JAMESTOWN – Flower and vegetable gardens are featured on the 34th Jamestown Garden Tour on Wednesday, July 10.

The garden tour highlighting four yards runs from 4 to 8 p.m. and is sponsored by the Jamestown Branch of the American Association of University Women.

“I am pretty excited this year because of the variety of and great ideas that participants will get going through the gardens,” said Connie Lillejord, AAUW co-coordinator with Erin Klein on the event.

“We look every year for big and small gardens, something that when people come on the tour, there’s something for everyone,” Lillejord said. This year, she noted there are many flowers plus vegetables and garden art.

Proceeds from the tour support the AAUW Educational Foundation and the AAUW Scholarship Endowment at the University of Jamestown.

Jack McGregor said when he and his wife, Yvonne, were younger, gardening was a way for them to feed their family of four. But tending to a garden became a burden with their full-time jobs and they scaled back.

Now, four years into retirement, gardening is anything but a burden.

“We love the work and we love the food that comes out of it,” McGregor said. “My primary interest in the garden is food and Yvonne actually is kind of more focused on the flowers and the arrangements and things like that.”

McGregor said wind mitigation is “really important” where they live.

“We live out on the tundra,” he said. “Everything to the west of us and north is wide open farmland. So for us to grow a garden, we have to control the wind. Our whole yard is based on that.”

While he said visitors won’t see much in the front yard, the protected back area is another story. That’s where the McGregors’ gardens and greenhouse are located.

“We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 raised bed areas,” McGregor said. “Because we don’t like bending over to weed. … You will see a lot of raised bed gardens with vegetables intermingled with the ornamental gardens with flowers and plants.”

He said they try to be as organic as possible with fertilizing and weed control.

“We do not have a monoculture yard as far as the vegetation that grows in the stuff we mow and walk on,” he said. “There’s dandelions, there’s weeds, there’s just a whole bunch of stuff. And I really think that’s good. We do mow it because we use our yard. But when you watch the bunnies, they’re foraging on little weeds and plants that grow in the middle of the yard. I’m thinking they leave our flowers alone because of that.”

Roger Koenig’s interest in planting flowers grew about 12 years ago when a neighbor leveled off a sloped area behind their home to help solve a drainage problem when it rained. That gave him an extra 12 feet of yard, he said.

“And that’s really when things kind of took off … when I started getting more of an interest in planting flowers back here,” he said.

Koenig said he does only flower gardening.

“I told somebody we’re like a sanctuary garden,” he said. “If it comes here it normally doesn’t get turned away. If it wants to grow here, let it grow here. So some of it’s kind of wild in some ways. But we also have certain parts of the garden that are specifically for certain plants.”

He said there are a lot of perennials including daylilies, salvias, speedwells, daisies and rudbeckia.

Koenig also enjoys annual flowers, planting 44 pots with them this year.

“We have a lot of garden art that we’ve accumulated over the years,” he added. “Mainly it’s come from our son and daughter.”

John M. Steiner / The Jamestown Sun

Those on the garden tour will find artist Rosemary Gasal in the Koenigs’ yard.

“She agreed to come and be kind of an artist in residence and do painting in the backyard while the tour is going on,” Koenig said.

Michelle, the Koenigs’ daughter, lives in Colorado Springs and her yard was on the garden tour there two years ago, Roger said. That tour provided artists at each location and Koenig liked the idea of doing that here.

Michelle also has packaged small bags with rudbeckia seed that will be given away free on Wednesday to garden tour visitors who would like to plant them, her father said.

Dave Bohl said when he and his wife, Wanda, purchased their present home more than 20 years ago, Canada thistle, wormwood and trees filled the backyard.

The couple have worked to make their yard a place to enjoy, so much so that a granddaughter was married there last year.

The Bohls have planted trees, done landscaping with rocks and timbers, added water features and flower and vegetable gardens.

Wanda picks the plants and trees.

“I’m from the South originally so I like deciduous trees, trees that change colors in the fall,” Wanda said. “The trees that are deciduous are mostly the ones that I have picked out over the years and started growing because I like them.”

Those include river birch, aspen and many amur maple trees.

“We did plant a red maple from a seed that fell from the tree that is in our deck,” she said. “The tree was barely a little over the top of the deck and now it is way over the house. But it’s multi-trunk and the perfect shade for the deck.”

Wanda said Dave decided to make a water feature out of a fish sculpture made by their son, Brad. Brad and Corey’s business is Bohl Iron Works.

“We have another water whiskey barrel water feature next to the deck,” she added.

John M. Steiner / The Jamestown Sun

Dave likes grasses, Wanda said, so a lot of reed grasses have been incorporated into the landscape.

“It’s very relaxing back there,” Dave said of the yard.

Arlie and Lynette Lind have flowers in their yard but spend most of their time in their vegetable garden.

“We concentrate a lot more on our vegetable garden,” Lynette said.

Arlie says the vegetable garden takes up most of the space but flowers are “interspersed around the landscape,” some of which are in carts he made that can be moved around their yard. Other yard art that Arlie created includes potting benches, tables and chairs.

Arlie said they save seed and plant it every year for their large zinnia bed. The perennials they have came from other people’s gardens, Lynette said.

Lynette said the flowers they have are there more for other people.

“… It’s just kind of a thing to do to add a little beauty to the yard because we know that people can see them from the (Anton Klaus) park,” Lynette said. “And we basically plant flowers just for people’s enjoyment to drive down here and look at the flowers. But Arlie and I concentrate on our vegetables and garlic and onions and that kind of thing. That’s where our main focus is.”

The Linds’ favorite vegetables to grow are cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, garlic and onion, she said. They also have herb and lettuce raised beds on their deck off of the kitchen.

“It’s very convenient for the kitchen and very handy,” she said. “It seems to do better that way for us.”

John M. Steiner / The Jamestown Sun

Arlie said they have a “prolific” grapevine and about 65 feet of raspberry canes.

“We make a lot of jelly off of them,” he said.

Lynette says they grow and preserve a lot of vegetables.

“We grow about double of what we need because I like to give it away to friends and family. It’s just fun to do that,” she said. “Some people don’t have gardens and I just like to share so we grow a lot more than what we actually need just because we like to make gifts of it to people.”

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What: Jamestown Garden Tour, sponsored by the Jamestown Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW)

When: 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 17; refreshments at The Arts Center, 115 2nd St. NW, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Tickets: $10 advance, $12 day of tour; available in advance and until 3 p.m. July 17 at The Arts Center, Country Gardens Floral, Comfort, AAUW Used Bookstore, Melted Crayon, Dakota Store, Lloyds Toyota or AAUW members. After 3 p.m. on tour day, tickets can be purchased at The Arts Center and AAUW Used Bookstore. During tour hours, tickets are available at each location

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Dave and Wanda Bohl, 1310 41st St. NW

Jack and Yvonne McGregor, 8055 36th St. SE (north side of interstate)

Arlie and Lynette Lind, 424 7th St. SW

Roger and Margaret “Peggy” Koenig, 317 17th Ave. NE

Source: jamestownsun.com