Busiest Wednesday Ever?

Today was a busy day out in the gardens in every way. We had a good-sized grounds crew, many volunteers and lots of visitors. Above is one of the many delphiniums (Delphinium sp.) blooming in the English cottage garden today. Note the blue obelisks in the distance. Those are two of the eight obelisks that are in the eight formal annual sections. Our grounds staff today consisted of Terry, Jenny, Big John, Pat, Cindy and Cheryl. Janice popped in later as a volunteer to work with the Chestnut House volunteers. Terry set up sprinklers, watered, sheared and accomplished other projects as well. He has plenty more shearing in the near future with boxwoods (Buxus) and yews (Taxus) aplenty. Jenny fertilized, watered and did a nice job tidying up various areas. She also focused on our Hosta Hollow garden in anticipation of the tour I'm giving tomorrow night to members of the Wisconsin Hosta Society (www.wihostasociety.org/). Big John ran irrigation all day, fertilized, watered, set up sprinklers, mulched, etc. Pat watered, sheared, cut back bulb foliage and tidied up other areas as well. Cindy watered and continued weeding the All-America Selections (AAS) display garden. Cheryl weeded and planted in the front sign berm and worked with many volunteers tidying up the beds along our frontage road (Palmer Drive). I spent time placing some plants, helping with volunteers, checking on labels (with Pat C.), etc. There was lots of activity around the gardens today. Below are some neat plants I photographed today. The fourth photo down shows some 'Bright Lights' Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris) in our upright, "re-purposed" pallet planter in the AAS Display Garden.

'Silk Tassel' sedge (Carex morrowii)

'Red' Martagon lily (Lilium martagon) from underneath

blue globe ornamental onion (Allium caeruleum)

We had a great batch of volunteers out in the gardens today. Above are Ron W. and Mary (first row), Nancy and Myrt (second row) and Gena in the back. Our new cart was very handy today with hauling our volunteers to our target areas. Bev and Ron (below) continued planting the Rainbow Garden this morning with Eva. They were shortly joined by Carol, Gena, Myrt, Mary and Nancy. The second photo down shows Bev (left) and Carol in a football stance at the line of scrimmage. Patrea and Kay joined Cheryl with some major weeding duties in our front entrance garden beds. Those three ladies did a great job and had some help later from Eva and Carol. The third photo down shows Janet who is back in action along the larch wall bed which features our primary lime theme for this year. Mary and Roy came in to tidy up the shade garden and Bill O. did a nice job shearing more boxwoods (Buxus 'Green Velvet') near the French formal garden, under the pergola. Dr. Gredler mowed and Larry and Amy H. came in to weed and tidy in the fern & moss garden which is their assigned garden. We also saw Dr. Yahr, Stan and many others as well. Further below are more plants of interest. At the bottom is a pile of our empty flats showing the progress we've had with planting over the past six weeks. It's nice to see the progress but this is also confirmation of the amount of plastic we accumulate very quickly every spring. We'll be sorting these for re-use and/or recycling.