Establishment

HOWDY!

I've been here at Moore Farms Botanical Garden for almost two weeks now, but it has felt like so much longer, (in a good way of course)! To be completely honest I came into this internship a little nervous, not knowing what to expect or how things were going to go, but it has been great! I have experienced so much already and have met so many wonderful people in a little less than two short weeks. If this is any indication of how the rest of the summer will go, I am not sure if I will want to leave!

History & Description of the Gardens
Moore Farms Botanical Garden was founded in 2002 by Darla Moore, a South Carolina Native, who desired to turn her ancestral farm lands into a beautiful and educational garden. Over the past 12 years it has grown enormously into a place of enjoyment, research, and pride for the community.


The Garden encompasses numerous areas of attraction that I'll describe briefly below.
Fire Tower Gardens: includes the visitor center, a bog garden, a turf event area, and the signature fire tower that serves at the official entrance to the Gardens

Pine Bay: includes four hundred species of plants native to the coastal plain of South Carolina in the midst of tall pineland

Crape Myrtle Alee: displays rows of Crape Myrtles enclosed by rectangular bordering boxwoods
Formal Garden: includes a symmetrically exploding cottage garden style surrounded by Bay Laurel hedges
Vegetable Garden: includes a great variety of vegetables of different size and texture creating a beautiful look and harvest year round 
Cut Flower Garden: created for ornamental plant material and aesthetics, and used primarily for floral arrangements and displays. 

Green Roof: a structure covering the entirety of a building roof that contains over one hundred species of plants and is used as research to test and display what plant material can tolerate roof-type conditions of the area

Living Wall: a support structure fastened to a building wall that holds over seventy varieties of plants used for research and education

Production Center: includes three greenhouses, an outside nursery, and a storage cooler to produce and hold material for the Garden
Fishing Pond: full of wildlife and exotic aquatic plants

My Endeavors Over the Past Two Weeks

I arrived just in time for the Gardens May Days event. This event opens the Garden to the public, hosts tours, and holds a plant sale. The first day of the event I acted as a floater to get myself more familiar with the Garden and the staff as well as helping run the plant sale. The second day of the event I aided a staff member in guiding the Green Roof, Living Wall, and Production Center tours. This task made me get familiar with the Garden's history and garden area descriptions real quick as I was giving the tours by the end of the day.
This past week was more of a cleaning out and replacing week for most of the Garden, as it is right around transition time from spring to summer here in South Carolina. So I spent most of my time in various parts of the garden (Main House Beds, Formal Garden,and Green Roof) cleaning out beds and replacing new fresh plant material ready for the summer season.



Long Term Projects

I live on-site in what is called the Intern House on the grounds of the Garden. Right outside the house is an area with a little more than three hundred different cultivars of Daylilies. Their purpose is for observation of bloom time per specific cultivar. This is one of my small tasks over the summer, to record this information so the Garden can be more familiar with these specific cultivars. So far thirteen have come into bloom and I'm excited to further their documentation for the duration of summer. Below are a few of my favorites.

 

Hemerocallis 'Baruch'

Hemerocallis 'Kate Carpenter'

 

Hemerocallis 'Ming Toy'

Another project the Garden is undergoing that I'm aiding in this summer has to do with their Bay Laurel hedges. They have developed an insect scale problem. To handle the situation best, they're doing somewhat of an experiment with it first. Earlier this week, I took several samples from different sections of the hedges and drove them to the Clemson Extension Service to be tested for the types of scale present. The plan from there is to spray different types of insecticides on the different hedge sections and then take another set of samples to compare what insecticide worked on what scale and so on. From there the Garden can determine the best way to solve their problem. I'm also excited to be involved in seeing this project pan out. It is not the most glamorous project but it is part of the job and needed to gain a well-rounded understanding of the workings of a botanical garden. 



STAY TUNED
A couple more interns will arrive later this week, the other horticulture intern and the GIS intern so many more experiences and learning are to come. Quickly following their arrival, that next week we will take our intern trip to NYC and explore a few of the botanical gardens there. Continue following as I can't wait to continue sharing my experiences with you all!