Pictures of our Year continued

Pictures of our Year

May Blog

A big upcoming event for the Botanical Center are on Friday, May 10 which is designated American Public Gardens Day. The garden will officially be opening the Dr. Bill Roston Butterfly House for the season. The Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden will have free entry, and the Center will also be running a free tram service around the Springfield Botanical Gardens from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  The garden has 114 acres of park and gardens! At this time, the Azalea Garden is looking very colorful and the irises are starting to bloom within our massive iris collection. The White Garden is looking good as well as the Hosta Garden and the Dwarf Conifer Garden. The Mizumoto Japanese Stroll Garden costs three dollars normally, but it is well worth it.  This month our group has finished up our final volunteer hours by picking flowers, cleaning up the park, and collecting items for kids classes.  We are so happy to have worked with the Garden this year!!  

Spring Pictures

Spring flowers emerging at the garden!

Snow is taking over in March!

Flowers are beginning to bloom :)

Beautiful flowers

March Madness

There have been many exciting things happening at the garden this month!  The most recent happening was a sundial dedication on Sunday.  The sundial was dedicated to honor Springfield resident Charlotte Collier. Charlotte will be turning 90-years-old next week! Another project that is currently in the works at the Garden is the start of the Master Gardeners' Kitchen Garden.  Lettuce and carrots are the two plants that the center is focusing on planting this week.  One belief workers at the Garden all share is that animals are not a nuisance. Wildlife is part of the attraction to the park so instead of being angry that animals are eating some of the plants, the gardeners plan ahead and plant an extra row.  An important upcoming even for the Garden is a free presentation at 6 P.M. entitled Alpha Meadows: Creating a Garden in the Ozarks 2000-2012. Another exciting event is Katie's Arbor First Friday with Friends on April 5th at 10 A.M. where she will teach the basics of aboretum.  A final upcoming event is the Bonsai Workshop which is presented by the Friends of the Garden.  It is this Saturday April 6th from 1-2:30 at the Springfield Botanical Center in the workshop.  The workshop will focus on how to prune and shape plants in the bonsai tradition.  Our group is looking forward to helping plant flowers and vegetables this month for the Garden! We have been working well as a team deciding which events work for us all to attend in April!

Freezing February!

The Botanical Center is open year-round and continues to host events throughout the winter season.  The biggest project this year at the garden was finishing phase two of the Winter Garden.  The Winter Garden is about an acre wide and it is the biggest garden in the park.  The project ended up costing $27,000 total.  Friends of the Garden membership fees are what paid for the majority of the garden.  The park is two-thirds completed and will finished in the near future.  The reason for the construction of the Winter Garden is to promote year-round visitation of the park.  One challenge that our group has had this semester so far is finding time to volunteer at the Garden. Although we have the time available, there is not much that needs to be done during this season.  When the spring season gets closer though, there will a lot of planting to accomplish.  We can't wait to see all of the flowers in bloom!

Share a leadership quote and a personal accomplishment this semester

My favorite leadership quote is from Max DePree, "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."  I love this quote because it emphasizes the importance of service and not asserting power over others.  My favorite leader is Martin Luther King Jr.  His rise to the top did not come from rallying people with anger or suppressing them.  He gained followers by seeing the needs in his community and helping these people himself.  I want to be the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily without needing a title or a weapon, just like MLK.  I also love this quote because it stresses that leadership requires thanking people. No one succeeds in life without some help from others and I  believe being thankful for these people is a key to success and shows true integrity.  One thing that I have personally accomplished this semester is winterizing the master garden.  This sounds like a trivial task, but in actuality, it took a lot of work and help from others.  One of the tasks needed to complete this project was pulling all of the tomato and pepper plants out of the ground so that new ones could grow in next spring.  This also helped the garden look more appeasing and once the dead plants were gone a passerby could see the beautiful plants that were still alive but previously hidden.  Another task completed in the master garden was pulling up all the shrubs surrounding the garden.  There were about 30 of these creating the perimeter.  Next, I trimmed all the banana plants so that they would not rot over the winter break.  I had to use a pretty large knife to complete this task and it was very fun but pretty time consuming.  Finally, I hauled all the material gathered in this garden to the compost pile.