Lushness

Posted: July 26, 2016 by Mark Dwyer

If you haven’t visited the Giant Aquarium (seen above) yet, come check it out as our undersea growth is maturing and it’s looking pretty cool! While we continue to deal with weeds and tidying, the recent rain has allowed us to focus less on frantic watering and more on the “fine tuning” around the gardens. We’ve had quite a few recent tours as well and the gardens are looking spectacular. I would say that they are at the start of “summer peak”!

The weather was sunny and quite warm today but in a more pleasant way than the intense heat of last week! We had an excellent volunteer turnout for garden work and some repair work at the Horticulture Center and our grounds staff kept busy all day. Trevor and Nolan push mowed early and Trevor moved on to gravel work, fertilizing and some office projects. Larry H. did significant weeding in the entrance garden (see further below) and moved on to watering and more weeding. Big John watered containers and had some other small jobs but his focus was on pressure washing the walls and bricks in the sunken garden (which is no small task). Janice was in to print out lanyards for our Horticultural Therapy & You! symposium tomorrow. I was able to get out in the gardens quite a bit today

‘Delft Lace’ false spirea (Astilbe hybrida) – perennial

‘Gloriosa Double’ gloriosa daisy (Rudbeckia hirta) – annual

‘Red Sun’ zinnia (Zinnia elegans) – annual

‘Cosmic Orange’ cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) – annual

‘Sunny Red’ cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) – annual

‘David’ garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) – perennial

Our volunteers continue to be so important to all of our day to day operations (both inside and outside!). Above is Alan weeding in the entrance garden along with Eva and Kathy (to the right) below. They collectively did an excellent job and planted some replacements in the areas that we had to clear due to some plants failing. Betty (second photo down) tidied up her gardens space which is filling in very nicely. Dick H. (third photo down) worked on equipment repairs and in the photo is seen welding our bucket for the “endloader” which needed some attention. Kay (fourth photo down) did an excellent job weeding along the back of the woodland walk garden which will provide her with plenty of action this week. Terry, Linda and John weeded along the back road today and Nancy M. was in to water the trial beds at the Horticulture Center. Larry had some shop work and watering to attend to and Bill O. did his mowing rounds. Stan & Kristin (top photo and below) always do a nice job primping the Japanese garden. Peg came in to work on labels and we also saw Donna, Barb, Janet, Cora, Art, Dr. Gredler and many others.