Learning Moore

Welcome back! I have the pleasure of updating our blog this week and I thought I would start off by introducing myself. My name is Laura Hennighausen and I've been with the Atlanta Botanical Garden for almost two years. I started out as a part time Education Assistant with our Big Bugs and Killer Plants exhibition and then came back as the Registration Coordinator in the Garden's education department. Because I have an arts background, I was especially excited when the Garden announced it would be hosting Henry Moore at the Garden. What a great experience!

To compliment the Moore exhibition, we’ve cooked up all sorts of educational opportunities for both young and old. One of my favorite programs, The Big Draw, is actually occurring this weekend, and again every third Saturday of the month through October. Kew Gardens started the Big Draw project when they hosted the Moore exhibit (in 2007) to encourage participation in the arts. We embraced the idea and decided to hold monthly events here at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Henry Moore’s artwork and the beautiful garden is inspirational and we want to encourage visitors to sketch, paint or draw during their visit. The Big Draw was a big hit during the grand opening in May, with drop-in drawing classes by Garden artist Carol Sutherland and a giant chalk mural created by visitors and led by garden educator Jackie Smalley-Barnes.

Even after studying art for several years I find myself sometimes overwhelmed when presented with large exhibitions. To help visitors enjoy their experience with the Moore exhibition, the Atlanta Botanical Garden offers several guided tour opportunities through out the month. The first Saturday of each month at 10:30 am we feature an Expert Lead Tour hosted by a staff member or special guest who can provide insider information and interpretation of the exhibition. We also offer a Henry Moore Family Walk for families on the last Saturday of each month, which is perfect for little feet! I lead our first family walk last month and had a blast imagining what each sculpture could be and how and why they were made. My favorites were Catherine’s interpretation of Three Piece Reclining Figure - Draped as the Titanic and Brady’s explanation of Goslar Warrior - a Star Wars Storm Trooper!

Another program I’ve had the pleasure to become involved with is our Saturday Drop-in class. Each Saturday at 1:30pm garden educators host a drop-in class for families visiting the garden. I hosted a “Natural Artists” class where we made sculptures out of clay, learned fun facts about Henry Moore (Did you know he’s the 7th of 8 children! And he made 1,200 sculptures through out his career!?) and went outside to explore a few key pieces in the exhibition. We imitated Moore sculptures with our bodies, talked about what we thought each statue looked like, and then made nature collages with materials collected from the grounds of the Garden.

We are also offering several classes relating to the exhibition such as our Bronze Foundry Tour and Demonstration where participants tour the Inferno Art Foundry to learn more about how bronze sculptures are created and watch a bronze pour. In the next few months we’ll also be offering opportunities for participants to get their hands dirty and make their own bronze sculptures with a Scratch Mold Bronze Casting class and a Lost Wax Method class led by artists from the Inferno Art Foundry. It’s an unusual opportunity and sure to fill up quickly!
[Below, Carl from the Inferno Art Foundry points out a step in the Lost Wax casting method.]


For more information about educational opportunities surrounding the Henry Moore exhibition, click here!

Taking Time To Discuss The Roses

Henry Moore’s Large Totem Head of 1968 can be found nestled comfortably in the Rose Garden among some of the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s most traditional and well-known beauties. If you look closely, the statue is leaning forward – I think to catch a better glimpse of the wonder around it!
Emily Russell, Atlanta Botanical Garden horticulturist, is responsible for the beautiful sights and delicious smells that emanate for much of the year from this oasis along with her partner in crime, Emily Ann Bielawski. Russell graduated from the University of Michigan with degrees in Environmental Studies, Anthropology and French, and has been working at the Atlanta Botanical Garden for three and a half years. Read on to hear what Emily has to say about the variety of flora one can find in the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Rose Garden...

