A Rotary delight

     In 2012 I built two moss gardens at Rotary Botanical Gardens in Janesville, WI, about 50 miles west of my home.  They have a Japanese garden, and as virtually all gardens in Japan have extensive moss gardens, it made the gardens at Rotary more authentic.
     On this past Monday, I spent six hours doing spring cleanup work there.  Plus, I replaced some mosses where birds and other critters did damage.
     The first three photos show the garden at the south entrance.  Surprisingly, after five years, this garden is doing better than the other one, primarily because it gets no sun, as does the main garden, shown in the last four photos.  The second garden, split in two by a walkway (the last photo shows that garden from the opposite side of the first three), has several Thalictrum dioicum (Early Meadow Rue) planted in it, though it was just emerging on Monday.  It gets about 18 inches by mid-May.
     I fasten the moss on the big limestone rocks with 100% silicone caulk.  In a few months it will send down rhizoids, root-like attachments, which connect it to the rock.  Eventually it will spread over the rock, growing from a half inch to an inch each year.