Column: The roses amongst us — creating a column

Thinking back to where we started both as an organization and the column you are reading, is quite gratifying. In 1989, a group of enthusiastic gardeners got together to talk about their gardens. Many were interested in perennials and loved to share their knowledge as well as their plants. Soon they were visiting each others’ gardens for inspiration and enjoyment. Later that year, they formalized things at a meeting held at the Forestry Farm Park in Saskatoon and became the Saskatchewan Perennial Society. The mandate of the society is to share knowledge of perennial gardening through information meetings, plant exchanges and garden tours.

The society maintains two gardens at the Forestry Farm Park. The Meditation Garden is named to honour Robin Smith. He envisioned the gardens but passed away at the young age of 42, before they would become reality. The Heritage Rose Garden showcases plant material developed by prairie plant breeders. We hold “labour and learn” work bees at the gardens every three weeks during the gardening season, giving members and volunteers opportunities to meet in an informal setting to work together and share their gardening knowledge and experiences.

In 2007, we undertook a new venture, providing a free column for the Sun, the weekly paper then associated with the StarPhoenix. Our column is also distributed free of charge to other weekly publications in Saskatchewan. The Sun has since evolved into Bridges.

To get 52 articles per year into print does require some co-ordination, a task that was gracefully accepted by Sara Williams, who kept the writers organized. Initially, our regular contributors included Brian Baldwin (who passed away in 2009, and whose wit, and unique viewpoint we still miss); Maureen Troesch (who still writes a regular ask us column for The Gardener magazine); Erl Svendsen and Sara Williams.

Toward the end of 2010, Erl Svendsen took over the co-ordinator position from Sara. During those years the majority of articles were written by the co-ordinators, who, between writing great articles, had the task of coaxing articles from their friends and cohorts in the horticultural arena and editing them before publication. When Erl retired as co-ordinator in 2018, things became a little more formalized with Heather Brenneman at the helm.

Meetings are now held every four to five months to schedule the upcoming articles. Articles are generally edited by either Sara Williams or Erl Svendsen prior to submission to the co-ordinator, who then forwards the articles to the weekly papers for publication. Brad Leibel was co-ordinator in 2019. Michelle Petrisor has carried out this task since March of 2020.

Over the years, the cast of characters writing this column has changed, but the core group since 2009 has consisted of Sara Williams (horticulturist, author and co-author of many gardening articles and books including: Creating the Prairie Xeriscape, Best Trees and Shrubs for the Prairies, Best Ground Covers and Vines for the Prairies and Growing Fruit in Northern Gardens); Erl Svendsen (Erl has a background in horticulture science and plant stress physiology); Jackie Bantle (greenhouse manager at the University of Saskatchewan and past vegetable specialist for everything to do with vegetables, greenhouse and container gardening); with an occasional sprinkle of wisdom from Jill Thomson (retired plant disease specialist), and myself Bernadette Vangool (an enthusiastic gardener, who has learned a few things along the way).

For specialty articles on pests, we connect on occasion with Cedric Gillott, while for everything Patterson garden and unusual trees or shrubs we depend on Alan Weninger. Bob Bors at the University of Saskatchewan, is our go-to guy for fruit breeding. There have been many additional guest writers in our fifteen years of publication, too numerous to mention. The Saskatchewan Perennial Society greatly appreciates and salutes all of our writers and co-ordinators for their continued selfless contributions to our educational endeavours.

You are truly the roses amongst the perennials, not too many thorns in sight either.

This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (SPS; saskperennial@hotmail.com ). Check our website (www.saskperennial.ca) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/saskperennial) for a list of upcoming gardening events