Early spring in the BOPU Habitat Hero Demonstration Garden
You are invited to the ribbon-cutting May 20, 3 p.m., for the Habitat Hero Demonstration Garden at the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities headquarters, 2416 Snyder Ave. A few words from dignitaries and light refreshments.
The garden showcases Water Smart Landscapes that save water and are wildlife friendly. Bee Smart! Water Smart! The garden was created in part with a grant from the National Audubon Society awarded to the Cheyenne – High Plains Audubon Society. Contact Dena, BOPU, degenhoff@cheyennebopu.org, 637-6415.
A crew of Rooted in Cheyenne volunteers plants a street tree.
Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle April 14, 2019, “Laying down roots, Rooted in Cheyenne to plant more trees, offer tree and garden tour.” All photos courtesy of Rooted in Cheyenne.
By Barb Gorges
Street trees and their canopy of green are prized, especially here in Cheyenne, located on the naturally treeless prairie. Trees keep cities cooler, break the wind’s ferocity, add to property value, remove pollutants and sequester carbon.
Cheyenne residents started systematically planting in 1882 and have continued planting in successive waves.
The latest wave of tree planting was instigated by Mark Ellison, city forester. He noticed many street trees have disappeared, victims of disease and old age. A windfall of $25,000 helped set up a tree planting 501(c)3 nonprofit, Rooted in Cheyenne. The name harks back to our city’s tree history and forward to a tree-full future.
The funds came from mitigation for the historic residential block replaced by Cheyenne Regional Medical Center’s Cancer Center, said Stephanie Lowe, involved with Historic Cheyenne, Inc., the group set up to disburse the funds.
Trees are planted in the right of way.
Ellison and the Rooted in Cheyenne board organized an incentive program to encourage property owners to have trees planted in the right of way, between curb and sidewalk, or if the sidewalk abuts the curb, on the other side of the sidewalk.
In the spring of 2017 they bought 100 trees, and for $50 each, offered to plant a tree for a property owner as well as stake it and care for it for one year, including weekly watering in summer and monthly watering in winter.
Rooted in Cheyenne has continued to offer 100 or more trees twice a year. Some trees are available at no cost to people who qualify. This year, the actual cost of $150 per tree, including planting supplies, was also supported by a state forestry grant and the Laramie County Conservation District. Additional sponsorships and donations are welcome.
The trees this spring come from nurseries in Colorado, Nebraska and Oregon in 15-gallon containers. They are 8 to 10 feet tall with a caliper (diameter) of 1.25 to 1.5 inches.
Ellison has taken the precaution of offering a variety of trees suited to our area. You can see photos and descriptions at www.RootedinCheyenne.com. It’s a list to work from if you are planting on your own.
When I spoke to Ellison mid-March, nearly all this spring’s trees were spoken for. If you missed your chance, there’s another planting being scheduled for September.
Consider volunteering May 18 on a planting crew for half a day. City Council Ward I member Jeff White is enthusiastic about his experience on a crew last spring and the importance of the effort: “So many of the trees in our city have reached their shelf life. We would become treeless. It’s important to have Rooted in Cheyenne.”
Each crew plants 10 trees in four hours. A crew is led by one or two people from the green industry (landscapers, arborists, yard care company employees, etc.) who know how to correctly plant a tree.
If you plant trees yourself this spring, see the Cheyenne Urban Forestry department’s website, http://www.cheyennetrees.com. Look under the Education tab for the Wyoming Tree Owner’s Manual. It describes safe planting locations and best planting practices.
Volunteers are also needed to do weekly summer watering. A crew of two drives a pickup around with a tank of water and a hose in the back.
When sidewalks abut the curb, trees are planted on the other side of the sidewalk.
All the trees planted so far have survived, except a handful hit by hail last summer, and one tree loved to death. Once the critical first year is over, novice tree owners should be able to handle the maintenance.
“Word of mouth has been carrying the program pretty well,” said Ellison. Now Rooted in Cheyenne wants to get the word out about their Tree and Garden Tour, a mix of education, fun and fundraiser June 9.
Ticket holders will tour the Historic Dubois Block yards and gardens, viewing 30 different trees and shrubs plus other plants suited to Cheyenne.
Activities will include food trucks, Ask an Arborist, lawn games and tree planting and care workshops.
MORE INFORMATION
Rooted in Cheyenne
To sign up for a tree, volunteer, donate or sponsor, see www.RootedinCheyenne.com or call the Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division.
Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division
Call 637-6428 Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. See http://www.cheyennetrees.com for resources on city tree ordinances, trees and tree planting.
Rooted in Cheyenne Tree and Garden Tour of the Historic Dubois Block, June 9, 1 p.m.
Check the Rooted in Cheyenne Facebook page. Tickets are $10.00 per person or $15.00 per family at www.BrownPaperTickets.com or at the event. All proceeds from ticket sales go to plant trees in Cheyenne through Rooted in Cheyenne.
Seed Library of Laramie County offers gardening classes
Published Mar. 24, 2019, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Sowing seeds of knowledge: Seed Library of Laramie County offers gardening classes.”
By Barb Gorges
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Cicero
“Seed” + “Library”—one of the first times these words were put together in the modern era was in California in the early 2000s for the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (BASIL). It is a place where people can swap seeds, as has been done historically, before the Burpee age.
A seed is rather like a book. You open it by adding water, soil and sunshine and soon you have the whole story. But for most of us, the concept of the library is the public library and one is expected to return the book. How do you return a seed? Save the seeds from what you grew and return them, if possible, though seed libraries won’t fine you if you don’t.
There is an art to saving seed. You need to know when to harvest it, sometime after it has reached maturity and before the pod shatters and scatters it. You also must be careful that wind or bees haven’t cross-pollinated your seed, making a hybrid.
Saving adaptations
One of the original goals of setting up a seed library was to protect the genetics of seeds that are not from commercial sources. The seeds that are handed down from generation to generation in one place become more and more adapted to those local growing conditions. Some of those may start out as commercially purchased seeds and little by little, become adapted (note: this works best with open-pollinated varieties, not hybrids).
Seeds become culturally important heirlooms, like varieties of beans grown in the Southwest.
Public library connection
There are several hundred seed libraries (http://seedlibraries.weebly.com) across the U.S. and in other countries, mostly located within public libraries. Many libraries find it difficult to get seed returned. Because so many of us have depended on commercial agriculture rather than our own gardens for food, the libraries have found we first need to re-learn how to grow vegetables—and flowers. Flowers are important for attracting insects to pollinate the vegetables.
Public libraries are all about spreading knowledge and so seed libraries have an educational component, like the classes offered by the Seed Library of Laramie County this spring.
The Seed Library of Laramie County got its start at the Laramie County Library in 2017. Librarian Elizabeth Thorsen recruited the Laramie County Master Gardeners and they looked at seed library models like the one in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and Richmond Grows in Richmond, Virginia.
The two local organizations have sponsored the cost, Master Gardeners’ part is from its annual plant sale. Costs include keeping up with the demand for seed, printing packets and educational materials, and purchasing what resembles a card catalog for organizing the seed packets. Donations of additional seeds and funds are appreciated.
Michelle Bohanan and Maggie McKenzie are two of the Master Gardeners working with library staff to put on this spring’s two free events: Vegetable Gardens for Beginners Mar. 30 and the 2019 Seed Library Kickoff April 20.
Michelle, who has an extensive home seed library and takes part in the Seed Savers Exchange, https://www.seedsavers.org/, and other seed swaps, said one of the joys is watching children pick out their own seeds.
The seed library is located on the third floor and is open during library hours, Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. – 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.; and Sunday 1 – 5 p.m. Ask the librarian at the Ask Here desk for help.
Seed Library of Laramie County classes:
Vegetable Gardens for Beginners
Saturday, March 30, 3 – 4:30 p.m., Storytime Room, Laramie County Library, 2200 Pioneer Ave. Free. Adults and teens.
Which plants should be started indoors? How much space does a cucumber need? What should be added to the soil? Get answers to these and other questions about vegetable gardens from local gardening experts.
2019 Seed Library Kickoff
Saturday, April 20. Laramie County Library, time and room to be determined. All ages. Free. Contact Kellie, kjohnson@lclsonline.org.
Get seeds for your garden and tips for simple, affordable gardening! We’ve chosen a huge variety of flowers, herbs, and vegetables suitable for beginning gardeners in our climate. Seeds and advice are free; no library card needed. Each person is limited to 12 packets of seeds.
Explore the mysteries of monarchs and milkweeds in your backyard
Published Feb. 17, 2019, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
By Barb Gorges
Monarch butterflies are hard to find in Wyoming. This is partly because we have few people looking for them and because of the terrible decline in monarch numbers. I found a dead one last year. I hope this will be the year I see my first live one in my garden.
