Visited June 5th, 2014 With the Lakeland Horticulture Society. Carl Linnaeus’s work laid the foundation for Sweden as a nature-conscious country with twenty nine national parks and over 4000 nature reserves, each with a specific purpose. The Swede’s consider Linnaeus as the pioneer of modern day ecology as his work showed the connection between plants, [Read the full story …]

Visited on June 5th, 2014 with the Lakeland Horticulture Society. Our afternoon visit was to an unusual Chinese Garden in Bastedalen.  The garden is placed in an open cast mine from the 17th century where limestone, feldspar and marble were mined until the late 1920’s.  The Bastedalen Estate and Swedish manor is secluded but a [Read the full story …]

  Visited June 5th, 2014 Thursday we headed southwest to Enköping, a city of twenty-five green parks. The focus of our visit was the Dream Park, an informal perennial park designed by Piet Oudolf, a Dutch garden designer and plantsman. The Dream Park is planted with herbaceous perennials, spring bulbs, ornamental grasses and vertical perennials [Read the full story …]

  Visited June 4th, 2014 The Uppsala University Botanical Garden showcases a manicured Baroque style garden from the 1750’s and a 21st century garden used currently for research and education at the university. Olof Rudbeck, the Elder, created Sweden’s first botanical garden in 1655 for Uppsala University. The purpose of the early botanical gardens was [Read the full story …]

When George Feather scheduled a June 2014 trip for Sweden for Lakeland Horticulture Society Members, it was the chance to visit the gardens in the country of my great grandfather from Halland and my great grandmother from Kristianstad. “Land of my ancestors,” I told George, and signed on. Fellow Virginia Beach Master Gardener, Lennie … [Read the full story …]