(ambient music) - I was so excited when we found out we could go to Duluth to film a "Prairie Yard And Garden" show.

We have a crew of four that travels, and I said, "Oh good, we can do a show at Leif Erikson Park and the Rose Garden."

The other three guys on the crew all just looked at me and had no idea of what I was talking about.

I'm flower and rose lover, Mary Holm, and come along as our crew and all of our viewers visit one of the most beautiful sites in the City of Duluth.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard And 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 interests at heart.

Farmer's 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 Yael Jolene in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful Prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota, and by friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden."

A community of supporters like you, who engage in the long term growth of the series.

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

(bright upbeat music) - [Mary] A few days ago, I was visiting with Julie who cuts my hair.

I told her my haircut had to look really nice as we were going to film a show at the Rose Garden in Duluth.

Julie said she has driven by, but they have never stopped in to see the park and Rose Garden.

She is looking forward to seeing the show and the beauty that Wendy Wohlwend enjoys almost daily at Leif Erikson Park and Rose Garden, welcome Wendy.

- Welcome, Mary.

Thank you for coming.

- Tell us about your background and what your job is here at the Rose Garden.

- My background is I have a degree in biology.

I also maintain a major in horticulture, and so I have to always do continuing education credits to keep up on current gardening practices.

My job here at the Rose Garden is to take care of over 2,600 different rose plants.

- Who was Leif Erikson and why is the park named after him?

- So Leif Erikson was a early European Explorer and Bert Enger was a wealthy Duluthian in the 1900s and the park was named something different and he wanted to have it named Leif Erikson.

So he donated $5,000 to the City of Duluth and one of the stipulations of that donation was to make sure that the park was named Leif Erikson.

- [Mary] Has the park always been here?

- No, there was a park in 1967, that was established a little farther west of here and in the '80s, there was the reconstruction of the freeway.

And once that happened, they removed the roses and they rebuilt, they built the tunnel over the freeway.

And now since 1994, this garden has been here.

- [Mary] Why was it moved here to this location?

- [Wendy] It was moved here because it was a great way to use this urban space.

And we are over the freeway and we have a gorgeous view of the lake.

- [Mary] What makes this location unique here in Duluth?

- [Wendy] Oh, well, we're centerly located and it's easy accessible, and we are at the lake walk as well.

So people can park here, look at the roses, and then if they wanted to continue on, they could go down and take a walk on the lake walk and enjoy many of the shops down in the canal park area.

It's a really, it's a great location.

- [Mary] Were the roses all, always part of the park?

- [Wendy] The roses have always been part of the park.

What's been added since the '90s is that we've added perennials for interest.

And also we've added more varieties and more disease and hearty resistant roses.

- Do you have to worry at all about lake effect here?

- Yes and no.

Lake effect can be good and bad.

So right now in the summer, we have been enjoying a really warm summer, but with the lake, we get these cool breezes that come through and it actually preserves the length of the rose.

And so sometimes if it's really hot, a bloom will only last a day, but because we have these nice, cool breezes that are coming from the lake, as you may be experiencing right now, they will last longer.

So ideally rose bloom can last five to seven days, but in a perfect system, it could last up to a couple weeks.

It's weather dependent.

We could have a storm.

There could be strong winds, things of that nature.

- [Mary] How are the beds designed here?

Is there a pattern?

- [Wendy] So there is the more formal areas and I call them circle one, two, three, and four.

It's like an English garden setting and they're in a circular pattern and they have the beds that are around in that circle and they kind of move like water because we're right next to the lake.

We do add perennials for more interest because typically roses don't bloom here until the first or second weekend of July.

So for more interest, we do supplement with perennials.

So we have hedges of arborvitae, and we have them not only for beauty and designated space, but it also helps for wind protection.

What helps in the summertime here being next to the lake by having these cool breezes can also be harmful in the winter because of the gales of Lake Superior can be down here as well.

(Wendy chuckles) - [Mary] How often do you trim these hedges?

- [Wendy] I typically hedge the arborvitae usually in the third week of July.

- [Mary] How long does it take you to do all these?

- [Wendy] It depends on how much help I get it.

(Wendy laughs) (Mary laughs) And typically we try to get it done in a week.

(gentle music) - As you know, on this show, we like to suggest ways you can support local farmers and local agriculture.

Today I'm going to share with you one of my favorite ways to support local farming by investing in community supported agriculture or CSA.

A CSA is a simple arrangement where you buy a share of a farm as you would buy a share in a business.

However, in a CSA, rather than a return of profits, you get a share of the produce on that farm.

For people who like to support local agriculture and like to know more about where their produce comes from, a CSA is a perfect way to make that connection.

Some CSAs work with one farm while others may combine up to four to five farms to give you a wider range of produce.

