Tuesday, February 23, 2010

More Before & After

Above is a shot of the beginnings of the reception garden back in the early 1990s (designed by Dennis Buettner of Milwaukee). Note the archway in the background. This was the archway to the original Parker Pen Company world headquarters, located here in Janesville. This piece is on permanent loan from the Rock County Historical Society. For an interesting look at Parker Pen history, check out www.parkerpen.com/en/discovery/making_of/timeline. This garden is very formal in arrangement and above you see all the precast pieces that were used to create the center planter while the stacks of lannon stone became the surrounding walls with caps. The current ground surface of this garden is asphalt which gets darn hot in summer. At some point we'll go to another surface I imagine. Other neat features of this garden include the druid sculpture (seen in past posts and in the picture below) and the color theme; always blue, white and silver. See some "after" shots below... The day started out with some snow and ice with many of the streets and highways quite slippery. After the sun came out, it was quite pleasant and we had a good turnout of helpers today. Kay and Heidi worked on separating and organizing vegetable labels for the sale while Janice worked on her various projects as well. Kay and Heidi are a great team and we look forward to their joined efforts out in the gardens too. Maury was in to do some painting and both Urban and Bill helped Little Jerry with pruning trees in our main parking lot. Gary worked on installing our new printer (very nice). This is the time of year that Larry is servicing all our vehicles before they are used more often this spring. We also saw Dick H., Dave and some new members of our Board over here today. Nice shot to the left of more ornamental bark. River birches (Betula nigra) may be fairly common but they sure are noticeable during the winter with their exfoliating bark. This is 'Heritage' in our Japanese garden (left). To the right is the exfoliating bark of bald cypress (Taxodium distichum 'Shawnee Brave') from The Morton Arboretum last week. While interesting bark may never be the primary reason for purchasing a woody plant, it should certainly be a consideration. At the bottom is a photo of Mike presenting at the Garden Expo on pruning. He does a nice job. I'm not sure why the local insomniac groups all congregate at his presentations to catch some quick "shut-eye". Look at the guy in the back right! :)

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