(gentle music) - Some time ago, a friend of ours named Denise, caught me after church.

She had a page torn off of a magazine and said, Mary, this looks like a yard you should visit for "Prairie Yard & Garden."

Well, according to the article, the Yard was owned by Sue and Bob Olson of Mankato, Minnesota.

And that's all I had to go on.

After lots of digging, I found out there was a Robert Olson who worked at a Mankato clinic.

As Paul Harvey used to say, tune in for the rest of the story on finding this beautiful yard.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard & Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of Truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard & Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard & Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music) - I had tracked a Robert Bob Olson to a clinic in Mankato.

I called the clinic, explained who I was and that I was not a stalker, and asked the receptionist if she would please give Bob my phone number and ask him to call me.

Well, lo and behold, he and his wife Sue called me back.

I had found the right Sue and Bob Olson.

And they said, we sure could come for a visit and share their yard with all our viewers.

Thanks so much for calling me back and letting us come to visit.

- Of course.

I'm so glad to have you here in Mankato with us.

- Well, tell me, how did you get started with gardening?

Gardening goes way back for me.

I have come from a long line of gardeners.

Back into Denmark, my grandmother and father would be proud right now.

I grew up, everybody gardened.

And they did their perennials, they had the, there's certain perennials that were important to them, which I've carried into my own gardening.

Vegetables, et cetera.

I always help my dad in the yard growing up.

I have a brother who's an avid gardener, and I've just, it's become a part of me more so than I ever would've dreamed as probably a young child.

I had no idea, but I'm passionate about it and it's carried over, I was diagnosed with cancer, gosh, almost 10 years ago now.

And even that was a part of my gardening experience in that when I was diagnosed in the spring, I thought, oh my gosh, my gardens, I've gotta get my gardens taken care of before I undergo treatment.

And I came out and I dove into the gardens and work, work, work, work, work.

And one evening, as I was pretty much finishing up, this is April in Minnesota, a butterfly landed on my shoulder and I thought, a butterfly, what?

This just doesn't add up.

And the butterfly danced around me and came, flew away, and it came back, and it landed on me and it landed on me.

And then it just sat there.

And I thought, this is a sign that everything is going to be okay.

And it was.

Here, I am today, very happily.

And, but I've made that an important piece of my gardens as well.

And I've memorialized different family members, even our pets in the gardens.

Everything I do is purposeful and has meaning and significance.

I don't do it just to plunk something in the ground.

There's purpose with everything I do.

- [Mary] So how did you start here at this property?

We moved in here 25 years ago, and it was an open blank slate for me.

None of this was here other than the center garden.

And that was a big, honestly, overgrown mess.

And I gave it the first summer.

And I said, let's just see what comes up in here.

And then the next spring, we'll attack this.

An attack, we did.

We cleaned that all up.

And every year since I've added something to the gardens.

And I've morphed things, I've changed things, I'm always, oh, I don't like that anymore, let's change this up.

Or, oh, I have a great idea.

And then my husband rolls his eyes and says, "Oh boy."

- So do you use annuals or perennials or both?

- Both.

Mostly perennials, but I do like the annuals because it gives you that continuous pop of color.

But my goal is to have color, you know, all through the seasons.

- [Mary] Do you design your own beds or do you have professional help to help with laying them out?

- [Sue] It's all me.

I've done it all myself.

I just have a, I get a vision and I work around that and work with it.

The only thing that we didn't do ourselves was the hardscaping, but I had a vision for that and we brought people in to do that.

But otherwise, everything else has been my dreams and the help of my husband too, put it all together.

- [Mary] How do you keep up with all the watering?

Well, we do have an irrigation system, and I try to be pretty mindful about what I'm planting.

For example, I love impatience, but impatience are water hogs.

And this, actually, this is the first year that I have not done any impatience.

And then ironically, we have this year of all the rain, but, you know, then, then you're a slave to your watering.

And I don't, I just wanna be able to enjoy it.

So, for example, I have a lot of begonias, the begonias can adjust to.

They don't, I don't have to stand there and water for half my evening, you know?

So, I think about that.

So you said that your plantings are purposeful.

What are some of the beds or the reasons you've planted?

- Going back to my cancer diagnosis, I have a bed over here that's dedicated to the butterflies.

And, so I have a butterfly theme going in that area.

And that was the area where the butterfly landed actually.

We lost a grandson a year ago, and I have a bed dedicated to him, memorializing him.

