More Mums!

Yup, more mums, in fact more than I had ever expected! We have spent the past two full days changing out the beds in the main conservatory and the east conservatory, and the thousand bloom has arrived. Yesterday was filled with single stem mums and Coleus, and today was filled (literally) with more mums and Salvia. Yesterday the thousand bloom arrived and it was quite an operation to get it in the conservatory-but they did it! It is pretty amazing and still being finished-I am really anxious to see the finished product which should be early next week. The remainder of this week…I expect to see more mums! The days fly by though when we are so busy so its fine with me.

Oh, and I noticed something else this week…a beatiful recycling center as the backdrop to our gardens! I’m sure it will be a nice facility and it makes sense considering our gardens will be in the gardens “proper” next year-EEK!!

MUMS

Well…I said I was interested to see how things work in the conservatory and I’m definitely getting a taste of that! You would never know from seeing it as a bystander, but changeovers in the conservatory require a lot of work, and a lot of FAST work. And I love it. I really enjoy being engaged all of the time and having a sense of urgency. Another thing I love about indoor display is the learning labs that we have on Tuesdays. Each tuesday for an hour, one of the section gardeners takes us around the conservatory and teaches us about different plants in their section. This is a great opportunity for us to ask questions and learn about these plants-for our own personal knowledge and also so that we may answer questions that visitors might have. I don’t expect the pace of indoor display to slow down before I leave, as we are quickly approaching Mum Festival. They expect that the thousand bloom will come in next week and we will be changing out all of the displays to mums next week as well.

Indoor Display

This week we started our new work rotations and we will be staying here for a full month. I am in indoor display this month and am really excited to see how things work inside the conservatory. This week I have been working with Kat McCullough in the Mediterranean House, the Silver Garden and the Acacia Passage. It is amazing to me how much works goes into these areas that I would never have noticed otherwise; I suppose because they are kept up on so well. We pruned the Arbutus trees, restrung the Hardenbergia standards, re-vamped the Tallandsia tree in the Silver Garden, and pruned the Podocarpus in the Acacia Passage. This work makes me want to visit South Africa because most of these plants are native to that region…among thousands of others!

We were graded on our fall containers yesterday. My container looks fairly decent; I think the pansies needed a bit of cold weather because they were looking a little sad. Otherwise, things have filled out a bit and seem to be doing well. I may give them some fertilizer at some point soon depending on how they seem to be doing. This is the first time I have made a container with recycled potting soil so I am interested to see if it really makes a difference. At my old job we always replaced the soil and I never really asked why because I just assumed it was to avoid disease; but since it is so humid down south that could be why there was an increased threat of disease. Hopefully our fall will be a bit drier than our summer!

Plant Records

So we started work rotations again this week after a much needed, restful weekend! I am currently in the Curatorial department for the next two weeks. It is really interesting work; I’m learning all sorts of new things like how to enter information into BG Base which is the database that Longwood uses to keep records of all of their plants, entering things onto BG Map-taking information from BG Base and mapping it into the quadrant system that gardens use, I’m also learning how to locate plants/trees in the gardens using these maps. We have currently been working on mapping Conifer Knoll and the Hillside Garden. It’s sort-of like going on a little hiking scavenger hunt to locate the plants because you have to be able to get to the accession tag which is the “hard copy” record of the plant. Sometimes the tags need to be replaced or are missing so we then make new tags and bring them back out to label the plants. Luckily the weather has been favorable so we have had many opportunities to get outside!