Pollinator Park, New Ulm gardening club, and the downtown waterers are all parts of this gardening spirit.

At 2250 North Broadway, the city’s Pollinator Park has started another growing season. Heading into the summer months, native plants new and returning are growing and beginning to show their colors.

This will mark their ninth summer providing people in New Ulm with a chance to explore the area’s natural flora. Volunteer and retired naturalist Joe Gartner said the land was first purchased in 2015 before being fully utilized a year later.

“We got permission from the city of New Ulm to use this land for Pollinator Park,” he said. “That’s when it all started. We worked on getting grants so we could purchase plants and signage. June 2016, we had a big volunteer day where volunteers came out and planted all the plants. From there, we’ve been doing maintenance, a lot of re-planting.”

Members of the New Ulm area gardening club tour a members garden. Though they don’t meet in the summer months, activities like this continue to take place.

The local wildlife has caused harm to some of the plants, like Meadow Blazing Star, by eating them.

“That’s my favorite plant,” Gartner said. “It’s an important nectar plant for Monarch [butterflies]. We’ll probably have to fence some of it in.”

“It must be like candy for them because they’d like to chew it down,” volunteer Deb Steinberg said.

Steinberg said Pollinator Park differs from a typical garden because it is all native plants, as opposed to manicured areas like German Park. This establishes Pollinator Park as a unique area, but it does have its issues.

“They establish a real strong root system,” she said. “We deal with a lot of weeds because we’re keeping it natural. We do have some very different plants than people are used to.”

Volunteer and schedule manager Keith Rolloff gives the flowers outside the Journal offices their daily watering.

In addition to the weeds, the soil depth is also a factor. Gartner said the park is on top of an old demo dump. This means in many spots there are only four or five inches of soil before plants hit rubble.

For some plants, like the prairie grasses, this limitation is a good thing.

“If we had deep rich soil, the prairie plants would be [extremely] tall,” Gartner said. “We’re really lucky to have pretty poor soil because it keeps them at a reasonable height.”

For those who seek a community, the gardening club has provided that space. The club currently has 35 members. Steinberg, who serves as club president, said they bring different ideas and people to each meeting.

“We have our little business meeting,” she said. “We have a guest speaker, or we may do a project like molding a rhubarb leaf into decoration.”

The club meets from September through May. While the non-meeting season has started, Steinberg said this in no way slows down the gardening fun.

“We do our volunteer work at the brat stand for a fundraiser,” she said. “We go on garden member tours. We keep active during the summer. We have a potluck in August.”

For Steinberg, having the gardening club is being able to share her passion with others who do the same.

“It’s great to share the same interest,” she said. “Everybody learns something new, even if you’ve been doing it for many years.”

Downtown also has its fair share of greenery. Every year, hundreds of ground pots and planters are given marigolds, petunias, and coleus begonias among others to add a splash of color.

These splashes of color could not shine without splashes of water. This responsibility falls on the 29 volunteers who share the responsibility of going out daily and providing the plants with much-needed watering.

Kim Hanson has volunteered for the last four years. Due to work commitments during the week, she waters one weekend a month. She said her father Keith Rolloff’s closeness to the project and wanting to be involved through her family in beautifying New Ulm inspired her to start.

Hanson said the task is pretty straightforward.

“You pick up the cart from the shed and make sure it’s full of water,” she said. “We start on Minnesota Street down by the glockenspiel. You come to all the baskets and pots all the way down and then we come back and do the other side of Minnesota street. Then we do Broadway Street from City Hall down to API on both sides.”

For Hanson this work is not just volunteering, it connects with a love for flowers she’s had her whole life.

“I’ve always loved flowers,” she said. “I enjoy it and they are so beautiful. When you’re driving with that cart you wouldn’t believe the people, even visitors and business owners, that come out and thank us for volunteering because it is such a beautiful thing.”

For Gartner, Steinberg, and Hanson, gardening is a personal joy as well. Gartner shares a garden with his wife Julie Gartner where they grow vegetables and native plants for butterflies. Steinberg grows annuals, perennials, pollinator plants, and a small vegetable garden. Hanson grows daisies, zinnias, and a vegetable garden with tomatoes and peppers to make salsa and spaghetti sauce.