The Actual 2026 Garden Tour

 I'll continue with pictures from the actual 2026 Garden Tour, which was yesterday.  The forecast rain held off, the sun came out, and the temperatures were in the mid-70's, making it the best weather for the tour in my 19 years of witness.  And them last night the sky opened up and 3 inches of rain fell!  Again, I will let these pictures (all unedited, save one) speak (mostly) for themselves:  

If you're going to grow scarlet Bee Balm, there is much to be said for a mass planting!  Go big or go home!

This house had a nice porch wrapping around 3 sides of it; I'll show you one side, for envy's sake.  Want!

Sometimes it's just about the flowers.

This birdhouse is at the home of a native Austrian and models, in miniature, the mountain homes of that area.

 

In this shade garden, with the white Loosestrife backdrop, this bench is calling.

And to finish, this piece taught me that I need to use more reds and scarlets in my own garden;  see it pop!

Garden Envy activated: I wish these were all part of my garden!

2024 EMG Manhattan Area Garden Tour

 Warning:   Picture heavy!

On schedule, and a little later in the year than for previous tours, the Riley County Extension Master Gardeners held their annual Manhattan Area Garden Tour yesterday (June 22nd), with 5 private homes, the 2 community garden sites, and, of course, the KSU Gardens included.   If you've read my blog before, you know already that I am the unofficial annual photographer for the event and this year is no exception.  Here, I've included my favorite two pictures from each site.  and it wasn't an easy task to choose from the over 863 pictures that I took and kept for the EMG's. 

I wasn't at first sure about the community gardens being on the list, but at least it exposed all of us to the fact that Manhattan boasts the oldest community garden in Kansas, celebrating it's 50th anniversary this year..  I was also introduced in the gardens to the shocking color combination of burnt-red daylilies and pink phlox pictured at upper right, finding to my surprise that I rather liked this jarring adjacency, even though I'd have never planted these myself.

Color and creativity abounded on the tour this year.   This artistically-oriented homeowner had a number of these stacked-glass focal spots scattered around her corner lot.  I missed my chance to ask the gardener how they were held together and how they stay upright and unbroken in our Kansas winds.

One of the continuing themes of this year's Tour seemed to be "extra living spaces", with covered or screened porches, outside private dining areas, "she-sheds" or "man-caves" at nearly every home.  I was envious of this small, detached cottage annex at this home, with a one-room, perhaps 8 foot x 8 foot cozy interior populated by a loft bed, comfy couch, writing desk, and mini-kitchenette.  Oh, the writing I dream that I could accomplish there!

The most admired plant of the day (at least admired by the native fauna who count most) was at another home, where a fantastic hot pink Monarda stood out in the landscape and attracted bumblebees all during our tour.

I had many "favorite spots" in this garden, which contained natural outcrops of huge boulders as it's backyard border, falling away 20 feet down to nearby Wildcat Creek below it, but my eye kept being drawn back to this simple grouping and the genius of this lime-green-painted milk can, darker-green hosta, and the pink impatiens nearby.

 

A repeat garden on the tour, featured previously in 2011, was this cottage house, complete with a geometric garden painstakingly laid out and inspired by a mid-1700's Williamsburg garden the owner had visited.   Because I don't show people's faces here when I can avoid it, I was careful to take advantage of this moment when it was empty for a quick photo.  Notice please, the original  Revolutionary War-era flag flying from the garage.

This same home, placed near two K-State fraternities, also had a very shaded, fenced, private courtyard between the home and detached garage for some early morning and late evening enjoyment and rest away from the boisterous college activities.

A friend and fellow veterinarian had a garden on the tour that featured, unsurprisingly, a number of cat statues, fitting for the owner's profession.  

In fact, I can't limit myself to just two pictures from this garden as there were a lot of cute focal points, including this cute little maiden peeking from behind the pink bells.

It was also in this garden that I was introduced to and coveted the fabulous sedum below and also admired one of the few blooming roses on the tour, a climber whose name I don't know.  I'm lusting for that sedum and will have to go searching for it since I'm hopeful my colleague purchased it somewhere here in town. 

 

One home featured a lovely patriotic feel in the front, with the prominent flag and a comfortable front porch decked out in red, white and blue banners like Calvin Coolidge was going to speak from it at any moment from just behind that hale and healthy hedge of huge white hydrangeas (ProfessorRoush nails a quintuple alliteration!).   

To me, the patriotic feel of this property was continued in the back of the house in this combination of these bright red salvias and red-and-white petunias.  Or maybe I'm partial to them because I chose red petunias and white petunias and red pelargoniums and red and white inpatients, and a red begonia to put in pots and beds leading to my own front door this year.   I wonder, are these color choices subconsciously influenced by the fact that it's a Presidential election year?

Well, I need to get outside to the weekly mowing so I'll finish off by showing you, first, the newly-constructed, black-granite-walled reflecting pool of the KSU gardens.  I'm told the flanking channels, which are unchlorinated and barely visible here, will be populated in the future with water lilies and other aquatic plants.

I can't leave you, however, without also adding a current photo of my beloved 'John Davis' already in its 2nd, yet still bountiful, seasonal display of floriferousness.   Another year, another successful Garden Tour witnessed by this stalwart hardy Canadian rose!

So, It's Not Just Me?

 I've spoken before about the surprise to me that peonies seem to volunteer everywhere in my garden and of the volunteer peonies that have thrived here.  Until this week, I've felt like either a deep, dark gardening secret has been hidden from me despite all the reading I've done, or alternatively that I'm just blessed with a peony-fertile climate.  Just recently, however I've seen that the volunteer peony issue can plague others in the area.  I was taking my first walk of the new spring in the K-State Gardens at lunchtime the other day and came across this obvious aberrant peony growing out of the first tree peony to bloom there.

