Perfect Weather

It was a great day with sunshine and highs in the upper 70 degrees F. The gardens are still damp from recent rains and while we did some watering/fertilizing today, we'll bring out the hoses and run irrigation tomorrow as needed. There is a small chance of rain over the coming days but we'll see how that works out and as usual, we wont count on it! There were a lot of visitors out in the gardens today including children and their parents that participated in the Story & Stroll program. It was perfect weather to enjoy the gardens and we saw many people doing just that. Directly above is the 'Matchsticks' perennial chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum) which has some neat flower power and you can see how it gets its name! Directly below are some other neat flowers that I photographed today.

'Golden Rocket' snapdragon (Antirrhinium majus) in the All-America Selections Display Garden

'Everest Blue' flossflower (Ageratum houstonianum) in our Flossflower Collection

unknown hollyhock (Alcea rosea) variety in the English cottage garden

As usual, we had a nice showing of volunteers and were able to tackle a wide range of work. Above are Dr. Gredler (left) and Dr. Yahr showing off their new shirts (thanks Paul T.!). Note below that Dr. Gredler's title has been included on his shirt as well. With Dr. Yahr wearing stained and torn shirts all the time, we thought he could use a couple new ones too! Dr. Gredler did his mowing rounds today as did Bill O. Rese and Cookie (second photo down) tidied up the North point garden and did some significant planting on the east end of the gardens as well. Bev D. (third photo down) was in to weed her section of the sunken garden and we'll follow up with more plantings in the near future. The fourth photo down shows Tina B. who was part of the team including Kay, Patrea, Mary W. and Eva that planted and weeded in the ornamental edible garden. The ladies did a fantastic job planting and while we still need to accomplish more planting, their aggressive shift to weeding in that area will pay off as well. The next photo down shows Janet near her lime wall planting. The photo beneath that features some of her handiwork. The lime them actually extends and "snakes" through other areas as well and is really filling in nicely. We (Lori, Mary and I) had a meeting with some our Garden Ambassador volunteers including Russ, Eva, Stan, Larry H., Arnie, Tony, Londa, Dennis and Gena. Stan stayed later to work in the Japanese garden. Pat C. was working on labels including matching them out in the gardens. We also saw Lois, Maury, Dick P. and many others.

We had plenty of grounds staff duties around the gardens as well. Larry checked water features, worked on some rock work in the Japanese garden (with Big John), watered containers and did some other odds and ends. Big John push mowed, worked with Larry in the Japanese garden, installed new signs with QR codes (for smart phones) and watered. Cheryl did a nice job weeding in the formal annual sections and elsewhere while Jenny finished matching up labels with our newest plant order and also did a nice job weeding in many locations. Cindy fertilized the All-America Selections (AAS) Display Garden and did a great job on some other gardening tasks in multiple locations as well. Pat push mowed, watered containers, repaired potholes in our gravel paths and is working on renovating our color rooms garden. I placed plants this morning and had some meetings as well. We hope to get back to more planting today and Friday to finish out the last of our gaps out in the gardens (specifically for annuals). Directly below are more plant highlights from today (identified under each image).