Where We’ve Been

Where have we been? Mostly out in the garden….

Oconee Bells, Shortia galacifolia. A rare plant from the Appalachian Mountains.

Spring is upon us and we have been raking, weeding, admiring  the plants coming up through the slowly warming soil, moving stones, cutting down trees, and edging the beds.

Ligularia dentata coming up among the Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum).

Edging is heavy work but I love the way it defines the gardens and makes them look cared for (as well as keeping the grass from creeping into the beds).

Freshly edged garden bed.

Inside the greenhouse, there are flats upon flats of seedlings. Some are for the garden, some for the All-America Selections Display, and some for the plant sale.

Seedlings in greenhouse.

We also made a few trips to the unheated overwintering house at URI’s East Farm, where perennials in pots stay for the winter. Now they are inside and coming up beautifully, ready for the garden and the plant sale.

Perennials in the greenhouse.

Solomon’s Seal, a beautiful spring perennial.

SAVE THE DATE: Plant Sale Friday May 3rd, 8AM to 2 PM, at the greenhouse on campus, then on Saturday May 11th at the East Farm Festival, 9 AM to 2 PM at URI’s East Farm.

Vegetable seedlings, All-America Selections annuals, and Garden-dug perennials!

My Imaginary Garden

Today I am daydreaming about an early spring garden. It would be against the south-facing stone wall, for winter protection and early warmth. The sun would embrace it from dawn to dusk. All the earliest bulbs and flowers would be growing there, encouraged to rise and bloom for springtime cheer.

Being so close to the Atlantic Ocean and Narragansett Bay,  springtime here is cold. The water temperature warms slowly, leaving a chill in the air as our March and April breezes pass over the water. (Of course, the flip side to that is a long warm autumn, September days at the beach with just us year-round residents, and tomatoes holding on til October…) After last year’s “non-winter” and early spring, this year Old Man Winter seems to be hanging around for an extra long stay.

Back to my early spring garden: It would be full of crocuses and snowdrops, witch hazels and hellebores, tiny dwarf irises, winter aconite, and the earliest daffodils. All these beautiful flowers are here at the Botanical Gardens, but not all together in my imaginary garden. They are scattered about, each creating a tiny spot of color in a  landscape just beginning to awaken from winter. Walk through the garden and welcome them, and welcome spring.

On It’s Way

Winter Blues

The view from February…

More than halfway through winter, and here it is. I am completely uninspired. I’m sure the weather has something to do with this. It’s 40 degrees F and raining, with half-melted dirty snow banks slowly disappearing under the deluge, and plenty of mud. (I don’t mind April mud, it’s different in April!) End-of February rain holds no promise for me. No thoughts of seedlings, buds, sprouts, sunshine, or warmth. A walk through the Botanical Gardens yesterday confirmed that Kingston is indeed the land of broken trees, due to the blizzard. We have a big clean up coming, as soon as rain, mud and snow let up.

Although the Conservatory has some beautiful flowers blooming right now, (you can see them here) I think it is simply Springtime that I am longing for. There is something about  the feel of the sun on my face, and the smell of the soil, that isn’t the same in the greenhouse. The greenhouse got me through December, January, and almost all of February, and I appreciate that! But I am ready to get outside.

In a few more weeks, I’ll be starting seeds. Around here gardeners plant peas on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th. With transplants like tomato and pepper seeds, I aim for April Fool’s Day (April1st), so that they don’t get too big before it’s warm enough to set them out. Starting seeds brings back the optimist in me, daydreaming about the wonderful garden I will have. Just a few weeks to go…what will YOU do to get yourself to Spring?

The view from March!

Tiny Predators

Praying Mantis egg case with newly hatched mantid.

Jamie’s Praying Mantids hatched ahead of schedule and she released some from their rearing container into the Horridge Conservatory.

Beginning to leave the container.

The mantids are very small but will grow quickly.

The mantids love to eat aphids, which are not in abundance here. They don’t go for scales or mealybugs, because they hunt insects which are moving. So we put them on a plant where I had seen some thrips — thrips are really fast.

Off to look for food.

Check out this post from the Archives,  “Insect Dreams” , for pictures and some fun facts about the Praying Mantis.

Blizzard of 2013

The Ericaceous Garden, Monday morning after the blizzard. URI Botanical Gardens

Lots of snow, many sadly broken trees on campus as well as all over South County. White pines and arborvitae seems to have taken the worst hit.

2/11/13

2/11/13

And around town:

White pine across road, in wires, West Kingston. (2/9/13)

And yet another… (2/9/13)

Unstable utility pole, Dale Carlia corner, Wakefield. photo courtesy of South County Independent

The greenhouses did not lose heat or electricity! (Electricity was turned off for a few hours in order to make repairs to other lines.) At one point, it became really warm in the greenhouses when the vents couldn’t open and the heat was still going but overall we came out of the blizzard unharmed.

Horridge Conservatory, Monday 2/11. URI Botanical Gardens

Anxiously awaiting the return of electricity (and running water) at home!

Keeping Busy

It has been a very busy beginning of the year for this gardener. ( I have to laugh when people ask “What do you do in the winter?”) Well, in addition to caring for the plants in the Conservatory range, scouting the greenhouses, carrying out our IPM program, writing and taking pictures for the blog, keeping the website updated,  getting a required certification, engraving new labels to replace lost or broken ones, and supervising student employees and volunteers, I have a great new opportunity:  to take over responsibility for the “Botany Collection”, a wonderful and fascinating group of plants.

The plants are used in the labs for students in BIO 104 (Principles of Biology-Plants), BIO 311 (Plant Structure and Development), and BIO 321 (Plant Diversity). (There are 375 students in BIO 104 alone this semester…wow!) Plants in the collection have been gathered to represent different features like a certain type of flower or a certain type of root. Cactus and succulents, orchids, conifers, aquatic plants, ferns, plants with brightly pigmented leaves, mosses, fruiting plants, vines, many, many flowering plants, and some plants that are just plain curious, are all representatives of groups of plants being studied in Biology and Botany.

Each week, plants are brought in to demonstrate the objective of the lab, whether it is simply “Primary Growth” or something a bit more advanced such as sporophyte development. Occasionally, germinating seeds and seedlings are requested for dissection and study under the microscope (what fun!) I start those here and then bring them over to the lab. It all looks so interesting that I wish I were in class!

Tomorrow I am off to New England Grows  — taking the 6 AM train to Boston. N.E.Grows bills itself as “the Ultimate Horticulture and Green Industry Education and Trade Show” and it is truly gigantic. Immense tree digging machinery and backhoes look like Matchbox cars on the floor of the trade show. My job tomorrow will be to give a very quick slideshow tour of the garden, condensing my usual one hour tour into 5 minutes! Then I am free to attend any educational session, so even though it’s not Biology Lab, I really do get to go to class.

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