Part One of: Summer Scenery on Campus

On the Fourth of July, I had my first chance to walk around campus and see what Landscape Services had done with the place. Our campus is quite large, so these posts will continue for several days.

This building is very old and historic, so the gardens in front of it are supposed to be showstopping and novel each year. Last year's array, as I recall, was more tropical, but I'm happy with what they did here. This is the best (and most encompassing) shot I could get without standing in the middle of the road.

I don't know what these cattail-like plants are, but they're neat. The not-quite-purple, not-quite-brown of the reproductive parts, paired with the whimsical bending of the spike, catches your eye better than most "typical" flowers. But they're only sporadically placed, which creates a good balance.

These flowers are just about the peppiest I've ever seen. They are clearly also meant to be highlights of this display.

Here's a closer shot of the "cattails."

These plants probably get overlooked by all the passersby, but they're sweet and subtle all at once. I always like flowers that fade to green like these do (white hellebores, for instance).

In terms of thrilling, filling, and spilling, these flowers fill. Because there are so many flower spikes, it's nice that a mix of colors was used. This would blow people off the sidewalk if it was all one color.

These bluebell-esque flowers don't seem to be quite in full bloom yet, but they also exhibit a combination of flair and sensibility--they're bright, but tiny. I wouldn't miss them terribly were they not in this bed, but they're nice enough on their own. They resemble snapdragons.

As you can see, these daisy-like blooms were so blindingly white that they wouldn't really show up on my camera. You can get the idea, though. For all the ground cover and filler plants included here, there are still many patches of bare soil. I wonder if that will change as the season progresses.

Albino cattails? These spikes were my favorites because they are hard to spot, but once you spot them, you can't look away. Bright green and bright pink fading naturally into each other! You don't often see that in nature.

These same plants (plus some petunias and a small tree) were combined in these containers. It's nice to have all that color livening up the beige of the (gigantic) building.

So that's that arrangement! What do you think of it? What could be added, improved, removed?

Next post: neon explosion.