Ball Seed held their annual Customer Day on Friday, July29, in The Gardens at Ball. Nearly 1,200 customers attended this event, which included garden tours, seed lab tours, seminars and of course, a picnic lunch! While this garden party is mainly directed to view the beautiful containers and landscape plantings of seed and vegetative raised annuals, we had great traffic through the Darwin Perennials Garden.
Overall the Perennial Garden was still in good color with good attention to our row trials of TC propagated Echinaceas (the Baja Burgundy Sombrero was outstanding!) and the new UpTick Coreopsis series, in particular Gold & Bronze. Many guests took photos of the dinner-plate size flowers of Zone 3 hardy, Luna Hibiscus (from sister company Kieft Seed).
It has been fun watching this garden from early spring and throughout the spring as various varieties come in and out of bloom. Most customers would have missed the stunning mid-May flowering of Alyssum Golden Spring combined with Veronica Venice Blue. The UpTick Coreopsis also continue to flower for much of the summer and fall and most likely right up to the first heavy frost. If you are ever in the Chicago area, we would love to show you around the garden. So much to see and learn.