japanese garden rotation - wk 3

Today we have a lot of new labels to replace in the Japanese garden. Jeremy is a stickler for replacing old, worn or incorrectly placed labels. As he explains - in a public garden a collection must strive to balance it's education and information for it's visitors, without overwhelming or distracting the eye away from the natural beauty of the plants themselves. With so many plants in a small space (as the Japanese style commands) - the way the labelling is done here is even more important.

Many new labels searching for a perfect match.

Luckily Jeremy is not quite sure exactly where all the new labels need to go since he ordered them a few weeks ago, so it becomes a fantastic exercise for me in Plant Identification. As we move around the garden searching, we of course notice more labels that need replacing, so I offer to record the details to type up later and submit to the 'labeling' department in the resources section of RTBG. I also add a description column to help Jeremy identify where each plant in situated in the garden. Later in the office we record the actual bed letter (A-Z) according to the garden's plan. This type of good record keeping will make it much easier to find the plant later when the new labels are ready to place.

A beautiful and early flowering specimen of Magnolia stellata
has its label replaced.

After lunch we get onto some transplanting and replanting. Some Azaleas Ken and I planted earlier in a bed need to be spaced out more to allow each plant room to grow into a mature form. So this is a perfect opportunity to showcase my planting technique for signing off this unit! Firstly I lift the young plants from the soft soil gently with a fork. After deciding on the new placement - four need to be removed and three moved into a better spot. I scrape back the top layer of mulch to expose the soil and cultivate the soil to a decent depth and width, breaking up any huge lumps. I then place the plant in the new hole so the soil level is the same as the top of the plants soil level. Back fill and gently compress to remove any air pockets. Place the plant label to the left of the plant as per the gardens labelling system. Smooth over and replace the mulch. Give a good water in. 

After the plants have been re-arranged and replanted.

After this we have four plants in need of a new home. Jeremy thinks a bed that has recently been cleared of two large shrubs will be just the spot. If not we can easily lift and remove them again at a later date. For the moment they are in need of a cool place to rest their roots, so we start to dig. This bed turns out to be quite root bound and dry underneath the mulch layer, so will need some attention (deep watering and organic matter added and dug through) in the days to come. For now we water in deeply and head for afternoon tea.

The new Azaleas 'Red Wing' in place.

After finding and replacing the remaining plants we head to the resource centre to complete the latest label entries onto the spreadsheet and then it's pretty much home time! A great day all up with at least 10-15 more botanical names crammed into my brains storage system!