Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Heading Towards Peak Color!

Above is a nice shot of the annual gloriosa daisy (Rudbeckia hirta 'Becky Golden'). This variety is quite short and is a small portion of our rudbeckia collection that includes over 50 varieties of these colorful annuals. There are some neat colors and forms. This collection should peak once we get some heat but I was amazed by our color this week and feel we're headed towards a good time to enjoy particularly annuals and summer perennials peaking. Below is another composite bloom although on a perennials. This is a hybrid coneflower (Echinacea hybrida 'Green Envy') that really caught my eye yesterday. We have maybe 40 varieties of the newer Echinaceas and are excited about what is next to come. I will say that not all of them seem garden worthy and that old adage "New plants aren't always good and good plants aren't always new" comes to mind.
The day started out drizzly but we haven't seen any significant precipitation. We received .5" of rain yesterday but could use a good, all-day soaker of 2" or so. It has been overcast with possible showers over the coming days. We'll see. We had Kay, Mary W., Roy, Jan and Rose weeding today and had the "fence boys" worked yet again (John, Rollie, Dick H. and Ron). Marv composted, tilled, sheared, repaired irrigation lines, prepped and watered while Marianne tidied, planted, weeded, watered and bounced around. Janice did some planting in the fern & moss garden as well as the alpine garden and finished with some weeding. Little Jerry spent the day in the Japanese garden pruning and we had Bill to help push mow and tidy. Dr. Gredler worked on myriad projects and among other activities today, I gave a tour to a nice bunch of Master Gardeners from DeKalb, County (IL) that came to visit. We had lots of traffic in the gardens today. Below is a nice shot of our new seating area in the wishing well garden. Dr. Yahr really moved things along and orchestrated the progress on this area. This space will accomodate 60 youth or 40 adults and we see it as a nice space for outdoor education (and possibly entertainment). That garden continues to develop. Two more shots at the bottom. Remember that all coneflowers aren't purple (Echinacea purpurea 'White Swan') and enjoy the bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) in full bloom near our observation platform.



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