Meet Extension horticulturist

New horticulturist joins Laramie County Extension team

Published April 19, 2024, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle

By Barb Gorges

            I’d like to introduce you to the new University of Wyoming Extension horticulturist for Laramie County, Hannah Morneau.

            Catherine Wissner, the previous horticulturist, retired last June, and the Laramie County Master Gardeners found themselves on their own for teaching this winter’s Master Gardeners 60-hour, 10-week class. Luckily, Hannah, who is also a Master Gardener, started her new job about the time the class started so she could absorb the same local knowledge as the 30 students.

            The growing season will be Hannah’s busy time. Farmers, ranchers, gardeners and homeowners will all have plant questions. Sometimes she can forward those to Master Gardeners with expertise in a certain area that might call for a yard visit (Catherine always sent me the bird questions).  Or maybe emailing a photo for plant ID or plant pest or disease ID will work.

            In addition to detective work, the county extension horticulturist can make recommendations for not only solving problems, but avoiding them, such as recommending what to grow. For years, I’ve enjoyed the perennials recommended to my neighbor across the street for their front yard.

            Besides Master Gardeners, Hannah will also be working with 4-H and other educational programs for youth and adults.

            This is not Hannah’s first time working in Cheyenne. She was a summer intern for the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens in 2021, in the Children’s Village, for a combination of gardening and teaching experiences.

            Hannah grew up on her family’s cattle ranch outside Lander, Wyoming. But she was more drawn to growing produce, preserving it and selling the excess at the farmer’s market.

Her first job on her resume is three years working at Sprouts Greenhouse outside Lander, a full-service garden center that grows most of the plants it sells.

            Next, Hannah headed for Sheridan College, where she received an associate’s degree in horticultural science. While there, she was an intern for Rooted in Wyoming, which describes itself as a developer of “school and community agricultural projects to directly improve access to locally grown food for Wyoming families.”

            Overlapping that experience, Hannah also worked at the Sheridan Research and Extension Center, one of four centers operated by the University of Wyoming in locations around the state.

            Then it was on to the University of Wyoming for a Bachelor of Science in Agroecology and Rangeland Ecology and Watershed Management. While in Laramie she worked on campus at the Rocky Mountain Herbarium and the Williams Conservatory.

            After a summer at the Pitkin Forestry Nursery of the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, learning about growing seedling trees and more about greenhouses, Hannah finished her time at UW as an undergraduate teaching assistant for the basic botany classes.

            Her first job after graduation was with Harris Native Seeds in Bozeman, Montana, where she learned about the production of native grass and flower seed.

            Hannah’s resume mentions she also knows her way around a variety of agricultural equipment and knows how to maintain them.

            So, what we have in Hannah is a well-rounded horticulturist.

            If you aren’t familiar with Extension, or at least not in Wyoming, you should visit the University of Wyoming Extension website: uwyo.edu/uwe.

            You’ll find written materials and videos on all kinds of ag and home gardening and landscaping topics. Plus, there might be classes coming up. If you have kids, look into 4-H. Kids don’t have to live on a farm or ranch to take part—it’s not all livestock. Hannah is helping teach a 4-H vegetable gardening class this spring, from seedlings to fair entry preparation, and it might not be too late to sign up. Contact dawns@uwyo.edu.

            Do you have a question for Hannah? The day I interviewed her, she had just been out consulting with a landowner about replacing a windbreak destroyed by one of the recent fires. While fire is usually good for prairie grasses, Hannah stressed being mindful of erosion and how important reseeding with native grasses is. And how important it is to be prepared for wildfires.

            Hannah can be reached by phone at 307-633-4480 or by email at hmorneau@uwyo.edu.

High Plains Arboretum’s living legacy

Published Jan. 12, 2024, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

The High Plains Arboretum: A living legacy of horticultural research

By Jessica Friis, guest columnist

For decades after the Homestead Act, many settlers had tried and failed to establish roots in the high plains of Wyoming. The combination of short growing seasons, unpredictable early and late frosts, low precipitation, high winds, and lack of winter snow cover makes it especially hard for trees to survive.

Hoping to help settlers get established and beautify budding communities, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) constructed a horticultural field station west of Cheyenne to find or develop plants that could survive the harsh conditions of the high plains.

