UW grounds staff quietly ready bedding plants

While many people traded last week’s gray days for a spring break getaway, five Environmental Services staff diligently prepared for spring’s glorious bloom in Physical Plant greenhouses hidden behind King Hall on Observatory Drive.

Their colorful work is featured throughout campus – most prominently in several flower beds designed to resemble university logos. Those beds are located at Henry Mall leading toward the steps of Agricultural Hall, along University Avenue in front of the Humanities Building and at Lathrop Hall.

The crew members cultivate almost all of their own plants through an annual ritual of cuttings, propagation and seasonal transplanting. They buy only “a few oddities and new varieties like potted vines,” says grounds supervisor Tom Homburg.

Grounds staff member Larry Kraak surveys a potted field of geraniums awaiting pruning.

The greenhouse is located behind King Hall on Observatory Drive.

Potted dusty miller plants await spring planting.

Potted ferns are first used as stage decorations at commencement, then planted outside for the summer.

Kraak wields the shears to prune geraniums at the grounds greenhouse.

Environmental services workers transplant seedlings that will soon be transplanted again into outdoor planting beds around campus.