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Gardens in Summer
Summer is always a busy time and our staff and interns have certainly been busy little bees!
If you visit ArbNorth, you will notice the Sentinel Garden is now gone and will be seeded as soon as we can. Then we can decide what native plants can go in that area (at the end of the turnaround). Invasive removal is a continual project in that part of Chadwick and this summer was no exception. One large project was working with the Arborist Crew to remove many of the dead, dying, and unsafe willows at the entrance. You will now notice new pathways and a few new small trees!
In the Lane Ave Gardens we’ve not only worked on all the ‘usual’ areas, but are paying additional attention to the Olentangy Corridor and getting some of the invasives under control, and cleaning out the seedlings, making the area more pleasant to walk through. The Rain Garden (installed earlier this year) is looking great in that area as well! Lots of dead and dying plants, small trees, seedlings etc. were also removed on the west side of FABE, near the end of the beech allée. This will give the area a ‘cleaner’ look as you walk through
The trials in the Learning Gardens is looking as stunning as usual. The annuals have really come into their own! The Still Garden has filled in nicely and we are working on ordering new plants to fill in some gaps. We had interns do projects in front of Howlett Hall and should soon have the plants for those areas as well. Stop in later this summer/fall to see the changes, all driven by student ideas! If you haven’t visited, come by and say ‘hi’ to all the tropical plants the Horticulture Team put our earlier this year; they are scattered throughout the gardens. Finally, if you hadn’t noticed the containers at the major areas (Howlett and Kottman entrances, and the Trellis Entrance to Lane) you will see they all have themes this year! Our favorite kid’s books (or books we liked as kids). Can you guess which books they are? If not, we have signs in each letting everyone know. We will soon go into planning for next year’s theme!
Saying goodbye to an old friend
We’ve had two large trees suffer large branch losses this year and ended up having to remove one of them (the large shingle oak in the Lane Ave Gardens – north of the Ag Admin building). The tree in this image was suffering from a LOT of rot in the main trunk, and we were watching the split get larger and larger. In consultation with the Arborist team, we made the heart-wrenching decision to proactively remove the tree. It was in a very prominent and well-travelled area and was a safety hazard. It always pains me to remove large trees, they are the ‘Mother Trees’ of the Urban Forest and will take decades to replace its canopy. I gave it several hugs, thanking it for years of shade, service, and watching over the area and the people passing by. Fear not, tree lovers. We will get a replacement in the area as soon as we can so future students will be able to sit in its shade. Trees are planted for future generations!
Interns
I know that Anna introduced our interns through the Volunteer Newsletter and I won’t rehash those here. We had a great group of student interns this year! Because there were EIGHT of them, we got a lot done and they learned a lot. We visited Secrest Arboretum, Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, Inniswood Metro Parks, Tracy DiSabato-Aust’s home garden, the Green Legacy Trial Gardens, and spent a day at Cultivate ’25. The intern Landscape Olympics allowed them to show off some of their newly acquired skills in areas such as: skid steer driving, standard transmission Cushman maneuverability, weed and plant identification. Here they are celebrating their individualized awards for a job well done this summer. They are all staying on for fall too, which is fantastic. (Front Row: Lexi, Ariana, Linh, Kent, and Emma. Back Row: Charlie, Dillon, and Abby).
Director Ramblings
I’m not at all sure where the time disappears to. It seems just yesterday was the beginning of summer and now it is almost over, and we are into fall semester! I think tomorrow is Jan 1, 2026!
My favorite thing this season? We’ve hired two new full-time horticulturists! Jim Priest is our new Assistant Manager of Horticulture Operations, and Rachel Tutera is our Assistant Horticulturist. While they are both still getting their boots dirty, they have great ideas and are quickly showing they are valuable assets to the team. I cannot wait to bring some of their ideas to fruition.
It occasionally seems that all we do as a team is put out fires (this tree lost a major branch, the irrigation is broken (again), the deer are out of control and eating everything, WHY DID THIS PLANT DIE? But in retrospect, I believe the gardens have come a long way, and we are making plans for areas that certainly need more work and getting students more involved in their areas of interest and ability. Changes cannot come immediately, but we are moving forward with changes, some planned, some unexpected, and while it might seem like we only put out fires, behind the scenes there is planning, designing, planting, and all manner of horticultural activity.
Plants and Fun Facts
The most asked about plant at the Cultivar Trials Showcase wasn’t one actually IN the Cultivar Trials Showcase! The entrance to the sidewalk that leads into the Horticulture Therapy Garden is a large, uniquely colored Hibiscus. The large flowers are a very unusual grey-blue color (trust me, this image doesn’t even begin to capture the unique color) with a deep red center, which bleeds into the veins. The plant stands tall and demands to be noticed, which everyone did. I could not fine anything in our records about the cultivar, so off to a Hibiscus breeder I went! Hans Hansen is a well-known breeder from Walters Gardens, Inc and he is confident it is from a breeding program out of Texas A&M, and probably the cultivar Blue Brulee.
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