The year 2010 was a year of extremes for us here at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden:  the wettest spring, the hottest summer, and the coldest December.  We also had the extreme pleasure of exhibiting Glorious Glass in the Garden, which ends January 10, 2011, after a nine-month run. The glass sculptures by Hans Godo Frabel are just as captivating as ever and seem to have enjoyed four seasons in the Garden!

Clowns after installation in March

Clowns enjoying balmy days in June

Clowns against fall color in October

Clowns frolicking in the December snow

Below are a few more photos from 2010 of dazzling displays, exciting events and some of the people who make the Garden such a special place.

Staff pitch in for the arrival of Glorious Glass

Tulip border during A Million Blooms

Garden "Geezer" volunteers at Plant Sale

Mother's Day at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

Father's Day at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

Flowers After 5

Glass Blowing Demonstration

Fourth of July -- a day of free admission to the Garden!

A visit by Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority residents during Families After 5

Going on a Bug Hunt during Families After 5

Staff and volunteers working together in the Garden

Getting Ready for Goblins and Gourds

We had an exceptionally beautiful fall this year

Planting Bulbs for Spring 2011!

Dominion GardenFest of Lights (photo: Don Williamson)

We look forward to seeing you in 2011 for more great times!

Garden Shop, Conservatory and Security Staff in the Conservatory

If you love the  Hans Godo Frabel’s Glorious Glass in the Garden exhibit at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden — you may be interested in seeing some of the glass-working process actually take place here at the Garden.

Local glass artist, Brad Pearson, will be here at the Garden leading several  flame-work glass demonstrations  in the North Wing of the Conservatory, on Saturday August 21, and September 11, at both 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.   The glass work demonstration will allow you to learn more about how this delicate sculpture  is created.

Brad Pearson demonstrates flamework glass technique at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

Brad Pearson, a professional lamp-work glass artist, is a graduate of VCU, and teaches intermediate and advanced glass classes around the country, including at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Like Frabel, Brad first developed his love of precision and detail through work with a scientific glass blowing firm.  For the past decade, he has refined his lamp working skills and pushed the boundaries of design and small-scale hot glass work.

Rachel Cooper, who writes for About.com, was here for his first demonstration in July:

“The cool thing that we learned was how he blends glass colors together using powdered glass and melts it onto the surface. This creates a unique swirling color pattern.  It was fascinating to watch,” she says.

Last week I decided to take a short stroll to look at some of my favorite pieces in the Hans Godo Frabel‘s Glorious Glass in the Garden exhibit.

In the Library, the installations are situated on top of the book shelves. I took a close look at the Ghost Orchid and Embrea rodigasiana orchid pieces.

Just inside the door of the Conservatory is one of my favorites of the Masks.

My other favorite mask has a haunting quality.

I had to look closely… I almost missed the frog.

I had to ask myself… is it real? Or is it Frabel?

The Glorious Glass will be in the Garden through January 10, 2011. Don’t miss the chance to see these wonderful examples of artistry in glass. Visit often. Look closely. You won’t want to miss a single piece.

by Frankie Geouge, Conservatory Garden Volunteer, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden 

During my first weeks as a volunteer in the Lewis Ginter Conservatory, I found myself in the midst of two transitions: the removal of spent spring plantings and the arrival of the beautiful Fräbel glass sculptures. New plant materials are being nestled into the nurturing incubator of the Conservatory, and the wonderful Fräbel sculptures have been artfully placed to frolic among them.  Unlike the painful transitions of childbirth or middle age, however, these adjustments are facile and lovely. 

These gorgeous Fräbel glass creations, born from both nature and the creative spirit, exemplify the melding of the real and the imagined.  As both an artist and a gardener, I found it wondrous to be able to gratify my love for both horticulture and art within the same artistic space.   Some of the Fräbel sculptures emulate nature so closely that it takes a second look to be able to distinguish the living from the skillfully designed (see below).                                                                                                                                 

Other sculptures are flights of imagination: among them, organic fawns reach joyfully out toward their newfound universes, and frosty jesters prance among the natural foliage. 

The plantings will change, as all living things do: and it will be continually interesting to see how this juxtaposition between life and art evolves. This gratifying renewal, always unique and constantly changing, is the essence of life in the garden and the inspiration for all art.  We should take this as a personal lesson: to resist change is to arrest life and stifle creativity.  Changes are necessary in order to grow. 

Please feel free to respond to this post with your own reflections. 

“The fountain is my speech. The tulips are my speech. The grass and trees are my speech.”  George T. Delacorte 

Many inches of snow and cold temperatures gave us the coldest winter in our area in several years. If you’re like me, you may have wondered if  spring was ever coming.  This week, a wonderful spate of warmer weather recently inspired me to walk the paths of the Garden to see if there might be any hints of things to come…

A couple of Canada geese went about their business as I stood and watched.  Obviously, they didn’t see me as a serious threat.  We have many birds here in the Garden, actually.    And if you are interested, you can pick up a map of the  bird trail as you enter the Robin’s Visitor’s Center.

