A Prairie Garden Journal    by Dick Meyer

Notes from the Garden Walk

If you missed last Sunday’s Theatre West Garden Walk, the bad news is that you missed another great collection of Wyobraska gardens.  Each year’s walk seems to have a slightly different flavor.  I didn’t find quite as many “new” plants this year as some years, but I did find six gardens that clearly are a major facet of each family’s daily life.  It seemed that every site featured a patio, deck, or sunroom that showed evidence of almost daily use.  Colorful entry gardens, large, well-placed water features, and attractive border screens and gardens all reflect the growing ability of Wyobraska homeowners to create functional and attractive landscapes.  It’s always easier to add great new plants to a well-designed landscape than it is to make a collection of attractive plants into a functional garden or landscape. 

There’s so much to see and hear in our gardens through the rest of the summer and into fall.  I happened to be up just before dawn one morning this week and the nighttime crickets were singing in the cool nighttime air.  That evening I was sitting on my patio enjoying a, uh, beverage, being serenaded by the cicadas in the nearby trees.  I saw my first hummingbirds of the season in my garden last evening.  Two of them were hovering around my large clump of red bee balm.  It’s the second year in a row that they have visited.   And in the midday sun butterflies dragonflies, bees, and all sorts of other insects are busy gorging themselves on the abundant foliage and nectar.  There’s plenty for everyone. 

Previous Articles

April 27, 2006
Crazy Clematis

May 04, 2006
Ornamental Grasses

May 11, 2006
Perennials

May 18, 2006
Herbs

May 25, 2006
Hummingbird Garden Party

June 1, 2006
Gardening with Kids

June 8, 2006
Wildflower Week

June 15th
Shade Garden

June 29
Thumbs, Feathers, Fruit

July 6, 2006
Reading Plants

July 13th
Back to the Oregon Trail

July 20th
Theatre West Garden Walk

Coming Soon
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This year’s Walk was an opportunity to revisit a landscape that I hadn’t visited since it was planted almost 10 years ago—the entry planting at the Northfield Park Arboretum in Gering.  It was planted back in the late1990’s as a xeriscape demonstration planting.  It is a lush, colorful landscape of gambel’s oak, rabbitbrush, three-leaf sumac, green junipers, Russian sage, and assorted other trees, shrubs, and flowers.  I had always assumed that the garden was watered with a drip irrigation system, but I happened to be visiting the garden on Sunday while Ron Ernst, the Director of Parks for the City of Gering was there, and he politely reminded me that the garden site is not irrigated.  The edges of the site get a little drift from the park’s lawn irrigation system but that’s all of the irrigation that the planting receives. 

What makes this remarkable is the memorable 5-7 year drought that this landscape has experienced—and it has not only survived, but it is thriving.  It was a clear reminder to me to continue to promote the xeriscape approach to landscape design.

But if you missed this year’s Theatre West Garden Walk the good news is that you still have plenty of time to take your own garden walk around your neighborhood or around other neighborhoods of the communities of the region.  The next 30 days is the prime garden viewing season in Wyobraska.  Most evenings cool down nicely, the setting sun creates dramatic lighting effects which add to the beauty of the gardens—so don’t be shy—take your own garden walks, gawk, and when the opportunity arises, visit with a few of the proud owners of some of those gardens that you’re admiring.  Remember, there are two things people always like to talk about—their gardens and themselves.

Pink Hibiscus with Feather Reed Grass

Lest we forget the plants, over the next month you’ll see grasses filling out and sending up seed heads.  The seed heads of feather reed grass are already turning their distinctive golden yellow color.  Switch grass, miscanthus, fountain grass and big and little bluestem won’t be far behind.   Hibiscus have started blooming early this year, so it looks like a long blooming period for these large flowered shrub like perennials.   Shrub roses are showing up in more and more landscapes and most are now in full bloom and will continue to bloom through mid autumn.   Goldenrod, daylilies, sunflowers, asters, coneflower, gayfeather, and Russian sage will all be blooming through August, just to name a few. 

And if your are planning changes to your own garden or landscape, mid-to-late summer is the best time to be looking at other Wyobraska landscapes to get ideas.   More like than not, the plants that look great now in someone else’s garden or landscape will also look great in yours.   So take your notebook, or better yet, your digital camera, and take your very own summertime evening garden walks.