New Camera Mania

Here are a few pics from work this

week.

This is a roof top garden I maintain in a fancy neighborhood in lower Manahattan. One of my co-workers did all the plantings and, for now, I go weed and water once a week. It is nice to pretend that I live in a fancy building with a private rooftop garden. I also like seeing all the other rooftop gardens around me as I work.

This is one of the areas that I rotate through for watering it is called hoops and frames. It is my favorite place to water because I get to be alone, I get to do a lot of grooming, and you get to experience plants that are in a variety of life satges i.e. seedlings, diseased, dormant, rooted cuttings, damaged, and etc.

This is a pic of potting up which were grown from digitalis seeds, common name fox glove, that I had collected about five weeks prior.

Here are some cuttings that Will and I did. After trimming them off the plants and dipping them in rooting hormone we firmly plant them in these trays and then they get put underneath a mister for a few weeks to a month.

The first pic is of an Eryngium species that I collected seed from and the second pic is the seed separating process.This is super fun process which reminds me of grade school science class when you dissected a marigold to understand all of it's reproductive parts. If you have a magnifying glass it is also fun to take a closer look at the seeds. The magic/science of a seed is so amazing to me. The power in nature around us is truly inspiring.

Here I am working at the potting bench dividing Bromeliads. This was fun too, but I felt like a bone doctor when they have to

break something to repair it. The roots are very dense and not easy to cut through, I actually broke a sweat. Bromeliads flower and then they send out new baby Bromeliads which are called pups. Once these pups reach a certain size some people prefer to go in and remove the mother plant, which is what my goal was here. At Wavehill they don't have enough space to keep every mother plant and all her pups. If they did eventually they would be known as Bromeliad Hill. HA!HA!

Here is Diana's plant of the week Berlandiera lyrata in the Asteraceae family.

This was Rachel's family of the week Thymus. There are many different species of thymus in the dry garden so she chose to do the genius as a whole.

Osi chose Salvia discolor which is in the mint family Lamiaceae.

Jen chose Lavendula which is also in the mint family Lamiaceae.

I chose Santolina but I can't fit anymore pictures into this post.

Have a nice week/end y'all!

Birthdays and over due Blogging

Well Well!
I just got back from a great trip to Chicago and southwestern Wisconsin. I go home for my birthday every year because I like spending it with my family. I need that grounding that celebrating my birthday with my family gives me. We went to the Chicago Botanic Garden and I got to test out my new digital camera. I also had a very nice visit with the director of Horticulture, I felt like my dad and I got as close to VIP treatment as is possible for not knowing anyone in the hort dept.

As per usual the CBG was in full swing looking beautiful despite a staff decrease, pay cuts, and benefit cuts. It is hard out there for public and private gardens right

now. They just aren't getting the funding that they are used to. I know we are going through the same thing at Wavehill Garden in the Bronx.

At Wavehill Garden none of the gardeners took pay cuts but they had to reduce their staff and take unpaid furlough days last winter. Anyway I got a little excited about my new camera so please pardon all the plant photos.

I had to snap a shot of this beautiful Copper Beech they have, which

is looking very healthy! I always liked this tree as a younger person and now that I am working in the horticulture field I have a even greater appreciation for this tree. The name Copper Beech comes from the color of the newly emerging foliage in the spring. The copper color of the new leaves is quite a thing to see as the light passes through them. Though it only lasts a few days as the foliage quickly turn to the deep red green you see in this photo. Unfortunately many Copper Beech trees are dying because of a higher incidence of bleeding canker and a type of fungus that both affect the bark and trunk area. This tree is probably half the age of the ones we have at Wavehill.

This plant smells amazing! I

couldn't believe the aroma that came into my nose the moment I stuck my face into the thick leaf growth of this commonly known Curry Plant!

First time seeing this super cute vine. It has a great chartreuse color and asparagus fern/cypress leaf feel.

This is not all I saw but I don't want to make this post to long. Lets just say the more I learn and do in horticulture the more I like it. I was staunchly against growing plants for non-edible purposes. But now my ideas about that are changing and I am understanding the validity in propagating ornamental plants more and more.