It is likely, I suppose, that since a tree peony is grafted to the roots of another herbaceous peony, the above break of a graft understock is not so really so surprising.  I'm used to rootstocks growing up and being a nuisance in grafter roses.  During the same lunchtime constitutional, however, I also observed another herbaceous peony rising from this Itoh hybrid, which I highly doubt is grafted.  Itoh hybrids are usually propagated by division according to my reading.  I predict that if I watch while the dozens of peonies at K-State bloom, I'll see other wild children, exposed by their flowers after hiding inside more similar foliage clumps.

Regardless of the wanton explosion of unplanned peonies at the K-State garden, however, my own volunteer peonies continue to crop up.  Just this week, I noticed this small seeding trying to grow next to the Knautia macedonia and Monarda of this bed.  

And I've lost count of all the volunteers that grow for me.  In this vertical line of three distinct peonies, I think that only the center one was planted and the other two are volunteers.   And then there is the volunteer peony with the burgundy foliage growing nearby (and pictured below);  it bloomed last year with a deep red, single flower.   It is worth keeping for the foliage alone.

Should I now run across the city, screaming warning about the unplanned peony population explosion?   Should I be interrogating this advance guard about their alien invasion plans or likely non-terrestrial planet of origin?   Both seem like a slight overreaction given the innocuous and welcome presence of a plant that doesn't smother nearby neighbors and will survive the worst things Kansas throws at it.  No, I think I'll just keep nurturing these babies along.  At worst, they don't have good disease resistance and don't make it.  At best, they'll survive for generations and be my legacy, my lasting joke on those who garden here long after I've become part of the landscape rather than a gardener of it, as they try, and fail, to identify what peony varieties I planted here.

My Minty Monarda



Wild Monarda fistulosa

 This is certainly the time of daylilies in the Flint Hills, but on the native prairie, it is also the time of  Monarda, specifically Monarda fistulosa, otherwise known as Wild Bergamot, in my pastures. 



Wild Bergamot is a common perennial forb of the Kansas prairie, blooming from June through August.  This 3 foot tall member of the mint family is easily identified by the characteristic square stem of the mints and by the blowsy pale pink-purple flowers that stand out from the yellow-green color of the prairie grasses in the summer. When its leaves are crushed, it also releases the fragrant essential oils we've come to associate with the mints.  Highly resistant to drought, it is an essential summer food of bees in the area. 

 

Wild Bergamot clump on the prairie

Great Plains Native Americans had many uses for this aromatic plant, from a food seasoning ingredient or perfuming their clothes to the treatment of colds and stomach ailments. They also recognized that it had strong antiseptic properties due to a substance now known as "Thymol" (now a common ingredient in mouthwash formulas) and used it as a poultice to treat skin infections and minor wounds.   There are three other Monarda species found in Kansas, Monarda citriodora (Lemon Mint), Monarda punctata (Western Spotted Beebalm), and  Monarda bradburiana (Bradbury Beebalm), but only Lemon Mint might also be found in my local area and I've never seen it.

'Jacob Cline'

Of course, most gardeners know this genus by the more colorful cultivars of Monarda didyma, otherwise know as Scarlet Monarda or Oswego tea.  The latter common name is popular because the Oswego Indians taught the American colonists how to use it for tea after the colonists had a spiteful little Boston Tea Party.  I grow several cultivars of Monarda didyma, from deeper purple-pink 'Blue Stocking' to less intense 'Prairie Knight' and also grow a bright red form that are the descendants of either 'Gardenview Scarlet' or 'Jacob Cline'.  Those two cultivars were identical to my examination from the time I planted them and I had both planted in the same general area, so now that it has spread throughout my front landscaping, I'm not sure which of my scarlet bee balms was the evolutionary winner (if not both).  'Gardenview Scarlet' is a cross of Monarda didyma X M. fistulosa that was a selection from the Chicago Botanic Gardens Plant Selection Program.  'Jacob Cline', which seems to be the more widely available and better known red cultivar, was a selection of the native Monarda didyma that is highly resistant to Monarda nemesis of powdery mildew.  I've had some trouble determining if the proper spelling of the name is 'Jacob Cline' or 'Jacob Kline', but according to Saul Nursery, which originally introduced it, the proper name is 'Jacob Cline', named for the son of Georgia garden designer Jean Cline.  I suppose they'd know.

'Blue Stocking'

As you would expect from a plant where related species grow naturally in the same area, every Monarda cultivar that I've tried has done well in my Flint Hills garden. It seems to love the full sunlight and dry late summer conditions of the summer, blooming freely and self-seeding or spreading by rhizomes over whatever garden areas I choose to give it. And I've got to tell you, I love removing last years stems in the Spring and weeding this stuff in the summer; stepping on the young plants packed so closely together releases a delectable aroma.  Monarda has a reputation in most printed sources for thriving best in moist environments, but I haven't found extra water to be necessary for established specimens.  Monarda seems to do just fine with occasional droughts, just as long as the drought does not occur in the middle of the flowering period. In fact, withholding a little moisture helps keep these cultivars from growing too tall and then sprawling about. None of the cultivars I grow seem to get mildew, and they provide me the benefits of being deer resistant and attracting bees and butterflies by the thousands. In fact, it is one of the few plant families that I can truly say I've never killed or lost a specimen I've tried.  Now that's what I call adapted to the climate!



'Jacob Cline' in my front landscaping