The Shrubbery Arrives!

It was darn hot today and it brought back memories of that heat wave back in late July / early August. Today was very "reactive" as we had two deliveries of shrubs come in for the plant sale (see top picture) and about 600 asters. Thankfully we had volunteers on hand to help unload the trucks and we made quick work of it in this heat. Our shrub offering this year for the sale is quite impressive and also includes some choice conifers. The image directly above is a colorful cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) called 'Sunny Red'. This cosmos gets about 30" tall and while the flowers aren't truly red, they glow with a luminescent orange. This species of cosmos requires very little "deadheading" and is maintenance free in nice sunny areas with decent soil. To the right are the exquisite blooms of the hyacinth bean (Dolichos lablab) in our Ornamental Edible & Compact Vegetable Display this year. The flowers are beautiful as are the soon to follow, shiny purple bean pods. I've heard mixed thoughts on the edibility of the beans which apparently is connected to boiling them before consumption. ??? Research this before you nibble as we only use this as an ornamental as there are so many yummy bean varieties out there. To the left is our most-asked-about annual this year. This is the Persian shield (Strobilanthes dyerianus) that I've featured in the past and have actually grown here at the gardens every year. Could you verbalize a description of those leaves to a friend? We have visitors describe it and say things like, "It's sort of violet, blue, maroon, silver..." Tough to describe but easy to enjoy. We obtain these as small plants every year and put them in partly shaded areas for foliage interest. Full sun can crisp the edges and in full shade, they wouldn't grow much.

Lots of great volunteers today with Grumpies, Grumpettes, RECAPPERS, afternoon weeders, etc. Ron Y., Bob C., Dick H. and Del put up two more tents today for the plant sale while Rollie and Ron B. ran out to pick up our borrowed wagons for the plant sale. The guys moved on to other projects later in the morning. Pat worked on filling MANY buckets with gravel and these will be used for our plant sale signs. Dave, Jim and Bob continued work on the Japanese garden fence and Maury (and Pat) ran out for cardboard flats for the sale. Dr. Yahr was here and watered some newly planted trees while Dr. Gredler continued his aeration rounds. Our morning Grumpettes included Suzy, Karen, Mary and Glenna. They did a nice job weeding here and there. Our afternoon crew (Mary, Nancy and Myrt) also weeded but ran in to the tough temperatures and stayed in the shadier gardens. Jumbo Jim came with two RECAPPERS and their timing was perfect to help unload plants and water all the new plant sale items. Hal and Doris were in to primp their garden area as well. We also saw Kelli, Lilian, both Bill O's and many others. Above and to the right is the 'Elephant Head' amaranth (Amaranthus gangeticus) with such interesting flower clusters. And who says red, orange and pink can't go together!? When it is a "quilt" of impatiens (directly below), it will always look good. These plants are all over 24" tall and have filled in nicely. Last year a photographer apparently had their clients stand in the middle of this (yes, unbelievable, but it happens!) for a photo and it was pretty beaten down. Directly above is one of our verbena (Verbena hybrida) varieties still looking pretty good and sending up fresh blooms. This is 'Obsession Coral w/ Eye' and really has done well all year and "shrugs off the heat" as they say. Our small staff today kept busy. Larry ran irrigation like a mad man and was shifting zones around to avoid volunteers and visitors. He also push mowed his areas of responsibility and worked on many different tasks including our major plant unloading. Big John also helped with unloading and worked on lots of watering throughout the day, including most of the containers. Janice helped our morning volunteers, watered our marigold (Tagetes) collection and worked on placing more of our new labels out in the gardens. I worked primarily on the plant sale and also helped unload and water. The four flowers here are all moss roses (Portulaca grandiflora) and are part of a new series from PanAmerican Seed. These are 'Happy Hour Banana', 'Happy Hour Coconut', 'Happy Hour Orange' and 'Happy Hour Peppermint' respectively. I've always loved moss roses and they sure are effective in tough soils and sunny locations. Unfortunately, their close relative purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is a major nuisance here and has avoided our eradication efforts over the past decade or so. We've had a nice arrangement with Ball Seed, PanAmerican Seed and Takii Seed over the past couple of years to feature their plant material at RBG. While some of the varieties are currently out in the market, many have not yet been released. I take informal notes and make some observations of each variety along with photos and we pass this information back to the seed companies. If we had more acreage, I would be interested in more formal trials similar to what the Chicago Botanic Garden is doing at this point. However, that would also require more staff and some lengthy evaluation windows, particularly for woody plants and perennials. Below is the 'Kahori' dianthus (Dianthus hybrida) that is one of the seven entrants for the American Garden Award program (www.americangardenaward.org/). The AGA extended the voting for another month (until the end of September) and if you check out their website, you can get more information on this program but also see the current status of the voting. This neat little dianthus is in last place but certainly has some stiff competition! At the bottom are some of our 'Tumbling Tom Red' and 'Tumbling Tom Yellow' tomatoes spilling out of our culvert pipe planter at the Horticulture Center. More plant sale work tomorrow and it looks like another hot one!