As a horticulture agent for K-State Research and Extension, Pam Paulsen oversees the horticulture program for extension in central Kansas’ Reno County. That means working with the county’s master gardener program and answering questions from quite a few homeowners, who often want to know how to care for different plants, and what kind of fertilizing and water they need.
“Mostly people want to know what does well in our area,” she said. “It’s great to have the garden where people can go see what you’re talking about. Our master gardeners are diligent that everything in the garden is labeled, and it’s really easy for a homeowner to go out there and take notes.”
The garden in Reno County is one of many demonstration gardens across Kansas that showcase plants appropriate to their locations and provide learning opportunities for home gardeners on design, planting and maintenance practices. If you haven’t yet been to a demonstration garden, what you’ll see will vary county by county.
“What’s nice is that each of the area’s demonstration gardens has something unique to offer,” said Matthew McKernan, a horticulture agent for K-State Research and Extension – Sedgwick County.
Generally, the gardens are free to explore and open to the public every day during daylight hours. Most rely on master gardener organizations to plan, plant and maintain the gardens. That includes labeling so visitors can identify what they might want to grow at home. The gardens’ focus is on trees, ornamental plants or vegetables known to do well in Kansas or, in some cases, being tested to see how they perform.
K-State Research and Extension is short for Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service. The organization is a statewide network of educators sharing unbiased, research-based information and expertise on issues important to Kansas, from agriculture to health to lawn and garden topics.
The Extension’s master gardener program allows gardeners to donate time in return for horticultural training. Some of this donated time goes toward a community’s demonstration gardens, an important way local county extension agents meet the need for horticultural information.
Work on the gardens is already in progress this year, including planning and some early plantings happening this month. The majority of the planting work happens later in the spring and the gardens are often looking their best from about mid-June until mid-September.
Here’s a look at three such demonstration gardens that vary in size, scope and location. Consider a road trip to visit one of these sites or check with your local extension office for options closer to home. Some gardens host workshops and events, from guided walks to live music and gardener talks.
Reno County: A Unique College Campus Setting
In a unique partnership, the Reno County Master Gardeners Demonstration Garden fills about three-quarters of an acre in the center of the Hutchinson Community College campus.
It started in 2012 in a spot on campus that had once been a roadway and was most recently a turf area. It’s now one of the state’s most stunning demonstration gardens. It’s a highlight of any campus visit and locals have even changed their walking routes to get a frequent view of the garden.
Besides being a great place to spend time, the garden tells a great “if it can grow here, you can grow it at home” story.
“It was horrible, hard, miserable soil,” Paulsen said, “and I was sure nothing was going to survive when we first planted. It was to the point that one of our guys went home and brought back a mini jackhammer with a shovel bit on it so we could dig. Honestly, I’m surprised anything has survived there much less done really well.”
Reno County Extension Master Gardeners volunteer time for planning, planting and maintaining, while the college offers the land along with manpower for bigger projects like moving mulch or constructing a retaining wall.
The gardens are arranged in a dozen specialized areas. Along with annuals and perennials suited for the area, there are some distinctive plantings: a border of heirloom iris dating back to the 1850s, a cutting bed added in 2019 for flowers to cut for bouquets, and raised vegetable beds that have recently included peanuts and hops.
“With some of our space we like to share what’s recommended for our area and with some we want to show the unusual,” Paulsen said.
An important area here and at many of the demonstration gardens is annual trials, where the master gardeners can evaluate how a new variety handles Kansas and give feedback to the grower.
Though the garden has excelled, Paulsen admits, “We kill all kinds of stuff, too. We experiment, from the trials to a local garden center or nursery asking us to try something new to our master gardener volunteers finding an interesting, new plant that they want to try. Some do really well and some we might struggle with.”
That’s part of the process that makes the demonstration garden especially valuable to the master gardeners and home gardeners. In case you’re wondering, the peanuts and the hops did great. A local brewery used the hops to brew a small batch of craft beer for the master gardeners.
