike to demand that the Washington Bulb Co. improve wages and health and safety protocols.
The strike comes just ahead of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, one of the area’s main tourist attractions that starts April 1.
Flowering medical marijuana now available in Minnesota
March 3, 2022 GMTST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesotans who use medical marijuana now have a new way of consuming the cannabis.
As of Tuesday, everyone who is registered for medical marijuana can apply to get it in its purest form, dried flower.
Vicksburg spruces up its Memorial Rose Garden
February 19, 2022 GMTVICKSBURG, Miss. (AP) — Crews are in the process of restoring Vicksburg’s Memorial Rose Garden.
The garden is home to roses and other flowering plants, monuments honoring the city’s war dead and has hosted ceremonies on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, The Vicksburg Post reported.
US backs rare flower habitat amid Nevada lithium mine fight
February 7, 2022 GMTRENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed designating critical habitat for a Nevada wildflower it plans to list as endangered amid a conflict over a mine to produce lithium batteries for electric vehicles critical to the Biden administration’s plans to combat climate change.
Showy amaryllis makes a perfect Valentine’s plant or gift
February 1, 2022 GMTEaster has lilies. Thanksgiving has gourds. Christmas has poinsettias. And Valentine’s Day should have amaryllis.
For the uninitiated, amaryllises are big bulbs that can produce among the biggest and showiest flowers a gardener can grow indoors (maybe outdoors too).
US protection sought for threatened Florida ghost orchid
January 24, 2022 GMTST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The rare ghost orchid faces mounting threats in Florida from poaching, loss of habitat and climate change and needs federal protection, environmental groups said Monday.
Where Ukraine’s sunflowers once sprouted, fears now grow
January 22, 2022 GMTWASHINGTON (AP) — On a warm spring day in Ukraine 26 years ago, three men smiled for cameras as they planted symbolic sunflower seedlings in freshly tilled earth where Soviet nuclear missiles had once stood ready.
Tulips for Amsterdam: Growers hand out free flowers
January 15, 2022 GMTAMSTERDAM (AP) — As stores in Amsterdam and across the Netherlands cautiously reopened after weeks of being under a coronavirus lockdown, the Dutch capital's mood was lightened further Saturday by dashes of color from thousands of free bunches of tulips being handed out.
Gardening: 8 parting tips from longtime AP columnist Reich
December 21, 2021 GMTFarewell, fellow gardener. After almost 30 years of sharing my gardening experience, expertise, and enthusiasm in columns for The Associated Press, I’ve decided to focus my time and energy in other directions.
Thailand’s festival honoring rivers also pollutes them
November 20, 2021 GMTBANGKOK (AP) — Thais flocked to rivers and lakes on Friday evening to release small floats adorned with flowers and candles in an annual festival honoring the goddess of water, with thousands of the tiny boats ending up clogging and polluting the country’s waterways.
Giant ‘corpse plant’ draws crowds in Southern California
November 2, 2021 GMTENCINITAS, Calif. (AP) — The bloom of a giant and stinky Sumatran flower nicknamed the “corpse plant” because it smells like a dead body is drawing huge crowds to a Southern California botanical garden.
Some ‘impatient’ plants considered weeds, others cultivated
November 2, 2021 GMTAt a recent dinner party, my host launched into a monologue about a plant he had discovered in his garden and was delighted with.
It had, he said, green leaves (what a clue!) and large, yellow flowers.
Belfast closer to goal of planting a million flowers
October 17, 2021 GMTBELFAST, Maine (AP) — The town of Belfast is inching toward a goal of planting a million flowers.
Elisabeth Wolfe, who launched the effort, said this is the fourth year people have worked to plant bulbs through the Belfast Daffodil Project.
Fall’s a good time for a flower-bed makeover
October 5, 2021 GMTNobody ever said gardening offers instant gratification. With this limitation in mind, I dug and made over one of my flower beds last weekend.
For the plants, fall is a fine time for a flower-bed makeover.
Naomi Campbell steals Lanvin show at Paris Fashion Week
October 3, 2021 GMTPARIS (AP) — Yet again, Naomi Campbell stole the show at Paris Fashion Week. The 51-year-old runway veteran trod the boards of Lanvin’s flower-themed collection Sunday to screams from guests in a dramatic black cloak.
GLIMPSES: Medalists’ bouquets hold deeper meaning for Japan
July 29, 2021 GMTTOKYO (AP) — Of course, an Olympic medal has significance. But the bouquet of flowers that every medal winner is being handed at the Tokyo Olympics has deeper meaning. Much deeper.
The sunflowers and all the other flowers in the bouquet were grown in the three northeastern Japanese prefectures that were devastated by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and the subsequent meltdown of three nuclear reactors.
University of Tennessee biologists await corpse flower bloom
July 22, 2021 GMTKNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The public is invited to come see, and smell, the rare blooming of a corpse flower at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Hesler Biology Building.
Endangered corpse flower blooms in Warsaw, drawing crowds
June 14, 2021 GMTWARSAW, Poland (AP) — The endangered Sumatran Titan arum, a giant foul-smelling blossom also known as the corpse flower, went into a rare, short bloom at a botanical garden in Warsaw, drawing crowds who waited for hours to see it.
