Touring Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

A little over a month ago, Jonah Holland was kind enough to invite me and Sarah of Roaming Virginia for a private tour of Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. I brought Buttercup along, figuring it would be a good chance for her to get the inside scoop on one of her favorite places around town.

I'd been in touch with Jonah via Twitter, and we have a slew of mutual friends in Richmond. Given how many of us have kids and are loosely or directly involved in creative professions, sometimes it seems like a little thirty/forty-something parent mafia, all slightly interconnected. In any case, after meeting Jonah, she took us out for our first stop at the community garden.


Ginter received a grant this year to grow 10,000 pounds of vegetables for the local food bank. It was/is an ambitious task driven by volunteer support and community contributions. When we visited, they had already harvested nearly 2,000 pounds of vegetables and received a few hundred more from personal donations — people with gardens more successful than mine.
We had a chance to speak with the associate director, who explained that they'd opted to go with conventional rather than organic methods out of expediency and cost — they'd been offered a substantial supply of mulch. Still, they weren't treating the plants and sought more organic or natural methods of pest control. Regardless, it was clear that the program was proving to be a success — after all, affluence shouldn't determine whether a person can afford fresh, local produce.

Next up was a stop at the Butterflies Live! exhibit. Here Buttercup was able to show off her stellar knowledge of butterflies and moths. There were some truly remarkable specimens, including one with a wingspan of nearly a foot. The butterflies and moths flit freely around, and you're cautioned before entering not to touch them if they happen to land on you. The brilliant part is that you can visit repeatedly and be assured of seeing different varieties of butterflies and moths.

After a bit more wandering around, we landed in the children's garden. Buttercup knows the place well, but it was still a pleasant surprise to come across blackberry bushes bursting with berries and fairy houses. It was a further reminder that it would be grand to see a bigger cross-section of Richmond using and taking advantage of the gardens... butterflies, squash and all.

about last night

Josh Ritter put on a hell of a concert at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. The newly redone performance area is well laid out, and the roses are a stunning backdrop. We missed most of Justin Earle's opening set, unfortunately, but the couple songs we heard were as good as you'd expect.

The sun was just going down as Ritter and the band took the stage. They opened with a track I didn't recognized and went on to play a solid two-hour set that mixed up new songs with a nice spread of tracks from his first three albums. Their energy was spot-on, and even when he flubbed a line late in the show, he just laughed it off. I've said many times over that what I most look for in a good show is the energy and engagement with the crowd, and he had both in spades.

Among the setting-related highlights was this little guy. Frogs were all over the place, and Ritter joked about making breaks in the songs for them to sing along. Buttercup found this one near the pavilion. He seemed pretty happy in her hands and was safely returned to his home before we left.

Son Volt @ Ginter Garden

I am a bit of a johnny-come-lately to Son Volt. After Uncle Tupelo broke up, both Wilco and Son Volt stayed on the periphery of my music. It took seven years for my Wilco interest to pick up and another six years for Son Volt to really hit my radar. The album Okemah brought them onto the radar and regular play on Radio Paradise fully brought them into my CD collection.

That said, I have only seen the various incarnations of what started years ago once-apiece. Tupelo touring with Michelle Shocked and Taj Mahal in 1992. Wilco last year. And tonight, Son Volt.

The show started off on low notes with a couple of tracks from the most recent album. The sound was muddy and awful. Farrar's vocals and all of the instruments were at the same level and lost in the outdoor venue. By the third song, however, the sound man had begun to clear things up.

They played a very clean set, mixing things up from the last two albums for the first half, and then bringing a good selection from the early albums. The band is tight, so tight that there was often little to distinguish the live performance from the recorded tracks. Farrar's reputation for staying aloof from the audience held true, and there was very little banter between songs. While this can make for a tight set, it can also take away from the live experience.

Basically, it was a good show, but except for one killer set of riffs during the encore, nothing really made it great.