Some CSAs will drop the produce at your house while others have a weekly pickup site in a convenient location.

To tell us more about CSA we are joined today by Jane and Jeff Way with Ida Valley Farm in Garfield, Minnesota.

They are going to tell us about the advantages of CSA for farmers and consumers.

- Our farm was started about 10 years ago as a market farm.

And we did several farmers market a week, and we decided we wanted to build more relationships with our customers and reach out to them in different ways.

And so we started CSA this past year as a way to try to build up more relationships with them.

You can't beat fresh food and it will help you also learn different ways of preparing those meals.

There's a lot of good things about a CSA.

- [Mary] CSAs are also flexible.

You can buy a full share or a half share.

You can invest with your neighbors and split the produce.

Many options are available.

- My advice is to go ahead and try it because what you're doing is you're building a relationship with a farmer and also building the relationship with the other CSA members.

And you're trying new foods and fresh food.

- In Minnesota we are lucky to have more than 200 CSA farm options.

To find one close to you, go to minnesotagrown.com.

How many roses do you actually grow here?

- [Wendy] There is 2,600 individual rose plants here.

There is 18 different classifications and over 275 variety of roses.

- [Mary] Who decides which varieties that you grow?

- There's varieties of roses that have been here since the garden started in this location since 1994, if there is a rose that is a failing, we might replace the individual rose.

If we see that the whole bed is maybe declining, then we'll change the whole garden out.

I make that decision by doing health reports and things of that nature.

So I'm not just like ripping a rose out because I don't like it.

I actually once a month go around and look at every single garden bed and determine if it has insect damage or fungus damage and then make a health report.

And at the end of the year, decide if I, that rose is healthy enough to keep going, or maybe I do need to replace it.

- So then do you get to pick the new variety that comes in?

- Yes, however, I do get new varieties that come in all the time because the breeders are really fun and always developing new roses.

I do have a space here at the garden in circle four that we call the test area.

So I will buy bundles of five, put them in that test area.

If they seem like they're gonna handle Duluth weather, then I will go ahead and purchase 20 to 25 plants, depending on the bed size, to fit in the rest of the circles.

- How many roses of each variety are here?

- [Wendy] So each bed is a slightly different size.

So I may have as little as 20 in the English formal garden area, or up to 30, depending on the space.

And it also depends on the rose.

Some roses are naturally smaller, just depending on the breeder and the type of rose it is, 'cause we have miniatures.

We have all the way up to large climbers.

And so they get a lot bigger.

- [Mary] What is the difference between a regular rose and a standard rose or a tree rose?

- [Wendy] So your regular rose that you're thinking of is the ones that are roots in the ground and then the Bush on the top.

Your tree rose is a grafted plant.

So you'll have a root stock of a rose and then they will train the stem and it looks like it is a tree, but it's actually a rose cane that's been trained.

And then they'll graft another rose, the one that you want to see the blooms on, on top of that.

- How do you keep up with the watering?

- So we're lucky enough to have irrigation and that would, that's how we keep up with the watering.

- [Mary] Do you have to worry about getting leaf disease at all if the irrigation hits the leaves?

- So we do have to worry about fungus, powdery mildew and black spots seems to be the two major diseases that we come across in Duluth here.

We do spray fungicides and we rotate 'em through between like a contact chemical and a systemic one.

I try to do it as long as the intervals as possible because I don't wanna over spray.

If we do get insects, I generally do nothing.

Unless it's like aphids, I can spray the aphids with a hose, they're such a so off body insect that, that will just blow 'em onto the ground.

I don't like spraying for insects because that could harm the pollinators.

So, so far we haven't been spraying for insects here.

- You said that the roses start blooming sometime back already.

How do you keep 'em looking so beautiful?

- How do we keep the roses blooming is that we make sure that we fertilize really early in the spring.

We fertilize with organic chicken manure, which smells really good.

(Wendy chuckles) And we put it around each individual plant.

And so we make sure that they get enough nitrogen.

Roses are really nitrogen dependent.

If they don't have a lot of nitrogen, they won't spend the energy in the plants to put on the gorgeous flower.

We fertilize early spring, usually April, when there's bud break.

We don't want the leaves to come out completely because you don't want the fertilizer to actually touch the leaf of the plant because it is so high in nitrogen.

It could actually burn the plant, but yet we still need that nitrogen for the health of the plant to grow later when we want the flowers.

It takes about two cups of organic fertilizer per plant.

And we have to sprinkle it around the drip line of each individual plant.

When we get our fertilizer, we make sure that we get it from a reputable garden store because you don't wanna take your chicken manure from your neighbor's chickens because it needs to actually sit for six months or longer.

Otherwise it'll be too hot and potentially burn your plants as well.

