Skeleton Crew On A Beautiful Day

It was a beautiful day today with a cool start to the morning but sunshine and afternoon temperatures just over 70 degrees F. We truly had a skeleton crew on grounds staff with just Terry, Janice and myself. Due to various schedules, etc., it worked out this way and of course we managed our duties including watering at the end of the day. We normally have six staff here on Fridays but with some good volunteer help today, we did fine. Above is the front slope of the entrance garden that we'll be planting tomorrow during our Volunteer Work Day (8 am until 12 noon). I spent most of the day laying out these plants and hopefully we'll hit our "average attendance" for volunteers with 25-30 sets of helping hands. We'll need all the help we can get to complete which is only about 50% of what I prepared for planting tomorrow which includes the rest of the entrance garden too. If all goes well, our big orange theme will be planted and complete. Directly below is one of my double decker cart loads of plants. Terry and I hauled all the "ingredient plants" out to this area from the Horticulture Center this morning. Terry also worked on cutting bulb foliage, push mowing, rototilling and watering. Janice did her cutting display, push mowed and spent time watering some newly planted collections and all the remaining yard plants. The yard is looking "thinner" each day but we'll still have plenty to plant throughout the month. Further below are some plant images from today as I walked through the gardens running various irrigation zones.

golden black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia 'Frisia')

'Cherry Tomato' hosta (Hosta)

'Fire Chief' petunia (Petunia) which is part of our All-America Selections (AAS) Display which is again entered in a landscape design competition where we'll compete with AAS displays at other venues as well.

'Dolce Blackcurrant' coral bells (Heuchera)

Directly above is Kay planting over 100 tropicals as part of our "Giant Garden". Those elephant ears (Colocasia esculenta) in the foreground are called 'Jack's Giant' and they should get quite large. The overall intent in this space is to make it look like a jungle. Kay did a great job planting this space after she finished planting perennials in her portion of the shade garden. Dr. Gredler came in for mowing and Dick H. worked on some electrical issues (lights) with our dump truck. Rose came in for some painting work on our new Horticulture Center door. Karen M. was out tidying up in the Japanese garden late this morning. We also saw Maury, Dr. Yahr, Mary W., Vern and many others today. Further below are more fun plants from today. With two weddings tomorrow afternoon, I hope to have an aggressive morning of planting, clean-up, watering and be out of there by lunch time. We'll see how it all goes. Terry and I both were amazed at how many visitors were out in the gardens today. It's always nice to see that!