Zoo Garden Replanting

Bulb Planting at the MRLS Lily Garden at the Detroit Zoo on Thursday, October 22, 2015. This note is from an email by Alicia Boyd who spearheaded the planting.

  1. On Thursday we had seven individuals there to plant the 60 plus bulbs.
  2. We started out by removing the Dahlia’s around the perimeter,
    1. Planting the last six Silver Mounds
    2. Digging up that large volunteer clump of black eyed Susan’s.
    3. Surprisingly that clump was large enough to be split up and placed around the entire perimeter of the fence leaving 3 feet between each piece.
    4. So next spring instead of plating 4 to 5 flats of annuals, one flat of something to accent the black eyed Susan’s will work out great.
  3. In the attached photos you will notice the silver mound is planted around the entire perimeter of the bed, with approximately 4 feet between each one of them.
  4. We started with the Hall of Fame lilies and planted three of each one of them.
  5. Then we move on to all the other planting them in the same manner.
  6. Without planning, we managed to plant all the bulbs that we had hybridized by Warren and Charlie in the top of the bed closest to the carousel.
  7. Once the map is complete we will referred to this as “the Michigan curve”.
  8. Then we dropped back and did the same around the newly installed clumps of Autumn Sedum.
  9. This job did take a little longer than we expected, we were there 9-noon.

To everyone present on Thursday, thank you so much for being there to help and for your input on the planting scheme. We would like to give a very special thanks to Jeff. He’s a friend of new member Cinda. He joined us with his auger tool on a drill, which made digging the holes for the bulbs a breeze!
Many Thanks!
Alicia