No Shortage of May Color

Today was a mix of sunshine with the afternoon becoming cloudy and rainy. We had quite a bit of action around the Horticulture Center and gardens today though. I took a nice walk over the entire gardens and feel "reconnected" after the return from my trip. I noticed many more blossoms and foliage emerging and was quite impressed with the look of the gardens. This early warm up and recent rains has created quite a battle with the weeds but we're holding our own thus far. The top picture is a nice shot of our new waterfall (from last year) in the Japanese garden in full operation and looking great. The Japanese garden has superior color in both spring (at peak right now) and the fall. The new stream and lower holding pool look nice as well in this garden. Near the Japanese garden is the fern & moss garden where I photographed the 'Pewter Lace' Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum) two photos above. This variety has quite a bit of burgundy to the fronds and is one of my favorites. All the ferns are showing good growth and are filling in nicely. Directly above is the variegated Norway maple (Acer platanoides 'Drummondii'). These leaves look nice in spring but tend to get crispy brown later in the summer. To the right is the orange spring growth of the 'Autumn Moon' fullmoon maple (Acer shirasawanum) which will later turn to a brilliant gold for the remainder of the summer. To the left is one of the many columbines (Aquilegia sp.) looking good out in the gardens. The blooms of this dwarf variety, 'Origami Red & White', are enormous and caught my eye from a distance. This series is known for upwards-facing blooms. We have hundreds of columbines throughout the gardens and I always enjoy looking at them up close. To the right are the showy blooms of camassia or quamash (Camassia leichtlinii 'Blue Danube') in the woodland walk garden. This fall planted bulb is native to the Pacific Northwest and was used as an edible root crop by Native Americans. I like this bulb for the nice spires and there are species and varieties with white, powder blue and/or double flowers. There is also a variegated leaved variety ('Blue Melody'). They like damp soils and thrive where it is moist. Camassias in our damp sunken garden have thrived for over 10 years and form some very nice clumps. Normally we wouldn't see these until early May but we'll enjoy them now any way! We had a great crew today and the photos both above and below are a tribute to the hard work that occurred. The top photo above is Pat spreading shredded bark near the Smelly Garden (Nancy Yahr Memorial Children's Garden). Pat must have spread 40 loads of this stuff today and does a great job tapering it away from plants. The second photo shows Dennis (left) and Big John (right) planting our first shrubs of the season near the gazebo garden. These guys worked together all morning and are a great team. The shrubs, incidentally, are variegated versions of the Southern bush honeysuckle (Diervilla sessilifolia) which is a tough shrub for sun and even dry shade. This Cool Splash ('LDCP Podaras') variety looks dynamite and I saw it first at the Chicago Botanic Garden two years ago and wanted to try it at RBG. John and Dennis then shifted to installing our big culvert pipe planters on the entrance garden slope with Larry and Dick H. Directly above is Larry "double barreling" the culvert pipes thru the garden this morning. Larry worked on all sorts of other projects today as well. To the right is the Carolina silverbell (Halesia tetraptera) in bloom in the shade garden. I finally caught this one at peak and was happy to just catch it out of the corner of my eye! To the left is the yellow buckeye (Aesculus octandra) starting to bloom near the Horticulture Center. All of our horse chestnuts, buckeyes, etc. are starting to bloom and I like all the Aesculus in spring. Many develop leaf scorches and other issues later in the summer months though. There is a great collection of Aesculus at the UW-Arboretum's Longenecker Gardens.

Janice was in to help out in the gardens as well as with preparation for the tree sale, spring plant sale and our Grains of the World collection. She also helped get Suzy and Glenna situated out in the gardens with some weeding duties on the east end of the gardens. Happy B-Day to Glenna! Jenny came in for some weeding and did a nice job potting up the last of our caladiums. Pat, Big John and Larry kept busy as mentioned above and we also saw Marv and Marianne briefly. Rollie and Ron W. assembled our plant sale tables (third photo from the bottom) which was timely as they were used by Golden Kiwanis members this afternoon to process 12,000 tree seedlings for our Spring Tree Sale (Friday and Saturday, 8 am until 3 pm, see details at http://www.rotarybotanicalgardens.org/). Bob C. was out mulching the west end of the parking lot (second photo from the bottom) and did a nice job along that long border. The carpenters, Dave, Jim and Bob A., were in full motion on some projects which include a dunk tank as seen in the bottom with Bob A. swimming....not really. That blue film will be peel off to expose the clear sides of a new "root box" for the education program. Vern popped in and it was good to see him. Maury was busy with preparations for the tree sale but ran some errands including a very timely tree run. We also saw Urban, Polly, Kris, Mary W., Geesje (welcome back) and many others today. To the right is the first peony I've seen blooming. This is the Chinese woodland peony (Paeonia veitchii) in the woodland walk garden. Pretty.