Gardening promoted at conference at Chadron State

The keynote speaker was Roger Swain, who for 15 years beginning in the mid-1980s, hosted 500 episodes of “The Victory Garden” on public television.

A resident of southern New Hampshire, Swain told the appoximately 200 in attendance that gardening is absolutely essential because everyone eats, it is good for the environment and a healthy activity for the participants. However, he focused most of his talk on the social value of gardening, or as he put it, “What plants have to do with building a friendly village.”

He urged his listeners to put their best plants on the front side of the house so everyone can see them, not in the backyard where they can be seen “by invitation only.” He said that often during his 30 years as editor of “Horticulture Magazine” he has often been given two tickets valued at $50 each to view “the secret garden” of the Beacon Hill Garden Club in Boston. But he has never attended.

“Secret gardens are trendy stuff, but they kiss me off. They are so wrong,” Swain said. “I don’t want to see gardens that are behind high brick walls. I want to see the ones that are in the front of the house and near the street.”

During his 90-minute program, Swain showed slides from throughout the United States and several in Canada of some of his favorite garden spots. Some were elaborate, well-groomed botanical gardens, but others were simple efforts by people to grow plants in small areas to give what he called “a welcoming feeling.”

“Plants turn spaces into places,” he said. “You can do it with plants. You can build connections with people you don’t know with plants. If you want people to come downtown and mosey by your business, you can do it with plants.”

Swain said community gardens are a great place to learn gardening because if you’re doing it wrong, it’s easy to see who is doing it right. He also urged the audience to buy food at local farmers’ markets and showed slides of school children learning where food comes from by planting potatoes.

Swain also said he likes containers because they allow people “to grow plants in places where plants might not otherwise grow.” He added that plants in pots have to be watered, giving the person caring for them a chance to meet a total stranger who may be walking by and ask, “What is that?”

“Putting plants in containers right next to the street. That’s the way to go,” said the colorful speaker who wore his trademark red suspenders. “I don’t believe it when people put their best stuff in the backyard.”

Earlier in the day, Swain was a member of a panel that answered numerous questions posed by area residents about lawn, tree and garden problems they are experiencing.

One of the questions Swain tackled was how to protect gardens from deer. He said the only way he knows is to encircle the garden with two lines of snow fence placed a few feet apart.

“Deer love suburbia because there’s plenty to eat and they don’t get shot there,” he said. Swain added that the only squirrel-proof fence he has seen contained a strand of electric fence.

Swain also advised “try growing something three times before giving up.”

Some of the other answers included:

--More plants drown than die of drought.

--Don’t plant the same variety of a tree “if there are already 100 of them on your street. Try something else.”

--The only sure-fire way to avoid ground ivy is to move, but some lawns are made up entirely of ground ivy.

--The suckers that some trees send up as well as trunk sprouts will grow into healthy trees.

--The Forest Service does not view the emerald ash borer problem to be “a terrible one” because officials believe some trees will survive and they will be healty.

The conference will continue today (Friday, March 28) with speakers discussing how horticulture is tied into Mari Sandoz’s works and further discussions on the beauty of the High Plains and plants that grow in the region.

 

Photo information: Roger Swain, long-time host of “The Victory Garden” on public television, signs photos of himself after giving the keynote address at the joint conference of the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society and the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum at Chadron State College on Thursday night.