Everyone except the bears above were in perpetual motion today. Of course, these bears have an excuse, they're bronze. It's tough to see it but the bear on the left is right over the top of that "stump" where there is an active bird's nest; seemingly protected by these bears (in the woodland walk). Lots of volunteers today and lots of planting. Larry worked on cleaning out the fern & moss garden pump and water feature and we think we've solved part of the problem. Janice was here working on fertilizing containers, applying more pre-emergent herbicide and helping facilitate all the volunteers. Little Jerry was in to mow but left early as he wasn't feeling well. I spent the day on my tractor and trailer hauling around plants to six different areas and was happy that I could keep up with our planters today (barely). Jenny worked on organizing our ferns and was out matching up labels to annuals already planted out in the gardens. This is an enormous task and Jenny's organizational skills lend themselves well to accomplishing this task. See her cart below!
I placed plants right away this morning in the sunken garden for Mel and June who came later to continue to plant their side of that large garden. They did a nice job and one more planting visit next week should finish that up. I also left plants for Kelley and Sue who came in and did a creative job of placing and planting another couple hundred annuals in the shade garden. I placed many plants in a portion of our entrance garden and was happy to have Ron, Bev, Mary, Suzy, Marilyn and Big John planting this space. Judy and her grandchildren, Sadie and Alex, came in to help plant and both Bev and Barb came in and planted about half of their shady garden area near the pond. We'll finish that space up next week. Below is an example of my "rig" that I loaded up four times today. The plants seen below are what I positioned along our terrace garden border seen further below. This border will be planted on Saturday by the Noon Rotary Club (organized by Hal R.) but I wanted to get it designed so I could focus on other areas that will be planted that day as well.
We had a great Grumpy turnout with Ron and Big John planting out front and the other guys dispering to various tasks. Charlie, Pat and Dick H. cleared allium foliage throughout the iris collection and did an awesome job clearing daffodil foliage and weeds from the east border. Gary and Del hauled compost to "top off" the shoreline bed in the wishing well garden and then moved on to spreading mulch around trees. Ron B. and Jim helped Bob T. air edge and worked on various odds and ends including putting up protective fencing around our cucumber and gourd collection to thwart the best efforts of the resident woodchuck (think Caddyshack...). Dave, Bob A. and Jim are almost done with our fancy new desk for the laser engraver and Dr. Gredler continued to work on the new sidewall project. We also saw Maury, Big Jim and two RECAPPERS. Mary, Marilyn and Suzy helped plant and Glenna did a nice job weeding in the parking lot islands. Below, in sequence, is Kelley and Sue, Mary and Bev W.
It was wonderful to have so many people helping at the gardens today. I think there is still some n
ervousness about being rained out over the coming days so we had lots of help today. To the left is Judy with Alex and Sadie. They planted some orange impatiens and helped the entrance garden planting crew plant our red/maroon theme annuals. The kids have helped in the past and grandma Judy is quite a gardener herself and her home garden (beautiful) has been on our Home Garden Tour in the past. To the right is Ro
n W. (Bev's better half) who has become our "go to" guy for a variety of projects and has great attention to detail. Any project Ron is involved with is done right. If our momentum continues with planting, we should be done by the end of the month and are also trying to finish planting our perennials, trees and shrubs. I like to have an empty yard in July so we can focus on the gardens. We try to avoid any planting in July and August if at all possible. The recent rains have encouraged some major weeds but we'll catch up with those later this month. Below is Marilyn and Suzy planting near our 'Dialogue' sculpture. I really feel good about this red/maroon theme and think it will be quite impressive once it fills in over the coming weeks. Keeping everything watered, fertilized and maintained will be the challenge in this entrance area which is our "front door" for visitors.