From 1930-74, station staff tested native plants from around the region, as well as foreign plants collected from similar climates around the world and introduced by USDA plant explorers. If no suitable plants could be found, researchers bred new varieties. They developed varieties of strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, pumpkins, and ornamental plants specifically for Wyoming’s harsh climate and short growing season.

A class featuring the heirloom vegetable varieties that were tested or developed at the station will be offered at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens on February 24, and seeds will be available for purchase. Visit www.botanic.org for more information.

Trees and shrubs grown at the station were distributed around the state and region to help landowners establish shelterbelts and beautify the grounds of many government buildings, including the state capitol, University of Wyoming, Colorado State University, the Veterans Administration hospital, highway department, and many more.

The research conducted at the station changed the landscape of the high plains. New varieties released by the station were shared with local nurseries so that homeowners could grow their own produce at a time before refrigerated shipping brought fresh produce to grocery stores.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) had two camps at the station during the Great Depression. A veterans’ camp assisted with the daily labor needs from 1935-42. A junior camp beautified the area around the Roundtop Water Treatment Plant from 1935-37. Buildings, stone terraces, bridges, and campsites constructed by both CCC camps remain on the station. For more information on the fascinating history of this site, the book “High Plains Arboretum” is available at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens giftshop or online.

                In 1974, the focus of the station was changed to livestock grazing and mining reclamation research. With these changes came a new name, the High Plains Grasslands Research Station. Rangeland research still continues at the station under the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

When the focus of the station shifted away from horticulture, most of the horticultural plots were removed. The trees and shrubs in the arboretum were left standing, and members of the staff continued to till the weeds and irrigate during dry spells. Despite these efforts, almost half of the 1,175 trees and shrubs inventoried in 1978 had died by the turn of the century.

                In 2000, a group of concerned citizens formed to save the trees remaining in the arboretum. After years of negotiations, 62 acres of land encompassing the arboretum was returned to the City of Cheyenne. The space was named the High Plains Arboretum and opened to the public in 2008. Since that time, the Cheyenne Urban Forestry Division and Cheyenne Botanic Gardens have worked together with limited funding to preserve the remaining plants, replace some of those lost, and provide interpretative signage for visitors.

                The City of Cheyenne and other stakeholders are now working with Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources to create the High Plains Research Station and Arboretum State Historic Site. The bill to create this historic site will go before the Wyoming State Legislature in February.

The vision is to have the city continue to care for the historic arboretum, while state parks will manage the remaining property. This includes preservation and restoration of historic structures, interpretation of Roundtop and the history of the site, and master planning to ensure all partners can work together seamlessly.

The city of Cheyenne is working to return to the original mission of growing plants best adapted to Wyoming’s climate for statewide use. We hope that by working together, the site can be more accessible to visitors and serve the public as a wonderful historic site.

For more information on this effort, an information session will be held at the Wyoming State Museum on Tuesday, January 16 at 6:30 pm.

Jessica Friis, horticulturist at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, and author of the book “High Plains Arboretum”, enjoys beautifying the Paul Smith Children’s Village, researching the High Plains Arboretum and educating the public on growing plants in Wyoming. Contact her at jfriis@cheyennecity.org.

10th Annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero Workshop Feb. 3, 2024

10th Annual Cheyenne Habitat Hero Workshop

Feb. 3, 2024, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Laramie County Community College:

 “Ways to Make and Keep a Garden for the Birds and Bees Plus Advice on Trees”

          This year we look at how different people approached making a Habitat Hero-style garden and how they maintain it.
 We will introduce the makers of six local gardens who will be panelists for discussion on what works and doesn’t work:
Gary Kayser has created a meadow at the corner of 3rd and Carey avenues that drew the attention of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle photographer.
Eric Dalton has made Habitat Hero gardens at his home and his business, Bella Fuoco Wood Fired Pizza on Warren Avenue.
Nancy Loomis keeps the weeds at bay in the garden at the Laramie County Library.
Isaiah Smith, horticulture and operations supervisor at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens installed gravel garden beds in the parking lot last year.
Isaiah Smith and Jacob Mares prepared the Habitat Hero garden site at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and Barb Gorges keeps it weeded.
Rex Lockman, wildlife and range specialist for the Laramie County Conservation District, will report on the Native Prairie Island project, sowing seeds over new septic fields.

