Gardens are year-round labor of love for head gardener

PALMER — Though the Alaska State Fair only opened yesterday, in her head, Becky Myrvold is already planning next year’s gardens.

Part of the process is the same each year. From her 29 years of experience, the fair’s longtime head gardener knows she’ll use hundreds of varieties of annuals, perennials, herbs and vegetables to create 150 hanging baskets, 200 whiskey barrel planters and to fill the 35 flower beds on the Alaska State Fairgrounds.

Although the gardens will be seen mostly from Aug. 22 to Sept. 2 this year, it takes a year-round effort to bring them to life.

About the time the remains of this year’s gardens are cleared away in mid-October, Myrvold said it’s time to order the seeds for next year’s gardens. Then in January 2014, she will start thousands of new plants — 99 percent of plants are started new each year from seeds and clippings — needed for next summer.

“I’d be really crazy if all I grew was marigolds and petunias,” she said. “Part of my goal us to always have surprises for people, even the hard-core gardeners.”

The fair is a whirr of sights, sounds and smells and its gardens are a good place for people of all ages to pause for a few minutes before returning to the festivities, she said.

“I see people just sitting in the gardens,” Myrvold said. “It’s a good feeling for me.”

Marketing Director Dean Phipps said this year’s new garden-related offerings include an Alaska-sized watering can near the red gate and main office, which Myrvold designed and maintenance/grounds crews spent months building and installing.

The plaza area in front of Raven Hall also will feature Myrvold’s garden art this year. But first those plants will be part of the fair’s top-secret entry in the annual Alaska State Fair Parade at 11 a.m., Saturday.

“None of us has seen it, it’s a secret,” Phipps said.

Myrvold said only the grounds and gardens crews know the float’s concept, but no one has seen the float because its blooming bits won’t be assembled until Saturday morning right before the parade.

“That’s part of the fun,” Myrvold said.

If this inaugural flower float goes well, Phipps said, the fair might also be interested in entering a flower-based float in some kind of national parade.

The fair’s gardens have expanded a lot since Myrvold joined the fair’s staff 29 years ago as a new horticulture graduate from the University of Minnesota.

In the summer, a 10-person crew helps her tend the gardens, but for most of the year the gardens are a one-woman operation.

Wednesday afternoon, the garden crewmembers were placing plants in Victor’s Garden in the Kid Zone. By that evening, Myrvold said the children’s garden would be alive with vine-covered tunnels, a cave and a dragon protecting the last dragon egg in the world.

Lindsey Dreese is standing in the garden’s pond working to get pots of decorative grass to stand straight and not float away. It’s her first summer on the garden crew. She’s on summer break from the University of Alaska Fairbanks where she is studying biology.

“It’s a different side of biology,” she said.

Some crewmembers have tended the gardens for multiple summers, Myrvold said.

Like Shelby Wood and Carly Cassidy, who between them have seven years experience working in the gardens.

Hannah O’Brien, a lifelong Alaskan who moved to Palmer about a year ago, is part of the team caring for the gardens throughout the fair. She’s enrolled at Mat-Su College this fall.

“I like it a lot,” she said. “The people are awesome.”

Contact Managing Editor Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.