"Thousand Bloom" mum among the many treasures at Longwood Gardens

The following guest post is from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for the Australia-based Tesselaar Plants. Phillip regularly posts wonderful stories, info and photos from his horticultural travels around the world.

Well, I've finally arrived back in Australia after 3 weeks freezing in the Northern Hemisphere.

During this trip, I had the opportunity to visit Longwood Gardens (just outside of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania), which was great and saw some amazing material – especially this chrysanthemum, which is a single plant trained in a style known in Japan as the "Thousand Bloom."

The name refers to the number of blooms and the symmetry and beauty found in the perfect half dome shape. It has taken over 14 months for the plant to grow to this size and they have already started work on next year’s display material.

It was also great to see some of our Festival™ Burgundy cordyline (dark-red, strappy, glossy foliage) in the conservatory at Longwood doing well in the tropical conditions.

Here are some some other images taken at Longwood of the various parts of the garden. The green (or "living") wall in the last image is apparently the longest green wall structure in the world (at least this is what they claim, but I am yet to verify). But it looked great!

Desert oasis garden with drought-tolerant plants

Greenery-covered arches along roadway

Dianella Tasmanica variegata 

Gigantic lily pads

Sculpted topiaries

Green ("living") wall