Braving howling wolf winds and machine-gun-like rainfall, 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. Dressed for the weather, the group exchanged knowing glances and smiles as we waited for more people to gather for the tour.
The goal of the annual tour is to celebrate the area’s many gardeners and gardens while stimulating ideas and sharing knowledge to expand green thumb opportunities for all.
Janet Balice was dressed head to toe in rubber and looked as though she was well prepared for the deluge. However, she explained that she was only dressed that way because she had just come from checking the fishing net.
Thompson, wearing a homemade brown felt hat and layers of flowing floral-print clothing, led the group across the street to the Nome Community Garden next to the Nome Food Bank. We happily followed her booming laughter as it echoed off the buildings surrounding Anvil Square.
Alicia Reitz, who managed the community garden this year, took the tour briefly to show the season’s harvest and improvements. New perennials were planted in front of the food bank, including forget-me-nots, Alaska’s state flower, as well as strawberries. Volunteers built mini-arches over some of the raised beds, contributing to good yields of kale, spinach, chard and lettuce, which were repeatedly donated to the food bank. In the large polytunnel, peas, carrots, squash, radishes and more showed signs of a season of care. Next to the polytunnel was a new greenhouse built by Grizzly’s Building Supply, also bursting with edible crops. Reitz then explained some of the organizational efforts she brought to the garden, as well as the addition of a new worm composting station, where worms make new soil from compostable materials.
Several participants on the tour were enthusiastic and volunteered to be winter caretakers for the worms, as they cannot survive the many freeze-thaw cycles of winter in the vermicomposting station. There was then a detailed discussion about garlic, which needs to be planted in the autumn to be harvested the following year – be sure to pick the shoots, called scapes, as they grow, advised Kim Knudsen.
Then we boarded a school bus and headed to Dave McDowell’s on First Avenue. Dave’s landscape garden is a testament to how you can create a colorful garden without a lot of work. The trick: perennial flowers that can survive in Nome’s harsh environment. Wild geraniums, delphiniums (but they need support!) in periwinkle and purple, lupines (a gift from Little Sisters) in the world’s softest blue, Iceland poppies in red, orange and yellow, fireweed in all its pink, and columbine in its softest yellow with petals shaped like spurs. All of these colors radiated from rusty lawn art, also known as historic junk or scrap metal. Someone in the crowd quipped, “All of these plants smell like iron.”
We talked about the technique used to make the poppies pop – one promising theory was that here on the Seward Peninsula they like to be covered with a little gravel. The miracle of the volunteer flowers was discussed while a young man in a detailed Batman outfit bounced around on his father’s lap.
We got back on the bus and drove to Knudsen’s house next to the Dredge #7 Hotel. When we arrived, it started pouring rain, so hard it was hard to keep your eyes open, but this Nugget reporter didn’t see anyone bat an eyelid. People continued to enjoy the garden. Some retreated to one of the greenhouses Knudsen had set up. Her permanent greenhouse burst with color from dahlias, herbs, hanging tomatoes and even a few tender rosemary, one inside the greenhouse, the other outside, proving Knudsen’s green thumb and spirit of experimentation. She offered plants to those on the garden tour to take home. At one point during the tour of the greenhouses, Knudsen explained the need to try many different seeds and to keep records of one’s own experiments; others agreed.
But the garden tour is not just about vegetables and flowers. It is also about decoration, recycling and upcycling. And other activities on the farm.
As the rain turned into heavy downpours, Knudsen led us to her chicken coop, where she keeps three chickens. They came out to beg for food as we talked about the resilience of Alaska Ninja chickens, a hardy breed.
Knudsen offered a prize to the person who could guess the number of garden gnomes they had – eight.
People discussed that although chickweed was edible, it was still advisable to pick it from the garden to prevent it from taking over.
On the way to Icy View, the first stop was the Hughes’ house, where we were told that 10 years ago it was a gravel lot. The first thing we saw and sniffed was chest-high lilacs in pink and purple. The honey scent seemed to linger longer on this rainy day. Their windows were filled with pepper plants. We noticed the alder hedges at the edge of their property; they stood in perfect rectangles.
The day is about both the exchange of ideas and appreciation, Thompson noted.
One street over, Angela Hansen greeted us in the willow maze of her backyard. Rather than clearing their property, they carefully cut dead-end gardens into their yard of tall willows. The effect is magical, immediately reminiscent of secret gardens. Hansen boasted of her large delphiniums, which she said came from Thompson. She then explained her garden art philosophy: “Get stuff from the dump, paint it white, and put it in the garden.” The pure white of the random objects—from old lanterns to baubles to antique cans—contrasted with the raging rainbow colors of her garden, giving viewers a glimpse of classical beauty à la Greece or Italy. One tour participant said, “It reminds me of my grandmother’s garden.” Hansen said they’ve been on the property for 25 years. She also offered us a few flowers and plants to take home. Many were enlivened by their Trollius europaeus, or globeflowers, which glowed a pleasant clementine color and looked as if little fingers were protruding from the petals.
Next door, Sue Steinacher invited us on a tour of her garden. Her large spruce and poplar trees were planted 18 years ago and stood guard next to tasteful, blue-tinted steel cranes. In the back yard, she showed us her geodesic dome filled with the largest kale and broccoli plants we would see all day and probably all season. Steinacher is looking for someone to help her maintain her greenhouse next summer.
We took the bus to the high school to see Thompson’s class’s greenhouses. The group of students and teachers has three greenhouses that are filled to bursting point. They told stories of battling thrips, buildings being destroyed, and musk oxen nibbling on them. Thompson told everyone that if they wanted to grow peppers, they should buy the Hungarian Hot Wax variety they had grown there because it thrived there. They had sunflowers in full bloom and many of the plants were supported with string.
The rain let up and we all became friendlier. On the way to the last stop, across the Dexter bypass to Dexter, to Sylvia Matson’s house, we hit a pothole and Balice screamed from the back of the bus, turning everyone’s heads. Balice shrugged and said, “That’s almost my ‘there’s silver in the net’ scream.” We shared snacks and talked about the myth of potato growth – do flowers really mean there’s something growing underground?
At the Matson Oasis on the banks of the Nome River, currently for sale, we checked out their packed greenhouse before heading behind the house to see the main attraction – the soil farm. The Matsons have spent years making soil, using sawdust and grass clippings, but they’ve experimented with everything in their soil production, even fish, which they say is great for compost piles. The main tenet of the theory, however, was to maintain a balance of browns and greens, keep the pile’s temperature around 60-65°C, and not be afraid to use water to cool everything down.
The evening ended with a potluck in the mineshaft of Dredge #7. Knudsen had set up picnic tables with freshly cut flowers in pots. The sun came out and shone on the delicious buffet. It looked like a room set up for a wedding, full of plants, creativity, and warmth. Generations of Nomeites discussed intergenerational plants and change. We ate a special be-bop-a-rebop rhubarb pie in honor of Nancy McGuire, the late publisher and editor of Nugget who was a huge supporter of the Garden Tour. The power of climate change and the potential of dandelions were discussed, among other things about terra firma. We all felt growth and went home with a certain kind of abundance.
