Back To Business

After my week of vacation, it was nice to get back in action and I was very impressed with how the gardens were looking (never had any doubts) when I returned. So many beds and borders have filled in quickly and the gardens are looking very colorful. The grounds staff and volunteers did an excellent job out in the gardens and spent many hours keeping up with weeding and watering which are pretty common tasks for this time of year. Some light sprinkles this morning helped a bit and kept the temperature at a "mild roast" with high humidity. I did a jaunt around the gardens and was soaked thru after only a short period of time. My co-workers suffered more than I did with their tasks but they are made of "tougher stuff" anyway. Nice shot above of Dick K. and Gary today as they were out mulching the rose garden. The shot directly above is a combination of 'Tidal Wave Silver' petunia (Petunia) and 'Novalis Deep Blue' verbena (Verbena hybrida). I'd like to say we planned this one but so many of our best combinations are pure luck! These two annuals are part of our collections of All-America Selections winners and Fleuroselect (Europe) winners. To the right is one of the seven beds that feature all of these neat plants. These beds have really begun to fill in and are among the most colorful out in the gardens. Speaking of crazy growth rates, the squash (above left) collection at the Horticulture Center has gone bonkers. Janice's team has done a nice job weeding and watering the collection and have started to help train/guide these plants up our support structures. The squash plants all look very healthy, happy and vigorous! I'm very interested in seeing these unique varieties later in the summer. Progress on the Japanese pool, stream and waterfall have gone well. Nature's Touch will be installing the waterfall this week and we look forward to the end result. The stream (to the right) looks awesome and moves along very nicely as it finally empties in to the new pool. While there have been some setbacks to the progress of this project, the end result should be magnificent and we'll begin planting the stream edges and will landscape around the waterfall once it is complete as well (10 days away?...). Overall, the gardens truly look the best they ever have and some comments from attendees of the Dinner Dance this past Saturday (July 16th) indicate the same. This week we have our Pruning Demonstration/Seminar on Wednesday, July 20th (6 pm - 8 pm) and this Saturday, July 23rd is our annual Home Garden Tour (10 am - 4 pm). There is information on our website (http://www.rotarybotanicalgardens.org/) regarding both events and there are still some openings for the Scarf Dying Workshop on July 30th with Shelley Ryan, host of WPT's The Wisconsin Gardener. Below is the showy foliage of the summer poinsettia or fountain plant (Amaranthus tricolor 'Early Splendor') which actually has edible leaves and is tasty in a stir-fry. We have various varieties of this amaranth species in our ornamental edible/compact vegetable display including those with yellow highlights and bright pink.
We had a smaller volunteer turnout this morning and figure that the heat was the primary factor. It was fairly brutal early on and despite some light showers and overcast skies, it was a sticky furnace out there. Shirley was in early to help weed the gazebo garden and woodland walk garden. Above are the carpenter Grumpies in the Japanese garden. Jim, lower left, was stranded on one side of the new stream so Vern, Bob A. and Dave (left to right) worked on constructing a bridge to get him back across. They can be seen trying to coax Jim across that chasm. Actually, the guys are building an all-access bridge across the spillway of the waterfall pool where the water enters the stream. The guys had to dig out some major rocks to widen what was formerly a narrow crossover point on a flat rock. This should look nicer and help accomodate accessibility in the Japanese garden. Gary and Dick K. worked on mulching the roses behind the pergola while Pat and Ron worked on additional mulching around the sunken garden. Rollie was in to work on placing new memorial bricks and will continue this project tomorrow or later this week. He has been our "brick man" as long as I've been in the garden and it's nice he's finally placing them with the writing facing up this year. Dick H. worked on the dump truck (brakes?). Dick P. and Ron W. worked on some signage at the Parker Center and Dr. Gredler was in to mow. We also saw Dr. Yahr, Bill O., Kelli, Ray, Mike M., Darcie, Mark (new maintenance guy) and many others. To the above right is the 'White Dove' plantain lily (Hosta) in the woodland walk garden. To the left are the yellow culvert pipe planters with blue lyme grass (Elymus arenarius) in the terrace garden. To the right is Shirley working near the gazebo garden this morning. Wherever she goes with those weeding tools, weeds quiver with fear and hope to go unnoticed (small chance...).

The ground staff did quite a bit of watering and weeding as it was too hot for any major projects. Marv and Terry set up plenty of pictures and tidied up some beds. Marianne hand watered and weeded in many locations and did another nice job with her cutting display. I've seen cutting display samples at other botanic gardens that help show the visitor where interesting plants are located out in the gardens (which is the same reason for ours). The Missouri Botanic Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden and Olbrich Botanical Gardens have cutting displays with either five or six samples. Ours has 12 samples and is refreshed three times each week by Marianne although Janice has done it is as well. This is an awesome feature to have at the gardens and I never have to worry much about it (aside from the occasional ID). Larry kept irrigation running, repaired irrigation heads and ran some errands. I caught up on various tasks and had two meetings. Chance of rain tonight which I hope hits us. Directly below is the 'Denver Daisy' (Rudbeckia hirta) black-eyed Susan in the North Point garden that was developed for the 150th Anniversary of Denver, CO (in 2008). I like this flower a lot and the blooms are 6-8" wide and very long-lasting. With our daylily (Hemerocallis) collection starting to peak out near the arboretum, I thought I'd share one of the many varieties that caught my eye this morning. At the very bottom is 'Tigereye Spider' which is just gorgeous. I'm glad Lisa has kept up with this collection and our new labels really make a splash.