March at Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens is an interesting time. The Garden is waking up, the daffodils are blooming and the maples are leafing out. It’s a strange time for any gardener; we feel like it’s time to plant our annual plants and crops and get going! Unfortunately, we are still well within our chance for frost. As of March 25, we still have a 90% chance to get a killing frost before we are free and clear. As we roll into April, the chances decrease until April 30.
Protection from buildings, concrete, wind and more can effect total frost quantity and where it will hit the hardest. Here we air on the side of caution. We plant over 5,000 annuals every spring in the formal gardens like the Canal Garden and the White Garden. Planting too early and losing these plants is a risk we simply can’t take.
These annuals are ordered through local nurseries, who receive orders from retail spaces and contractors from all the way back in early February. The plants grow in the nurseries until they are delivered to us at the end of April and are finally planted out at the beginning of May.
So, what does the Garden do until then? A big lift for Horticulture in January and February is removing all of the holiday lights that we installed for Holidays at the Garden. It takes us about four months to put up the show and about two months to take it all down each year. We have to balance that with working on weeding and mulching the planting beds, work on exhibits like our recent Trip to the Tropics event this February, preparing the turf for the year and the general day-to-day work to keep the Garden looking its best, even when there are less blooms in the winter.
What’s in the Garden now? Every fall we plant another set of annuals. Plants like violets and pansies can make it through the winter and start to put on a show in early spring before our spring annuals arrive. This year the Garden faced a new challenge. Unfortunately, a contractor left one of our deer gates open and eleven deer made their way into the Garden looking for an all-you-can-eat buffet. The Garden has an 8,000-ft. long fence that protects the inner 90 acres from these hungry herbivores. A single deer will eat six to eight pounds of vegetation each day! Some of their favorites are the soft and tender annuals we plant here every year. We have been working since November to remove these deer to protect our plants. The efforts have been successful, but it has taken time and has unfortunately caused major damage to fall plantings from last year.
Our dedicated Horticulture team has been working hard to make Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden the best it can be. If you have any questions please feel free to ask a member of our team, volunteer your time to help us weed and mulch or donate to the Garden to help us maintain this amazing place we all love.
