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Utah Heritage Garden Update |
By Susan Meyer Horticulture Chair, Utah Native Plant Society In this millenial year we have seen a doubling in the size of the Utah Heritage Garden Program, with the planting of five new gardens varying in size from a few planter boxes to over 6,000 square feet. We planted our first garden outside the Wasatch Front area, and obtained a $15,000 grant from the Bureau of Reclamation to help with signage and interpretive material. We hosted our second series of Native Plant Propagation Workshops in February 2000, attended by over sixty enthusiastic native plant gardeners. And we posted information about the Utah Heritage Garden Program as well as instructional materials and plant photos from the propagation workshops on the new UNPS website. We plan to augment these web materials soon, so keep an eye on the Heritage Garden pages of the website (www.unps.org). The flagship garden of the program is at Wasatch Elementary School, 1080 North 900 East in Provo. This 2700-square-foot garden was planted in June 1998 and is getting better every year. Third grade teacher Darrin Johnson is taking good care of the garden as well as teaching generations of third graders to grow and value native plants. He has obtained grant funding from several sources to expand the program to involve more teachers at his school, as well as offering workshops for other teachers throughout the state on growing natives in the classroom. Darrin also built garden benches, beautiful wooden signs, and a rustic box for garden maps. For more information about the garden, contact him at 371-2234. At the request of Wasatch Elementary teachers, garden designer Bitsy Schultz spent this spring preparing coloring book pages for many of the plants in the garden. These pages will soon be posted to the UNPS website where they can be downloaded and used by teachers and anyone else with an interest. We are also considering publishing a hardcopy version. Inspired by our success at Wasatch, we planted four new Heritage Gardens in 1999. Marcene Younker at the University of Utah Grounds Department persuaded her bosses to let her plant a Heritage Garden in one of the circle beds on the Mallway. This 1000-square-foot garden is located just north of the new Gymnastics Gymnasium at the east end of campus. The garden recently received its new signage, including a lovely etched stone sign featuring the Utah Ladyfinger Milkvetch logo. This garden is professionally maintained and always looks good. For more information call Marcene at 581-3078 or e her at: myounker@campplan.utah.edu. We also installed a mini-garden at the Animal Park at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi in 1999. The objective was to provide the Environmental Ed staff there with a small piece of native environment to use in instructing the thousands of schoolchildren who take part annually. This garden consists of 300 square feet around a flagpole in the middle of a bluegrass lawn, and consequently features mainly water-loving species. It has signage and an interpretive pamphlet. For more information about this garden, call TP Environmental Education Director Carolyn Bayliss at 768-4940. Our third garden project in 1999 was at the Rock Canyon Trailhead Park in Provo, at the east end of 2300 North, east of the LDS temple. The garden is located just north of the trailhead parking lot and features some fine landscape rock placed by our partners at Provo City Parks and Rec as well as dozens of plant species native to the Wasatch Front. It currently occupies about 1500 square feet but is scheduled to grow considerably in coming years. For more information call Phil Allen at 378-2421. The native shrub planting at Ensign Elementary School, 12th Avenue and L Street in Salt Lake, has been in place since the school was built over twenty years ago. It was donated by Native Plants Incorporated to help the school stabilize the quarry hill to the north of the building. It now boasts handsome, specimen-sized curlleaf mountain mahogany, cliffrose, and squawbush, among many others. Last year, hill guardian Ann Kelsey, whose children attended Ensign, got together with us to talk about supplementing the shrub plantings with more of a native understory. We waited patiently for rain last fall so we could do our planting--and it never rained. Finally in November we planted anyway, and used water from a kind across-the-street neighbor to give the plants a good start. We had more of a weed problem than we reckoned on, so at present this garden is still nascent. We plan to plant again this fall. The Ensign Heritage Garden is in much need of additional "Gardenin'Angels" to help with planting and maintenance. The garden is on a hill with great public visibility from both a path system and the school parking lot, and we are hoping to get more people involved in this very satisfying activity. For more information, contact Ann Kelsey at 581-6520 or kelsey@umnh.utah.edu. In July 1999, the Center for Water Efficient Landscaping at USU