Sticky Hot (Day 2)

Although our marigold (Tagetes) collection is still maturing, I'm impressed with some of the neat varieties, like 'Bonanza Bee' (above) starting to bloom out in the gardens. Of course the flower above isn't totally opened up but it sure looks cool as it does. It was another hot one today (heat index of 100!) and Larry, Big John, Pat, Janice and Jenny all deserve gold medals for their perserverance outside today. I was outside the least of anyone today and am not feeling the best after all the sun and heat today. I hope everyone kept hydrated and as you can expect, we didn't have a lot of volunteers at the gardens but still had a very productive day. Kudos to the youth education volunteers for toughing it out too and completing the last of the plants program today. The female cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) continue to scatter seed and I hope the winds will help make this a quicker process and just get it over. As you can see below, the cotton will actually acumulate on our pond and create a floating mass of stinky flotsam (always wanted to use that word) that while unsightly (and particularly pungent in the gazebo garden) will disperse in a couple weeks and settle out. I'm always amused by the bridal parties that expect us to go out in boats and collect this debris. Our pond, while certainly a nice feature at its best, can be a liability when algae, debris such as this and flooding issues create more challenges. There used to be budget money and City assistance with maintaining the pond but in the age of budget cuts, that has disappeared.Larry came in bright and early (6 am) to start irrigation going around the gardens. While we have four controllers out there, we can only run one zone at a time off each controller so we prioritize based on what's the driest, where we will be mowing and whom (volunteers/staff) we should avoid soaking. We try to run most irrigation in the morning but occasionally have to run it during the day as well. We've developed our own lingo for running zones that Larry, Marv, Little Jerry, Big John and I use as we prioritize zones. Example, "Let's run 10 & the formals off pergola for 35 each then gazebo, 5,7 and Scottish for 30 minutes off the tree. Run building for 15 minutes each and Japanese garden for 40. Rain off when done." I could translate that but it is top secret. However, "rain off" essentially means to turn all the controllers off when we're done as we've found that they sometimes will run weird "ghost" programs that might result in a wedding getting sprinkled or an area becoming quite damp overnight." Thank goodness for the irrigation system and Larry's knowledge of repairs! The fellas from Evergreen Irrigation (Rockford, IL) were here today to install irrigation in our new North Point garden. They'll finish tomorrow and then we'll move ahead with final planting, sodding, etc. Larry also mowed, weedwhipped and fertilized our entire Smelly Garden. He also hand watered the new shoreline planting on the west end as well. To the left is the short but thick-leaved (and glossy) 'Tweety Bird' plantain lily (Hosta). To the right is one of our many hanging baskets. This one is located in the Scottish garden and features the new, trailing begonia (Begonia boliviensis 'Choc Red') which we also have trailing over our lower larch bed wall en masse as part of a maroon theme this year.

Big John mowed early, rototilled and moved to significant watering duties, weeding, etc. Pat weeded out our entrance garden beds that were becoming inundated with amaranth (Amaranthus) seedlings and moved on to mowing, clearing ornamental onion (Allium) foliage and watering. Janice continued to plant our ornamental edible / compact vegetable display and watered everything in that garden (see bottom photo). We're about 50% planted in that large space and will finish up later this week. Jenny was out in the yard all day and continued to organize and label flats of plants as they came in. She is truly a wonder and few are aware of (and could possibly appreciate) the organizational skills of Jenny who is sorting thru thousands of flats and matching labels (created in April) and grouping flats by collection. This saves so much time and stream lines getting the plants out in the gardens. I ran out for our last order of plants from Jenka Blossoms (Lima Center, WI) and it was nice to see Kathy and Tom. They have some nice plants left out there and it wont be hard to encourage a trip over this weekend with the wife. I had some meetings and also worked on assembling plants for planting tomorrow. Below are the beautiful, silky blooms of perennial snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum) in the Scottish highlands garden (alpine section of the Scottish garden). The white blooms hang above silvery foliage and this is certainly a tough, and marginally vigorous, groundcover.

Directly above is the interesting spring foliage of the variegated, Southern catalpa tree (Catalpa bignonioides 'Variegata') that impresses with bold foliage although the variegation and "lime green" appearance will turn green within a month or so. I've always liked catalpas and we have many at the gardens. Dr. Gredler was in to do some minor mowing but was also very helpful in setting out sprinklers around the gardens. Doc has been involved with mowing at the gardens for over 15 years and is very meticulous with his work. He has earned the title, "Superintendent of Sod" for his work (and promotion) of our turf. While I'm not the biggest fan of high maintenance turf, it has been nice to leave so much of this activity to Doc, Little Jerry, Bill, Larry, etc. We still pushmow about 20% of the turf at the gardens and I've seen few botanic gardens with better turf. Of course this is a monoculture for the most part but lawns serve a purpose in our setting. To the right is a close-up of one of my favorite coral bell varieties. This is 'Dale's Strain' (Heuchera americana) that has such a nice, "stained glass" look on a green leaf. To the left are the pure white blooms of the wood cranesbill geranium (Geranium sylvaticum 'Alba') in the Scottish garden. To the right are the neat blooms of the yellow fumitory (Corydalis lutea) that reseeds (in a nice way) to fill in gaps in the shade and part/shade garden with blue/green foliage (12") and yellow blooms like this from May until hard frost (mid-October).

Mary H. was in to check over her area and we also saw Vern, Steve S., Maury, Mary Kay, Vern, Bill O., and Dr. Yahr was also a trooper this morning and helped plant for a couple hours. Dr. Robert Yahr, the founder of RBG, continues to live and breathe the gardens and while his trowel is handy, his vision has never wavered in the pursuit of improving the gardens for the visitor and education specifically. I frequently can't keep up with his ideas but having someone with significant drive regarding the gardens is truly an asset. Directly below are the flower clusters on a golden ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Nugget') that are moderately showy but look even better on the maroon-leaf forms ('Diabolo', 'Summer Wine', 'Lady In Red', etc.). Sticky Hot (Day 3) on tap for tomorrow with planting and plenty of watering!