Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Lambeau Leap (Sort Of...)

I'm back from Green Bay where I spoke this afternoon on "Edible Containers" for the Spring Thaw Symposium hosted by the Green Bay Botanic Garden and sponsored by Mayflower Greenhouse (Green Bay, WI). My wife, younger daughter Luciana, her friend Hunter and I went up last night and stayed at the conference hotel which was also a waterpark (Tundra Lodge). This hotel was quite near Lambeau Field which we saw in passing over the past couple of days. The kids had fun at the waterpark and I enjoyed the speakers dinner last night with Jan (Mayflower Greenhouse owner), Glenn (first Director of GBBG), Susan (current Director of GBBG), Mark K. (Director of Horticulture, GBBG), Sharon (Education at GBBG), Steven (landscape architect, Ziegler Design Associates) and Joan (horticulturist and Steven's "better half"). This morning Dr. Lee Reich spoke on fruiting trees/shrubs in the landscape. I've read many of Dr. Reich's books and enjoyed the presentation. He was then followed by Steven Ziegler who has been directly involved with Troy Gardens (www.troygardens.org) which is in Madison. Check it out. I've always wanted to visit and will do so for sure this year. Both speakers did a nice job and my presentation seemed well received. The three images here are just some of what I featured. Above is one of the wall planters (parsley and pansies) at the Chicago Botanic Garden's Buehler Enabling Garden and the other shots are of the container-worthy Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris). There were over 60 attendees at this event and it was run very smoothly by GBBG staff. It was nice to see my counterpart, Mark K., who has been Director of Horticulture at GBBG for the past six years. I used to live in Appleton, WI over 20 years ago and remember when that garden started and I have visited many times over the years. The trip back was uneventful although we caught plenty of sunshine with temperatures near 7o degrees F. At RBG today was the second Saturday of the compost sale that Janice set up and volunteers staffed. I hope we cleared out some bagged compost. We also had our mosaic birdhouse workshop facilitated by The Glass Garden, LLC (Janesville) and assisted by Janice. I'll check with Janice and Larry next week on how the day went and I know both Big John and Bill O. were there today as well doing some gardening. More rains tomorrow with balmy temperatures approaching 8o degrees F.

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