Lunch – Included in registration
Jacob Mares, Community Forestry coordinator for the Wyoming State Forestry Division, will introduce trees appropriate for water-wise Habitat Hero gardens.
Scott Aker, director of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, formerly in charge of horticulture and education at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., will show how to prune young trees to help protect them from wind, snow and ice damage. 
          To bring us an update on the size and scope of the Habitat Hero program, we will hear from Audubon Rockies staff.
         Finally, everyone’s favorite part–Michelle Bohanan has selected native seed for everyone to take home for winter sowing.

Registration for in-person attendance will be $25 and will include lunch. Registration for Zoom only will be $5. Registration information at: www.CheyenneAudubon.org/habitat-hero/

Or register directly at: https://act.audubon.org/a/make-keep-garden-birds-bees

Bindweed wars, new weed

Bindweed is one of the hardest weeds to kill because it grows so fast. The arrow-shaped leaves can be hard to see at first, but the white morning glory-type flowers are not. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Gardener wars with bindweed, discovers new weed

Published Aug. 11, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

By Barb Gorges

            The weed I dread the most is bindweed, a native of Europe and Asia. I think the seeds must travel by bird and once sprouted, they are quick to spread underground, popping up new vines that quickly engulf competing plants.

            Even in the thickest vegetation you’ll suddenly notice the white mini-morning glory flowers blooming and then realize half the greenery is bindweed’s arrow-shaped leaves. Trying to unwind the vines leaves their victims somewhat tattered.

            The organic method of bindweed control is to break off the vines at ground level frequently, eventually exhausting the plant. I’ve been nipping a new infestation this year nearly every other day and the leaves are staying tiny. It’s the vines that infiltrated the beebalm for weeks that have leaves two inches long. At the very least, don’t let bindweed flower and set seed.

            If you choose to use a systemic herbicide in which the plant takes up the poison and sends it into the roots (versus topical that only kills the leaves), I wouldn’t blame you. But please consult an expert so that you don’t endanger people, pets, wildlife, water and other plants.

            For other weeds, it might be worth considering cutting them off at ground level rather than disturbing the soil by pulling them. Many weed seeds need light to germinate and so hoeing might disrupt the weeds in your vegetable garden, but it starts up a whole new crop – of weeds. Consider mulching with lawn cuttings or straw (not hay – it has seeds) to block the light.

            The Habitat Hero gardens I tend depend on self-seeding perennials to fill in spaces. There are a few biennials, short-lived perennials and weeds that put out a rosette of leaves the first year that can be difficult to identify. By the second year, it is easier to decide what stays and what goes.

            However, in early July, an unidentifiable plant as tall as me began to flower profusely at the back of the Habitat Hero garden at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

The mystery plant in the Habitat Hero Demonstration Garden at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens is thought to be White Mullein, Verbascum lychnitis. Photo by Barb Gorges.

            I took pictures and went home to page through my native plant books as well as my copy of “Weeds of the West” to no avail. So, I sent the photos to Jane and Robert Dorn. She illustrated “Vascular Plants of Wyoming” and he wrote it.

            Jane suggested pulling the plant while figuring out what it was – so many flowers would indicate a lot of seeds on a plant that might be detrimental to agriculture.

            Bob thought it might be a type of mullein. Common mullein is found all over, along roadsides and other disturbed areas. It’s the tall one with a rosette of big fuzzy leaves and a thick stalk covered in tiny yellow flowers that bloom one ring at a time. And there are many ornamental mulleins.

The flowers resemble those of Common Mullein, Verbascum thapsis. Photo by Barb Gorges.

            By the way, they asked, would I press the plant for future inclusion in the University of Wyoming’s herbarium?

            Herbarium specimens are mounted on 11.5 x 16.5-inch sheets. Just how do you press a 5.5-foot-tall plant, plus the 1-foot-long root? You preserve only the flowering part and bend it to fit and cut a bit of stem that has a couple leaves and save the root.

            I don’t have a plant press anymore, so I inserted the plant parts between multiple layers of newspaper. That sandwich I inserted between squares of rubber-backed carpet tiles – carpet side in, in lieu of blotter paper, allowing for some airflow so the moisture could escape. And then I laid a couple of concrete blocks on the whole thing.

            Jane and Bob came a few days later to pick up the damp plant, transferring it to Bob’s plant press, a simple plywood affair.

