Again, my six pictures are not from my own garden, which incidentally, is not at all interesting. Instead, these pictures are from the biggest site I work at. It is many acres, with some very big features.
1. Big lawns are acres of turf. The kid in front of the building in the distance shows how big the building and lawn is. This is the biggest of three big lawns.
2. Big trees are very common here. These are coastal redwoods. There are also big Douglas firs and ponderosa pines.
3. Big water features are not constructed backyard fountains or koi ponds. This is Bean Creek, which flows into Zayante Creek less than half a mile away. It is more than a hundred feet below where the picture was taken.
4. Big shovels are necessary for working in such big gardens.
5. Big garden sheds and big garden carts made by Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet are also very important.
6. Big insects are quite at home in such big gardens.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Beautiful moth . Closely resembles a Luna Moth in my area . Could you please tell me what it is ?
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I really do not know what it is. I believe it is a cecropia moth, Hyalophora cecropia. We know them only as gypsy moth; but they are not really gypsy moths. Although rare, and usually limited to where the maple trees are, several have dropped into our yard from the ponderosa pines above.
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Wow that is BIG. The house and grounds look wonderful, must be great to work there. The best things is the butterfly though, beautiful!
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Oh, it is not a house. It is a conference center.
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Cool house and gardens! Those trees…I would love to see those. X
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Oh, someone else just mentioned the house. It is really a big conference center. It would be a HUGE house.
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Oh well that makes sense! I was imagining a Gone with the Wind style staircase in there…..what a lovely place to work though.
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It must take a BIG crew to keep those gardens well groomed! Do the creeks ever cause problems? Love the moth!
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Actually, the gardens are very minimal. We have a grove of nice big rhododendrons that need only minimal work. We really try to let the natural forest do the landscaping for us, with only a few added features like dogwoods, flowering cherries, azaleas, hydrangeas and so on. The lawns are a big part of the work. Anyway, there are only two of us for the whole area. There is a third who maintains the roads, bridges and trails. He sometimes helps us. The creeks take care of themselves. Mud slides are frequent, and often destabilize huge redwoods, which is a problem at times. Besides the two main creeks, there are small brooks that flow from springs. They actually take more work because they flow through landscaped areas.
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It’s beautiful! It sounds as if you’ve designed grounds that are pretty easy to take care of, except perhaps for the creeks and any damage they may do. Looks ideal for the venue!
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I did not design them. Some of the grounds were developed in 1906, and the landscape has been evolving and expanding since then. Much of what we do is simple (ha ha) ‘vegetation management’, which shows off the forest trees better. The best parts of the landscapes are the natural features.
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Oh, ok — but I do agree with you that the best parts of landscapes are usually the natural parts — this sounds lovely, though, and I’m sure the work you do enhances that!
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Thank you, but really, we just expose what is already there, and maintains bits and pieces of synthetic landscape. . . and a whole lot o’ lawn.
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I like the Big Shovel.
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I don’t. It makes a big mess. It is necessary sometimes for some of the big shrubbery we need to dig up.
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I see what you mean about it all being big. How amazing gardening on this scale. And what an amazing moth, it doesn’t look real.
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They are normally rare, but a few have been falling into the corporation yard from the ponderosa pines above.
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That is one big garden to look after. But it is possibly much easier to look after than all my fiddly pots (which, incidentally, I am downsizing by 2 a day)
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It is actually not as much work as it looks like. Mowing the big lawns takes a long boring time, but is not too much work. Most of the landscaped area is rather unrefined, so we do not even need to be neat and clean about it.
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