Birth of Coffee

On Saturday, The Birth of Coffee Exhibition photographer and author Daniel Lorenzetti and Linda Rice Lorenzetti visited their exhibit at the Majorie McNeely Conservatory and signed books and visited guests. (and some staff too!)

The exhibition runs through Wednesday and has some fantastic photos of the many cultures involved in the coffee industry.

Summer is Coming!

The Sunken Garden is busy this week!! The Spring Show, with all the tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and lilies, has been recycled. The thousands of bulbs are being prepared in the garage for the Spring Bulb Sale held the morning of May 17th. The soil and flowers are removed from the bulbs and then the bulbs are allowed to dry. Then they will be bagged and offered for sale!

The installation of the Summer Show is progressing. Visitors can peak through the glass doors into the Sunken Garden and see the gardeners busily planting geraniums, salpiglosis, lilies and other beautiful summer annuals. About half the room is planted as of lunch time today. There will be gardeners working in the Sunken Garden during the next couple of days to finish the room in time for the opening on Saturday morning at 10:00 AM. Besides the planting, there is watering and grooming that will occur before the room can be presented to visitors.

The starlights, hanging above the pool in the Sunken garden, were cleaned yesterday. These fixtures were installed some time after 1927 but before 1940. They are lowered down by hand and the outside is cleaned with a mix of alcohol and water. They are then returned to their place above the pools.

While all this is happening inside, the Blooming Butterfly Exhibit is taking shape outside by the Carousel. The structure is up and there is much activity surrounding it! And the tubs for the Victoria Water Platters are being installed today! The platters will not go out into the pools until early June but the pools are being prepared for their arrival. The Japanese Garden opens tomorrow. Follow the signs in the North Garden and they will lead you to one of the most beautiful gardens in Como Park.

Even with the cool outside spring weather, summer is coming to the Conservatory!

Cloudy April day

It has been raining most of the day today. The outside crew has been dodging raindrops as they wait for mulch deliveries and continue the spring garden cleanup. There is an example of a raingarden on the Visitor Center Plaza. Come and take a look and get ideas!

There is a crew working on the Como Blooming Butterfly Exhibit, getting the metal structure set up in the next few days---it will look like a caterpillar when it is finished! More butterfly attracting plants are being transplanted in the growing areas to larger pots. It will be a beautiful display starting in June!

There are only a few more days remaining for the Spring Show in the Sunken garden. The show ends Sunday April 27th. We will have a group of about 8 volunteers removing the plants from the beds and saving the bulbs for the upcoming Bulb Sale on May 17th. The bulbs are stored in the Conservatory garage where volunteers sort, remove the flowers and soil and eventually bag up the bulbs for sale. This is a great opportunity to buy those bulbs that were so beautiful in the Spring Show!

The Summer Show design is ready and the plant material in the greenhouse are looking great. After the volunteers remove all the non-permanent plant material from the Sunken Garden on Monday, soil will be a added to any low spots and the remaining soil will be turned and aerated. Ivy may be trimmed. The Arborvitaes were pruned before the last show and will not need pruning until the Fall.

Plants will be shuttled on carts from the growing range greenhouses to the Sunken Garden starting about Tuesday and planting will continue through the week. The Summer Show is scheduled to open Saturday May 3rd at 10:00am. Geraniums, lilies, roses, salpiglossis, petunias and statice are a few of the plants that are scheduled to be in the show.

The Japanese Garden is scheduled to open May 1st. The pool is being filled today. Volunteers and staff have been spending many hours grooming and pruning to get the garden ready for the upcoming opening.

There is so much going on as we move into the spring growing season!

It is looking like spring!

It is the end of another week here at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory. There has been alot of activity outside in preparation for the spring plantings. The outside crew has been pruning, cleaning, mulching, cutting back perennials and grasses and getting those pesky fall leaves out of the way. A group of plants, slated to be part of the new butterfly exhibit, arrived from Florida on Wednesday. We have been transplanting and repotting other plants in the growing areas that will also be used in the butterfly house. The last group of tulips have been tucked in to the Sunken Garden plantings. There was a large change in plant material today so the Sunken Garden looks very fresh and smells wonderful! There is a little over a week left of the spring show in the Sunken Garden before the big change to summer! It is absolutely beautiful!

The Victoria Water Platters are over a month old now. They were started from seed the end of February and the first seedings are already getting comfortable in the outside greenhouses. The leaves are about 2-3" wide. Watch for these plants out in the pools in front of the Visitor Center sometime in late May to early June.

