Rainy day work: plant shipping....Azalea 'Dimity' and much more

We did a lot of sorting and labeling and packing and addressing today and eventually shipped out 30 some boxes of plants. Camellia x 'Anacostia' is our introduction. Stachyurus praecox var. 'Matsuzakii' is not our discovery but we highly recommend it. The various conifers are plants that we produced as part of the monumental reconstruction of the Gotelli Collection. Chris, Mariya, George, and a few propagators have been working for years taking cuttings and growing them on to produce plants to replace many of the existing Gotelli confers that have outgrown their aesthetic. It's a huge project and one that the rest of the staff is watching with interest. Since it's been going on a few years many of the older larger plants have been removed and their replacements are beginning to have enough size to exhibit some "presence" in the garden. It's going to be along process but we're (they're) far enough in that it's beginning to be exciting. Anyway there were excess cuttings and we've now distributed them to a variety of public gardens and Universities.

Seeing all the plants on the table increased my respect for Mariya's and George's abilities as growers. I order a lot of plants and sometimes I'm happy (mostly) sometimes not. If I opened a box to find one of these assortments I would be more than satisfied.

Part of our shipping includes boxes of paired azaleas: 'Dimity' and 'Bagatelle'. These are Glendale hybrids. Barbara Bullock, the Azalea Curator, is working to reintroduce the Glendales to the commercial world and we distribute two new old ones every year. The top picture, with the oddly blotched fall foliage, is 'Dimity'.