Busy Plant Sale

Today was quite busy at the Spring Plant Sale at the Horticulture Center. It was extremely busy during the first couple of hours of the sale and we sold out of some herb selections and tomato varieties. Thanks to Tina B. for the pictures above! The traffic was steady throughout the day though. We still have plenty of selections left for the sale tomorrow on Mother's Day (9 am - 4 pm). Tomorrow is a "free day" for admittance to the gardens for all mothers. With a large brunch crowd at the other building tomorrow, we hope we'll get some traffic from that event trickling over to the plant sale. The weather looks pretty good and despite the chance of some morning showers today, we just had overcast skies and nice temperatures in the mid 60 degrees F. To the right is just one of the many colorful cartloads of plants that departed the sale today.

We had another great batch of volunteers assisting in the yard and at the cash registers. With three shifts of volunteers, I wont remember everyone involved but it was a good crew and customer service was quite evident and readily available. Janice and Marianne were again instrumental in keeping everything running smoothly. We ask most of the volunteers to wear the construction orange construction vests which makes the conspicuous for the customer to approach with questions.

There seemed to be lots of visitors out in the gardens today too as it was a free admittance day. There was a fundraising walk of some sort over on Lion's Beach and along Palmer Drive this morning which made parking scarce but everything smoothed out after lunch. Bill and Larry went out in the gardens to collect garbage, tidy the wedding garden (sunken), mowing and some other tasks. Marv was in for some projects which included significant spray painting. Del was in to do some mulching in the main parking lot and had the help of Evan, one of our new volunteers. Evan also weeded the vegetable beds near the Horticulture Center. The Janesville Area Herb Society (JAHS) had a meeting this morning and they were out working in the three herb garden sections for spring clean-up. They selected a wide range of herbs from the sale and with the new path improvements in those garden sections, the herb garden will look dynamite again this year.

The other photos included in this blog are from yesterday and catalog the efforts by Dale S. in his improvements of the moss island in the fern & moss garden. Dale, with the significant help of Marv, Terry and John, did a great job creating a "new look" for that garden space.

Tomorrow should be another nicely attended Spring Plant Sale day.