That one will be descended from a monarch that’s currently wintering in Mexico (not from the group west of the Rockies wintering in California). It’s the only North American butterfly that must migrate because it can’t survive cold winters like other butterflies.
In spring the generation that wintered in Mexico produces the next generation while on its way north and that one begets another, and so on. After a few months, it may be the fourth generation we finally see here. There are several more generations produced over the summer and the final one makes it all the way back to Mexico in the fall.
Monarchs have been clobbered on both ends of their route. Mexico has established the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in the relatively small area they cluster. Here in North America, besides building on and paving over habitat, the problem has been planting herbicide-resistant crops and spraying them with herbicide to kill weeds—which also kills milkweed.
While monarchs feed on nectar from a variety of flowers, they only lay eggs, tiny white dots, on milkweed—it’s the only plant their caterpillars will eat. The good news is that there are about 100 species of milkweed found all along their migration routes. There are 13 species in Wyoming—and four right here in Laramie County.
If you want to join the effort to garden for monarchs, you want to grow our local native flowers. Of course, monarchs are not the only nectar-lovers that will enjoy them.
Two species, Asclepias viridiflora, green milkweed, and A. pumila, plains milkweed, are not seen commercially as seeds or plants. But the other two are quite popular.
Asclepias speciosa, Showy Milkweed, photo by Barb Gorges
Asclepias speciosa, showy milkweed, a perennial, has large round balls of pink florets on stems 2 to 4 feet tall. Its vigorous rhizomes help it spread. I got a few plants from my neighbor who was digging them out of her lawn. But on the other hand, their taproots are sensitive and not all my transplants survived.
I’ve also collected seed from showy milkweed in the unmowed corner of the field where I walk the dog. Seeds are easy to grow if you leave them in the refrigerator for two months to cold stratify or use the winter sowing technique no later than March 1 (https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/winter-sowing/).
Plant showy milkweed in full sun for maximum number of flowers. Water it regularly the first summer to get it started. Around the county I see it alongside roads where it gets extra water from runoff when it rains. It is not going to bloom much in a very dry location.
The other local milkweed, Asclepias incarnata, swamp milkweed, I haven’t grown myself yet. Master Gardener Michelle Bohanan assures me that despite its name, it doesn’t need a swamp. Like showy milkweed, it does best with a little more water than just rain to maximize blooms and nectar production. It grows 2-3 feet high, usually with pink flowers, though Michelle has a white variety.
Considering milkweed has been treated as a weed and grows unaided in weedy places, I wouldn’t worry much about fertilizers or compost.
If your showy milkweed gets ugly late in the season, don’t cut it back until there’s nothing left for caterpillars to eat. And even then, the dried plants are useful for catching snow—free winter watering. I cut them back in spring.
All the websites devoted to monarchs say avoid buying plants treated with systemic pesticides. The long-lasting neonicotinoids get in the nectar and poisons the butterfly—and other pollinators. Avoid these herbicide ingredients: Acetamiprid, Clothianidin, Dinotefuran, Imidacloprid, Nitenpyram, Thiacloprid and Thiamethoxam.
Butterflies are also looking for shelter from wind, for sun-warmed rocks and pavement to bask on and for places to puddle on damp sand to get a drink.
The great thing about growing a garden for monarchs is that it also works for bees and birds. But let’s not stop at the garden gate. How about encouraging native flowers along our roads, in corners of fields, in our parks? I’m excited to hear that Nettie Eakes, the head horticulturist at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, has plans for more perennials in city beds. Many natives, we hope.
Sandra Cox’s vegetable garden did extremely well its first season. Photo by Barb Gorges
Published Jan. 6, 2019, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Transplanted gardener helps local yard bloom.”
By Barb Gorges
There’s only one thing that beats Sandra Cox’s love of gardening: It’s love for her family.
In July 2017, she gave up gardening in the Hudson Valley of New York state to move to Cheyenne at the invitation of her son and his family. She left behind a newly planted orchard and everything she knew about gardening there to start over at her new home.
When Sandra arrived, no one had watered her new yard for some months, and our clay soil required a pick ax to plant the calla lilies she brought with her. But with care and mulch, by the end of the season, time to dig them back up, she was pleased to see a healthy population of earth worms.
Sandra’s garden in New York was in the same Zone 5 USDA growing zone (coldest temperature rating) as Cheyenne. But there are five major differences:
Cheyenne has alkaline soils rather than acidic so adding lime or wood ash is a no-no.