Cottonwood District: a Garden in a Brutal Environment
The Cottonwood Extension District formed in 2017 by combining Barton and Ellis counties in the northwestern quadrant of the state. The district works with master gardeners in both counties and maintains a drought tolerant perennial bed along the side of the Ellis County Extension Office on Main Street in downtown Hays as well as large planting pots featuring annuals in front of the office. The gardeners also work with K-State Research and Extension on ornamental and vegetable trials at the Agricultural Research Center, which is on part of the old Fort Hays military reservation.
Master gardener Jo Ann Schroller said there has been a demonstration garden at the extension office for many years but in 2019 the group redesigned and planted it from scratch.
“We wanted to plant a flower bed using drought tolerant plants with easy to read labels to educate the public on wise water practices and what they could grow in our area that would look good all summer,” said Schroller, who has been involved with a local garden club since the 1980s and was employed for 20 years as the horticulturist for the city of Hays. “Our main goal was to make a bed everybody can relate to. They can see it and want that in their yard.”
The bed has more than 70 plants and 27 different cultivars, she said, and grabs the attention of passing motorists or folks affiliated with Fort Hays State University, just a few blocks away.
The bed is in what Schroller calls a brutal environment: It’s about 80 feet long against the building, gets direct sunlight and is surrounded by materials that put off a lot of heat. Excessive rain last year helped the plantings get established, and Schroller said the garden took off and grew faster than expected.
“Ellis County does not sit above the Ogallala Aquifer so we are working very hard in this area to be drought tolerant and conserve water,” said Lauren Fick, the horticulture agent for the Cottonwood District. That’s why showing home gardeners they can grow a vibrant garden in these conditions is especially important at their demonstration garden.
“We have a 500-gallon rain barrel with a pump on it and that is how this bed is mainly watered,” Schroller said. “We don’t use much city water at all. We put a layer of newspaper under the mulch to suppress weeds, and the newspaper breaks down within a year. We mulch with a 3-inch layer of wood chips to conserve the moisture and that helps the plants thrive.”
Sedgwick County: Large Arboretum and 12 Focused Gardens
The Sedgwick County Extension Education Center serves as the headquarters for all K-State Research and Extension programs in Sedgwick County, and staff there consider the land to be part of the learning environment. The 24 acres surrounding the facility in northwest Wichita are considered an arboretum, with more than 300 planted and labeled trees, and there are 12 display gardens, including a demonstration garden by the county’s master gardeners.
McKernan, the horticulture agent in Sedgwick County, said people looking for ideas will come to south-central Kansas from across the state to see the wide variety of landscape plants and trees on the property.
“We’ll host tours of groups from areas around the state, especially during the summer months,” he said. “We’re lucky to have a large piece of property so we can offer ideas on a lot of different things they can do in their yard.”
You’ll find examples of traditional plants like roses and day lilies and unexpected ideas, too, McKernan said.
“People typically don’t think of cactus and succulents as a beautiful outdoor landscape plant but in the middle of the summer when that garden is covered in flowers, it’s really hard to beat as far as attractiveness,” he said.
Besides showing what grows and looks great in Kansas, the gardens are meant to share challenges. The shade garden, McKernan said, provides inspiration on how to tackle issues in your landscape that you see happening with the shade-loving annuals and perennials planted here, like dense shade and heavy root competition from nearby trees.
A few other highlights: The ornamental grass garden uses nearly two dozen varieties to demonstrate the range of sizes and shapes ornamental grasses are available in and to show their drought tolerance and year-round interest.
The great plants of the Great Plains garden features plants from a Nebraska Arboretum program to showcase prairie plants with landscape value or other plants that can thrive in a prairie ecosystem and are maintained with minimal water.
People are becoming more water conscious so trying to incorporate more plantings that can handle the tough conditions of Kansas, like native plants and ornamental grasses, are of interest to gardeners in the state, McKernan said. Another trend he sees is paying attention to pollinators.
“We’re seeing an increasing awareness in the community about pollinators and beneficial insects, and trying to provide for wildlife in our habitats that are becoming more and more urban,” he said. “People are often very interested in what they can do to help the Monarch butterfly or lesser known pollinators. They want to know what they can do in their own backyards to make a difference in their community.”