COLUMBUS, Ohio — Adrian Bloom, an internationally renowned horticulturist who has spent 30 years incorporating his blend of perennials, woody plants and grasses in gardens throughout England and North America, has left his mark on Ohio State University.
Bloom recently visited Ohio State's Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens and assisted in installing a 4,500-square-foot woody plants and perennial garden. He designed the garden specially for the arboretum. The garden is located in front of Howlett Hall on the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences campus in Columbus, Ohio.
"The Bloom family is very well known and honored around the world," said Mary Maloney, Chadwick Arboretum education and volunteer coordinator. "This garden is very significant as it puts an international spotlight on our arboretum."
Bloom is president of Blooms of Bressingham Nursery in Norfolk, England. He has appeared on BBC-TV's "Gardeners' World Program" and other gardening programs, including the PBS Victory Garden, to educate the public on the latest gardening tips and cultivars. He has authored and co-authored several books, including "Blooms of Bressingham Garden Plants" and "Adrian Bloom's Year-Round Garden Glory," and is the holder of the Royal Horticultural Society's Victoria Medal of Honour of service to horticulture.
The Bloom garden, which features over 150 perennial cultivars, grasses and woody plant varieties joins Chadwick Arboretum's 60 acres of gardens that feature some of the most varied collections of flora in the state, made up of woody plants, tropical plants, wildflowers, native Ohio plants, perennials and more than 400 cultivars of newly planted annuals.
Bloom, who places heavy emphasis on contrast — either in plant variety or color — and accent plants as focal points for year-round garden enjoyment, strived for a design of the Chadwick Arboretum Bloom garden that best suited its urban setting.
"The idea was to provide a different plant association from different angles, and to that end there's essentially four gardens represented on each corner," said Bloom. "And rather than design a grass pathway down the middle, we designed avenues of plants that allow your eyes to travel into the garden, rather than throughout it."
In whatever way the garden is interpreted, Bloom hopes that it will become a learning tool for its visitors.
"You learn every time you plant a garden. You learn the way plants behave, how they respond in their planting combinations, what will work and what won't," said Bloom. "Beyond that, perhaps the garden will make people think about plants themselves, to make them stop and look. We have to try to keep an interest in horticulture and gardening growing and if this garden, in some small way, achieves that, then it will have served its purpose."
For more information on Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens, contact Mary Maloney at (614) 688-3479, or log on to http://chadwickarboretum.osu.edu.