A Day Off With A "Plant Fix"!

I took the day off today and the wife and I dropped our daughter off up in Madison, WI where she is participating in a dance camp this week. We made a nice day of it in Madison and the weather was nice at around 82 degrees F and sunny. I did get my plant fix today and it was nice to have a day off (although my wife would argue that it wasn't actually a day off as I took many plant pictures today too...). We went shopping over at Greenway Station (www.greenwayshopping.com/) in Middleton and their landscaping was unexpectedly quite nice. As seen above, it included many annual beds [that's castor bean (Ricinus communis 'Carmencita Red') in the center of the top photo), bioswales for parking lot runoff and nice bold containers. We walked thru a little farmer's market and later went further downtown on an unsuccessful quest for a smoothie (too early I think at 11 am). We then travelled to Allen Centennial Gardens (www.horticulture.wisc.edu/allencentennialgardens/) which is a beautiful 2.5 acre teaching garden on campus that Ed Lyon, former Executive Director for RBG, manages and does a great job. He gave us a great tour along with Ed G. and Dylan (photo further down is Ed L. with my wife, Amy). We went out to lunch and had time later to go to a bookstore then pick up our little one. The gardens looked great. The two plant shots below include the 'Black Magic' elephant ear (Colocasia esculenta 'Black Magic') on the left and 'Hot Papaya' coneflower (Echinacea) which is the first double orange selection from the Netherlands. While the flowers are beautiful, they were a bit floppy for my taste. Ed had a nice collection of coneflowers to evaluate and the gardens are going thru many improvements with hardscaping and planting. Surprisingly, not many know about the gardens (even in Madison) and Ed has made great progress in exposing/promoting the garden to the public.