Hello to all you lovely visitors, Denise and I have come to the end of our weekend and all I can say is, the end. The end of this practical weekend at Fanshawe College marks our last task to do before officially saying we are graduated in the program! It’s been on hell of a run and we’ve had such a good time, we made sure to apply all those skills the wonderful staff here has taught us.

First off, what would a Horticulture class be hoping for in tail end of April? Praise that it is that time the weather warms up, clothing becomes lighter and the working days with 3 layers are over! Not this weekend, the weather was all over place… snow, rain, sun and heavy wind were among us but thankfully all those previous class practical sessions throughout winter really ‘hardened us off’ (no plant pun intended)

 

 To kick things off, Jeff took us for a tour around the campus listing off and pointing our certain things to do. First tasks on deck included relocating a Pinus heldreichii from the within the Woodland garden area, planting in a more open, sunny filled spot about 50’ away. This was done with Cassie and Sijia, another pair of students as it was quite a job digging, lifting and transplanting an 8’ specimen! Immediately after that we moved on over to the entrance of H building to transplant a Oxydendrum arboretum from in between two large spruce trees as it was being over taking and not being supplied enough of its cultural needs!! The back of R2 was the home to be for this poor specimen, as this tree prefers a wet, soggy soil and on a rainy day like that, this area sure did show us the swamp it can be.

 

 

 

Now time for the spring clean up! After successfully transplanting the trees, we moved on over to the front of T building are dove into our bed clean ups. Weeds, weeds and more weeds, and oh, garbage everywhere too. Scanning for all the weeds and removing them using a fork but being tedious enough to  not rip up the landscape fabric was a little tricky and those weed runners just like to shoot along that stuff and cause huge problems spreading weeds everywhere! Thankfully the teachers had such patience in teaching bed maintenance and weed removal as that landscape fabric causes difficulty and would have been torn out.

So, what is the worst thing about a contractor on a school property removing snow? He pushes all his salt filled, gravel packed snow into all the garden beds! Seeing as rocks and dust really give no added nutrition to the soil, we figured we should take it out. 

 While moving on down through the front of T building, we ran across such tasks as cleaning out debris stuck within plants of the garden bed. Sometimes you just have to wonder if ground cover plants should really be called garbage collecting plants because that’s all they ever seem to do! After garbage picking each bed from T building to A builing, we found that  Heuchera ‘Obsidian’, Epimedium xversicolour ‘Sulphureum’ and Aurinia saxatilis ‘Gold dust’ seem to outdo all those plastic containers reading ‘Garbage’ on them… which is really sad.

 After a little cleaning, we now were set on giving the beds a little haircut to shaping everything up for a healthy and form producing plant come summer time. Have you ever used hedge shears to remove a Barberry shrub? Make sure the gloves you use are thick because the thorns on that sucker can really give you quite the scratch! Everything from cutting out and removing of the old wood from the Hostas, sniping off all sucker growth found on trees and wood shrubs, cutting out dead and overgrown branches on the Junipers and Euonymus and digging up every weed we could find was conquered. After completion of all that we found ourselves already nearing the end of our Sunday.

 Now with summer on our minds and the end of a day near, we headed back to the tool rooms to wash all tools and finish up for the day. We learned that bed maintenance work isn’t just what meets the eyes as it certainly felt like a more! Prioritizing and working as a team was really the overall factor that allowed us to get everything completed on time.

  All in all for a final practical at Fanshawe College, it sure did wiz by just like the last 2 years!! Reflecting on our day, a real big wave of impact comes over as you reminisce how much has changed and how much we’ve grown into horticulturists. Just like any plant in nature we started from a mere seed, we’re SCAREified, cared for enough by someone to survive on our own and now are off to continue to grow on our own.