By the time visitors notice the first blossoms of spring at Gathering Place, Botanical Collections Curator Kendall Golden-Spradlin and Horticulture Manager Kellyn Lee will have already spent months preparing for the park’s most intense season. For these garden professionals, spring is the most demanding season of the year — and the most rewarding.
Both Golden-Spradlin and Lee began working at Gathering Place in 2018, before the park opened. The two women trace their interest in horticulture back to early life experiences surrounded by agriculture and gardening.
Lee grew up in Higginsville, Missouri, on around 5 acres, gardening with her mother and grandmother, later discovering floriculture through high school activities. “It was something that I really liked, that came naturally to me,” she says.
Golden-Spradlin was raised in Morris by agriculture educators. Both of her parents were huge “AG-vocates” who took care of the greenhouses at their respective schools and encouraged their daughter to take part in floriculture. Her love of plants extends outside of work. She keeps orchids and other house plants in her home, and even tends to a miniature greenhouse and propagates seeds, which she shares with her coworkers.
With the largest cherry blossom collection in Oklahoma, Gathering Place will be painted pink and white with petals this month.
Greg Bollinger
Lee describes the Gathering Place staff’s teamwork as the most special part of her role. “The team and their own motivation, their vision, just really align with the park,” she says. “They are what makes this happen.”
The team spends the winter months taking care of plants while they are domrant. “Even in winter plants need water — especially if it is a dry winter,” Lee says. “Winter is also the time of year for our biggest horticulture task at Gathering Place: We put our plants ‘to bed’ and start cutbacks on our perennial plants. (We) tuck them in for the season by mulching most of the park in just a 4-week period.”
All of that hard work pays off when the first signs of spring begin to show. “Whenever you see that spring flush, you finally get this sense of, ‘okay, we made it.’ It’s so beautiful, and everybody loves it,” Golden-Spradlin says.
Visitors entering the park in early spring can expect to see cornelian cherry, flowering quince, forsythia, hellebores, paulownias, saucer magnolias, viburnums, witch hazels and winter jasmine, as well as the park’s signature cherry trees. Gathering Place is home to the largest cherry blossom collection in Oklahoma, which are primarily located along Caterpillar Bridge.
“We try to centralize them to give that wow factor,” Golden-Spradlin says, explaining that the design allows visitors to walk directly beneath the blooms. Peak bloom typically falls in mid- to end of March, often around spring break, depending on weather conditions.
Moving forward into April and May, visitors can expect magnolias, fothergillas, redbuds, groundcovers like vinca and ajuga, and hydrangeas in vibrant pinks, blues and whites. Flora fans can sign up for a horticulture newsletter at gatheringplace.org/horticulture to keep up with both breaking blooms and park happenings.
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