photo by: Elvyn Jones

Douglas County master gardeners Carol Anderson (left) and Jane Akob relax on a shaded bench Tuesday in Tom Swan Park in downtown Baldwin City. Akob has led a team of master gardeners who transformed the small park into one of Douglas County Extensions four demonstration in the county.

Although Tuesday morning wasn’t one of their designated workdays at Tom Swan Park in downtown Baldwin City, Douglas County master gardeners Jane Akob and Carol Anderson soon had their fists filled with weeds.

“When you see a weed, you have to pick it,” Anderson said as she bent to pluck another weed growing in the shade of the Lumberyard Arts Center, which forms the eastern boundary of the 400-square-foot pocket park.

It is such dedication that has transformed the park since Akob first took over its care in 2012 from an overextended Susan Baker, who at the time worked for the Baldwin City Chamber of Commerce in the old filling station building just to the south of the park on the corner of High and Eighth streets.

Akob has photographs taken from that time, which show a few flower beds surrounded by grass in the about 400-square-foot pocket park. Four years later, what little grass remains is obscured by flowering plants and bushy scrubs, which are watered by an irrigation system she installed.

“I became a master gardener in 2010,” Akob said. “Back then, each year’s master gardener class had a class project. In 2012, I proposed it (Tom Swan Park) as a class project, but it was rejected. I started working here anyway. The next year, I decided to make it a demonstration garden, and it was approved.

“It’s turned out pretty well, We’re pretty proud of it. It’s become a local attraction. A lot of people in Baldwin City when they have visitors, they drag them down here.”

There’s a lot to see and learn in the little park. Small tags near their stems identify the pasque flowers, begonia, heliotrope, sweet potato vines, purple coneflowers, zinnia, lobelia, fennel, salvia, rain lilies and many other flowers and scrubs in the park.

That is the point of the garden, Akob said. For all the greenery and flowering beauty it offers from March through October, it is a demonstration garden meant to instruct and educate.

“The goal is to show people good practices, like good soil testing, proper fertilization and using plants in the right place,” she said. “Every plant is labeled. It may make my work a little harder, but it makes it good for visitors.”

Tom Swan Park is the smallest of four demonstration parks in the county, said Douglas County Horticultural Extension Agent Marlin Bates. The others are the garden at Douglas County Fairgrounds near the extension office, Monarch Waystation No. 1 next to Foley Hall on the University of Kansas’ West Campus and the Native Medicinal Plant Research Garden at 1865 East 1600 Road at the KU Field Station northeast of Lawrence.

The gardens are all different. The Monarch Waystation specializes in vegetation that promotes invertebrate conservation, and Native Medicinal Plant Research Garden is reserved for the kinds of plants that give it its name. The fairgrounds garden shares with Tom Swan Park a focus on residential ornamental and landscape plants, but is large enough to have rain, scrub, shade, vegetable and other sub-gardens.

Despite their differences, the demonstration gardens are all tended by the county’s master gardeners and share the goal of educating the public, Bates said. Master gardeners are often on hand to share information and all have educational material on hand. Those who visit when master gardeners are unavailable can call the master gardener hotline at 785-843-7058 for more information or answers to questions.

Another commonality is the shared use and further testing of Prairie Bloom perennials and Prairie Star annuals K-State Research and Extension developed to thrive in northeast Kansas, Bates said.

One thing special about the Baldwin City garden is its accessibility, Bates said.

“That’s one of the things we really like,” he said. “It is the centerpiece for downtown. It’s cultivated a greater understanding of the master gardening program, We’ve had a number of new recruits from the Baldwin City area because of the work Jane and her crew do there.”

Visitors will also get landscaping ideas. The small park is sprinkled with sculptures local artist Forrest Waltman carved and is graced with a arbor arch, obelisk and screen master gardener Les Conder built. There’s also a sundial donated by a woman whose story illustrates the value of the park beyond education.

“She was sitting here when I came by one day,” Anderson said. “She said she her husband was out at the rehabilitation center at the nursing home. She said she came here to get away from all that stress.”