Today was a busy day around the gardens with staff and volunteers going in many different directions (literally). Early this morning, Big John and Larry (top photo) along with Dick H. (goofy smile) and Pat went out to pre-cut and haul some of the large evergreens that we place out in the gardens temporarily for the Holiday Lights Show (HLS). The guys went out to a new location where a generous donor is letting us thin his spruce (Picea sp.) windbreaks. While some of the trees are larger than we need, we're taking the top portion and leaving the remainder to be chipped up as mulch. The guys hauled back a good 30 or so trees this morning including some huge ones that will look nice out in the HLS. A larger group of staff and volunteers will return on Monday morning to pick up another 80-100 trees that should complete our needs for the event. Directly below are some of the many benches and chairs that we'll be refinishing/sealing/painting this winter. It will be a huge project but many of these benches in particular are in need of a "freshening up."!
We had a great day of volunteers with Grumpies and many others. Directly below is Jumbo Jim who brought two RECAPPERS to help work in the Japanese garden. Stan and Karen were out there too. It was a beautiful day to be outside in the gardens. Bob C. and Ron Y. spent time hauling and spreading shredded leaves as mulch in the entrance garden. Ron and Bev W. decorated the last grouping of our 49 arches (total) for the HLS with clear lights. They do a superb job and the effect in the evening is amazing. Janice worked with the Chestnut House volunteers this afternoon and they collected a huge amount of leaves and debris from our east border garden. Gary and Pat continued making and processing plant labels and will head out in the gardens next week to do some more inventorying of label needs before the snow flies. Two photos down are Del (left) and Dr. Gredler peeling labels off of our plant signs. We re-use these aluminum signs every year for our annuals and Jenny will start making our new labels in February. The third photo down shows the progress on the 20' tall obelisk that Dave, Vern, Bob and Jim have been working on recently. The guys continued their progress today. This one will find itself out in the HLS soon....We also saw Dick P. and Maury who had some work at the other building. Little Jerry stopped by in the afternoon and it was good to see him.
We had a small grounds crew today and with Larry and John on the road early, I helped get the Grumpies moving this morning. Aside from cutting plenty of evergreens this morning, both John and Larry continued projects at RBG when they returned. John hauled quite a few of the larger, freshly-cut evergreens to their permanent locatons and Larry helped organize more HLS elements at the Horticulture Center. Randy will be back this Saturday to repair the remainder of the rope light displays that need some tweaking. I bounced between various projects but didn't run any cords today unfortunately. However, we're in pretty good shape in regards to the HLS and it was nice to see L.P. Tree Service here today starting to hang icicle lights from our taller trees. They should be able to finish tomorrow or early next week. Directly below is the maroon fall color of the Chardonnay Pearls slender deutzia (Deutzia gracilis 'Duncan') which has nice golden foliage in spring and summer and neat white flowers in May. The bottom photo show some trial ferns that were just sent to us from the Hardy Fern Foundation. We are one of their satellite display gardens for ferns and look forward to trying these six new types of ferns.
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