A Busy (Albeit Chilly!) Plant Sale

The Spring Plant Sale and Spring Tree Sale have both gone very well this past weekend .  The photo above is from yesterday when the yard was packed with customers.  The morning was "crazy busy" but the entire day went well as did Sunday.  We again had great volunteer help throughout the duration of both sales and the Blackhawk Golden Kiwanis members did a nice job as well.  Directly below are (left to right), Pat C., Magda and Audrey working the checkout registers yesterday.  The next photo down is Janice (left) and Mary our Executive Director.  Janice has done a superb job of keeping everything running smoothly for the sale which is no small task.  Yesterday (Saturday), we also had a volunteer work day.  Big John and Cindy worked with new volunteers, Keith and Jodi (third photo down), and did a great job mulching a large portion of the Potter Daylily Collection.  We have volunteer work days the next five Saturdays (8 am until 12 noon) where our primary focus will be on planting.  Once the plant sale is over, we'll be running out daily to pick up our plant orders and our yard will fill quickly with plants that we'll install over the next six weeks.

The gardens have no shortage of color although I haven't been out in the gardens proper since yesterday morning!  I hear there were lots of visitors out in the gardens today and we had free admission for all mothers and those with receipts from the plant sale and/or tree sale.  Directly above is the 'St. Elmo's Fire' hosta (Hosta sp.) emerging which is a colorful variety.  Directly below are the fragrant flower clusters of the compact Koreanspice viburnum (Viburnum carlesii 'Compactum') which has a wide radius of enjoyable scent.  The next photo down show one of our many columbines (Aquilegia sp.) just starting to bloom (here in the alpine garden) out in the gardens.   The plastic contraption featured further down was built by our volunteer Jody and donated by his workplace, Agrecol, as a vertical gardening structure.  We'll sow some lettuces and other greens in these plastic gutter planters (3" deep) as that should be sufficient for quick growth and that type of plant.  We love trialing these new vertical opportunities.  My talk last night up in Madison for the International Lilac Society went well and it was nice to see Mike M., Dr. Hasselkus, Brent and Deb.  It was a receptive group and I enjoyed their passion for all things lilac (Syringa sp.).  My talk was on the sensory garden.  At the bottom is a photo from last year of the dwarf Korean lilac (Syringa meyeri 'Palibin') which will be blooming in the next 7-10 days.