We have a now city garden called Munsinger's, it used to be owned by the late Mr. Munsinger who created it so his ill wife could look out the window and view the roses she loved so much after she was wheel-chair bound.
I spoke with a gentleman who was doing weeding and I found out is one of the employees, used to be volunteer help, who cares for the garden.
He told me they are not allowed to used any treatments for the roses, period, so all they can do is pick off bad leaves and weed.
As I was there he showed me the sawfly problem they had and squished a larva with his fingers.
They suffer massive loses every year. He told me all they can do is plant new plants.---- This answered a question I had wondered about as I noticed that in the past few years that roses with large diameter canes, showing age, were getting to be fewer and fewer. Most roses had the scrubby look of younger roses.
They have a second rose bed with roses with numbers as they have a connection to a rose society for growing new rose types.
It was clean, weed free five years ago now it looks like they are also growing new type of weeds.
The gardens have more than just roses. I have been going there for decades and it seems that after Mr. Munsinger died a few years ago, even though it was volunteer help that grumbled about being under manned then, it has gone to hell .
Mr. Munsinger would gladly spend money to take care of the roses, except paid employees, but they had good winter care being covered with rice hulls.
This year I saw no rice hulls on the ground as I have in the past. A worker there some years back said they were expensive and I doubt the city would put the money out.
It is now the combined Munsinger - Clemens garden. -- (Clemens , city run for decades,) --- Clemens garden is down on the river tech. across the street, but now they are both cared for by the same entity.
Fifteen years ago I spoke to a worker at each, then separate garden, and the city owned one spoke of being undermanned.
The weeds I saw this year, if they had fifty people working there instead of five , weeding by hand would take month to do a fair job.
I cannot really give any idea of what this garden is like as it has old sections and new ones but he old one with hostas and trees a hundred years old was weed free ten years ago, now what was brown mulch is green weeds with dandelions flower stems two feet long along the edge.
I told a girl staff member who was planting in an annual area, they keep weeds down by roto-tilling, that the fellow over in the roses said they should all come over and help him.
She laughed and said "I believe you."
Of the five staff working the garden, three were planting annuals, one was mowing lawn and one was working the large rose garden.
I probably should have put this in the grumpy section but after seeing what that poor fellow working in that hot rose garden has to deal with, my problems are teeny-tiny little whines.
The area the rose gent was working was, hot clay paving stones that made up the path ways, and black dirt the roses were planted in. I could feel the heat radiating off of the bricks and black ground.
I told the gent that what atmosphere in that area reminded me of when I was laying paver stones on a hot day surrounded by hot bricks and crushed granite; he said that when the temps. hit the nineties it was pure hell working that garden.
The worst thing I saw was THISTLES were infesting many areas of the garden. Roto-tilling them under makes it worse and pulling them out is a waste of time.