            At home, Bob dissected flowers and determined it was probably white mullein, Verbascum lychnitis, native to Europe and Asia. It’s a somewhat variable plant. Sometimes the flowers are yellow.

            I uploaded my photos to iNaturalist and it also suggested white mullein. Many of their photos looked somewhat like my specimen.

            Then I looked at the map locating 61 white mullein observations so far. There were a handful on the West Coast, a handful in the Midwest, one in Florida and the most in the area around Philadelphia, where it probably landed in North America.

            There was only one observation in all the Rocky Mountain west, Canada to Mexico, and that was in Fort Collins, Colorado. My observation won’t show until it has been approved.

            There are birds that fly up and down the Front Range during spring and fall migration. A seed may have dropped off of, or out of, a bird coming up from Colorado, if digestion didn’t harm the seed.

            I expect in a few years, white mullein will be joining our common mullein along the side of the road.  

Local gardening wizard retiring

Laramie County Master Gardeners, interns and other volunteers plant the extension of the Habitat Hero garden at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens June 1. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Laramie County gardening wizard retiring

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle June 16, 2023.

By Barb Gorges

            After 21 years, Laramie County Extension Horticulturist Catherine Wissner is retiring. She has often been my go-to person the 12 years I’ve been writing this column.

            It’s difficult to find hyper-local gardening information online or in print. Every location is different. In Wyoming, it is hard to generalize because of our variety of elevations, precipitation zones and weather patterns.

You need the voice of experience, someone like Catherine who, over the length of her Extension career, has been on numerous yard calls to help locals solve landscape, gardening and farming problems. The plants she suggested to my neighbor are still colorful and going strong years later.

            Catherine augmented her professional horticultural training and previous experience by listening to experienced local gardeners. She made her accumulated wisdom available to Laramie County, including teaching the Master Gardener classes.

            By July 1, Catherine will no longer be officially available and there is no one immediately taking her place. I don’t know if she will be going from her role as Laramie County Master Gardener advisor to unpaid volunteer like everyone else, and still be available for questions. We should at least let her have a vacation first.

            In the meantime, the “Ask a Master Gardener” committee is ramping up. Chair Marie Madison is setting up a table at every Tuesday Farmers Market at the mall, southside of J.C. Penney, starting June 13, 3 to 6 p.m. Bring your questions, pictures, unidentified plants and plant problems.

            I’ve been doing a little teaching myself and realizing how much I don’t know. Wanda Manley and I went over to give a program about Habitat Hero for the Laramie Audubon Society, about planting native plants for pollinators and other wildlife. Even though Laramie is on the plains like Cheyenne, it is 1,000 feet higher, and their growing season is shorter. Their list of native plants might include more alpine species.

            Then, at the last minute I was asked if I could Zoom in the next night with the same PowerPoint program for Evergreen Audubon in Evergreen, Colorado, a mountain town with the same elevation as Laramie. However, my list of prairie native plants might not all work there.

One of the questions was how to grow flowers under evergreens, especially lodgepole pine. Property owners in Cheyenne recognize the same problem and vainly try to grow grass when the better solution is to not cut the lower branches of spruce and pine and enjoy the natural groundcover of old needles. Less work.

            However, in the mountains, it seems to me property owners should be studying Firewise recommendations (search for the column I wrote at my http://www.CheyenneGardenGossip.wordpress.com site) in which evergreens, being very flammable, should be removed within a certain distance of buildings, replaced by a less flammable rocky or grassy or flowery terrain.

            Some horticultural advice can pertain to wider areas. Kenton Seth, the crevice garden guru who designed the one at the entrance to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens conservatory, showed me a new way to plant.

            When transplanting a potted plant to the garden, pop the plant out of the pot. Then gently remove all the potting soil from the roots. Some people even wash the roots before planting directly into the new soil. Kenton does this because a regular root ball isn’t going to fit into one of his rock crevices.

            Removing all the potting soil means that instead of confining themselves to it, the roots will have to reach into the new soil and will establish more quickly.

            I’m not planting in rock crevices like Kenton, but holding a small plant with wispy roots coming from a 2.5-inch pot, I realize I can essentially plant it in a crevice I make with my hand trowel, hori hori or soil knife. I just plunge the tool in the soil, wiggle it enough so there’s room to tuck the roots in and press some dirt in the opening – much easier than digging a hole.

