Plantstravaganza!

Plants in place

Today was Day 1 of the 2 day Planting Party marathon we devised to get all 800 plants that were delivered this week in the ground, safe and sound.

I woke up at 5.30am with a very uneasy feeling that it might be asking a bit much from everyone to make his happen. Matt and I were up at the garden shed picking up tools by 7.45am and met Emily and Ryan for 2 hours of plant placement from 8am to 10am. Nate and John came at 9am to join us.

Nate fixing the fence

A relentless stream of plants left the Regent's parking lot, Emily and Ryan coordinating sets of about 35 plants per grouping. With 4 groupings designed by me, and each grouping being repeated 7 times down the street, it was a straightforward though hectic task to drop them off on the path for me to place in the exact spot they were to be planted. Randy from SF Scrap metal generously donated his time and equipment again to use a forklift to move pallet loads of plants for us.

Tina from Baked dropped off some delicious pastries in the middle of all this - what a treat! Everyone really enjoyed those. Especially the lemon bars!

Heads down...

At 10am the volunteers were supposed to arrive, and Emily and I had calculated we'd get about 5 hours of work out of them before they dropped from exhaustion. The initial trickle of helpers was slow, but by 11am a band of people led by Carlin were planting their way down from the top of the street, almost faster than I could place plants ahead of them!

Matt coordinated moving the large Agaves into place, and removing pups from them for later use, with Ryan. Everyone worked quickly and cheerfully and by 1:30pm we'd done about 20 of the 28 groupings!  Jim and Paloma coordinated pizza for everyone from Goat Hill Pizza, and we ate and drank heartily.

Matt and Ryan on Agave duty

After lunch we plowed on, managing to complete all but 4 groupings. Fresh and enthusiastic volunteers showed up to invigorate the crew, and people jumped right into moving mulch into bags to take up to Pennsylvania Garden. Emily coordinated a team spreading mulch there - and guess what? Now we don't need to set up a mulch delivery in spring! Miracle.

Finally by 4:30pm we'd pretty much had enough, and started waving goodbye to people. We picked up all the trash and empty pots, put away all the un-planted plants for tomorrow's session, and took all the tools back to the shed.

Jackie and I collected up and labeled the saved Agave pups, and I took the trash and recycling home. (Almost) DONE!

Before...

After!

A million thanks to all the volunteers from today - Bruno, Mary, Jan, Bette, Mary, Angela, Lissette, Joshua, Dominic, Rich, Luke, Jennifer H., Jennifer L., Diane, Cath, Mike, Matt, Rob, Roxanne, Ian, Tanya, Nate, Ross, Ashley, Trina, John, Carlin, Jackie, Randy, Eliot, Gillian, Heather, Riley, Anna, Bruce, Maulik, Jessica, Janet, Paloma, Jim, Bonnie, Beth  - you are all amazing!  Hope we didn't miss anyone here!

More photos by Emily can be seen by clicking here.

Now, who has any energy left for finishing this job on Sunday? :)