Cheyenne has a shorter growing season. Sandra’s learned she will have to start her peppers and eggplant indoors earlier and put them outside, with protection, earlier.
Cheyenne has 12-15 inches of precipitation annually, one-third of New York’s. Watering is necessary much more often here. She’s thinking about installing an irrigation system.
Cheyenne has hail. Although the tomato plants this summer made a comeback, the tomatoes themselves were scarred. Sandra’s planning to protect them with wire cages next year.
Cheyenne has different soil—clay instead of sandy.
Although arriving mid-summer 2017, Sandra went to work establishing a vegetable garden. “I disturb the soil as little as possible to avoid disrupting the earthworms because they do all the work for you,” she explained.
Instead, she spread leaves over the abandoned lawn, laid down a layer of cardboard from the packing boxes from her move, then covered them with wood chips from the city compost facility. To keep the chips from blowing away, she laid wire fencing over them and pegged it down. She removed the fencing and planted directly into this mulch the next season.
Sandra researches the best varieties to plant in our climate. Her first fall, she planted grapes and an apple and a plum tree. Last spring, she planted pear, peach and sweet cherry trees. The cherries did very well.
In the north-facing front yard, Sandra’s planted shrubs for privacy and perennials for pollinators and pleasure. The city’s street tree planting program, Rooted in Cheyenne, came out and planted a burr oak and a linden. A huge spruce tree shades the house on hot summer afternoons.
One day last fall, she called and asked if we’d come harvest some kale and Swiss chard since she had too much. What an oasis of lush green! And her giant sunflowers were at least 12 feet high. A sunny yard helps, but much of her success can be attributed to her dedication to compost—she composts everything, and her chickens help break it down.
Sandra’s chickens are an important part of her gardening. Photo by Barb Gorges.
Sandra hasn’t used fertilizer yet—other than fish emulsion and well-aged chicken manure. She’s planning to do a soil test this next year to see if she has any deficiencies, but her plants didn’t seem to show any signs.
Pests are not a problem so far. Sandra thinks it is only a matter of time before the pests catch up with her. Already she’s concerned about the big spruce tree being attacked by the ips beetle. It has killed other spruces in her neighborhood, she thinks. The city forester recommended winter watering—good for all her newly planted trees and shrubs, but also good for older trees for which drought stress makes them more susceptible to pests.
Unlike New York which normally has constant winter snow cover, Cheyenne has snowless weeks plus days when the temperatures are above freezing—good days for watering trees.
Sandra remembers that growing up on the family farm was a constant delight, from taking care of the goats to eating apples while high up in the branches to joining her parents and five siblings in the field after dinner to weed, joke around and enjoy each other’s company. Her siblings still enjoy gardening and farming, as does her son, who has a degree in horticulture. Her granddaughters have caught the family enthusiasm as well.
“Bloom where you’re planted” is an old axiom that doesn’t just mean, “make the best of a situation.” For Sandra, it means with a little studying up, she can joyfully grow a garden anywhere, even here.
Sandra’s sunflowers are more than a story high. Fencing protects new trees and other plantings from the chickens. Photo by Barb Gorges.
My book reviews have always been about books I like and recommend. Gardening books are some of my favorite winter reading and gift suggestions.
However, I was disappointed by “Gardenland,” by Jennifer Wren Atkinson. No color photos—only a dozen black and whites! It was described as a book about garden writing. Among other topics she discusses is how over the centuries it hasn’t always been about how-to, but how writers support our garden fantasies. We started dreaming about floriferous and bountiful gardens when industrial agriculture took away the romance of the family farm.
But this is an academic textbook, it turns out, written at 20th-grade level, compared to this column clocking in at 9th -grade level. We need a popular literature writer to interpret these very interesting ideas. The 17-page bibliography is a useful list of garden writers like my favorites, Michael Pollan and Eleanor Perenyi, and introduces many more.
For those of us who want to be immersed in fantastical gardens, there is a new book, “GardenLust, a Botanical Tour of the World’s Best New Gardens,” by Christopher Woods. You can justify buying this 8.5 x 10.5-inch, 400 page, full-color, $40 extravaganza as it will give you inspiration for your own garden—if you have a million dollars to spend. At the very least it may count for your recommended daily dose of nature viewing.