             I’m not sure all 11 volunteers helping me plant the extension of the Habitat Hero garden at CBG June 1 caught on to my planting technique. But all these daily rain showers have erased any inconsistencies. When I checked June 4, all the transplant droopiness was gone.

            We didn’t have enough fence to protect all the new plants, but Isaiah Smith, the horticulture and operations supervisor, thinks that with so much lushness to choose from everywhere, the rabbits won’t decimate the unprotected plants, like they did when we planted the first part in 2018.

            At home, I’m doing a little editing of my own Habitat Hero garden. I’m replacing more non-natives that filled in the gaps early on with natives I started last summer in my little nursery plot. We will see if the bees, butterflies, bats and birds notice.  

Blank slate garden opportunity

Rockwork can add interest to a garden or actually be the garden. This is the Crevice Garden outside the door to the Cheyenne Botanic Garden’s Grand Conservatory. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle May 19, 2023, Page A9, “Blank slate gives gardener myriad of opportunities”

Blank slate gives gardener myriad opportunities

By Barb Gorges

            Imagine this: a blank slate, a flat 12 by 40 feet of nearly bare dirt.

The dirt looks good, nearly weed-free. One long side is backed by concrete block wall painted black, so almost any plant by it will look good. A sidewalk edges the other long side and is backed by a red brick garage wall.

I’m a little jealous that Kim Parfitt has all that empty space without having to dig up lawn. I could fill that up in no time with one trip to a good nursery.

In fact, the Cheyenne Habitat Hero Committee is about to do that very thing as an extension to the Habitat Hero garden by the flagpole at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The extension’s outer perimeter is a 30-foot-long curve and figuring the square footage is beyond my geometry skills. But I think 72 new plants should do it.

Kim has something more interesting in mind. She wants some topography. She likes the crevice garden at the entrance to the CBG’s Grand Conservatory. Good news is that she has a wide gate between the garden and alley for delivery of large rocks, and probably a cubic yard or two of extra dirt she can haul from Cheyenne’s compost facility with her husband’s pickup. Shrubs can also offer some diversity in height.

Kim’s thinking about a groundcover, maybe clover, for a path for the dogs to wind through the topography. Unless it’s mowed to keep it from flowering, the bees attracted to clover might make it hazardous to walk barefoot, paws included. The compost facility has lots of wood chips for path making.

The very first step (which I have never taken, so my home garden looks like a patched crazy quilt) is to get out the graph paper and measure and draw the garden boundaries.

The next step is to figure out where the water faucet is and how to get water to potential plantings. The former owners of Kim’s house had set up plastic pipe along the black wall with four or five sprinkler heads to water the grass that used to be there, plus some drip irrigation tubing for a raised vegetable bed in the far corner.

My suggestion is to scrap all the old irrigation. It’s better to have soaker hoses running along the surface of the garden than to have the plants sprayed with water. Drip irrigation and soaker hoses mean less wasted water. Designing a system needs to go hand in hand with deciding where the plants and paths are going to be. There are people who design watering systems as a profession.

At the same time, Kim needs to think about what plants she is planting. With her experience teaching high school AP classes in environmental science, I’m guessing she’s thinking about native plants. But she might mix in some of her favorites and discover some water-wise exotic beauties among the natives from Plant Select offered at area nurseries and mail order from High Country Gardens.

The trick is to sort the plants by their needs. The ones that need the least water (after they’ve had plenty to get started) can be at the far end of the yard since Kim said the water pressure is poor that far from the faucet.

Identifying sunny and shady areas is important too. I’ve grown Rocky Mountain penstemon in the shade for 30 years and it blooms but then flops over. I moved some to a sunny location and it’s become a vigorous, bushy plant.

When Kim first described her new garden area, she said she needed to get it rototilled. But that’s no longer a given these days, even for vegetable gardening. If your vegetables need soil amendments, add them to the top couple of inches. There’s a whole community of helpful little soil microbes that die when you dig too much. Also, disturbing soil exposes weed seeds that use sunlight to germinate and then you’ll have more weeding to do.

I suggested to Kim when she’s buying perennial plants, pick smaller ones, in 2.5-inch pots instead of 1-gallon pots. After you gently shake the potting soil off the roots, you only need to slice open the soil with your shovel and insert them. The roots quickly reach out, whereas if you plunk in the whole root ball, potting soil included, the roots just circle around and around in that “cotton candy.”

