Plant Sale, Pond Prep, and more!

Our spring plant sale at Duke Gardens is just hours away! Staff and volunteers are busy making preparations for the big day, and it looks like the weather will cooperate, with a toasty 87 degrees forecast for Saturday. As far as aquatic plants go, the sale this year will feature bareroot lotus tubers that are ready to plant now, along with hardy waterlily rhizomes divided from our display plants last week.

In the ponds, the volunteer waterlily team has been busy preparing for the busy summer months. John Wyman and Jean Reniers finished up their work on the waterlily stands yesterday, removing any rust and adding a fresh coat of rustoleum to keep them sturdy for this season. These stands allow us to grow our waterlilies at depths necessary for optimum growth and blooming - generally 12-18" below the water's surface. Without the stands, we would be unable to grow these plants in many areas of the ponds that average 4' deep.

Karen Webbink was hard at work again this morning in our propagation greenhouse. A water change was done in each tub and the Victoria and Euryale seedlings were fertilized. She also assisted in transplanting many of our tropical waterlily starts, which were ready to be seperated from the tubers we saved from last year's plants. We have a good collection of tropicals started, and can hardly wait to get them out into the ponds!

Lastly, we are continuing to receive entries to the IWGS New Waterlily Contest, with a hardy waterlily entry set to arrive early next week from Thailand! The tropical entries will begin to roll in next month, and all of these will be placed outdoors starting in early June. Stay tuned!