Plant Sale Progress

Above are the primary features of one of my top ten favorite perennials. This is the 'Jack Frost' false-forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla) and you can see the merit of its beautiful, silver-highlighted foliage and the nice (but all too ephemeral) spring bloom clusters (hence the "false forget-me-not" name). I don't grow weary of seeing or photographing this perennial and we have planted probably 30 or 40 of these around the gardens for primarily their silver contribution in part shade and their proven, extreme durability. I've featured 'King's Ransom' false-forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla) in previous blogs and while it has similar features to 'Jack Frost', it has yellow/chartreuse highlights, particularly in spring and more pronounced on younger leaf edges. Some plants look sickly with this color but I don't mind it at this point. The specimen of 'King's Ransom' below is one of many in our woodland walk garden. This variety also has the neat blue flowers.
As I pulled up to the Parker Education Center this morning I was tickled to see that the tulips (Tulipa) have started to open nicely and there was at least some color for all of our Mother's Day visitors yesterday. See some of the images below. The tall tulip is 'Big Smile' (right) and the smaller, deeper yellow tulip is 'Strong Gold' (lower left). My older daughter was at the gardens yesterday and said it was packed. There was a huge brunch offered and apparently there was a wedding too! For many years, our spring plant sale was on Mother's Day weekend which, in theory, would equate to lots of traffic. However, we had some pretty miserable weather in the past with sleet, evening frost warnings, etc. and decided to move the sale a week later. Janice and Marianne really did an AWESOME job today going thru the layout, labeling plan, handout preparations, sign creation, etc. for the plant sale. We had some rain in the late morning and sprinkles and clouds the rest of the afternoon. In short, it was a good day to figure out our plan of attack. I went mobile twice. My first trip was out to pick up 5760 basil (Ocimum) plants (not kidding) from Ahren's Acres (Brodhead, WI). We are offering a wide range of basils at the plant sale and have many for the grounds as well. With our "Smelly Garden" initiatives and the ornamental edible/compact vegetable display, we'll be using plenty of basil out there too. We still have to pick up more basil tomorrow and make two additional runs for plants. Larry and I also ran out for our hanging baskets and some custom grown annuals from Jenka Blossoms (Lima Center, WI). The plants look great which is what we always get from Kathy H. After tomorrow's pick-ups, we'll still only have about 25% of our stuff but will get the remainder next week after the completion of the plant sale will free up much needed "staging" space.

Marv and Terry did some work preparing the terrace bed in the North Point garden for planting. They secured the last two butterflies out in the gardens and prepared more soil for our containers. Big John was in to work on his projects, one of which includes replacing the soil in a retaining wall area for growing annuals (new this year). Janice worked primarily on plant sale preparations as did Marianne, who also tidied and put together her cutting display. Larry helped with unloading our plants and continues to check on the progress of our big projects out in the gardens.

It was a well-attended Grumpy Monday with Ron W. and Pat working on some woodchipping and shredded bark applications. Bob C. and Ron worked on composting while Rollie and Del skimmed up and replaced the gravel in some of our paths. This is a much needed (annually, actually) task that inolves significant time and elbow grease. Vern, Dave, Jim and Bob A. finished off the bench project and are working on a neat planter for the Dinner Dance auction. They have no shortage of smaller projects (and some larger too!...). We also saw Rich K., Bill and Bob T. was in to continue his air edging efforts. Dr. Gredler was in to mow among other duties and Dr. Yahr showed up to help unload plants. Winifred and Mary Q. worked well together in the gazebo garden and had no trouble filling up a cart with weeds. We also saw Kelli, Polly, Nancy, Mel, Geesje, June and many others today. To the right are the mid-Spring blooming summer snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum 'Gravetye Giant'). Why are they called "summer snowflake"?! I love the dangling white bells with a drop of green on the upper portion of each flower petal. Unfortunately, I don't feel there is a lot of "punch" when you consider the proportion of foliage to those little (albeit exquisite) blossoms. Directly below are the flowers and emerging leaves of the Korean maple (Acer pseudosieboldianum) which also has a superior red fall color. At the bottom is a nice shot that Tina B., one of our volunteer photographers, shared with us from her weekend visit. I was remiss in mentioning that Kathleen Miller's talk last Thursday night on The New Landscape was very well presented. She had some good visuals and her down to Earth style was appreciated by an audience of around 25 or so.