So there's a fine line of too much nitrogen and too little.

And so you don't want hot manure basically.

- Do you fertilize at all during the summer also?

- I haven't.

It can be done.

I generally, because we have so many plants, there's just so many things to do that I generally don't, unless that flower looks like it might need more help, but generally I don't fertilize second time.

- [Mary] Then how do you deadhead all of these roses?

(Wendy chuckles) - Well, it's not just me, I have help.

There's other city staff that helps deadhead, but we also have volunteers that come once a week, they help us prune on Tuesdays from nine until 11:30.

So if people are interested on Tuesdays to come and help volunteer pruning roses, we'll show them how to do it properly.

- [Mary] It looks like you also label all of the varieties too, is that right?

- [Wendy] Yep, we're a public garden but we also do education as well.

We have garden tags on each of the roses and it gives the name of the , the common name of the plant, the breeder, the year that this flower was introduced and also has a breeder code, which basically is its own key to that flower.

- [Mary] And then how about deadheading?

- [Wendy] The reason why we keep deadheading is to trick the plant into producing blooms over and over again.

If we don't, the rose will put on rose hips and then it'll be done.

- Wendy, this is absolutely beautiful.

And you obviously keep these roses looking so pretty in the summer.

Can you share with us what you do to over winter them?

- Yes, absolutely.

(gentle music) - I have a question.

What are some of the new apple varieties that the U of M Arboretum has been working on?

- Well, you probably know Honeycrisp.

That's our most famous one.

Now that's not quite new now.

We introduced that back in 1991, but it's been a great help to the program and we've used it a lot in breeding.

Another one of our newer varieties that I think you might be interested in, that you can find in the stores now is one that we call Sweetango and Sweetango is an interesting genetic combination between Honeycrisp that we talked about and that Zestar.

So we were trying to get some of that Honeycrisp texture, but with some of that interesting Zestar flavor, and I think we were pretty successful.

Although each child is always different than its parents just like our own children, but this one really brings kind of a special combination of texture and flavor.

I consider it to be one of our most intensely flavored apples.

And by that, I mean there's a lot of sugar, but there's also a lot of acid.

So people that like a tart apple, like it, people that like a sweet apple like it, and everybody likes that Honeycrisp texture.

This is our newest introduction, not brand new, it's been out for a few years, but the variety is called first kiss.

And yes, that's a little bit of a prerogative name maybe, but it's also the first good apple of the season in my mind.

This is actually ripens the earlier than the other ones we've talked about.

We start to see this in the marketplace, oh, by the third week of August.

Now, what it brings to the table is Honeycrisp texture, one of its parents is Honeycrisp.

The other is an apple from Arkansas that we use to get earliness.

And what we got is a very nice combination of that explosively, juicy, crisp Honeycrisp texture, but a tart flavor, a little tangier.

So some of the people that like the Haralsons might find this a little bit to their liking.

This is an apple that you may never see.

You may or may never see, but it's just part of the breeding program right now.

It just has a number.

It's an interesting apple, almost like porcelain, kind of a yellow, white, super sweet, crisp, juicy.

It's got some little problems.

This kinda apple shows bruising very easily when it's picked in the orchard.

So it may or may not make it all the way through, but.

(David moans) That is so good.

I'm gonna have to give you a taste.

You're just gonna love it.

- [Announcer] "Ask The Arboretum Experts" has been brought to you by the Minnesota landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to enriching lives through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.

(gentle music) - You know, Mary, we have a lots of different varieties of roses here and depending on the type of roses, we do different things to protect them for the winter.

- Okay.

How do you treat the tender roses?

- So the tender roses, we have to do, the Minnesota tip it's called, and in the fall we take hedge trimmers and cut them down to 18 inches.

And then we take baling twine and tie them up as tight as possible.

So they're really narrow.

And then we'll dig trenches in the dirt.

And then we lay the plants down, put dirt over the top of the roses.

And then we put bags of leaves on top as well.

So they get lots of protection.

- How do you manage to get 'em to lay sideways without tearing up the roots?

- So they don't really like to be tipped, but we force them with a potato fork and we try to keep the roots intact and then do just like fold them over into the open trench, put that dirt over and then cover 'em with the dirt and then put the bags of leaves.

- How much do you have to loosen those roots?

Or how do you have to press on 'em to get 'em to lay over that much?

- Oh, so the, we do cut them down so that it's a little bit easier to tip them over.

And with that potato fork, you're pushing on the roots and you're folding them over and it takes a little bit of effort.

You want to be forceful enough, but if you hear some cracking noises, you're breaking the canes.

(both laughing) - How many people does that take to do?

- Oh, it takes quite a few people.

So the Minnesota tip is quite labor intensive.

We get volunteers for helping with us.

