Business As Usual

Note the images above. The bad and the good are represented. The rose garden is starting to peak. We now have our most severe flooding to date and about 1/3 of the Japanese garden is flooded and 1/2 the alpine garden. Many of our lower paths are under water and we continue to block paths as the water rises. Warnings indicate that the Rock River (which affects our pond) may rise thru Sat. With possible rain this weekend, it could be a while before we dry out. Aside from keeping visitors away from the flooding, there is nothing more we can do until the water recedes. What a nightmare. Our thoughts go out to those that are considerably more unfortunate.

More of the same juggling today. While planting is our priority, we also need to figure in watering needs and of course, perpetual weeding. The grounds staff kept busy today with watering, fertilizing, general tidying, etc. Marv, Marianne, Terry and Jerry didn't lack for gardening chores today! Our awesome volunteers came in and kept our momentum going. Vern, Stacy, Mary, Don, Pearl, Don #2 and Thelma accomplished significant planting. Kay, Bev, Chris and Bob were a whirlwind of weeding and clearing of bulb foliage. We usually have a "team" work ahead of the planters and clear areas. The beauty of our bulb collection (400,000 bulbs representing 1,000 varieties) has a liability that includes removing foliage in a timely (but not premature) manner. We are currently cutting down daffodil foliage as it yellows and typically don't wait until they totally "brown out" in July. Regardless, I get a knot in my stomach when I see our spring crop of cottonwood seedlings everywhere. Ugh! While not a huge fan of herbicides, they had value today as I sprayed 10 gallons of RoundUp around the gardens to deal with weed carpets that we'll never be able to address before they reseed.

The blue globe onion (Allium azureum or Allium caeruleum) is in full bloom right now. It is about 24" high with beautiful, sky blue spheres (1.5-2" in diameter). Planted as a bulb in fall, we like to mass this species in clusters of 10 to 25 bulbs. It typically blooms between mid June and early July. It combines well with all sorts of plants. See below where it is blooming with red scabious (Knautia macedonica) which incidentally is one of my favorite perennials because of its long bloom period. It (Knautia) does need neighbors to support the floppy stems but what a strong bloomer. It can reseed though. And speaking of reseeding, the only drawback to the blue globe allium mentioned above is the fact that is also reseeds, sometimes prolifically. We'll actually remove the blooms as they fade to avoid most of the seed set. It's a subjective decision to plant this, you decide. We have about 10,000 blooming right now.