The Smelly Garden Almost Complete

Today was another great planting day with 25 helpers. Thanks to Sue, Sam, Margaret, Ron, Bev, Gary (to the right), Dr. Yahr (to the left), Janice, Big John, Maggie, Mike (below left), Mark, Magda (below right), Joanne, Ariel, Kyle, Mary, Jumbo Jim and the four RECAPPERS that helped out too. Hal and Doris also did a nice job planting their sign area (blue and yellow theme) and I even planted and watered too. We focused our attention on the Smelly Garden and spent the entire morning planting. After break, Janice shifted some volunteers over to clearing out ornamental onion (Allium) foliage along the entrance slope as that is our big planting project next Saturday and we still need to finish composting and preparing that space. Janice and Big John did a nice job of coordinating planting efforts and I'm always amazed at how smoothly everything runs with planting, debris collection, watering and tidying up. Larry was off running irrigation and watering most of the morning as it promised to be another "scorcher." We brought out two big coolers of ice water that were frequently visited. Periodic overcast skies helped provide some relief and right around noon it turned quite dark and sprinkled for about 5 minutes. UGH! We could use that soaker. Marianne came in as a volunteer and did a nice job weeding and tidying up our "front door garden" which is the entrance garden right in front of the Parker Education Center. She always has that garden looking great and we appreciate her time as it looked great for our influx of Saturday guests and visitors. Dr. Gredler was around for a while and Bill was here to tidy up wedding sites in the morning, haul debris, collect garbage, etc. To the right is Magda.

We've had over 80 volunteers attend the last three Saturday planting days and I hope we continue to have such solid attendance for the next two work days. We still have a lot to plant and large areas remaining include the entrance garden slope and the ornamental edible & compact vegetable displays. Over the years we've really come up with the best way to coordinate these volunteer days as there are many factors to consider, new volunteers to train, etc. Our donut breaks are always popular and the donut to volunteer ratio was 3:1 today. The plant shots below include one of our many peonies (unknown variety) still looking good and the yellow blooming plant is another hybrid false indigo (Baptisia hybrida) called 'Solar Flare' (trademark name is Prairieblues). This selection is from Dr. Jim Ault at the Chicago Botanic Garden and is currently a yellow beacon out in the children's garden. As we planted all those fragrant plants today, many of us kept catching a whiff of a very sweet scent which ironically, was from three fragrant abelia (Abelia mosanensis) shrubs (6' tall by 6') wide that are blooming right now in that garden and really are providing wonderful scent. A close-up of the flowers of that shrub are at the bottom. The fall color of the fragrant abelia is quite nice too (maroons and oranges).