And then also, because it is a city garden, it's all hands on deck.

And we have pretty much all of the park maintenance workers helping us tip the roses in the fall.

- [Mary] When do you do that?

- [Wendy] We typically do that early October.

We kinda watch the weather.

We don't want them to be quite frozen, but it is cold out when we do it.

- And how much mulch do you use then to cover them?

- So we're using whatever's available on the bed as far as like dirt slash mulch.

We do other methods of winter protecting with just compost.

But we typically don't use a lot of mulch for winter protecting, it's the leaves that are doing the most of the protection.

- Where do you get all the leaves?

- We get the leaves from the public.

They all donate leaves every year and we'll fill the whole parking lot space over there that this big mound of bags of leaves that are coming in from the public.

And we'll use every single bag practically.

- When you actually use them then in the garden, do you take the bags and tip those leaves out?

- Nope.

We keep the bags intact.

We don't want to spread all the leaves out because we just don't know what's in there.

Bags of leaves sound like it's like light and fluffy, but a lot of times they're really heavy because in the fall we typically get a lot of fall rain.

And so the leaves are heavy and wet.

And so they generally don't blow away.

So, you know, Mary, the Minnesota tip is quite labor intensive.

And so we've started to transition towards more disease and hardy roses.

And the hardy roses are actually zoned for this area.

And so that they don't require that Minnesota tip and therefore saves on time, money and labor.

- [Mary] What do you do with these?

- So with these hardy roses, they need very little winter protection, which is very good for beginning rosarians.

And so other than the first year of a little bit of mounding of soil to protect them that first year after that, we don't have to do anything, which is beautiful.

- Do you have to worry about critters at all over the winter?

- So we do have rabbits and because we are a people's garden, there's a lot of people that are walking through and generally we don't have too much damage.

- [Mary] When do you uncover in the spring of the year?

- We uncover, weather depending again, but usually the second or third week of April.

And we'll take all those bags of leaves off, maybe unmound some of the soil that's around some of these disease and hardy resistant roses and go from there.

- [Mary] Do a lot of the same volunteers that helped in the fall come back in the spring too?

- If we haven't scared them away, yes.

(Wendy laughs) (Mary laughs) - Ah, I love it.

That is great.

How do you treat the tree roses?

- [Wendy] So the tree roses are treated slightly different in the fact that we don't bury them here at the Rose Garden.

They aren't resistant like these flowers here.

We actually remove them off of the Rose Garden and put them in the ground in a special location off campus here.

(Wendy laughs) - Okay.

Wendy, do you deadhead these roses the same as the Hybrid Teas?

- [Wendy] So we do deadheading and they're very similar between the different varieties.

We have Mary here from the Lake Superior Rose Society that would be very happy to show how to deadhead the roses.

(gentle music) - Mary, I would love to show you how we deadhead here.

There's a lot of different ways.

I do it like this, where I'm coming down to the first set of three.

Some people will go down, some people who show roses will go down to the first set of five leaflets, which they believe gives a stronger bloom.

But here in the garden, you can get by with cutting off a little bit less going to the first set of three and they bloom well, they come back very well.

- How do you know when to take off the old blooms?

- Yeah, sometimes it's hard to tell, but okay, that one's obvious, right?

- Hmm-mm.

- But then you have something like this where it's bent, maybe the wind, maybe something else, you know you need to get that one off.

And then sometimes if you have a lot of some insect damage or rain damage where you have a lot of spotting, this one's not too bad, but if it was a little bit more brown on it, you might wanna take that too.

- Well, thank you so much for showing us how to do this right.

- You're welcome.

- And thank you for all of the work that you do in keeping this beautiful place so pretty.

- [ Mary] You're welcome.

We love to help here.

- This is so beautiful, but do you have weddings and special events here?

- There's about 30 weddings that happen every year.

And then of course there's other special events that happens.

We have like band concerts, you see graduation pictures being taken.

There's other celebrations of life that happen here.

It is quite the treasure that Duluthians have here and they do take advantage of that.

- [Mary] I read something about a rose Fest.

What is that?

- [Wendy] Rose Fest is an annual event that happens.

And it is a partnership between the Rose Society and the Duluth, City of Duluth employees.

And we celebrate the rose and then we have like a little kiosk for information.

We have prizes for kids that go do a scavenger hunt, and we do pruning clinics, we do a garden tour, things of that nature.

- [Mary] Thank you so very much for showing us this beautiful spot here in Duluth.

- Thank you.

I appreciate that you guys came here today.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard And 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.

Farmer's 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 Yael Jolene, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful Prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota, And by friends of "Prairie Yard And Garden," a community of supporters like you, who engage in the long term growth of the series.

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

(gentle music) (bright upbeat music)