A part of arboretum operations that visitors may never see is our tree and shrub nursery and propagation facility, tucked away on the edge of the woods behind the OSU Wooster campus grounds maintenance building off Selby Road. We have three polyhouses where we grow plants for our sales, as well as plants that we have propagated or plan to add to the collections in the arboretum. There is also a headhouse potting area, a small toolroom, an office, and two small greenhouses, one with a mist bench for germinating seeds and the other with space for growing seedlings in the winter months. We have two Thursday morning volunteers, Joe Arthur and Tabatha Miller, who are an incredible help in maintaining the nursery, assisting with potting, staking, weeding, as well as seed cleaning and sowing.
Though the plants are beginning to slow down, fall is still a busy time in the nursery. Our major focus in early autumn is preparing for our Autumn Discovery Day plant sale, which is the arboretum’s second largest fundraiser of the year. Leading up to the sale, we must first complete an inventory of items that will be in the sale, which we post to our website around one month prior to the sale so folks have time to research all the exciting new selections that will be offered. This fall there will be well over 100 different selections available, many of which have never been offered before. We then must enter a brief description of every plant, as well as pricing information into our label making software, then print and attach price tags to the plants. We also make picture signs for every plant to help customers identify and learn more about the plants they are considering purchasing, We pull the plants from the nursery in alphabetical order, load them onto trucks and trailers and transport them to the Secrest Welcome Center where the sale will be held. Our amazing volunteers help us unload and arrange the plants for the sale; we truly could not do it without them.
Following the sale, we return remaining plants to the nursery to overwinter for future sales. Hopefully we have beautiful weather, and the fall sale is a success, which means that we will have freed up a lot of space in the nursery. This is a great opportunity to do some rearranging and organizing in the polyhouses. We let the remaining plants settle into dormancy, blowing the leaves out of the houses once or twice a week until it is time to cover the houses with plastic, typically sometime around Thanksgiving. Torpedo heaters are installed to keep the houses just above freezing for the winter.
Fall is also a great time to collect seeds and take cuttings for plants that we would like to propagate for future sales, arbor day giveaways, workshops, and to preserve specimens from our collection. Acorns, seed pods, and cones are collected throughout the arboretum and sown or exposed to a stratification period, mimicking natural winter conditions. Some seeds need to be cleaned or scarified before sowing. Other seeds, like acorns from oak trees, will be placed in water to test for viability. Viable seeds will sink, while non-viable seeds float. Fall is a busy time in the Secrest Arboretum nursery.
–Matt Shultzman, Program Coordinator shultzman.2@osu.edu