in Logan sponsored a Native Plant Horticulture Symposium, where I gave a presentation on the Heritage Garden Program. One of the many fruitful contacts made at this meeting was with Lyle Bauer, who works for the Parks Department in Price. He was interested in a xeriscape native plant garden, so we hooked him up with the Price Chapter of UNPS, and after much frenzied garden designing, plant-growing and site prep, on April 29 the Price Heritage Garden was planted. Several Utah Valley Chapter members were on hand to help, as well as the Price Chapter and people from the community. We got the 6500-square-foot garden planted in a few hours. Lyle has been watering faithfully but appropriately sparingly and members of the Price Chapter have been holding once-a- week weeding parties. The garden looks great, and next spring, it is going to blow the minds of the local citizenry. It is located just off Carbon Avenue (second Price Exit). Turn left at the exit and proceed about four blocks, past an old school, and turn right on 3rd South. The garden is in the middle of the first block on the right hand side, behind the old school. We plan a big open house for the one-year anniversary, and will have signage and interpretive materials in place, so put it on your calendar early! For more information about this garden, contact Mike Hubbard at 435-637-4834 or mhubbard@castlenet.com. In early May perhaps the smallest of the Utah Heritage Gardens was planted in a series of planter boxes in the Atrium at Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake. This garden features mostly plants that can tolerate some shade, but we are being somewhat experimental. Students at the school helped plant the garden as a break in the standardized testing period. The school is located at 750 West 200 North, a couple of blocks north of the famed Red Iguana restaurant. For more information contact Sharon Kottler-Decker at 533-0271. We also planted a small Heritage Garden at the Layton Heritage Museum in Layton in May 2000. This 800-square-foot garden will be used in conjunction with educational programs at the museum, located at 403 Wasatch Drive in Layton. Contact Bill Sanders, Museum Director, at 546-8579 for more information. Bill reports that he has already had many positive comments on the garden. Garden Number Nine was planted in mid-June at the Benson Grist Mill Historic Site, a county park north of Tooele, with the help of Paula Mohadjer and friends from Red Butte Garden. This 1000-square-foot planting represents the first phase of the garden and could blossom into a full-scale restoration. The millsite is on a stream (of course) that could greatly benefit from the attentions of native plant lovers. To get to this garden, take the Tooele offramp from I-80 and turn west onto the Grantsville Highway. The 150-year-old Mill is just a few hundred yards west of the junction on the right hand (north) side. We are especially interested in getting some Tooele County "Gardenin' Angels" to help with the maintenance of this garden. For more information, contact call Museum Director Marilyn Shields at 435-882-7137. The tenth Utah Heritage Garden was planted in July-August by members of the Mountain Chapter at the city park in Park City This garden is a part of the city's xeriscape demonstration area. Plants for the garden were grown mostly by chapter members, several of whom took part in our propagation workshops last February. This year's 600-square-foot planting represents the first phase of a 1800-square-foot Heritage Garden. Contact Abby Moore (435-649-8859; balsamorhiza@hotmail.com) for more information. We are exhilarated with the success of the Heritage Garden Program and would like to see it continue to grow. In this second phase of expansion we would like to play more of an advisory role rather than being so directly involved with the hands-on aspects. We would like to organize our members to continue to grow plants for the program as well as to help with gardens in their communities. UNPS will be able to help prospective garden managers obtain plants, and will help with site plans, species selection, and signage and interpretive material. But we will no longer be able to be directly involved with planting and maintenance of new gardens. The program has outgrown our ability to be personally involved with every garden. We would like to thank the following people and organizations for plants and growing facilities: Janett Warner and Wildland Nursery (www.wildlandnursery.com), Brent Collett and the Thanksgiving Point Production Greenhouses, the USFS Shrub Sciences Laboratory in Provo, Roger Kjelgren and the Center for Water Efficient Landscaping at USU, and Mr. Johnson's Third Grade Class, Wasatch Elementary School. We are preparing a guidebook for prospective Heritage Garden managers, to be posted on the UNPS website and also available in hardcopy on request. We welcome ideas for new Heritage Gardens, as well as offers to help with existing gardens and any feedback that you have to give. Contact me at 423-2603 or at semeyer@sisna.com. |