Nursery Tour

I realized that I talk about the nursery a lot in my blog and quite a few people don't really know what I'm taking about! Since I'm there every day at work, I took some pictures for a little mini tour so you can see what my nursery really looks like. (Ha, my nursery. It's definitely not MINE, but I am in love with it!) Plus, Erin asked for a mini tour, too!

Ready? Please keep all hands and feet inside the tour bus. We'll start off the pump house.

 

This is where all of the tools, pump, and first aid kits are kept. Every morning Brian from the forestry crew opens up the pump house and we work out of there all day long. I usually close it up at the end of the day. It looks sort of small, but it keeps all of our tools nice and organized!

Inside of the pump house is a set of cabinets where I specifically keep my tools for volunteer groups, etc.

 

Only my boss and I have keys for these cabinets since these tools are expensive and important for the success of volunteer work days. To the right of the cabinets is the big pump for the water source. There's a dial to turn and then the pump starts up and sends water to all of the hook-ups in the nursery.

We'll be moving past the pump house now, to see more of the nursery. Next is the man-made pond that the water is drawn from when the pump is turned on. There's actually a sign that says, "DANGER, sharp drop off. Stay out!" Again, I feel like this was directed at me. Haha.

Now we go to the actual planting beds that I work in every day.  There are 20 sun beds and this is a shot from the very end of the beds. As you can probably see, most of the sun beds are up on a raised bed. When I weed, I just throw the weeds off the side of the bed and scoop them up once a week into the compost pile.

 

Here is a shot of the East planting beds. This was right at 7am so a lot of it was dewy and flattened down. It usually perks up around 11am. Right now we really only have yellow growing in the sun beds!

Here is a shot of the West planting beds. For some reason I spend less time in the West beds because of East beds are a little more needy and delicate. But the West beds are full of sunflowers which are so fun!

I just thought this was pretty in the early morning. :)

I also have 8 shade beds that I take care of, as well. They are right next to the sun beds, but are not raised. Here are the East shade beds. It's fun to work on these beds when its sweltering hot! The shade canopy is made to simulate the sun breaking through the upper canopy of a forest.

And here are the West shade beds! Recently I've been putting a lot of time in these beds because many of the seeds are ready to collect! The white signs indicate what was planted in each bed and where you can find them. Very helpful!

I ALSO have 3 extended beds that are full of little bluestem grass. It's funny - one of the forestry crew seasonals accidentally tilled all three of these beds under when he was tilling between the tree rows. He didn't realize that I was growing grass in these beds! So the grass is a little short, but doing ok after that incident lol.

And because I talk a lot about the forestry crew and their role in the nursery, here are a few pictures of the rows of baby trees. :)

There are a MILLION trees all over the nursery. These are just two shots near the planting beds that I work. It's fun to see them grow from teeny tiny to bigger trees that can be put in the preserves!

And to wrap up our audio tour of the nursery, here are some beautiful pictures of some flowers and plants that are headlining right now:

Sunflower

Yellow coneflower

Great blue lobelia and silky wild rye

Cardinal plant

Thanks for joining me on the nursery tour! I hope you enjoyed what I work with each week! Have a great day! :)