This year, planting a few easy-peasy annuals can be instant gratification while the perennials get established. The first year, perennials sleep, says the old axiom. The next year they creep and it’s the third year they leap!

Turf is so last century

Native plants are showcased at the Laramie County Library Pollinator Habitat. Photo by Jeff Geyer.

Published April 21, 2023, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

Turf is so last century, especially if there is no water for it

By Barb Gorges

            Walking the puppy every day gives me time to contemplate my neighborhood’s lawns as they recover from winter. And the puppy introduces me to neighbors who sometimes tell me their lawn woes.

            Of the 200 homes in our subdivision, it seems like most have dead spots in their bluegrass lawns (only a few are not bluegrass). One neighbor, let’s call her Debbie, said she did everything as usual last year, fertilizing according to instructions in May and September, watering three times a week for 20 minutes per zone, mowing every six or seven days. And still, dead areas adjacent to the sidewalk increased in size.

            Last year was dry. People who did not water killed their grass, leaving behind gritty dirt soon infested with drought-resistant weeds. The rest of us, without rainfall to make up for dry spots in our irrigation patterns or hotter spots next to the sidewalk, started to see problems like Debbie’s.

            I sent a photo of Debbie’s bare area to Catherine Wissner, Laramie County Extension horticulturist, asking for advice.

            “For starters, they are mowing their lawn way too short,” Catherine responded.

Grass needs to shade itself. If it isn’t a putting green, set your mower blade as high as it goes.

            Next, Catherine recommended reseeding. But first, do some core aeration and treat the area with Revive. This product improves the soil’s ability to take in water and nutrients. She said to look at our local nursery, Riverbend, or JAX, a chain headquartered on the Front Range, for high quality grass seed meant for our area.

            Don’t throw on any fertilizer until the grass starts growing. And because it will need extra water to get started, get the Cheyenne Board of Public Utility’s “New Lawn Permit” at www.cheyennebopu.org. It’s free.

But what about going native instead?

            If your bluegrass lawn has died, now is your chance to replace it with native grass and or other native plants. I spent many hours digging up part of my healthy front lawn last fall to expand my native plant garden.

            Native plants are the hot topic in every garden publication these days. Native plants support native animals, including insects, that are beneficial to us directly and indirectly. They are also adapted to the climate they are native to, so in our area, that means they need less water. Bluegrass is not native to our high and dry prairies.

Water shortages may be coming

            Growing a bluegrass lawn these days in our location is an outdated concept. Here in Cheyenne, we have even more reason to establish less water-thirsty landscapes: the Colorado River problem. Through a series of tunnels and agreements, 70 percent of our city water comes from that river, and it is suffering due to drought. We have junior water rights compared to other states, so it is quite possible we could lose that water.

            BOPU estimates that 30% of Cheyenne’s water is used to water our landscapes. So if we retrofit our yards now, maybe we won’t have an entirely dead moonscape when we are cut off from Colorado River water.

Retrofitting our yards

            We need only look at the High Plains Arboretum on the west edge of Cheyenne to see that there are trees and shrubs that survived 50 years with rainfall and snowmelt alone.

            There are people growing buffalo grass instead of bluegrass and saving money and time (see https://cheyennegardengossip.wordpress.com/).

            There are several demonstration gardens in town full of waterwise perennials. The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens features the crevice garden, Habitat Hero garden and the new Plant Select gravel garden beds out front and more in back. The Pollinator Habitat in the corner of the Laramie County Library parking lot is all local native plants.

            For information about growing a native plant garden in the Cheyenne area, see https://cheyenneaudubon.org/habitat-hero-resources/.

To find native plants for sale, check the Laramie County Master Gardeners plant sale May 6 out at the Archer Complex. See the High Plains Environmental Center’s nursery offerings online at https://suburbitat.org/, order, then pick up your plants in Loveland, Colorado, only 50 miles away. Order or collect seeds next fall. Once you become familiar with the easiest-to-grow natives, you might recognize a few of them at the big box stores. 

            Yes, there is a little work to native plants. You still need to match the right plant with the right place and water it the first year. In late April or early May, you’ll want to cut back the dead stems of last year’s growth. It sure beats the costs of lawn maintenance in time and money. And you get flowers. And bees and birds and butterflies and maybe even bats.

