Looking for a late summer horticultural adventure? Don’t want to travel far? May I suggest a visit to the spectacular gardens planted around the Roger Clapp Greenhouses at the University of Maine’s Orono campus?

I usually make at least one pilgrimage every year to these gardens and this year I found them to be especially delightful and educational. Of course, the primary function of the gardens is education, what with more than 100 students enrolled in various ornamental horticulture degree programs. But the appeal of the gardens owes as much to their splendid design as to their educational content.

Actually, there are several gardens harmonized to make one overall exhibition. Those who are interested in new plant material will enjoy seeing the All America Selections display garden where winners of the coveted award from 1989 through 1994 are planted. It was here that I got my first glimpse of “Lavender Lady,” an AAS winner for 1994 which blooms heavily the first year from seed. Good news for those who tend to lose lavender every year to winterkill. Dr. Lois Stack oversees this aspect of the gardens and was helped by student worker Diana George Chapin.

If herbs excite you, there is a terrific herb garden to wander through located just west of the greenhouses and facing Deering Hall. This year Phil Stack, who manages the Roger Clapp greenhouses and gardens, put in a collection of every type of basil he could find seeds for, 15 varieties in all! He reckons that cinnamon basil is about the tastiest.

Located between the herb garden and the AAS display garden is a teaching garden comprised mainly of unusual annuals. Here students and lay people will encounter a host of flowers not often seen in ordinary gardens, but all deserving more recognition. Throughout the gardens plants are numbered and a three-page key is provided in a covered box just at the start of the display. Those of us whose schedules limit garden viewing to odd hours of the day and evening really appreciate this touch.

Moving around the east side of the greenhouses one cannot fail to notice a spectacular annual planted atop an earthen berm. Angel trumpet is the common name for Datura metel, whose enormous white flowers are poetry to the eye. As a botanical aside, a relative of this plant, D. stramonium grows wild in the south where its rank invasiveness and massive size (up to 5-feet tall), are considered to have played an important part in dooming the first European settlement in Jamestown, Va., back in 1607. Farmers are still battling Jimsonweed (Jamestown weed) all over Dixie today.

A perennial garden and more annual gardens are planted between bays of the 13,000-square-foot greenhouse complex. And continuing a long tradition, a knot garden highlights the end of one greenhouse bay.

Anyone who has kept a garden will know that there is a fair amount of maintenance involved, deadheading, trimming, feeding and watering. Phil Stack feels very fortunate that his student helpers, Pam Noyes and Mike Auget, bring special enthusiasm to their job. Also volunteers from the Master Gardener program operated by Cooperative Extension have been a great boost to the gardens. Outside support comes from the Maine State Florists and Growers Association, various garden clubs and other groups.

All in all, it’s a show worth making a special trip to see. The Roger Clapp greenhouses are located behind the library. Just keep driving around the campus until you stumble across them. You’ll realize just how big and beautiful our university is.

Michael Zuck of Bangor is a horticulturist and the NEWS garden columnist. Send inquiries to him at 2106 Essex St., Bangor, Maine 04401.