It’s been a beautiful spring for roses: long and cool with lots of rain. Now summer is suddenly here, and it’s HOT. It happened so fast! Where did 78 degrees go? I grew up in Michigan, and I firmly believe that it should not reach 90 degrees in the month of June (May is out of the question). After four and a half years in Atlanta, I’m still adapting. The roses are feeling the heat too. The glorious spring show is over and we’re settling in for a long, hot, southern summer. Lucky for the roses at ABG, they’ve been carefully selected to thrive in this crazy climate. Since our rose garden is maintained organically, we choose roses that perform well here without toxic sprays and synthetic fertilizers. I think Henry Moore would like that: organic forms, organic garden!

Speaking of organic forms, it’s surprising to find out that Moore’s original inspiration for this sculpture was a boat, and then he named it Large Totem Head. I, along with some other horticulturists, think it looks like a giant seedpod of some unknown plant. Cathleen sees a walnut. Other people may see it as a fertility symbol blessing all the weddings held out in the rose garden. It looks reproductive in some sense….. perfect for a sensual, beautiful, blooming rose garden!
This lovely picture is from the time in early May when the roses can do no wrong. They are so fresh and beautiful with clean new foliage, blooming their hearts out with no prompting from the gardener. Then, usually right about now at the beginning of June, they start getting hot and tired. They want deadheading, fertilizing, and watering, and blackspot rears its ugly head. I can’t blame them; the heat makes me whiny too. 'Blush Noisette' (Noisette, before 1817)

But I really love roses. And I love our roses at ABG in particular, with all their diversity of color, form, and fragrance. We have over 100 different cultivars of roses, in 25 different classes. Our rose collection emphasizes Old Garden Roses: all classes that existed before the introduction of the first hybrid tea. The world of Old Garden Roses has so much more diversity than the standard florist roses that have lost their fragrance after years of hybridizing. If you’ve never smelled a Damask rose in bloom, you’ll have to come to ABG next spring and smell ‘Kazanlik.’ Damasks are the roses that have been used to make perfumes for hundreds of years. ‘Kazanlik’ is not a repeat bloomer, so he only blooms for a few weeks in April-May, but it’s worth the wait!

'Penelope’ (Hybrid Musk, 1924) at right, with the base of the sculpture at the top of the photo.

Another class of roses that I love is the Hybrid Musk. They are planted around the Henry Moore sculpture in the Rose Garden. ‘Penelope’ is one of my favorite Hybrid Musks. She has great dark green, glossy foliage and keeps flushing out flowers all summer long. At 97 degrees in August, ‘Penelope’ just smiles. Tea roses are another class that is amazing in Georgia. They aren’t hardy enough for northern gardeners, but they love to bloom all summer in heat and humidity, and they have a classic “tea” scent that is uniquely soft and delightful.
In an organic rose garden, summertime = alfalfa tea time. This is the liquid fertilizer we make by steeping alfalfa and water for a few days then adding fish emulsion. It doesn’t smell as delicious as a tea rose, but it keeps the roses happy. While the roses are drinking their alfalfa tea, the companion plants are also kicking it up a notch. That’s another thing I love about our rose garden: it’s beautiful year-round with bulbs, groundcovers, grasses, perennials, and clematis all mixed in with the roses. It makes for some stunning combinations.

'Rosette Delizy' (Tea, 1922)

Right now, we have coneflowers, Shasta daisies, gladiolus, and drumstick alliums just hitting their stride. We’re planting some ‘Cherry Chief’ salvias and coleus at the base of the sculpture next week. And today, the temperatures have cooled off again, ahh – sighs of relief. It’s just gorgeous out there! Come see us!

Guy Savoy® (Shrub, 2002) with Nasella tenuissima

Gladiolus tubergenii ‘Charm’

Allium sphaerocephalon

P.S. If this blog post has inspired you to love organic and heirloom roses as much as we do, check out the Rose Community Public Gardens Project. It’s a way to contribute to the Atlanta Botanical Garden rose garden through small nurseries that are preserving rare and historic roses. Click here for more information!