Be a Horticulture Exhibit Volunteer

Do you like plants, dirt, and science education? Do you think topics like pollination biology and plant domestication are cool? If so, come join our team of Horticulture Exhibit Volunteers!

Volunteers get hands-on horticulture experience working with exhibit plants, and help Pacific Science Center guests learn about the science behind our living exhibits. Horticulture Exhibit Volunteers work in our Tropical Butterfly House, the native plant Pollinator Garden, and in our new garden exhibit about plant domestication, “Civilized Seeds: A History of People and Plants.”

Join the talented crew that beautifies and interprets PSC’s plant exhibits. Become a Horticulture Exhibit Volunteer!

Please click on the link below for more information.

http://pacscivolunteers.blogspot.com/2016/02/horticulture-exhibit-volunteer.html


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Scarlet Paintbrush Blooms!

This week Outdoor Horticulture Volunteer Monica shares an exciting accomplishment for the Life Sciences Department.

Last Sunday while doing our normal rounds to check up on all the plants, we noticed that some are developing buds and then we came across something even more exciting: one scarlet paintbrush is in bloom! This is definitely a proud moment for Jenn Purnell and the Horticulture Volunteers.

Earlier this summer we planted this wildflower in our upper pads’ color bowls to complement the larger plantings of our pollinator garden. The upper pads is a good location for some of the more sunshine-loving specimens.

The paintbrush plant was a bit of a gamble since this plant is primarily wild. It is native to very specific habitats, and has unusual adaptations which make it a challenge to cultivate in the garden.

Scarlet-paintbrush (castilleja miniata) is semi-parasitic; its roots form connections with the roots of other nearby plants, usually grasses. But these restrictions and challenges were not enough to deter our fearless horticulturist Jenn from trying to give the plant a good home! Fortunately we already had some well-established grasses (festuca roemeri) so we had some very good candidates for hosts. Where the grasses didn’t have a very strong presence, we planted more. Over the following weeks there were some tense times as the paintbrushes settled in. Some individuals looked as if they wouldn’t make it. However many recovered and look better and healthier every week.

Jenn’s research and the care provided by all our Outdoor Horticulture Volunteers have paid off. Hats off to them for coaxing this finicky but marvelous plant into bloom. May this flower be the first of many!

Monica Dennis

Monica is one of our many hard-working, enthusiastic Horticulture Volunteers who keep Pacific Science Center’s grounds and Tropical Butterfly House healthy and beautiful.


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Native Plants on the Upper Courtyard

What’s fun, educational, hard work, and gets dirt all over? Replanting Pacific Science Center’s upper courtyard with native pollinator plants!

Last month, Pacific Science Center held an epic Horticulture Volunteer work party to replant the upper courtyard planter color bowls. The color bowls were badly in need of a makeover. An arch restoration project had made watering on the upper pads impossible for several hot, sunny weeks, and many of the bowls were filled with dying plants, dead plants, or weeds. Additionally, none of the resident plants had much of an educational story. What better opportunity to redesign the color bowls to be both beautiful and educational, to support Pacific Science Center’s mission of increasing interest in science?


Life Sciences Manager, Sarah Moore, and Horticulturist, Jenn Purnell, decided to plant a native pollinator garden, because of the educational tie-in to our Tropical Butterfly House Exhibit, and because of the vital importance of pollinators in our local ecosystems. Jenn chose a selection of Puget Sound prairie plants and Eastern Washington plants that could handle the hot, relatively dry conditions of the upper courtyard. All of the plants are native to Washington, and most of the plants are known to support native animals in some way – as nectar and pollen sources, host plants, or habitat. The plants were purchased from Kruckeberg Botanic Garden, a nonprofit that specializes in rare native Northwest plants.

It took six Horticulture Volunteers, two Life Sciences staff members, one Discovery Corps intern, and one guest speaker more than three hours to replant ten color bowls. They removed the dry, matted dead plant material from the color bowls, replaced much of the old, depleted soil with new soil and sand, and carefully planted 95 new plants. With PSC’s annual black-tie event, Festival of the Fountains, just days away, the team worked hard to contain the dirt in tarps and clean-up as they worked. The Horticulture Volunteer Work Party concluded with a well-earned pizza dinner, and a fascinating lecture by native bee photographer, Will Peterman.

The new upper plants are diminutive and botanically interesting. They are adapted to attracting and feeding bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. Because of this, they lack the showiness of many garden cultivated varieties. Because of being replanted in the heat of the summer, several of the plants initially showed signs of transplant stress. But with a careful watering schedule and lots of Horticulture Volunteer attention, most are sending up new shoots and leaves. Some of the plants are bulbs and won’t be seen again until next spring, such as checker lily (Fritillaria affinis) and Ithuriel’s spear (Triteleia laxa).

In addition to being popular with insects and birds, several of the plants have a history of ethnobotanical use. Native peoples of the Northwest used the roots of camas (Camassia leichtlinii ssp., Camassia quamish) and Columbia lily (Lilium columbianum) as a food sources. A few of the plants are named after the explorers Lewis and Clarke, in honor of their botanical documentation work: specifically Lewis’s mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii) and deerhorn clarkia (Clarkia pulchella).

In the coming years, we hope many people will have the opportunity to stroll beneath the arches of Pacific Science Center’s upper pads, and enjoy some close encounters with native plants, insects and birds.

To see a complete list of our plantings, go to http://pacificsciencecenter.org/images/stories/pdf/2013-08-13-Upper-Pads-Plant-List.pdf


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Never Stumped

“Plant down, we have a plant down!”

This is a walkie-talkie call you don’t often hear at Pacific Science Center.

But when wet soil, snow and rough winds toppled one of the Shore pine (Pinus contorta) on our grounds below the Tropical Butterfly House, the Horticulture crew quickly dealt with the problem. They immediately removed the damaged tree, which was obstructing foot traffic around it.




Life Sciences’ Horticulture team, Jeff Leonard and Maida Ingalls, is probably most famous for growing stinky lilies, bamboo, coffee trees, colorful planters and the many wonderful flowers and foliage plants in the Tropical Butterfly House. But some days are less about exotic flora and more about hard, but careful work.

To deal with the downed tree, they first removed all branches and cut down the tree trunk. This left a two-foot stump. Next they hauled away all the debris and cut the trunk into fireplace size pieces. Ever the recycler, Maida took the logs to help heat her home next winter!


Then came time to deal with the stump and attached root ball. This is the hard part! Digging out a root ball that weighs in the neighborhood of 300 lbs. took time, care and the proper tools to get it all out safely. NOTE: No horticulturists were harmed in the making of this story.



Once the stump was removed, it was clear that it still had the wire enclosure and even a bit of burlap from its original planting. This planting occurred before either of our horticulturist worked here. This is a great reminder: when planting, liberate the roots and let them spread out into the soil where they will be living. This tree’s roots were prevented from expanding, which may have contributed to its destabilizing in wet weather.



Finally, Jeff and Maida backfilled the planting hole, leveled the soil, and raked out all leaves and other debris. Arborist wood chips provided by Seattle Tree Preservation were used as base mulch. Soon cedar play chips will be blown over this and adjacent planting beds as the finishing touch.



We are most thankful to Portal to the Publics’ Tamara Yurkanin for documenting this feat of strength through her photojournalism. Thank you again Tamara!

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