You can preview the book at http://www.timberpress.com. I haven’t decided if I want to order it or if I can wait for it to appear at a used book store. Will what’s new today look boring by then because everyone copied it, like Karl Foerster grass and Russian sage today? Maybe it’s best consumed fresh or at least when there’s a good discount.
Atkinson thinks books about vegetable gardening are not in the realm of fantasy garden books. She would be mostly wrong when it comes to Eliot Coleman. He’s come out with a photo-filled 30th anniversary edition of his book, The New Organic Grower, A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener.” He’s a successful year-round market vegetable grower…in Maine. If he can do it there, we can do it here.
Coleman does it without a lot of expensive machinery. He’s learned how to appeal to customers and how to handle seasonal employees and he passes that information along to the reader, and the nuts and bolts of growing.
Barbara Damrosch, Coleman’s wife, contributed a section about how she grows and sells cut flowers at their farm store as well.
Even if you aren’t planning to go into business, this is an engaging introduction to organic growing from a farmer happy to share his knowledge. You can just imagine Coleman jubilantly giving you a garden tour of Four Seasons Farm. Successful organic growing might not be as much of a fantasy as you think.
Seed catalogs have long been known to be fantasy literature. Those Burpee babies hold giant tomatoes in their outstretched little hands. It’s an old fisherman’s trick that uses perspective to make the fish, or tomato, in the foreground look huge in comparison to the person in the background.
As I become a plant nerd, I can get excited about catalogs with absolutely no pictures. However, the catalog that gets my vote for most beautiful is Botanical Interests Seed Catalog, 2019 Season. Their seed packets feature original botanical art. It makes me want to cut out the pictures and frame them—both flowers and vegetables.
Botanical Interests is a family-owned company in Broomfield, Colorado. Its seeds can be found nationwide and in our local, independent garden centers. Both the website, https://www.botanicalinterests.com, and print catalog contain a wealth of information, as do their seed packets, printed inside and out.
For instance, in the catalog there is an article about the national movement for local cut flowers. In the last few decades, most cut flowers purchased at grocery stores and florists in the U.S. have been imported from South America, raising concerns about pesticide use and the carbon footprint of travel. Check out https://slowflowers.com/. It’s like the slow food movement.
Here in Wyoming we need fantasy garden literature for the five or six months when nothing blooms outdoors. Besides the catalogs and coffee table books, don’t forget to look for garden shows on Netflix. Several are British and make a nice getaway.
Photographer Pete Arnold and I are having a book signing for “Cheyenne Birds by the Month, 104 Species of Southeastern Wyoming’s Resident and Visiting Birds.” Join us this Sunday, Dec. 9 from 1 – 3 p.m. at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, 710 S. Lions Park Drive, Cheyenne, Wyoming. People are telling us Pete’s photos are helping them identify birds!
Books are available at the Gardens’ Tilted Tulip gift shop Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday, noon – 5 p.m. You can also find the books at the Cheyenne Depot Museum, Wyoming State Museum, Riverbend Nursery and PBR Printing.
Immediately following the book signing is a reception from 3 – 5 p.m. for the new Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Artist in Residence exhibit, “Garden of Quilts,” featuring 10 of my flower and flower-bright quilts. My husband Mark is baking cookies for it. The exhibit will be up through Jan. 27. My other book, “Quilt Care, Construction and Use Advice,” will be available in the gift shop.
Seed Library of Laramie County offers gardening classes
The two local organizations have sponsored the cost, Master Gardeners’ part is from its annual plant sale. Costs include keeping up with the demand for seed, printing packets and educational materials, and purchasing what resembles a card catalog for organizing the seed packets. Donations of additional seeds and funds are appreciated.
Should garden literature be listed in the “fantasy” section of the bookstore?
For those of us who want to be immersed in fantastical gardens, there is a new book, “GardenLust, a Botanical Tour of the World’s Best New Gardens,” by Christopher Woods. You can justify buying this 8.5 x 10.5-inch, 400 page, full-color, $40 extravaganza as it will give you inspiration for your own garden—if you have a million dollars to spend. At the very least it may count for your recommended daily dose of nature viewing.
Atkinson thinks books about vegetable gardening are not in the realm of fantasy garden books. She would be mostly wrong when it comes to Eliot Coleman. He’s come out with a photo-filled 30th anniversary edition of his book, The New Organic Grower, A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener.” He’s a successful year-round market vegetable grower…in Maine. If he can do it there, we can do it here.
Dear Readers,
