Thursday, September 30, 2010

The Next Phase

The weather again was quite delightful and we had a great turnout of volunteers and saw many visitors out in the gardens today. Above is "the point" garden area that now has been graded with new topsoil and is ready for our next phase: the arbor structure construction. Above are Jim, Bob A., Vern and Dave determining where we'll need the support posts. Dr. Yahr and I were out there with the guys to spot the final location and the carpenters did a nice job squaring everything off. We'll start getting the posts in place on Monday. This project, while taking up quite a bit of time, has really gained some momentum and lots of interest from visitors. We'll probably have time to get in some trees yet this fall but will save the remainder of the landscaping for next spring. We'll have lots of gardening work over the next couple of weeks just with clean-up duties. There are concerning "temperature rumors" of 33-34 degrees F overnight this Saturday. If we get those temperatures, we'll have to start removing the most sensitive tropicals and will become "reactive" as plants start to look frost-tinged or compromised because of cold temperatures. Above to the left is Little Jerry pruning in the alpine garden. He's done a nice job pruning and shaping many of our conifers in this space and his eye is one of the best for pruning anywhere out in the gardens. To the right is Mary who was part of our Grumpette group today. Luis (white hat and sunglasses) to the left has been in the gardens these past two days (and many prior to that)continuing his woody plant inventory around the gardens. With our new laser engraver ready for action, we'll start on woody plants this fall. Luis, a vounteer and Master Gardener, has volunteered to update our woody plant records which will be an exhaustive task. However, Luis is one of our best so I have no concerns about getting thru this valuable project. I just wish my memory was better with trying to remember some of these specimens and help Luis out! To the right is Karen, one of our newest volunteers that has been helping out on Monday and Thursday mornings. We're happy to add her to our family and she's doing great work out in the gardens. Below is one of our more commonly used groundcover sedums. This is the 'Lemon Coral' stonecrop (Sedum rupestre 'Lemon Coral') that we've used as an annual although it should make it thru the winter as well. We'll see. It's quite showy and will get orange tinges thru the fall. We had a small crew today with Janice, Little Jerry and myself. Janice helped get our volunteers organized and moved on to clean-up in the woodland walk and watering duties. She also had her afternoon volunteer group come in for bulb sorting. Little Jerry continued working in the alpine garden and I was able to spend the entire morning outside and helped with watering as well. Big John and Dick Peck worked at the other building and made a "gas run" for our vehicles. Aside from the carpenters mentioned above, we also had Ron W. and Pat here to run for more pumpkins, haul back debris and collect leaves around the garden pathways. Del was here working on carpentry (custom birdhouses) while Maury worked on lots of different projects. Marilyn, Glenna, Suzy (to the left), Mary (above) and Karen (above) all worked in the fern & moss garden and did a thorough job cleaning up and collecting debris. Jumbo Jim had three RECAPPERS and they focused on debris clean-up in the Japanese garden. Hal, Doris and Mary H. were all here to work in their garden areas and we saw Matt and Valerie working on cleaning out water features. Dr. Gredler was here mowing and we also saw Dave, Mike, Gena, Todd and Mary today too. Nice shot of Suzy to the left and a neat switch grass (Panicum virgatum 'Northwind') to the right. The switch grasses are looking pretty nice right now and there are so many suitable varieties including those with some reddish fall color. Below is a nice shot of our Ma' Chii' structure in the fern & moss garden and one of my favorite perennial mums, 'Mary Stoker'.

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