New Cheyenne Botanic Gardens director

The focal point of the 20-acre Ellipse Meadow at the National Arboretum is the columns that were part of the U.S. Capitol 1828-1958. Photo by Barb Gorges.

New Cheyenne Botanic Gardens director is not far from home

By Barb Gorges

            My introduction to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens’ new director was around the small conference table in his office in the conservatory. Along with my husband Mark and the gardens’ exterior horticulturist Isaiah Smith, I was there to talk about Isaiah’s request to extend the Habitat Hero Demonstration Garden.

            Director Scott Aker arrived in Cheyenne this fall fresh from Washington, D.C., where he was the head of horticulture and education at the U.S. National Arboretum. You might think he would know little about Wyoming native plants that grow in the demonstration garden, but he grew up in Whitewood, on the northeast edge of the Black Hills in South Dakota. It’s botanically very similar to Cheyenne.

            He might think I would have no idea of his previous location, but Mark and I visited the arboretum in 2015. It’s 450 acres inside D.C. full of meadows and woods and gardens.

Scott Aker is the new director of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Photo courtesy Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

Scott was the garden columnist for the Washington Post 2000-2010. He was also the Q and A columnist the next 10 years for The American Gardener magazine published by the American Horticultural Society, which I joined last year. The people I read on the Garden Rant blog are people he knows.

            How did a boy from the Black Hills get to D.C.? And why has he returned to the high plains?

            When Scott was 4 years old, his grandmother thinned her irises and gave the excess rhizomes to her daughter-in-law, his mom. She was busy so she told him to dig holes and plant them. The blooms next year captivated him, and he’s been into ornamental horticulture ever since.

            Scott’s dad, a would-be farmer, thought horticulture was for women, but historically, men were in all the higher positions, much like the chef/cook dichotomy that is slowly being equalized today.

            It’s hard to study horticulture in high school, but Scott made do with biology classes. There was a hort major available at the University of Minnesota St. Paul where he earned his bachelor’s degree. At the University of Maryland, study for his Masters degree took him far into lab work, but luckily he was also getting field experience.

            Getting a PhD in horticulture would involve more lab work, but Scott was done with academia and ready for the field, jumping into university extension work with the largest Master Gardener program in Maryland. Maryland is full of small agricultural operations which needed his help.

A year later his father-in-law told him to apply for the job at the National Arboretum. They were looking for an integrated pest management person and he had the credentials. Integrated pest management is using biological and physical solutions before resorting to chemical pesticides. Scott was able to reduce pesticide use by 75 percent.

Pest management took Scott throughout the arboretum’s different plant collections. He was a natural fit when the head horticultural position came open. Eventually, education program responsibilities were added.

On his 30^th anniversary with the arboretum, early 2022, Scott said he technically could retire from the federal government and all its bureaucratic headaches. He was flipping through a listing of professional positions that all seemed to be in major cities, but he was tired of commuting so when he saw the director announcement for Cheyenne, he jumped at the chance to get out of the big city.

Scott said he visited in 2018 on his way up from the Denver airport to visit his mom and was impressed with the then-brand-new conservatory.

Cheyenne Botanic Gardens’ history starts with the 40 years Shane Smith and the community built it, then five years with Tina Worthman as director. Though not a horticulturist, she improved its fiscal soundness. I’m wondering what to expect from Scott, someone with managerial and horticultural experience.

The first clue is the unusual houseplants in his office window—they are his.

The second clue is when I was discussing trading out purple coneflower in the Habitat Hero garden for the narrowleaf species, he knew that it was the Wyoming native coneflower. He also knew the other coneflower that has popped up unexpectedly, Echinacea pallida, and he has experience growing the “Cheyenne Spirit” variety. A plant nerd—my kind of gardener!

Scott has ideas for taking the Gardens into the future. First step is updating the master plan. That’s a process for collecting ideas and then integrating them with unexciting stuff like revamping irrigation systems originally designed for watering turf before the garden beds expanded. Most importantly, Scott understands that what grows/goes in D.C. might not be suited to Cheyenne. He will be drawing on his small-town roots as much as his big city experience, to our benefit.      

Transplant jam

Yellow monkey flower towers over other native plants waiting to be planted in the Gorges yard. Photo by Barb Gorges.

