It’s been great to see everyone this spring at the CENTS and New England Grows Trade Shows. Now, the speaking season switches to homeowner groups, which have also been superb this spring. Speaking of traveling, I’ve recently returned from a fabulous three-week botanizing expedition through South Africa in search of bulbs, ferns, and other cool perennials. We traveled over 3,000 miles from Capetown in the South to the Drakensberg Mountains in the East. The trip exploration log with photos should be ready in the next few weeks…I’ll let you know when it is posted.
Spring has already gotten off to quite a start when we were hit with 80+ mph straight line winds that ripped the covers from five greenhouses, tossed a golf cart 150 feet into a creek, and generally reeked havoc at the nursery. Re-covering greenhouses in a steady 40 mph wind is not the easiest of tasks, even after we were able to find someone that had extra rolls of greenhouse plastic for sale…thanks, Coors Farm Supply. It sure would have been nice if we had not been expecting 25 degrees that night.
Our crack shipping team is hard at the tasks at hand and so far, the results have been extremely good. We still haven’t maxed out their capabilities, so keep those orders coming.
The first top 25 list of the year is filled with surprises. Instead of finding many of the usual suspects, the list is filled with an array of newcomers. Hosta ‘Hanky Panky’ marks the first time that a hosta has cracked the top 25 in our records. Ditto for Epimedium ‘Purple Prince. If you entered our top 25 contest, how are you doing so far? If the answer is not good, don’t give up as we are still very early in the season and some of the horses in the back of the pack still have some “giddy up” left. -tony