Into The Trenches

Our annual vinca (Catharanthus roseus) collection is starting to fill in nicely. Marianne did a nice job of laying these out and babying them along. They will really hit stride with some hot and dry weather. This collection will be one of our best and I feel has a lot of merit in promoting this durable seasonal plant. The title of this posting refers to our shift from planting to some serious weeding. I walked every square foot of the gardens today (after being on vacation last week) and was both awed and discouraged at the same time. While most of our displays are really starting to peak, the flooding issues and rampant weeds tend to put a damper on things. We'll be directing our best weeders into weed warfare this month.
Note the variegated dwarf corn (Zea mays 'Tiger Cub') to the left. The seeds are from Parks and I've grown this at home as well. What a cool foliage pattern. We realize the raccoons will get the ears but this foliage annual (actually a grass) will only get 4' tall and looks great until late September. This corn is positioned in our "Ornamental Edibles" beds and was planted as seed in early June.

The Grumpies continue to do great work (no surprise) and are wrapped up with building a new storage shed outside of our visitors center to help alleviate some of our storage issues that were created with the construction of that building years ago. I envision our August work to involve lots of clean-up and repairs from the the flooding (assuming that we get back to normal water levels!!!).

I took plenty of pictures today and was smitten with this dwarf, striped papyrus (Cyperus albostriatus 'Variegatus') also called variegated umbrella plant. It looks great in this container mixed with DragonWing begonias. Both thrive with plenty of water. Speaking of containers, our assortment in the English Cottage garden are starting to fill out (see below). We have our annual 'Twilight Tour' this Thursday evening and hope to have good weather and lots of visitors coming thru the gardens to see how the gardens are looking. This is always a fun event and we hope to encourage the community to come enjoy Rotary Gardens.