Pretty Mums for the Fall

Last weekend we did get to go to the Chrysanthemum festival at Longwood Gardens.

When you think of this festival you mustn't think of the big ball of flowers that you get at the local grocery store to jam into dirt in the final cooling days of summer into fall. Longwood had every conceivable shape of chrysanthemum flower you could think of, or actually more than that. While I did read the different types, I do not recall enough of them to recount them here. Perhaps this classification from the Chrysanthemum society would be helpful. As if all of these classifications were not enough the horticulturists at Longwood also trained the mums in to different shapes. Some were trained to cascade, some were grown to be a single long stem, some were aggressively arranged onto grids. Anyone could do it...if they had the time, the skill, the patience, and the mums. I have a picture of a flock of pompon mums, plus a single perfect pompon.

They have also redone one of the large rooms in the conservatory. It has a spare far eastern style to it, with a large water feature in the middle connected to smaller ones around it by water flowing in troughs and fountains. There was a lovely fountain with an Assyrian feel to it. There are tall bamboos and for the season it was full of every mum imaginable.



A bird of paradise flower