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Fridays are usually frantic for a couple of reasons.  We have to tidy up the gardens for the weekend visitors and weddings and with recent lack of precipitation and a sunny high near 90 degrees F today, watering has become more important as well.  However, we had a top notch crew of grounds staff and volunteers to help today.  When I prepare for vacation (next week), I also put lots of time in to lists and maps to keep everyone occupied.  Above are the two Adirondack chairs in the Nancy Yahr Memorial Children's Garden ("Pollinator's Paradise").  In the foreground are more of those uber-fragrant regal lilies (Lilium regale 'Album') which are peaking by the hundreds in that garden space.  Come visit after 6 pm if you really want a whiff of these!  Below (different blue chairs from above) is the yellow coneflower (Echinacea paradoxa) which is blooming very strongly right now (here near the North point garden).
[Image] yellow coneflower (Echinacea paradoxa) - perennial [Image] 'Walker's Low' catmint (Nepeta x faassenii) - perennial [Image] bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) - large shrub, spreading... [Image]
We had some great volunteers helping out today including Terri seen above weeding in the "Pollinator's Paradise" garden (Children's garden).  She, Kay and Eva did a great job weeding most of that garden and later moved on to planting in the Rainbow Garden and Ornamental Edible Garden.  Bev W. spent most of the morning finishing installing plants in her section of the sunken garden.  Ron K. was in to weed in the woodland walk garden and he also installed another batch of new perennials.  Dr. Gredler and Bill O. both did their mower rounds and we later saw Rose, Urban, Dr. Yahr, Maury (running errands for us), Chuck S. (tweaking the cart tour for mobility impaired guests),  Dennis and many others.  Below are three more plant photos from today (identified under the image).
[Image] 'Lemon Slice' million bells (Calibrachoa) - annual [Image] 'Visions' false spirea (Astilbe chinensis) - perennial [Image] 'Fusion Peach Frost' variegated impatiens (Impatiens sp.) - annual [Image]
Our Friday grounds crew goes full speed all day to get through our duties.  Big John and Pat both worked a half day and addressed many projects.  John ran irrigation, push mowed, hauled soil and worked on other tasks as well.  Pat weeded, watered, mulched, air edged and bounced between many projects including watering containers with Terry.  Aside from container watering, Terry also push mowed, set up sprinklers, fertilized and continued his work on our color rooms upgrading project.  He also tidied up the gazebo garden prior to the wedding tomorrow.  Cindy watered, planted and took care of watering the yard.  Janice also push mowed, did the cutting display, watered and weeded.  I hauled plants out for our various planting projects, went on the radio (WCLO with Tim Bremel) to promote upcoming events (Garden Gala, Home Garden Tour, see our website!), sprayed herbicide, etc.  Above is our "Impatiens Berm" that is just starting to really fill in and offer bright coloration.  Directly below is our Rainbow Garden filling in nicely and the ladies (Kay, Terri and Eva) finished planting the remaining gaps in this space today.  At the bottom is the newly widened bridge by the Grumpies which is looking nice.  John and Larry have done some work around the bridge recently and this new width better accommodates visitors and our most narrow carts.  Signing out from the blog for now.  Come visit the gardens soon!
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