All Over Albany

Senate House Marigolds

We're fans of the Hudson Valley Seed Co. -- both for the seeds themselves, and their beautiful packaging.

So we were happy to see that one of the HVSC's newest "art packs" -- for the Senate House Marigold -- was illustrated by Albany artist Cara Hanley. Seed packaging blurbage:

In the 1950s, Herbert Cutler bred the Senate House Marigold to complement the [1676 Senate House in Kingston's] historic plantings. Ever since, the Garden Club has been saving seeds from the tallest plants with the palest yellow flowers to grace the gardens of uptown Kingston. ...

Talking of her Senate House Marigold artwork, Cara told us she wanted to incorporate architecture from Kingston's historic downtown area. "I also chose to play with scale by placing Kingston's urbanscape in a bouquet of marigolds. If you look closely, you will notice flower boxes filled with marigolds in the windows of some of the buildings! It was tricky and rewarding to create a design that hid secrets of the concept in the flaps of the pack, so the gardener must unfold the packaging to fully understand the piece."

You might already know some of Cara Hanley's work -- she created one of the murals on the Green-Hudson parking garage in downtown Albany.

By the way: Marigolds are very easy to grow. You don't have to start them indoors, they can be grown in a container, and they don't require much more than sun and some water.

Earlier: The simple joy of seed catalogs