Published July 16, 2022, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

Transplanting calculations plague local gardener

By Barb Gorges

            Every summer I get myself in the same jam.

I transplant new plants and then leave them at the mercy of our pet sitter, Becky. She’s a good sport and good gardener and when we leave again later in the summer she will get to take home any of our ripe tomatoes.

            This time she’s sitting the cats and seedlings from my winter sowing as well as $100 of young plants from the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, Colorado. They’ve been propagating native plants from seed and demonstrating their use in suburban gardens for some time now, but it was during the pandemic when they adopted a summer-long, online plant sale.  

All HPEC’s plants—all straight natives, no hybrids—are offered for sale at www.suburbitat.org, with photo and description (size, bloom color and season, water and light needs). Place an order and it should be ready for pickup in three days.

            A group of us coordinated our ordering and drove down together. Director Jim Tolstrup gave us a summary of HPEC’s origins. Some 20 years ago, when 3,000-acre Centerra was on the drawing table, the development set-back from the two reservoirs became HPEC’s 76 acres. Small fees based on square footage of residential and commercial buildings became HPEC’s endowment.

In 2018, Centerra became the first Wildlife Habitat Community in Colorado certified by the National Wildlife Federation.

            HPEC is open free to the public daily, dawn to dusk. It features hiking trails, community garden plots, native plant showcase and an ethnobotanic exhibit, the Medicine Wheel Garden.

            When I got home, my dilemma was whether I should transplant my new plants four days before my vacation or leave them in their little pots. I decided on planting. Some plants were potbound and would have needed frequent watering, more often than if they were new transplants.

            But first I had to make room.

Out back I dug out some turf for the western virgin’s bower vine and removed volunteer Sweet William to make room for yellow monkey flower. Out front, I removed part of a large swath of cornflower, or perennial bachelor buttons, and gave much of it away, with the warning that it is not native, fills space easily, and is popular with bees. In its place I’m trying more monkey flower, western spiderwort, blue lobelia, and right on the edge of the bed because it’s so small, fernleaf fleabane.

            My gardening is mostly about trying new plants. I wonder how these straight natives of prairie and mountain will do in my shady, tree root-filled yard. By buying at least three of each, I can try them either in different spots or together to measure their odds of survival. I find out what they look like in winter, early spring, mid-summer and fall, and which insects like them.

HPEC’s plants are in 2 and 3/8ths inch pots, but 2 inches taller and less tapered for more root development than the standard pot. And faster establishment than plants in a larger pot.

            I tried transplanting gallon-sized, blooming, purple coneflowers into bare spots in the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens’ Habitat Hero garden one July and no matter how often I drove over there and threw water on them, some folded up shop within a month and the rest didn’t come back the next year.  I don’t think I used my current bare root planting technique—gently knocking (or washing) off most of the potting soil before planting. Mulching after planting is important, too.

            I’ve also tried setting out seedlings and year-old plants in spring there, but someone needs to keep an eye on them every day, like I do at home. This year, I made a deal with Isaiah, the exterior horticulturist at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. He could have my excess winter sown seedlings if he would keep an eye on my year-old transplants. So far, his success rate is similar to mine at home.

Rain

            Rain clouds keep dodging Cheyenne. By June 19 we were 3 inches behind, compared to the average year by that date. That’s a lot when the total annual average is only 12-15 inches. It’s hard to make it up with irrigation. One upside: less rain, less hail.

            In the summer of 1980, I was hired by the Bureau of Land Management office in Miles City, in southeastern Montana, to do plant surveys. They were cancelled because it was so dry that year. Nothing greened up, thus no plants to survey. We aren’t that bad off yet.

            But be moderate with your watering—just in case next winter’s snow doesn’t refill the reservoirs and recharge the wells.

Book talk & signing Dec. 4, Cheyenne Botanic Gardens

Saturday, Dec. 4, 1 – 3 p.m., will be my next book talk and signing for “Cheyenne Garden Gossip: Locals Share Secrets for High Plains Gardening Success.” It will be at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, 710 S. Lions Park Drive. The talk starts at 1 p.m.

I’ll tell you how much fun it was to write this book, the many people who helped and the most important advice you need for gardening in Cheyenne. I’ll also have seasonal garden tips for you–and cookies.