What everyone can agree on is that spending time in Nature is good for our bodies and our minds.

From gardens and nature play areas to bird watching, maple sugaring and preschool- Tamarack Nature Center (TNC) is a true gem for the Twin Cities nature lover. There are roughly five miles of trails meandering through the 320 acres of widely varied landscapes. You can walk through old growth maple stands, skirt a swamp, round a lake and parade through lots of prairie.

There is also one of the Twin Cities’ largest and most engaging nature play areas, “Discovery Hollow” including a natural waterscape, a log and stick play area, hobbit house and a huge climbing wall with built in caves and sand pit.

Nature Center vs. Park

Nature centers differ from county parks in a few ways. Their main purpose is to preserve or protect natural landscapes and provide habitat for the wildlife that have always called it home.

People use nature centers differently than parks as well. While people gather at parks for the baseball fields or playgrounds, people come to nature centers to hike or birdwatch.

At TNC, the staff care for frogs, snakes, turtles and even owls, and share these animals as part of the programming. The visitor center also has nature displays and classrooms for both adults and preschoolers.

I am lucky enough to live close enough to this nature center to have it become an integral part of our lives. Both my kids have gone through the Nature Preschool here, we’ve had birthday parties here, attended their ‘drop in’ sessions, hiked the trails more times than I can count, even had family photos taken here.

White Bear Lake Winter Farmers Markets

Going on 5 seasons now, I’ve also worked with the staff to hold the White Bear Lake Winter Farmers Markets here! This has been a great way to bring the community together over local food, something I’m very passionate about!

Growing with the Community

Tamarack first opened it’s ‘doors’ with a trailer on the land circa 1978. The main building was built in 1989 with additions for classrooms, parking, outdoor play and gardens taking place throughout the years. The space has grown with alongside the community’s interest in nature. And the community is a big part of keeping it running. In a typical year the nature center sees around 150 volunteers who give over 6,500 hours of time. And that high level of community involvement shows in the grounds and gardens.

Digging Into the Garden

Tamarack’s Teaching Garden is one of a kind. With a whimsical hardscape design and plenty of changes in crops and uses each year the gardens as a whole integrate native perennial plantings to bring in the pollinators with a wide array of annual vegetable crops, herbs and a small orchard. Centered around a flower spiral both raised and in-ground beds radiate outward, drawing you in.

There’s been some sort of garden on site since 1999, but the current garden with fencing (this is a nature center with LOTS of deer pressure) was added in 2011. The Garden Building was added then as well, which later got a major overhaul to make it even more functional.

Planting in annual vegetables, many started from seed each year takes a lot of hands in the dirt!  As Marcie Oltman, Director of TNC explained, “Ramsey County Parks and Rec partnered with Minnesota/Iowa Conservation Corps soon after the garden was constructed. The level of involvement changes every year, but usually a crew of four Conservation Corps workers are on site roughly 20 hours per week throughout the growing season”. That’s a whole lot of garden love and makes these gardens flourish. 

Growing For Good

The garden is a Teaching Garden and Demonstration Garden which means they focus on growing a wide variety of crops in hopes of spurring interest, sparking joy and collecting a good harvest. Making those planting decisions is Amy Jo, the Garden Manager.

I asked Amy Jo all about how she decides how to plant all this space. There is a lot that goes into the process, in some ways its a lot like your home garden, just many times the size. But overall there are so many other people to take into consideration.

Amy Jo’s Guides to Deciding
What to Grow:

•  Garden maps of previous years to do crop rotations
  
• Talking with summer camp teachers about what the want to see growing
  
• Consult the Conservation Corp volunteers
  
• Try at least one a new crop each season (this year they grew artichokes)
  
• When there’s a garden fail (maybe pumpkins did poorly) she researches to decide if that plant should be taken out of rotation for the next season
  
• Reacting to wildlife- if they get greedy with one crop, deciding if that gets planted again, or try a new approach like straw bale gardens.
  And sometimes its just random 

Teaching + Demonstration Garden

Amy Jo works to plant a wide variety of produce that will have different harvest times. But also larger amounts of good produces like bush beans that will be useful in teaching programs plus be wonderful for the food shelf donations.

