It’s tough to fit in training and gardening education. I long for college days of uninterrupted reading, library, and lab work.

A friend who is curator of the Redcliffe Plantation historic site took a four day and evening brick laying and repair class last week. For our staff, we do lots of travel, but we also bring in a few professionals.

This week, Moore Farm staff invited professionals to spend two days together for an intense workshop on propagation of ferns from spores and other gardening education.

Yes it sounds like a festival for plant geeks. In fact, we only found five professionals who are so into native ferns that they wanted to learn this propagation technique of yesteryear. But this sort of training, challenging ourselves, at any level of horticultural knowledge is exciting and continues the skills handed down for centuries.

June Garden Checklist

Here are some things you can do to your garden in early June:

Divide Crinum, Canna, Elephant ears and other tropicals. This is a great time to pull off little pups and stick them in the ground around mother plants. With all this rain they’ll take root and make your clumps bigger. But only do this if you have a good size established clump.

Plant more Gladiolus and rain lilies so you’ll have a succession of flowers through the summer.

Shear hedges! Even though I use a growth-retarding hormone to treat my hedges and make them grow more slowly once every six weeks is a must.

Guide vines: Yep, we’ve talked about this before. Now, vines have put on lots of growth so not only can you guide them, but you can shear and prune them into check too. I sheared, with gas-powered-shears (sorry Greenies, they’re not even hybrids but then neither are my roses) my antique rose vines last week.

Gardening Education: What’s Looking Good

Rudbeckia maxima (Giant Coneflower)

Yellow Black-eyed Susans up to 9 feet tall. The blueish leaves look great all through spring. BUT now and just after flowering, the leaves look ratty so plant with something to make an outer skirt. A carex or how about Baptisia?

Sesbania punicea (Rattlebox)

Yep, it’s a big wild weed, escaped from South America but its eye candy! This woody shrub grows easily from seed collect and sow them in the next few weeks and youll have great ferny foliage and flowers like ORANGE WISTERIA!

Passiflora cearulea (May Pop)

Most of the crazy flowers are finished now—those flowers that look like 7 different people working different shifts, without a plan. I’ll just add this, says Number 1. I’ll just add this, and so on, until everyone was tired and the poor flowers were way overdone. Now, we have puffy, soft fruits that are fun to pick and throw hard at a wall for that POP which gives them their name.

Onoclea sensibilis Sensitive Fern

GREAT TEXTURE, GREAT COLOR (see picture), GREAT in massive combinations with shade grasses and perennials. I love this as a base all around the dark, shiny leaves of wax myrtles. And for a big, bold surprise, add in some lilies to pop-up in the fens.

Althea syriacus Rose of Sharon

While this is a shrub, it’s invaluable as a backdrop to perennial gardens. Tough and reliable, it’s in full flower now. We have a mass of pink/mauve Aphrodite fronted with a mix of blue salvia. Neither would be much without the other.

Rhexia mariana Meadow Beauty

This little runner flowers for months. You can mow it, shear it and plant it about anywhere. Why do some high and mighty horticulturists, like my dear friend Ethan Kauffman say bad things about it? EK wonders, In flower. Why does the trashiest Rhexia just so happen to be the earliest, longest, and most prolific bloomer?!