Early Early Blooms

With a recent return to warmer temperatures, I took a nice walking tour of the entire gardens this morning. While it's still sloppy out there, the "feel" reminds me of late March / early April. With that in mind, I had a couple goals with my walk. First and foremost, I needed to stretch out of my increasingly "hunched over the computer" posture. I have more back problems in winter for just sitting at my desk. I also wanted to check for deer damage and make sure our deer protection efforts were still in place. I didn't notice too much damage but can see evidence of deer checking things out (note the deer poop shot further below). I also had a gut feeling that I would find some things blooming or preparing to bloom. I had only made it to the woodland walk garden when I saw snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in bloom (top picture). This was one of the few clumps actually blooming yet but most snowdrops seem to be poised. Normally I would show a picture like this in mid to late March. My first blog posting of snowdrops last year was March 8th. The picture directly above shows the blooms of a 'Cinnamon Snow' hellebore (Helleborus) getting ready to open. Hellebores bud like this for a long time before they open early for a couple weeks. Again, I normally wouldn't see this for at least five more weeks. To the right is another hellebore (Helleborus niger) budding out in the color rooms garden. Also called the Christmas rose, this specific species (and specimen) is the first hellebore we see open up in March. To the left are the emerging buds of the spring adonis (Adonis amurensis 'Fukujakai') in the gazebo garden. Note the hint of yellow as these will all be beautiful flowers (daisy shape) in the near future and this is one of the top 10 earliest plants to bloom out in the gardens in spring.

It was nice to get thru the gardens and I've already compiled some additional duties that we'll have to address in terms of spring clean-up. We also will have some projects occuring in March that will be very welcome. This includes the re-roofing of the gazebo and observation pier structure and hopefully some major repainting of the arched bridge and many other garden elements if the weather cooperates. I can't help but worry that we'll be "paying" for all this warm weather with a severe end of spring! We'll see. To the right are the buds of the bearsfoot hellebore (Helleborus foetidus) in the gazebo garden. The arched bridge (below) never fails to be scenic at any time of the year.We had a nice turnout of volunteers today and we were a regular "paint shop" today (as seen above). Dr. Gredler can be seen in the upper left working on his orange obelisks. In the foreground are Gena (left) and Myrt (right) converting our lime obelisks to a nice, dark lavender. Dick W. is at the bottom of the photo and he worked on applying primer to all the deer and sleigh cutouts that he and Del have been working on recently. In the upper right are Urban and Rose working on the slanted blue pyramid. See further below and to the right to see Urban's interior work on the second pyramid. He and Rose are making quick work of those gardens structures. Urban and I also made time for a tour of the woodland walk to discuss some pruning "targets" and initiatives. To the right is one of the many "evidence piles" that the deer are leaving for us. Nice shot to the left in the Japanese garden today.

Marianne came in to process six more seed orders and she's done a nice job keeping the seeds grouped and organized as she processes them. Next week we'll start preparing labels for these varieties. Note the picture below of the Takii seed box. This is one of the many companies for which we trial seed varieties out in the gardens. We currently have over 70 seed varieties that we're trialing and will also receive vegetative cuttings for some other varieties as well. Most of our trial varieties aren't commercially available yet. It is always fun to try new plants out in the gardens and share them (visually!) with our visitors. Marianne is also helping prepare handouts for the looming WPT Garden Expo (www.wigardenexpo.com/) that is coming up on February 10th, 11th and 12th. Big John and I will haul up all our stuff and set-up the RBG booth on that Friday morning. Gary was over to clean up the laser engraver which should improve the quality of the labels being produced. We'll see Luis tomorrow and he'll keep up with our labeling momentum. We also saw Janice, Big John, Dick H., Glenn E., Kris K. and others today. At the bottom is our pile of clippings, trimmings and brush from all the recent pruning and removals. Much of our larger debris is chipped up for use as mulch out in the gardens. This pile will only be getting bigger as we continue pruning efforts out in the gardens. The progress has been quite amazing. By the end of this week, I will have posted my 1000th RBG Hort Blog and am on the start of my fourth year doing it. I hope readers, who find it of value, will spread the word and help promote RBG.