Doug and I will be at Bloomsday in the East TN Daylily Society booth. Ya'll come by and say Hi! It is great that it will be free admission this year. And, the vendor area is supposed to be twice the size as previous years.

I also read that our own Ione will be there giving a talk on variegated plants.

Rebecca

I'm sorry I missed the Bloomday! The first time I read that I thought it was in July, not June, duh! Rats.
My husband and I went to Knoxville and drove past the garden, so on the way home decided to walk through. I expected just another local garden with the same old, same old. Wow. We were shocked. It was so beautiful and so many unusual plants. Wish I had my camera, and paper to take notes. We loved the herb garden with the Eucalyptus tree, and the Brugmansia/EE/tropicals area.
What a great garden, I can't wait to go back.
PS, there are a lot of greenhouses there, are they ever open to the public?

No, the greenhouses aren't accessible. Most of them are for research.

I'm not sure of the actual numbers, but I think they had much more just a few years back. They've actually removed many of the beds and replaced them with grass. There used to be at least twice as many trees and shrubs as now. I've heard talk of adding more beds and more plantings, but so far the few new beds they've added have not kept up with removal of old beds. Maybe someone has a plan, but I liked it better before than I do right now.

As for the greenhouses, they are not open to the public. I think some limited access is occasionally available during certain events. Amazindirt might be able to expand on this.

Knoxville has a few of these smaller gardens that seem to have potential, but I get spoiled when I go out of town on vacation. I have been so impressed by some of the places I've been that I decided to start my own public garden. I am making slow progress, but we may all be too old to enjoy it before it really amounts to much.

Hmmm, I'm going to have to start refreshing my browser before sending these messages.

UT did remove beds, but they also added new beds. And they're constantly adding more. I didn't much like all the yanking they did either, but progress will happen no matter what we think. ;-)

Oh, here's a bit of not-yet-widely-known news for ya: Don Shadow of Shadow Nursery is donating a big collection of dogwoods to UT, either this fall or in the spring. It will be a wonderful addition to the gardens. :-)

It's not the number of beds but the large loss of planting bed area that got my attention. Yes, there are some new beds, but they don't come close to making up for the loss. Also, the teeny tiny seedling trees planted way to close to other stuff don't come near making up for the large beautiful trees they chopped down and threw out. I'm all for progress, but adding concrete "art" and planting grass where full beds once stood isn't even close to my idea of progress. I know many others also feel this way. Maybe there is a long term plan that will make the garden better in the long run, but I don't see much sign of it currently.

I miss the pond, bog gardens and the corkscrew willow next to it :(. One of my favorite places to hang out there.

Rebecca

Rebecca --

I was really ticked about the pond too! Sue has promised that a new water garden will be installed complete with electricity (pumps, etc.), but I'll believe it when I see it!

I wish there were something in middle tennessee to do like this

By middle TN, are you talking about Nashville? Are you kidding me? I keep looking at my list of places to visit and wishing they weren't so far west of here.

I've got a huge list of botanically interesting places to visit in TN. One day I'm gonna try to post it on a webpage.

Oh, I love corkscrew willows. Too bad about theirs! University of Wisconsin- Madison lets you walk through all their greenhouses, it's really a treat.

Is there still a plant sale at the UT gardens this Saturday? I don't see anything listed on their website and I hate to drive down there on game day.

I emailed someone at UT and got a quick reply- the sale was moved back because of the UT home football game on Sept 13. The new sale date is Oct 11, 9am-2pm.
If you hunt at the friends of the UT gardens website, you can find info about some of the plants. Look at their Sept. newsletter.