There's a tree dedicated to each of our parents, and there's a section of one of the gardens that has owls.

Owls are symbolic for my father, so we recognize that.

And I have a lot of perennials from my mother-in-law's garden, so she's kind of sprinkled everywhere.

My little bit of Nancy everywhere, so that's the idea what I do.

- How do you pick the plants specific to each garden?

- Well, of course, I think about things like the lighting, you know, is it a shade area or a sun area?

And the garden is continually evolving to that end, because at, when we first started, there wasn't any shade.

Now we have a lot of shade, so I'm always shifting and adjusting things that way.

But I also think about, for example, Bob's mother always told the story of good friends of theirs who gave her a bleeding heart when my husband was born, and she still had the bleeding heart, and I have a piece of that.

So that memorializes her.

It also recognizes my husband.

And I've split that many times now, and it's, I had that sprinkled throughout the gardens.

And that's something else I do, is try to have to, to bring the same themes through so I don't have just one area with, you know, a blob of pink bleeding hearts, so I have them scattered throughout.

But I also think about, well, for example, the tree that I have that memorializes my husband's father is a serviceberry.

Well, he was in the military.

So I think of the name and that kind of represents him.

The birch tree is in the owl garden for my dad.

The birch tree is big and tall and strong.

And I think about that with him.

You know, it's those, I make those types of connections, so.

- [Mary] How do you keep track of what you plant where.

- [Sue] Well, I'm a little obsessive in that regard.

Every one of my plants is labeled with the common name and the scientific name on the front.

The back is the, the size, you know, how high and how wide it gets when it blooms and when I planted it, or if it was gifted from a friend, I have their name on it when they gave it to me.

In addition, I keep a box of all the tags, you know, if I buy a plant, all the tags are in the box by year.

So I can go back and reference that.

And I also, if someone gives me something, I'll put a note card in there as well, just so I know what I have.

It would be very interesting to know how many plants I have.

We had talked about doing that earlier this year, but I'm a little overwhelmed when I look at it right now, so.

- [Mary] How do you keep up with all of the weeding?

- Well, the weeding is, falls to me, but that'll be a good thing to talk about with my husband, but I do, I spend about an hour every day just out weeding and deadheading.

And that pretty much takes care of it.

But he would be the one to tell you our secrets, some of our secrets for the weeding.

- [Mary] Well, can we go visit with Bob?

- [Sue] Yeah, absolutely.

(joyful music) - This is the original garden when we moved here, Mary.

And it was very full of weeds, it was a mess.

And took us a good season to take care of the entire garden, to see what was in it, what kept growing out of it.

Weeding, we probably weed at least an hour a day.

And weeds can come, volunteers from the air or they can come from below the ground.

So that's why it's real important to have mulch.

- [Mary] I see that.

And what kind do you use?

- [Bob] We use the hardwood mulch.

And this brand happens to be Sunset Gold and, wow mulch.

What does mulch do?

It provides a lot of moisture for the plants and it helps with some weed control.

When we first moved here, our first order of mulch that we had delivered, seven cubic yards, okay?

So picture, you know, this was most of the garden.

Well, Sue in her creativity, she's an artist.

She has developed the entire yard.

She's a pretty good salesperson because how she sold the expansion of the garden was, "Bob, you'll have less the mole."

Well, let's think about this.

First order mulch was seven yards, cubic yards.

Our last order was 40.

Okay, so we've expanded a little bit.

Now how about the mowing time?

Over those 25 years, our mowing has reduced about 20 minutes.

So not a super great return, but a great return from the beauty of the garden.

And I'll just add this because we have some color in the mulch.

We have color in the garden, and Sue is an expert, she's a conductor.

She has different areas of the garden popping colorwise or blooming wise with the perennials or the annuals that she'll sprinkle in to add more color.

In addition to mulch, composting is real important too.

So, whenever we expand a garden, we'll bring in compost and that helps us not have to go out and buy so much topsoil when we keep expanding the gardens.

- [Mary] Do you have trouble with critters?

- Critters, well, it depends on you're talking about the live ones or the statue critters.

The statue rabbits, it's a love-hate relationship.

Sue loves rabbits, the ones that don't move and don't eat.

So yes, critters are a huge issue.

We do live trap.

And what have we caught over the years?

Possum, raccoon, squirrel, rabbits, chipmunks, moles.

Thank goodness no skunks.

That would be a challenge.

