Hey everyone,
This is totally OT, but I'm having my second snow day in a row. Lots of very heavy snow and ice. I've been getting bored after catching up on homework, so I started some plans for this spring. Aside from the plant sale I'm putting together at school, I'm doing a community service project (200 hour horticulture projects look good on resumes). My school has a big square of artifical wetlands which serves as runoff for the baseball and soccer fields as well as the lower parking lots. I have about two hundred hardy hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos) seeds that I'm going to get started in the GH on Friday. The wetland has a 50' walkway that leads out into the center of the water. Mostly the plant life consists of cat-tails, sedges, and blue flag iris. I'm planning on lining the boardwalk with the Hibiscus. The area is under water at some points in the year and dry at others, with lots of organic matter and runoff. I'm figuring its about perfect for them, and assuming the rabbits and deer don't just munch them all down, they'll make a very long lasting feature to the landscape. I've grown the species before and started them from seed, but never on a large scale. Also, how would I keep them from becoming the salad bar for whatever passing herbivore wanders by? I have plastic deer guards in abundance, but I don't know how well that would work for small plants. Any input would be welcome.
Peace,
Nate

Nate you should contact the Cheasapeake Bay Foundation. They'll provide all kinds of info. Possibly plants and funds also. We have a courtyard at my kids elementary school. A number of years back we got a grant from the Bay Foundation to build a wetland area. The Paint Branch Watershed is in this area and the Little Paint Branch Tributary runs through our neighborhood. It's one of the last remaining natural Brown trout spawning areas so it's a big deal around here. Where you are is even closer to the Bay and I'm sure they'd be interested in helping you. It turned out to be (and still is) a great learning experience for the kids, not to mention it's just beautiful.

The nature center here surrounds all the new plantings with either deer fencing or chicken wire. The wire needs to be sunk a few inches underground because the rodents will try burrowing to get to the plants. The majority of the center is just left to reseed on it's own and most of it is wetlands. The rabbits aren't as big of a problem as the muskrats and beavers. It took almost 2 years for the state to trap and relocate a pair of beavers that were destroying trees. Not only on the nature center property but our yards also!

We didn't get snow, just lots of sleet and ice. I'll have to start picking up broken tree limbs once I can walk outside without breaking my neck! Good luck with your project.
Karyn

Snow day here too Nathan, 10" worth in the past 24 hours!





But indoors I am looking at these....





Forum Editing Tech
Zone 5b

Hope you guys back east stay warm and don't have to drive in this weather. And thanks to all you who have blooms and can post them for the rest of us who don't!