A Lovely Spring Day

What a perfect day despite a chilly start. The weather is sunny and around 50 degrees F which is perfect gardening weather for Wisconsinites. Nice crocus above although its days are numbered once found by the rabbits! Marv and Terry continue to do a great job on this edging project around our wishing well garden. They're using old beams from our pergola that blew down in a windstorm almost 9 years ago. This lumber has been sitting idle and the guys sure recycled these elements for a good purpose. Marianne continues her attention to fine detail with garden clean-up and is in the process of adding "backup labels" for our 600 new irises. We sure don't want to lose track regarding the various varieties. She also has made a nice map of all the iris beds which will be quite helpful. Bill and Dr. Gredler have been doing odd jobs around the gardens and Maury has been out picking up supplies for various projects. Larry is taking time to get all our vehicles and mowers ready for the spring push. Little Jerry is here (broken arm and all) to check out the Japanese garden and prepare for his return to action in a couple weeks.

To the left is the golden Canadian hemlock (Tsuga canadensis 'Golden Splendor') which has bright yellow spring growth but eventually fades to a green (with small hints of gold) by late summer. So many of us will purchase plants for the benefit of fall color but many woodies and perennials also have interesting spring foliage. Our hot WI summers tend to create a fading but the merit in spring is evident. Check out our custom potting bench to the right. We've been potting up tropical bulbs like caladiums and elephant ears (Colocasia esculenta) as they arrive so we can get some early growth on them prior to planting. We also pot up smaller perennials and some seeds in the coming weeks. We've had lots of comments about our cool "bean towers" around our horticulture center. Each one of these will support an heirloom runner or pole bean. See www.rotarygardens.org/images/2009%20Pole%20Beans.pdf for a listing of the varieties. Incidentally, we'll be selling little seed packets of each of these varieties at our spring plant sale (May 15-17). Some recent flooding pictures are at the bottom but thankfully, it's not near as bad as last year (yet...).