- How about deer - Well, as you can see, this six foot fence had to be constructed because of the deer.

So the deer, they have at it in the front yard, but to get around the rabbit center, the smart rabbits that don't go into live trap, we use liquid fence.

And that does a pretty good job for the deer and the rabbits.

The fence does the greatest job for the deer, but liquid fences has worked out quite well.

- Now, do you have a bed that's kind of yours or more of your interest?

- Skol.

It's called the Viking bed, a little bit of story with that.

There was a football stepping stone that I'd seen at one of the nurseries in town, and I'd make a comment to Sue.

"Yeah, I'd really like that."

"No, no."

Finally I wore her down.

It went on sale.

And the only way she would agree to let me purchase that football is if I created a garden.

And that's how the Viking garden was created.

Every year we plant annuals in the shape of the Viking V. And then my neighbor at the time was a huge Packer fan.

So I made sure to pick up a plant called cheesehead.

And I made sure the V was above the cheesehead.

Well, our article in the Star Tribune last October, Monrovia saw the article and said, you need a Viking velvet maple, so now that's in the garden.

My friend and neighbor gave us a Viking gourd.

I also added a Viking plate so that, it truly is one of my favorite parts in the garden because it's a Viking garden and the Viking plants way outnumber the packer plants.

- So is that your favorite part in the garden, or what is your favorite place?

- You know, I've given that some thought.

That is one of my favorite places, the other favorite place is on the swing set because I can sit on the swing and see most of the garden.

And that is so relaxing to see the garden in most of its entirety.

Behind us, we have a statue of a pig.

His name is Boink.

So the story with Boink, I've always wanted a potbelly pig.

And finally my son, Matt and his wife, Tess, took up that offer.

And I received Boink a year ago for a birthday.

And you know what's nice about Boink?

I don't have to bring him to the vet.

And when we had Boink, he became famous right away.

He ended up in the Minneapolis Tribune back in October.

And that was one of the conditions I really wanted a picture of Boink in the newspaper.

So Boink is probably one of the more famous pigs around.

- [Mary] How did they even find out about him?

- [Bob] Well, I pointed him out.

- [Mary] Okay.

Another, I mean, it's a little bit related to football, the Viking part, when a kicker kicks a field goal and it hits the upright, boink.

So he is close to the Viking garden.

- Well, thanks so much for visiting with us today and sharing your part of the story here.

I think we'll maybe try to visit again with Sue and find out what her favorite place in the yard is too.

- Sounds great.

Skol.

(Mary laughs) (gentle music) - I have a question.

Sometimes my crabapples look terrible and the leaves drop.

Can you recommend any other varieties?

- So one of the important things about when you're selecting plants is to look for disease resistant varieties of plants.

So crabapples, for example, there are hundreds of different cultivars of crabapples.

And they have been breed to be disease resistant.

Things like apple scab and anthracnose.

When you're choosing a tree, this is an ornamental crabapple.

You wanna look for plants that are disease resistant.

Now it's important to realize that resistant does not mean immune.

In other words, you may still see signs of a disease, whether it be fungal or bacterial.

This is Snowdrift, it's a cultivar, it's an ornamental, retains its fruit through the winter, which makes it a really good plant for winter interest.

However, it has poor resistance to apple scab.

An apple scab can cause leaf drop prematurely, and it can also cause the plant to basically defoliate in the summer.

So people get very alarmed by that.

However, it has good resistance to mildew.

Both of these conditions are fungal based.

In other words, there are fungal spores that cause these.

Now fungal, if you think of fungi, they like cool, wet, windy weather because it blows those spores all around.

And so during seasons when we have a cool, wet, windy spring, we'll see worse apple scab and mildew than we would during a dry hot spring.

One of my favorite disease resistant cultivars is Donald Wyman, also Prairiefire is a great one, and also Adirondack.

Those are all terrific disease resistant cultivars of ornamental crabs.

- [Announcer] "Ask the Arboretum Experts" has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska dedicated to welcoming, informing, and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research and education.

- Another important feature of our garden is the shed that I have here.

My, one of my brothers actually built it for me.

A second brother had the plan and that, the other brother built it.

And it was one of the first things that we did when we were creating our, a little oasis back here.

And it's become a focal point because when you come into the yard or you're looking at it from the house, that's what you see.

And I've kind of planned things around that, but it's very, very special to me because my brother did build it and it's very meaningful.

- [Mary] So what do you use the shed for?

- Shed is mostly for storage.

