Today was my first day working in the main conservatory with Karl Gercens and his team, Lauren, Lorie, and Lauren. In the am I watered the Fuchsia baskets over the lawn in the main. The lawns, and the citrus trees (it is essentially a orangery) are historical, and are permanent. The fuchsia baskets that hang over the lawn are also fairly permanent features. According to Lauren, the lawn is one of the hardest things to keep alive and looking good due to it not getting much light, often being wet, and having fungal and compaction issues. It is on a strict fertilizing and watering regime. For this reason the fuchsia baskets have pans hanging underneath that catch any excess water, these can be emptied into a bin. The baskets are lowered to the lawn by winch, watered and then the lawn then is cleaned of any debris by hand. All in all quite a process.
After watering baskets I groomed plants (deadheading, picking yellow leaves) with Karl. Chatted with him, good chap and knowledgeable. He has a website, http://www.karlgercens.com/.
At 1030 we had a all staff meeting in the ballroom with Paul Redman the Director. As he put it, it was the "state of the union". effectively a catch up of the past year, both events (lillitopia, orchid extravaganza, mum festival, Christmas...) and financially. It was refreshing and interesting to hear Longwoods finances discussed transparently.
In the afternoon I did some plant profiles for Karl. Hes trying to cataloguee a list of plants commonly used in the conservatory, both those that work and those that don't.
That night I started the shade perennials course. It was a great introduction, and he (David Culp) seems like a good teacher. He spent the first half of the lecture introducing shade, what it is, and why he likes it. He raised the good point that as gardeners it is almost always necessary to garden in shade at some point. But we shouldn't think of shade as a disadvantage. In his opinion shade has more nuances, than sun. It is not as blatant or as obvious as sun, but can be just as effective. Shade has a lot of textures. Some quotes I liked
Texture= emotion in garden, colour= mood
texture
bold, vertical, ferny (soft?). Elements of all combine to give a balanced form
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