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For those of you who missed our “press releases” and the museum’s web site, here’s the BIG NEWS. The garden club applied for and received an $800 grant from the Principal Financial Group’s Historical Gardens Project for use at the Butterfield Cottage.
As a result, one of the first things we will add to the garden will be a garden bench. It will be a lovely place to sit and enjoy the flowers. Second, the grant includes funds for a string trimmer so our king of the riding-mower, Len Brooks, will forgive us for placing the bench on a corner of the grass. Third, we are in the process of creating an herb garden in our growing collection of old galvanized containers. Appropriate planters for an old cottage garden
If the above are not enough to entice you for a visit, think of this – the climbing roses are blooming. The Noisette rose on the corner of the fence (Alister Stella Gray, an 1894 Golden Rambler) is a sight to behold. Then there is the large one on the south end of the cottage (Rambling Rector – 1912) and I’m here to tell you the rector does ramble. It would gladly cover the building if allowed.
That tall yellow rose with the evil thorns is Harrison’s Yellow also known as the Yellow Rose of Texas. Some sources give it a date of 1830 but A Gardener’s Encyclopedia says it “is of garden origin in the USA, said to have been carried west by pioneers and planted wherever they stopped.”
As I write this, the calla lilies, the iris, the pinks and the California poppies are blooming and the smaller rambling roses growing along the fence are covered with buds. Each week will bring us something new and beautiful.
When these old roses start to bloom each May, I feel grateful to the early settlers for bringing starts of their favorites with them. We know it was with difficulty, space was so limited. Can you imagine nurturing a rose cutting in a potato all those months of wagon travel. Now that’s dedication to gardening.
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