There are no lack of interesting plants out in the gardens although I'm finding less time to take photographs between my plant hauling runs. The irises are almost done as are the peonies. Our iris photographers h
ave done a nice job photographing all the irises this year and we'll organize those later in July for use by the American Iris Society, that would like to put them in their huge database that will have over 80,000 images of irises (including ours!). We'll also use the pictures to help sell these irises on August 28th. To the left is the striking foliage of the dappled willow
(
Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki'). The newest growth has creamy pink mottling that can be seen from quite a distance, making the plant look like it is blooming. We prune many of our specimens back severely in winter so they have vivid young growth and stay smaller. I like this variety around 5' tall but you can let it go to 15'+ easily. To the right is one of our alpine scullcaps (
Scutellaria orientalis) that caught my eye in the alpine garden with exquisite, chartreuse yellow blooms. On June 19th, the WI/IL Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society will be coming thru the gardens for a tour (with me) so we're tidying up in that space and Iza was here planting more alpine plants this afternoon. At the bottom is a picture of another neat shrub rose in our collection. This vivid rose is the Showtime shrub rose (
Rosa 'BAItime') that is another Easy Elegance series rose from Bailey Nursery.
Everyone except the bears above were in perpetual motion today. Of course, these bears have an excuse, they're bronze. It's tough to see it but the bear on the left is right over the top of that "stump" where there is an active bird's nest; seemingly protected by these bears (in the woodland walk). Lots of volunteers today and lots of planting. Larry worked on cleaning out the fern & moss garden pump and water feature and we think we've solved part of the problem. Janice was here working on fertilizing containers, applying more pre-emergent herbicide and helping facilitate all the volunteers. Little Jerry was in to mow but left early as he wasn't feeling well. I spent the day on my tractor and trailer hauling around plants to six different areas and was happy that I could keep up with our planters today (barely). Jenny worked on organizing our ferns and was out matching up labels to annuals already planted out in the gardens. This is an enormous task and Jenny's organizational skills lend themselves well to accomplishing this task. See her cart below!
ervousness about being rained out over the coming days so we had lots of help today. To the left is Judy with Alex and Sadie. They planted some orange impatiens and helped the entrance garden planting crew plant our red/maroon theme annuals. The kids have helped in the past and grandma Judy is quite a gardener herself and her home garden (beautiful) has been on our Home Garden Tour in the past. To the right is Ro
n W. (Bev's better half) who has become our "go to" guy for a variety of projects and has great attention to detail. Any project Ron is involved with is done right. If our momentum continues with planting, we should be done by the end of the month and are also trying to finish planting our perennials, trees and shrubs. I like to have an empty yard in July so we can focus on the gardens. We try to avoid any planting in July and August if at all possible. The recent rains have encouraged some major weeds but we'll catch up with those later this month. Below is Marilyn and Suzy planting near our 'Dialogue' sculpture. I really feel good about this red/maroon theme and think it will be quite impressive once it fills in over the coming weeks. Keeping everything watered, fertilized and maintained will be the challenge in this entrance area which is our "front door" for visitors. 
ave done a nice job photographing all the irises this year and we'll organize those later in July for use by the American Iris Society, that would like to put them in their huge database that will have over 80,000 images of irises (including ours!). We'll also use the pictures to help sell these irises on August 28th. To the left is the striking foliage of the dappled willow
(Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki'). The newest growth has creamy pink mottling that can be seen from quite a distance, making the plant look like it is blooming. We prune many of our specimens back severely in winter so they have vivid young growth and stay smaller. I like this variety around 5' tall but you can let it go to 15'+ easily. To the right is one of our alpine scullcaps (Scutellaria orientalis) that caught my eye in the alpine garden with exquisite, chartreuse yellow blooms. On June 19th, the WI/IL Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society will be coming thru the gardens for a tour (with me) so we're tidying up in that space and Iza was here planting more alpine plants this afternoon. At the bottom is a picture of another neat shrub rose in our collection. This vivid rose is the Showtime shrub rose (Rosa 'BAItime') that is another Easy Elegance series rose from Bailey Nursery.
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