Ginkgo Cookies

I made quite a bit of progress on the revised plan for the future Wellness Garden yesterday. I'll again work from home this afternoon on this project and hope to have it finished by the end of the week. Today looks to be a warm one with temperatures approaching 60 degrees F. I don't think we'll have much for snow cover by the end of the week. The blog title refers to the top picture which are some 2" thick by 8" wide "cookies" of ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) that are being prepared for the education department. Kris received a nice grant that will allow her to develop an educational, interactive, youth backpack program for the gardens. We'll be drying these, sanding them and putting a light sealant on them so they can be used for this program. Directly above is our flying saucer collection. These bowl planters will be united with their PVC supports very soon and we'll try to install these out in the gardens by late April. Yesterday, Marv, Terry and I discussed some of our plans for custom soil mixes for our various containers. With some of these new containers, we've certainly added the need for more watering time in the summer. To the left are the last of the larger culvert pipe planters; painted and ready to go back outside until we're ready to install them this spring. We'll bring in the set of five smaller culverts (18" diameter, 8' tall) next! Directly below is a shot of the Land of the Giants Hosta Farm in Milton, WI. The owner, Jeff Miller, will be speaking at RBG tomorrow night on the topic of Hostalicious from 6:30 pm until 8 pm. RBG Members will be $5 with all others asked for a $10 donation. This should be a great talk. Jeff has assisted us at the gardens in the past and will be helping with some identification, disease and slug control and has always been nice about supplying some varieties we don't currently display. Dr. Gredler was in to continue painting the Adirondack chairs and they will not be inconspicuous out in the gardens with our color selections (see below). Luis was in all morning entering more data for woody plant labels in the formal gardens. I would say that he is about 80% done with producing the labels although we have the next two steps of securing the labels on their anchored stakes and ultimately installing them out in the gardens. We just received another delivery of labels for our perennials which will be the next shift in focus after the woody plants are complete. We have many existing label needs out in the gardens but will also make advance labels for those varieties that will be installed yet this spring. What a novel idea to have the labels ready to go out with the plants. We are always well-intentioned but sometimes our planting speed exceeds our labeling intent/progress! Jenny has already entered most of our annuals and is ready for production. To the right is one of the five structural foam containers that will go out on the terrace. These have been red, yellow and now white to correspond to the main color theme which is featured in the entrance garden and always replicated out in the terrace garden.

Larry and Bill were out pruning again today and we continue to accumulate debris. We're getting to the point where we'll have to make room (because of so many debris piles) for our incoming shredded bark loads and compost. We also saw Vern, Mark S., Nancy N., Janice and many others today. At the bottom is one of the many sleighs that Del and Dick W. prepared over the past months. They got an early start on these and are contacting those that were interested in purchasing them thru the gift shop. They originally sold out in December.