You know, we keep all of our garden tools, lawnmowers in there.

We store stuff over the winter, you know, that kind of thing.

And another important feature in the garden for me, and it's a favorite place in the garden, is something that I just created this year.

My husband's mother passed away this past winter, and cleaning out the house, there was a church pew that had always been in their basement.

And the pew was from their original church that they attended in Little Falls, Minnesota.

And when they were building another church, they did, I suppose like a fundraiser, and you could buy the pews, and she bought the pew.

Well, somehow we ended up with the pew.

It was an adventure with my husband getting it home.

And we stripped it down and refinished it.

And I've got a verse on the back of it.

And it's just, I've tucked it into a corner of the beds.

And you can sit back there and it's quiet.

You can hear the birds and look out into the yard, and, it's cool, it's in the shade, and I love that spot.

- [Mary] Do you share your beautiful yard with other people?

- [Sue] Oh, we do.

I always say the garden gate is always open and people are free to come in at any time.

Always happy to give people a tour of the garden.

I'd like to share.

It's here to be enjoyed.

- [Mary] So you talk about sharing.

When you divide plants, do you move them to other places or do you share some of those too?

- [Sue] Well, that's another big share for me, that's, I think share is a big part of who I am.

In the spring we go through and do our splitting, and sure, I'll take pieces and I'll move things in different parts of the garden.

But I take the greatest amount of joy in potting up those splittings and putting them out front and opening it up and saying, they're here, available, free for the taking.

And I think we had about the last time we did it, we had almost 300 plants that we shared.

And it is, it makes me feel so good and people forward to it.

So, it's a feel good thing.

It's a way of me sharing my joy and spreading it out into the world.

- So I asked Bob this question, I'm gonna ask you too, what's your favorite spot in your garden?

- Wow.

That's a tough one for me.

Because every area has something special about it.

You know, it might be that pew area right now, but you know what, it shifts over the course of the summer, so it'll be, next week, it'll be somewhere else.

But for right now, that's my favorite spot.

Another important piece of our gardens is we kind of call this our edible area.

I have, my great experiment that I started last year was blueberries.

I have them in large containers and they're protected with netting right now because the birds like to eat the blueberries.

But I really had to work at the acidification of the soil because that isn't natural for this part of Minnesota or the country really.

But they're thriving and they're doing really well, so I'm quite proud of that.

We have peppers, a variety of different types of peppers.

We've got banana peppers, we have jalapenos, I've got miniature pumpkins, rhubarb, cucumbers for pickling.

I have basil.

I make lots of pesto, all summer long, tomatoes, strawberries.

And over here is my great experiment for the year, I'm growing moringa pumpkins.

And so far I'm really excited.

I've got some good sized pumpkins on there, and we'll see where that takes us.

But, you know, that gives you the idea.

I mean, we love the fresh food and I think that that is so important.

- [Mary] Do you use some of your compost in your raised beds?

- [Sue] We do.

I take part of the dirt out each spring because just to freshen up the soil and incorporate in the compost, and it just, it freshens up those containers and helps things to grow much more vigorously and healthy.

- [Mary] Do you take your containers in in the fall?

- [Sue] I do not.

I leave them out.

I leave them out, everything stays out.

And even my ceramic pots, I've learned that if I empty those in the fall and tip them upside down, I have no problems with cracking.

So that's worked out very well for us.

It used to be a laborious experience to put everything into storage, but we don't have to, we've figured out that we don't have to do that.

So I'm grateful for that.

I have bird baths throughout the yard.

I love to encourage nature, but those bird baths get so yucky.

And I learned that if you put a piece of copper tubing into the bird bath, you don't have to clean them out as often.

And it really works.

I was a little bit of a skeptic at first, tried it on a couple, and I'm a believer.

- [Mary] I see that you use a lot of mulch here in this area too, how do you get it all here?

- [Sue] Well, Bob touched on the mulch earlier.

We actually have a mulch party now every year because we have so much of it.

And we bring in five or six people that help us.

They're such good people for being willing to help us.

We feed them and we have a good time, you know?

We have little races.

Even my little granddaughter was here this year helping with her little wheelbarrow, so we make it fun, and when it's fun, it's easy.

- [Mary] Well, thank you so much to both you and Bob for letting us come and share your beautiful yard.

- Well, thank you for coming.

It's a joy to be able to share it.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard & Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of Truck country.

Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard & Garden, a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard & Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(joyful music)