Save the dates
and other fun stuff..
A quick newsletter to let you folks know what’s growing on at the arboretum!
On Sunday, June 14th, we have Levi O’Brien teaching 2 different classes.
Tree Identification & Woodlore.
To learn more and to sign up, click here for Tree ID
To learn more and to sign up, click here for Woodlore
Both these classes are for all levels of experience, and I can tell you from having taken both that there is always so much interesting information that he shares. I highly recommend taking one, if not both, classes. We have been fortunate to have him back for a third year, and each time the information he shares gets richer and richer!
On Saturday, June 20th, in partnership with the Garden Conservancy Open Day for Ulster County is taking place, and there are some wonderful private gardens that will be opening their garden gates for visitors to come check out, get inspired, and ask questions while supporting a wonderful organization that preserves gardens of all types. If you have never partaken in this event, I highly recommend it. Check out the garden guru Margaret Roach’s NYTimes article from last year on why we should all take advantage of this unique event.
We decided to hold our 6th Annual Art in the Garden Event on July 4th this year. This free event is an opportunity for us to celebrate another of our passions: ART! So bring your visiting friends and family and check out the work of the duo artists called Nervous System. We will also be hosting several pop-up artists for the day, doing interactive work, in addition to the gardens being open for folks to tour through.
The remainder is a little less newslettery and a bit more visually inclined due to the fact that I have begun editing the manuscript for our next book, due for a 2027 spring release and I am spending way too much time in front of the computer!
A cautionary word about the Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB). A native blight, Corylus americana has co-existed with this blight while its European cousin does eventually dies from it. We have noticed this present on plants that are older and established, and our 20+ year old ‘Rote Zeller’ has branches that exhibit the infection. There is little that can be done about it, and we have fully removed other European plants like ‘Harry’s Walking Stick’ (Corylus avellana), despite giving it all sorts of mud and Saran Wrap treatments! See my video below, mudding an infected branch- taken back in April 2024.
American Hazelnut is a wonderful multi-limbed, large shrub or small tree- but its nuts are small, which is a bit of a drawback for most growers. Luckily, many hybridizers have been working for years crossing both the European & the American, and there are some wonderful hybrids, two of which we grow called ‘Geneva’ & ‘Slate’ which produce sizable nuts that are extremely tasty and resistant to the blight!
The Annual Plant Sale was a BIG success. Thank you to all our members who pre-ordered plants and to everybody else who came out this past Saturday and bought lots of cool things. We still have lots of plants for sale, but you must come in person to purchase them.
In my last newsletter, I asked you to consider donating to help us expand our propagation area. Thank you to those who did contribute, but it was really a drop in the bucket. If everyone reading this donated $5, we would reach our goal of $5000 to redo the propagation area. That means doubling the size, building twice as many raised beds (another 8), fencing everything in from deer, and making a workbench station to actually pot things up. Please consider helping us! To donate and learn more, click here.
Time to get kicking on the manuscript edits.
Thanks for reading along!
See you in the gardens,
Allyson