Flyover people
Cheryl Unruh
Originally published 02:11 p.m., May 20, 2008
Updated 02:11 p.m., May 20, 2008
“The main thing I tried to teach those kids was to love nature,” Nina West said.
Once a biology teacher, Nina still promotes the love of nature and hopes that visitors to her garden appreciate plants and creatures as much as she does.
I stopped by Nina and Gaylord West’s Toad Hollow Daylily Farm during the Iris Tour earlier this month.
In 1994, the Wests moved to this property several miles east of Emporia.
At first, Nina planned a somewhat modest garden near the house.
Then they built a metal barn on the property which required some land leveling. With dirt work completed and the barn raised, they were left with a gash in the hilly pasture.
“When they dug up this hillside, my first thought was, ‘Oh God, what have I done? I’ve ruined the whole look of the place,’” Nina said.
“I knew I’d have a garden, but not out here,” she said as we looked toward the flower beds that draped over the hill before us. “This was a pasture. This was where the goats stayed.”
In 1995, as she viewed their torn up pasture, she remembered her visit to Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia. “It was a rock quarry,” she said, “And they built (the garden) on the hillside.”
So, she created her own tiered garden. Friends helped lay rocks and railroad ties to stabilize the land, to slow the erosion.
She started with a small flower bed in the center, shaped like an eye. Then the garden grew, one bed at a time. She and Gaylord have iris and daylilies, and also hostas and bleeding hearts, lilacs and pinks, peonies and poppies. And more.
Gardening took hold of Nina during childhood. When she was a little girl in Massachusetts, her mother took her to a friend’s place in the country.
“She had the first cottage garden I ever saw in my life,” Nina said, “And it was full of all of these old-fashioned kind of flowers, larkspur and poppies. So that was something I remembered.”
“And I’d go out with my dad and we’d dig up wildflowers and bring them home. They always gardened,” she said of her parents.
While in college, Nina read Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” about the negative effects of pesticides. The book made an impression.
“We wouldn’t have the environment we have here if I were not organic, as much as I can be,” she said.
“We follow state guidelines on bindweed; we use Roundup on that, but we would not have the toad population, all the birds that we have, the lizards, oh, the tons of butterflies. You can’t have those if you’re spraying.”
“If I have much of an insect problem on the daylilies, I use soap suds and baking soda. The big thing is just to clean things. You can’t control Mother Nature. You have to respect her. People forget that.”
“I’ll do hand-to-hand combat on worms, the little bitty dangerous ones for the daylilies and the iris, but I don’t care too much if something gets eaten,” she said. “They can have some and I can have some. I don’t have to have it perfect.”
“I do like (the garden) to be weed-free when I have shows. It wasn’t this time. There was no way we could do it, given the weather conditions, no way.”
It pleases her to know that Toad Hollow inspires fellow gardeners.
“When you travel and visit other gardens, you see things that you bring back and that’s what people get out of coming here,” Nina said. “They get ideas.”
Upcoming Events at Toad Hollow include:
• Art in the Garden: June 7, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; June 8, 11 a.m. to 4
p.m.
• Daylily Tour: June 28 and 29, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
No admission fee.
Toad Hollow is at 1534 Road 170. Take I-35 to exit 135, then R-1 south to Road 170 and turn east.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
• Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
Comments
Post a comment
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. Our goal with this feature is to encourage thoughtful discussions about the news stories. Using the comment feature to make random attacks on people is not acceptable. Emporiagazette.com neither endorses nor guarantees the accuracy of any user contribution. Responsibility for what is posted or contributed to this site is the sole responsibility of each user. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
(Requires free registration.)