Nome gardeners show off their green thumbs during Garden Tour
Despite wolf-howling winds and machine-gun precipitation, over a dozen Nomeites gathered outside Old St. Joe’s on Sunday, August 18 for the annual Garden Tour led by master gardener and teacher Cheryl Thompson. The crew was dressed for the weather and exchanged knowing glances and smiles as we waited for more people to coalesce for the tour.
The aim of the annual tour is to celebrate the many gardeners and gardens of the area while sparking ideas and sharing knowledge to expand green-thumb possibilities to all.
Janet Balice was there in head-to-toe rubbers, looking most well prepared for the deluge, yet she explained that she was only dressed as such because she just came from checking the fish net.
Thompson, wearing a homemade brown felt hat and layers of floral printed flowing clothes, ushered the group across the street to the Nome Community Garden beside the Nome Food Bank. We gladly followed her booming laugh, which echoed off the buildings around Anvil Square.
Alicia Reitz, who managed the Community Garden this year, briefly took over the tour to show off the season’s bounty and improvements. There are new perennials planted in front of the Food Bank, including Forget-Me-Nots, the Alaska State Flower, as well as strawberries. Volunteers created mini-hoops over some of the raised beds, which helped bring in solid yields of kale, spinach, chard and lettuce that was repeatedly donated to the Food Bank. Inside the big hoop house peas, carrots, squash, radish, and more all gave off signs of a season of care. Beside the hoop house stood a new greenhouse, constructed by Grizzly’s Building Supply, which was also busting with edible bounty. Reitz went on to explain some of the organization that she brought to the garden, as well as the new construction of a vermicomposting station, which uses worms to create new soil from compostables.
Several tour attendees showed enthusiasm to volunteer as winter caretakers for the worms, as they cannot survive the many freeze-thaw cycles of winter in the vermicomposting station. Then garlic, which needs to be planted in the fall for harvest the next year, was discussed in technical detail – make sure to pick the shoots, known as scapes, as it grows, advised Kim Knudsen.
We then boarded a school bus and drove over to Dave McDowells on First Avenue. Dave’s landscaped yard is a testament to the possibilities of vibrantly colorful yard without too much labor. The trick: Perennial flowers that can survive in Nome’s harsh environment. Wild geraniums, delphiniums (but they need support!) standing tall in periwinkle and purple, lupin (gifted from Little Sisters) looking like the softest blue on earth, Icelandic poppies in red, orange, yellow, fireweed in all its pinkness, and columbine showing off its gentlest yellows with petals the shape of spurs. All this color popped out of rusty lawn art, otherwise known as historical junk, or junk. Someone in the crowd quipped, “All these plants smell like iron.”
We talked technique for getting the poppies to pop – a prospering theory was that here, on the Seward Peninsula, they like to be covered in a little bit of gravel. The wonder of volunteer flowers was discussed as one young man dressed in a detailed Batman outfit bounced on his dad’s knee.
We got back on the bus and booked it out to Knudsen’s home, beside Dredge #7 Hotel. Upon arrival, the rains started coming down in sheets, so dense it was hard to keep one’s eyes open, yet this Nugget Reporter never saw anyone even flinch. People continued appreciating the garden. Some retreated to one of a couple greenhouses Knudsen has set up. Her permanent greenhouse boomed with colors from dahlias, herbs, hanging tomatoes, and even a couple delicate rose-mallows, one inside the greenhouse, the other outside, proving Knudsen’s green thumb and her experimental spirit. She offered garden tour participants plants to take home. At one point during the tour by the greenhouses, Knudsen expounded on the need to try many different seeds and keep track of one’s trials; others agreed.
But the garden tour isn’t strictly vegetables and flowers. It’s about decoration and recycling and upcycling too. And other homestead activities.
As the sheets of rain gave way to a shredded downpour, Knudsen led us to her chicken coop, where she keeps three birds. They came out to beg for food as the resilience of Alaska Ninja Chickens, a hardy breed, was discussed.
Knudsen offered a prize to the person that guessed the number of lawn gnomes she had – eight.
People discussed that, while chickweed is edible, it is still recommended to pick it from a garden, so it doesn’t take over.
Out to Icy View, first stop was the Hughes’ house, where we were told that 10 years ago it was a gravel lot. We first saw, and then deeply sniffed, chest-tall lilacs of pink and purple. The honey scent seemed to linger longer on the rainy day. Their windows were full of pepper plants. We noted their hedged alder plants on the perimeter of their property; they stood in perfect rectangles.
The day is much about sharing ideas as it is about appreciation, Thompson noted.
A street over, Angela Hansen welcomed us into the maze of willows in her backyard. Instead of clearing their lot clean, they delicately sliced cul-de-sac gardens into their yard of tall willows. The effect is magical, immediately calling to mind secret gardens. Hansen boasted about her big delphiniums, which she said came from Thompson. She then exposed her garden art philosophy: “Get bits from the dump, paint them white, and put them in the garden.” The clean white of the random objects — from old lanterns to spheres to antique tins —contrasted against the raging rainbow colors of her garden to give the viewer a glance at classical beauty-type, á la Greece or Italy. One tour member said, “It reminds me of my grandma’s garden.” Hansen said that they’d been on the property for 25 years. She also offered a smattering of flowers and plants for us to bring home. Many were enlivened by her Trollius europaeus, or globeflowers, which popped a pleasant clementine color and looked like it had little fingers reaching upwards from the petals.
Next door, Sue Steinacher welcomed the tour into her yard. Her big spruce and cottonwood trees were planted 18 years ago, and they stood sentry beside tasteful steel cranes hued in blue. In the backyard she showed us her geodesic dome bursting with the biggest kale and broccoli plants we’d see all day, and probably would see all season. Steinacher is looking for someone to help her tend her greenhouse next summer.
We boogied in the bus over to the high school to check out Thompson’s classes’ greenhouses. The group of students and teacher have three bursting greenhouses. They told stories of fighting off thrips and busted buildings and musk oxen munching. Thompson told everyone that if they wanted to grow peppers to score some of the Hungarian hot wax variety that they’d been growing there, because it was prospering. They had sunflowers wide open and lots of plants supported by string.
The rains lightened and we all became friendly. On the ride to the last stop, over the Dexter Bypass, to Dexter at Sylvia Matson’s home, we nailed a pothole and Balice shrieked from the back of the bus and turned everyone’s head. Balice shrugged it off and said, “That’s almost my ‘there’s-a-silver-in-the-net’ scream.” We shared snacks and talked about potato growth myth – do flowers really mean production under the soil?
At the Matson oasis, which is currently for sale, on the banks of the Nome River, we checked out her bursting greenhouse before swinging around the back of the house for their main attraction – the dirt farm. The Matsons have spent years producing soil, namely out of sawdust and grass clippings. But they’ve experimented with everything in their soil production, even fish, which they say works excellent for compost piles. The main thrust of the theory, though, was to keep a balanced amounts of browns and greens, and to keep the pile around 140°F to 150°F, and to not be afraid to use water to keep things cool.
The evening ended with a potluck at Dredge #7’s Mineshaft. Knudsen had set up picnic tables with freshly cut flowers in jars. The sun came out and shined down upon the mouth-watering spread. It looked like a space set up for a wedding, alive with plants and creativity and warmth. Generations of Nomeites discussed generational plants and change. We ate a special Be-Bop-a-Rebop rhubarb pie in honor of Nancy McGuire, the late Nugget’s publisher and editor, who was a big supporter of the Garden Tour. The power of climate change and the potential of dandelions were discussed, amongst other things terra firma. We all felt growth and went home with a certain kind of fullness.