It is peak tulip time, our busiest season in the gardens. If mother nature cooperates, we get four weeks of color, resulting from two months of planting. In celebration of our 50th anniversary, staff, extra temporary help, plus our volunteers, planted some 650,000 tulips. A significant increase from the 250,000 we plant each year, this proved to be quite the undertaking. If past years are any indication, the garden should be at capacity.
We have begun a partnership with the Memphis Horticultural Society, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary. Paul Kingsley, one of its founding members, was also a Director of Horticulture at the Dixon. Paul was instrumental in the development of both organizations, and so it seems fitting that the Memphis Horticultural Society meets monthly at the Dixon.
Together we will host foremost speakers in horticulture who will lecture on plants in our collections, from ferns to boxwood to camellias. All of these have historical significance at the Dixon.
In other celebratory news, our newly acquired Dixon tulip, Tulipa 'Margaret Oates Dixon,' has been planted. A pale-yellow beauty, bred in the Netherlands for the cut flower industry, its healthy growth habit and pest resistance make it desirable for production. We have planted hundreds of them in the gardens, but we have left several thousand in the Netherlands to grow as stock plants for future planting at the Dixon. We are working with our Dutch friends to make sure that we will have plenty of them for the next fifty years.
Yours for a verdant Dixon,
Dale Skaggs
Director of Horticulture