A Beautiful Day – Simply Stated

Posted: May 5, 2017 by Mark Dwyer

Today was another beautiful, early May day with a chilly start to the morning and then some excellent sunshine and moderate warmth (64 degrees F). There were many guests in the gardens today with a large rental of the facility with participants enjoying fresh air and early color as seen above and below. Our larger water features were being cleaned and prepared for the season as well with work to continue throughout the weekend. We had a busy day for both grounds staff and volunteers as we continue to prepare the gardens for a busy weekend and are continuing preparations for our Spring Plant Sale (see our website for details). Our shrubs for the sale were delivered today with perennials and herbs to follow next week.

Our grounds staff bounced between many different projects although we all converged to unload our shrub delivery early this afternoon. Cindy worked on planting more pansies, watering, tidying the entrance garden and weeding. Larry H. did his pushmowing, staged mulch for volunteers coming in tomorrow, composted and did some major reseeding in thin turf areas. Bobby K. continued to mount Garden Art Project fish, installed more critters in the Giant Aquarium and helped with myriad other improvements including some expanded phone lines to help with our looming sale. Janice planted pansies, did her cutting display, continues to organize for the sale and had plenty of other action. I was able to fertilize most of our lawns and I hope the rain comes this evening. It was a great day!

there are still plenty of tulips (Tulipa) blooming out front!

‘Pink Champagne’ barrenwort (Epimedium hybrida) – perennial

Lemon Candy™ ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Podaras 3’) – woody shrub

one of many crabapples (Malus) at peak right now throughout the gardens

‘Island Breeze’ plantain lily (Hosta) – perennial

Our volunteers had a very productive day. Above are Grandpa Terry and Corbin checking out the gardens this morning. With such a nice day, we had a great turnout of volunteers with Kathy P., Eva, Sandi and Terri all working on weeding issues in the sunken garden and gazebo garden respectively. Kristin put in some serious tidying time in the Japanese garden and Maury ran some timely errands for us. Dennis continued work on rebuilding the boulder wall along the North path. Dave T. and Vern were in to size up some future carpentry projects and we also saw Dr. Gredler and his child bride Alys. Bill O. was in and we also saw Dave K., Phil G., Mark S. and many others throughout the day.