We are getting ready to start the cuttings for the Gates Ajar plantings in the next few weeks. We are actually bringing in a group of volunteers to help with the hundreds of cuttings that are needed to complete that planting. Planting the Gates has taken about 100 hours in past years!

Stop by and enjoy our Spring weather!

BOB is in the greenhouse!

Before we opened to the public at 10:00 AM today, there was a flurry of activity in the Parlor. It was time to move the tiny titan back to the greenhouses where it can grow and hopefully produce a huge leaf and then someday, another flower! It was bittersweet to move the huge pot. It was exciting as the Parlor has not provided the best growing conditions for the past week and a half for this plant. It is good to get it into a more controlled environment. But it was also sad in that all the activity surrounding BOB's inflorescence and malodorous scent have come to an end. It was so wonderful to see all the visitors each day in the Conservatory and their excitement about a stinky flower!! What started with a wave of activity a few weeks ago, has now ended quietly and behind the scenes. Now the challenge is to keep this great plant alive and growing well! The Horticulturists at the Conservatory are definitely ready for that challenge!

So on this beautiful spring like day, there is still plenty to see and do here at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in Saint Paul, MN! Come join us for a sneak peek at spring!

BOB RIP

While the mighty inflorescence flags and the alluring scent of decay fades, the most important phase in the life of a flower begins: reproduction. There is evidence that the male flowers are now maturing and slowly releasing pollen. Success depends upon receptive female flowers and the genetic viability of this particular Corpse flower to produce seed. This morning the Horticulturist collected pollen samples for distribution to other scientific institutions active in the study and breeding of Amorphophallus titanum.



On Monday, BOB will be returned to the warm production tropical greenhouse to conclude seed production (should we be so fortunate) and die back to the ground for a dormant period of 'rest'. The plant will continue upon a vegetative cycle of growth in producing leafy shoots and foliage while fattening up the corm until the next flower develops. When that will be, we can't say with certainty. It is part of the intrigue of this remarkable charismatic flora!

Bob Hangs In There

Although the pungent aroma is very faint, Bob is still available for viewing throughout the weekend at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Como Park.

The death of a flower....

The Amorphophallus titanum at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, after a very short bloom, is showing signs of it's own death, the peculiar odor is very faint. It is starting to wither and collapse. It will stay in the Parlor for a few more days and then it will moved off display.

There is always something to see here!

WOW! What a day!

After a day of really emitting a nasty odor, this morning finds the Amorphophallus with just a little fragrance. There is the lingering smell of dead mice floating about the Conservatory but nothing as intense as yesterday. The smell still pulses from the base of the inflorescence. The spathe seems to have stopped opening and is already starting to wilt. There is actually pollen starting to be released! That is the next step in this flowering process. We hope to gather the pollen and send it to Gustavus Adolphus College soon so that it can be stored and made available to other institutions.

It had been hoped that there would have been a wonderful maroon colored "skirt" surrounding the center structure when we came in to work this morning. The time lapse camera did capture the slight unfurling overnight. If wishes always came true.....
If you visit the Conservatory today, BOB will be in the Parlor and available for viewing. We are approaching the end of this blooming cycle and the huge pot and accompanying pot with the tall leaf will be returning to the growing area possibly as soon as this weekend. The pot has been turned this morning so that the opening in the spathe is visible from the front. That opening was on the left side and a bit towards the back for the past week.

There has been wonderful media and visitor interest and attendance at this event! It has been fun to show off this wonderful plant!

It was well worth the effort and wait on our part! There were many lessons learned and the hope is that the NEXT time we get a flower, it will be bigger and better!

The end is close??

It has been a very busy day here at the Conservatory!! Lots of visitors stopping in to see and ssmell the tiny titan! This morning, the stench was almost overwhelming. Now, at almost 6pm, there are waves of aroma but it is not as strong and pungent. The smell has been described as : old diapers left in the garbage for days, a dead deer left in the sun for 3 days, old gym socks and just gross! The spathe has opened more and we are hoping that over the course of the night, it might fully expand. It is hoped that it might look like a tutu surrounding the large spadix in the middle. The color in the spathe is showing but the tips of the spathe are starting to dry out. We have been spraying the inflorescence with distilled water at intervals to try and keep it from drying out as rapidly.
Tomorrow may bring the end for this beautiful "flower". We really hope that it will open up and look similar to the photo at the bottom of our blog. No promises! After it is through blooming, it will stay on display for a more few days, then be moved back to the growing house where it wll go dormant and then eventually form a large leaf. And the process continues!
It was a great show today and we will see what tomorrow brings!