Federal agency: Nevada flower near mine should be protected
June 3, 2021 GMTRENO, Nev. (AP) — An extremely rare wildflower that grows only in Nevada’s high desert where an Australian mining company wants to dig for lithium should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S.
VA hospital to hold Memorial Day ceremony on Facebook
May 29, 2021 GMTWHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. (AP) — The White River VA Medical Center will be holding a Memorial Day ceremony online on Sunday.
Chaplain Anthony Madu will speak, a memorial wreath will be placed and Taps will be played during the Facebook Live event at 10 a.m.
Three common garden pests — and a 17-year visitor who isn’t
May 25, 2021 GMTOK, so you’ve got your vegetable and flower transplants in the ground, their roots are reaching out into surrounding soil, and stems are starting to grow.
Whimsical new NYC waterfront park floats over Hudson River
May 21, 2021 GMTNEW YORK (AP) — A whimsical new park that appears to float on pilings above the Hudson River opened to the public just off the Manhattan shoreline Friday, four years after a fight between media mogul Barry Diller and a billionaire real estate developer threatened to derail it.
Monet’s gardens reopening, a picture-perfect pandemic tonic
May 18, 2021 GMTGIVERNY, France (AP) — Beneath the scudding clouds and amid the luscious blooms, the gardeners tend the flowerbeds that were the pride and joy of impressionist painter Claude Monet, with pink and white striped tulips, diaphanous peonies, sky-blue forget-me-nots and myriad other flowers together creating a living art work.
Pandemic puts tulips, bluebells, cherry blossoms in hiding
April 20, 2021 GMTHALLE, Belgium (AP) — There is no stopping flowers when they bloom, blossoms when they burst. Unfortunately, people have been stopped from enjoying them these days...
The Latest: Crowds line streets to pay respects to Philip
April 17, 2021 GMTWINDSOR, England — Hundreds of people have lined the streets outside Windsor Castle to pay their respects to Prince Philip...
Artist gives nature a `cosmic’ twist in big NY garden show
April 13, 2021 GMTAn expansive new show featuring works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, famous for mesmerizing polka dots, speckled pumpkins and fascination with the natural world, has opened at The New York Botanical Garden...
Visitors tiptoe through the tulips in Dutch virus test
April 9, 2021 GMTLISSE, Netherlands (AP) — Finally, after bleak winter months of a coronavirus lockdown, springtime shoots of hope emerged Friday as restrictions were relaxed at a Dutch flower garden and other public venues...
Turning point: When is it safe to plant your garden?
April 7, 2021 GMTSpring in the vegetable or flower garden is a carefully orchestrated series of events. The goal is to keep things moving forward with the warming season, taking into account weather predictions and, because those are just predictions, average spring warming trends where you garden...
Time to try growing some vegetable or flower transplants
March 30, 2021 GMTIf you’ve never grown your own transplants for your garden, perhaps this is the year to do it. It’s economical, it allows you to grow varieties you might not be able to buy as transplants, it’s satisfying and it’s easy...
The ubiquitous orchid: A pandemic project with surprises
March 23, 2021 GMTNot so long ago, orchids were regarded as rare and exotic. But these days, thanks to new propagation techniques, certain varieties are mass-produced...
15th century bowl found at yard sale sells for $722,000
March 17, 2021 GMTHARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — An exceptionally rare 15th century porcelain bowl made in China that somehow turned up at a Connecticut yard sale and sold for just $35 was auctioned off Wednesday for nearly $722,000...
Pyrex and Pink Daisies: Midcentury cookware is fab again
March 2, 2021 GMTIf you want to freshen up your kitchen, look no further than Grandma’s old casserole dishes.
Vintage kitchenware is back in style -– pieces from the mid-20th century painted with flowers, bright colors, and specific functions, such as bracketed chip and dip bowls or four-piece refrigerator storage sets...
Flower farms see their Lunar New Year sales wilted by virus
February 4, 2021 GMTHONG KONG (AP) — The Lunar New Year holiday is usually a busy period for flower farms in Hong Kong, which gear up to sell plum blossoms, orchids and daffodils at flower markets during the festive season...
Field of tulips joins worried mom with widow battling cancer
November 17, 2020 GMTWhen the coronavirus upended daily life, Amy Baird was frightened, like much of the world — for her children and what would become of their school and friends, for her in-laws in their 70s, for her own health marked by a pulmonary embolism...
Budding florists get day in the sun in new reality series
November 12, 2020 GMTNEW YORK (AP) — They designed epic floral statements in limited time with some very intense judges, but the contestants on the new reality competition series “Full Bloom” did not wilt under pressure...
In solidarity, Poles buy flowers to help struggling vendors
November 2, 2020 GMTWARSAW, Poland (AP) — Driven by new solidarity, Poles have been buying armloads of chrysanthemums to help out flower vendors who unexpectedly faced bankruptcy when the government ordered all cemeteries locked due to COVID-19 during a traditional memorial weekend...