Gorgeous Day!
Today was a gorgeous day and after the nice, soaking rains we had over the weekend, our summer color is really starting to peak nicely. The photo above and the two directly below show our entrance garden with plenty of color. Our pastel theme has worked pretty well although some of the pinks and salmons were brighter than I had planned and aren’t quite “pastels”. We also had a heavily used pink zinnia turned out to be a mix of bright colors….we’ll just call those “accents” I suppose! We had another water line burst yesterday which necessitated shutting down our water system for the day. Thankfully everything is nicely moist after the weekend! Nice to see so many visitors enjoying the gardens.
Our grounds staff of Cindy, Janice, Larry, Big John, Shania, Alex and Ibhar all had a wide range of tasks out in the gardens and with watering not necessary (or possible!), we are able to focus on more traditional gardening like weeding, planting, mowing, pruning, etc. I placed plants for installation and continue to try to keep ahead of our events. Our Fourth Annual Horticulture Therapy Symposium is coming up on August 8th. Check out details on this neat event on our website. Our volunteers included Kathy P., Eva, Kim, Steve E., Firefighter Cathy, Dr. Tom, Shirley H., Ron R., Lloyd, Dr. Gredler, Rollie, Maury, Kristin, Ron Y., Dave, Steve J., Vern, Gary, Marv, Dennis, Kay and many more. It was another solid Monday at the gardens.
interesting leaf on a bloodleaf (Iresine hybrida) which shows both the variety ‘Blazin’ Rose’ and ‘Blazin’ Lime’!
‘Summer Beauty’ ornamental onion (Allium sp.) – perennial
‘Fireball’ French marigold (Tagetes patula) – annual
King Tut® papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) – annual
lemon bergamot (Monarda citriodora) – annual
‘The Rocket’ golden ray (Ligularia stenocephala) – perennial (above and below)
neat container above with ‘Black Coral’ elephant ears (Colocasia esculenta), trailing copperleaf (Alternanthera reinickii) and ‘Canary Wings’ begonia (Begonia hybrida)
SunPatiens® Compact Tropical Rose impatiens (Impatiens hybrida ‘SAKIMP037’)
‘Lavender Mist’ meadow rue (Thalictrum rochebrunianum) – perennial (hard to photograph!)
Both Ruth Ann Potts (above) and Rollie McClellan (below) have been instrumental and vital at RBG for their many years of solid and continued volunteerism here at the gardens. Both were past Board members and still help with myriad tasks and events at the gardens. They are sitting on two benches in the Wellness Garden, each of which was donated in their name last Wednesday as part of the dedication to a new garden space. Ruth Ann was a major contributor to the new Wellness Garden and the other major donor, Mercyhealth, dedicated their involvement in the garden to Rollie for all of his years of service to the Mercy health system. Great people sitting in a great garden. Both photos are courtesy of Marsha Mood (go buy the RBG 2019 Calendar at our Cottage Garden Gallery which features Marsha’s photos!).
