Koi In The Garden

[MikeM]

The Harry P. Leu Botanical Garden in Orlando has a weekend plant sale each year that draws thousands of plant crazies from across the region. Many of the various plant societies set up sales areas selling rarities in their area of interest...bromeliads, daylillies, native plants, tropical fruits, roses, etc, etc. The dozen or so plant societies are joined by another dozen or so specialist commercial nurseries, plus garden art folks and the like. This year for the first time the Orlando Koi Club participated. We got about 150 aquatic plants from a nursery we know, including such things as the native swamp hibiscus; and we brought in 70 inexpensive tosai from Quality Koi... lots of metallics, gin rin, doitsu...and a couple of the little Kujaku looked pretty good!

It was a great time for those of us who pulled it together, and the public enjoyed our different approach to what should be the focus of the garden.

[MikeM]

We had a few big gals on display. Their tank served well as the place to float sold tosai while their new owners wandered around the 80 acres of gardens visiting the multitude of sales venues.

[MikeM]

Saturday was a busy day. Out of the 70 tosai, less than 25 were unsold when the gates opened on Sunday. The day ended with a half dozen unsold.

We had a surprise visitor Sunday afternoon. Carl Forss came through and dropped in to take in the event... and he left with a huge garden cart full of bonsai, garden sculpture and various exotics. The guy has an eye for more than koi.

[MikeM]

This was a nice little event for our club. We made a few hundred dollars for the treasury, signed up 8 or so new members, had a hundred folks pick up club literature, and literally thousands who came heard of our club's existence for the first time. We had a few plants left over, and a few koi. These will become raffle items at the next club meeting.

Koi are not just living jewels. They are also swimming flowers.

[luke frisbee]

maybe you need to change your outlook...
Flowers are really vegetative koi

[HenryC]

Glad to hear everything went well. Sorry I did not make it out there. If you spoke to Carl, he could have told you I was at home busting my a$$ finishing up the back yard. Carl stopped by on Saturday to see the pond now that everything is finished up. I have been bad about updating my construction thread over here. I'll post updates today.

Henry

[Russell Peters]

Looks like fun with fish.