by Patrick O'Connor and pictures by Ron Killingsworth
Plan now to attend the joint convention in New Orleans. Perhaps this garden on the tours will tempt you!
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans,
LA
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden is one of New
Orleans’ brightest attractions. Like the
City, it is both old and young. Designed
initially to display a permanent collection of over fifty sculptures by
twentieth-and twenty-first century American, European, Latin American, Israeli
and Japanese artist, the nearly five-acre garden was dedicated by the New
Orleans Museum of Art in November 2003.
It sits in a prime spot in historic City Park, adjacent to the Museum
and not far from the confluence of Bayou St. John and the remnant of Bayou
Metairie where the park’s extensive system of bayou-like lagoons beings.
Located in one of the Park’s oldest sections, the Sculpture
Garden is itself transected by a lagoon and crossed today by modern bridges
that offer beautiful views of the Garden.
The original landscape design for the Garden called for Iris pseudacorus, the European native,
rather than Louisiana irises. Hurricane
Katrina took care of the anomaly. The
magnificent Live Oak trees survived, but the lingering brackish water destroyed
much of the under-story planting in City Park, including the pseudacorus in the Sculpture Garden.
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| Live Oaks and Spanish moss |
A virtual blank slate was created along the lagoon
banks. Several iris growers and
enthusiasts were among the volunteers who emerged to participate in the
Garden’s – and in the Park’s – rebirth.
These growers donated Louisiana iris rhizomes by the thousands. The
plants were maintained in pools and tubs and planted out by multiple groups of
volunteers in several waves over a couple of years.
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| State Flower of Louisiana |
Coincidentally, the Garden occupies the site of an historic
iris garden that was created during the frenzy of iris activity in 1930s New
Orleans not long after the plants were “discovered” in the wild and promoted
for the benefit of modern horticulture.
Dubbed a “Rainbow Memorial,” the original plantings are long gone, but
it is fitting that the Sculpture Garden created a path for the return of native
irises.
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| Lagoon in Sculpture Garden |
Today, the Garden boasts fabulous new sculptures and is
embellished by Louisiana irises in every imaginable color along the banks of
the lagoon. A permanent Display Garden
features named cultivars to accompany extensive mixed plantings.
Each Spring, the Sculpture Garden, along with the Greater
New Orleans Iris Society, hosts a Louisiana Iris Rainbow Festival. The Festival is a one day event that features
music and presentations on the irises.
It offers the public an opportunity to stroll among the fabulous
sculptures and the beautiful irises and to enjoy the Sculpture Garden at a
particularly beautiful time of the year.
Admission to the Besthoff Sculpture Garden is free, a rare and wonderful
gift to visitors and New Orleans residents alike.
The New Orleans Botanical Garden offers the richest, most
varied display of plants in the City.
Opened to the public in 1936 as part of a Works Progress Administration
project, the Botanical Garden’s twelve acres are home to 2,000 varieties of
plants surrounded by the Live Oaks typical of City Park. City Park is the sixth largest urban park in
the country and boasts the nation’s largest stand of mature Live Oaks.
Theme gardens in the Botanical Garden are dedicated to
aquatics, roses, native plants, ornamentals, trees, shrubs and perennials and
shade plants. The Conservatory of the
Two Sisters features a simulated tropical rain-forest and a magnificent fern
collection. Irises are scattered
throughout the Garden and include a planting of recent cultivars near the Shade
Garden.
The Art Deco style is evident in the Botanical Garden, which
also features sculptures by the celebrated WPA artist Enrique Alferez. His original sculptures are spotted
throughout, but two new and exciting garden attractions were added last
year: the Helis Foundation Enrique
Alferez Sculpture Garden, with additional sculptures by Alferez, and a
beautiful arrival garden with a green wall and an infinity water feature.
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| Front of Museum of Art |
To learn more about City Park in New Orleans go to their
website.
To learn more about the 2018 AIS and SLI convention in New Orleans,
visit the convention website http://www.2018irisconvention.org
To make reservations at the convention hotel, visit the Hilton New
Orleans Airport Hotel website (http://group.hilton.com/American-Iris-Society
For more information on the American Iris Society here.
To visit the Society for Louisiana Iris website click here
