Chesapeake Bay Living: A Year In The Annual Trial Garden

Annual Trial Garden

Written by Karen Harris

When I mention my work as a Master Gardener, and say that I work at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center, AREC for short, most folks, even locals, give me a blank look.  

If I say I work off Diamond Springs Road, where the gardens are, the response is nearly always enthusiastic, and that warms my heart.  A team of devoted volunteers tends this lovely flower garden, blooming its heart out on a busy, industrial street.  

Our Annual Trial Garden crew begins work each February in the potting shed behind the main building at AREC.  We receive seeds for new annuals (plants that last only until frost, think zinnias and begonias) from seed companies who want to know how they will do in our area.  Throughout the cold months of late winter and early spring, we plant seeds, and later in the season, rooted cuttings, tending them until after mid-April, when frosty nights are less likely.   The young plants are taken from the greenhouse to "harden off" under a shade cloth until they are acclimated to the outside world and the ground has warmed enough to host them.  

One of the many lovely varieties

By mid-June, we have filled our planting beds with a dozen or so of each variety, with extra plants in the shade cloth ready to replace a poor performer, or purloined plant.  With everyone in the ground, you may think our work is done, but it is just beginning.  Weeding, deadheading (cutting off spent blooms), and measuring and evaluating each variety goes on every Wednesday morning from June until October.  

After the Fall Gardening Festival is held, this year it is on September 24th, and the nip of fall promises a frosty forecast, we begin to pull out our beautiful garden, bed by bed, until only the four trees on the corners are left.  When we have spread the last of the mulch over the final bed, we say our farewells for the season.  The volunteers who order the seeds will be hard at work while the winter howls, setting in motion the renewal of our year in the Annual Trial Garden.

About the author: Karen Harris is a writer and editor from San Francisco, now residing in Virginia Beach.   Her story “I Have A Dress” appeared in By the Bay: East Beach Stories.  Her story “Comings and Goings” will appear in Volume II  which will be published in 2017.