Hanging steel cables for vine support

After a three-week absence (trip to Kyushu, Japan), I returned to the greenhouse on a sunny day with mild conditions. It was a joy to walk through the campus from the parking lot, then to pick up a coffee from the cafe on the edge of campus, and then on to the greenhouse. The garden plantings were filling out the flower beds, and the trees in full leaf. With most of the students away on summer holiday, the campus was very peaceful and quiet.

My tasks this week involved the vine bench in room C2 (tropical rainforest). Curator J... has moved some of the vine plants to another table since the current vine table is overstuffed with vines. Many of the plants didn’t have sufficient support or metal cables for crawling up. The new additional table has an overhead cable to which we can attach support cables. I used a bag of hardware from the cabinets in the workroom to crimp together 7 stainless steel cables. I hung each of the cables to one of the newly-moved pots. Then I attached the vines onto the new cables allowing the plants to grow upward rather and entangled with its neighbors.

Meanwhile, Curator J and student T were working on other vining plants in room C3. There, they were moving and trimming both “false jasmine” (Gelsemium sempervirens) and real jasmine (Jasminum officinale) onto a bench next to one of the walls. The bench has a large metal trellis to which the vines were to be attached. Just to add complexity to the concept, there is another plant called Stephanotis floribunda which produces a similar flower and scent, but it is in a different family from real jasmine, J. officinale.

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