Mystical glass sculptures have appeared in several places. You can see them too, as you walk the Garden and visit the Conservatory. Take a sneak peak now, or visit when the Hans Godo Frabel exhibit officially opens on April 1st.

With Spring on my mind, I’d like to share with you a few of my favorite websites to help you enjoy both Lewis Ginter and your garden at home even more:

To help you identify plants and get in-depth information , visit Gardenology.  Here, I discovered that I not only was misspelling Gingko, I was mispronouncing it too.

If you enjoy a little humor with your garden info, be sure to check out The Grumpy Gardener, available on the Southern Living website. His blog focuses on gardening in the South and runs a gamut of subjects. For instance, if you’re interested in when and where some favorite plants were introduced to our area, he mentioned Gardens and Historic Plant Antebellum South, by James Cothran. You can check it out from  Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s library if you are a member.

Most important, I know that even more things are greening in the Garden — Spring is finally here.

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden's Staff placing 'Gravity'

Frabel Clowns by the new Lotus Bridge

Blue Flower in the North Wing of The Conservatory

Imploded Spheres in front of Conservatory

by Jonah Holland, PR & Marketing Coordinator, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Our staff here at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden has been working incredibly hard getting ready for the official opening of Glorious Glass in the Garden exhibit by Hans Godo Frabel, on  April 1st.  You can take a sneak peak if you visit the Garden now, but if you wait a few weeks, we’ll have everything perfectly in place, and it will be the start of A Million Blooms by April so we hope to really wow you with both glass and real flowers.   Personally, I love the way the glass looks — the way they’ve placed it in the Garden, it looks like it belongs here.   I can already tell I’m going to miss it noticeably when it is gone. Lucky for all of us, we’ve got plenty of time to enjoy it — the exhibit runs through January of 2011. If you do get a chance to visit sometime soon, I hope you’ll share your photos of the exhibit and impressions with us.  You can share photos ( and thoughts about Glorious Glas sin the Garden) on our website, on our Facebook page or on Flickr. Twitter or just leave a comment on this blog.  And if you are really ambitious, make a video, and put it on YouTube!  If you want to learn more about Frabel and his glass art, there is a 3-minute video you can watch too.

One of the things I really like about working at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is that the Garden is always looking at new ways it can serve the community and its members while staying true to its mission of horticulture and education. Like nature, the Garden is always  in a flux of change.  But I don’t mean just the changes of what’s blooming in the Garden. The leadership here is always looking for new ways to improve the Garden and to engage our members, by adding new features like  Butterflies LIVE! and by keeping things interesting by adding new exhibits like Frabel’s Glorious Glass in the Garden exhibit, set to debut April 1st.

So, if the spirit of movement and change are at the heart of the culture here at Lewis Ginter, then it should come as no surprise that we are experimenting with a new series of workshops on movement and change.  The Spirit of Movement in the Garden, will be taught by Richmond T’ai Chi legend Cas Overton.  I first came across Cas when I was a student at VCU in the early ’90s and my friends couldn’t stop raving about the incredible T’ai Chi classes she taught through the VCU Dance Department.  Unfortunately, I never got a chance to take her class.   A few years ago,  I finally got to meet Cas, in person, and was immediately struck by her warmness and openness.  When I heard she was teaching our new class, I decided to give her a call.  I guess I had a feeling that there was a remarkable story behind this remarkable woman.  She explained to me that she started to study the Tao and become involved in T’ai Chi at age 25, shortly after she had been diagnosed with cancer.

“It helped me tremendously to quiet my anxiety and it  gave me strength and tremendous focus,” she says.  As she started to notice how great she felt, she immersed herself in the study even more. Doctors told her to expect the cancer to return within the year.  It didn’t.  And each year, the doctors continued to tell her to expect it to return.  After 3 years, she says, she stopped listening to the doctors, and now, 45 years later, she continues to be cancer free.

In today’s fast-paced world, often, we don’t take time to stand back and reflect on our lives.  Family, friends, work, commitments,  TV, email and Facebook  occupy more and more of our time.  So, if you’d like some help in stopping to reflect on your life, or you are a bit curious, we hope you will embrace the Spirit of Movement in the Garden.

Welcome to a new three-part series planned to explore our spiritual connections to nature. The programs incorporate the Asian concept of the elements earth, fire, water, wood, and metal and how they relate to the yearly cycle of nature. Focus is on the action of breath, movement, poetry and personal discovery in nature. Techniques include movements from T’ai Chi, dialoguing, poetry readings and writing. Each session includes a vegetarian lunch and other refreshments. Leader is Cas Overton, a former adjunct faculty member of the VCU Dance Department and instructor in Ta’i Chi, and Feldenkrais method of movement re-education . $80/ $70 member per session

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

January 23

10 am – 3 pm

Earth Element: Enter the Cycle of the Earth

Earth is silent. The dark world of late rising and early sleep claims us. Seeds hidden by earth and snow wait. Through the action of breath, movement, poetry and personal discovery, we will wend our way in the garden through this moment toward the next.

June 26 Water and Fire (details TBA)

October 23 Wood and Metal (details TBA)