The garden is also a demonstration garden meaning that it is for the public to enjoy the beauty of the plantings and to see how different produce grows. Amy Jo explains, “So that is why there is ‘a little bit of this and that’ in the garden. We try to incorporate a good deal of signage for the public and program participants like the summer campers to learn from”.

This extensive garden is also for the local wildlife, hopefully mostly just pollinators. Amy Jo says, “I put in lots of flowers not only for people’s enjoyment but for the pollinators”.

The gardens donate to the White Bear Area Food Shelf to the tune of 1,000+ pounds of fresh, locally grown organic produce a year.

this # varies each year

Get Involved

I volunteered a few Wednesdays this summer and it was so fun to be in another garden, working alongside other gardeners. The garden volunteer time is led by Amy Jo, and often includes other locals, some Ramsey County Master Gardeners and a naturalist or two. The garden is massive, and there’s always something to do- from planting seedlings, the never-ending weeding (which is a lot more fun done in groups) and of course harvesting! The gardening days are

Get involved with some of the many different volunteer opportunities; from caring for the center’s animals (like native turtles, frogs and snakes), removing buckthorn, tending the garden or the beehives and so much more. You can check their volunteer page for opportunities – they’ve got both in person options, and other socially distanced ways to help.

Volunteer Spotlight

Maple Volunteer Training

Saturday, February 5^th 
10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
11:45 to 1:00: Evaporator Training

FREE!Pre-registration required.

Attend this training to learn all about the maple season at Tamarack and how you can contribute as a volunteer. We utilize volunteers in sap collecting, evaporating, canning and programming. This is a great volunteer opportunity for individuals, couples and families!

TO REGISTER email volunteertamarack@co.ramsey.mn.us

Connect with Nature

For me, gardening and plants are the way I best connect with Nature. But TNC understands that for some it’s animals, bird watching or working together with others in the woods… Whether a family hike or snowshoe, volunteering or a visit to the Winter Farmers Market (hint, hint), or just hanging out on the climbing wall… make sure you visit Tamarack Nature Center each season. Your body and mind will thank you. Who knows, you might even end up in a deeper relationship with nature.

Dig into Nature Centers,

Michelle

The post Tamarack Nature Center and Teaching Gardens appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

As any gardener knows, Mother Nature and her weather are really the ones in charge of how our gardens grow. We are forever wondering, will we get that April snowstorm…?

Thinking about the weather and how it affects everything from
crop timing, to which insects buzz through it, to how much water we need to supplement is something I respect more each year!

Globally, our weather is also changing at an alarming rate. Both
temperatures and the number of erratic weather events are on the rise. These are but the tip of the melting iceberg of how weather touches every aspect of the garden process.

I hope that as more people dig in to gardening as a hobby and passion,
we’ll reach our tipping point. We’ll both love all kinds of weather AND care for our earth in ways that will leave it in good shape for future generations!

Growing Gardeners

I believe that the way to ensure our future generations take good care of
the earth is to simply get them out into nature so they can fall in love with
it! Let’s get kids exploring, asking questions and simply being outside
in a snowstorm or on a hot steamy day and everything in between…

Sarah Nelson, my dear friend and children’s book author, has recently
released a group of books, I Like the Weather. This set of picture books
introduces children to the joys of different weather with upbeat rhymes and
intriguing back matter. Below, Sarah shares her thoughts on how our relationship
with weather can change us, and our relationship with our gardens for the
better. Enjoy!

Weather Makes the Garden Grow

Weather makes the garden grow. This is a simple truth that even children and beginning gardeners (like me) know in our souls. A spot of soil, some sun, some rain—these are the essential ingredients for any successful garden. But if we really stop to consider, we realize that our gardens rely on weather—all sorts of weather—in dozens of meaningful ways to propagate the food we eat each day. Nevertheless, we sure do love to hate the weather.

When I wrote the first poem for the I LIKE THE WEATHER picture book series, I was living in a cloud. In the wet and foggy Pacific Northwest, it sometimes rains for weeks on end, and the sun seems to disappear forever. At first, it was hideous. Truly, I hated the weather.

However, I quickly learned that the only way to live in such a soggy place was to stop resisting—to zip up my raincoat and get on out there. Soon, I really did like the rain. Trees and gardens thrived. Flowers bloomed in February. Rainy walks were filled with sensory wonders. One day, caught in a winter rain shower, drip-drops tapping on my hooded head, pitter-pattering on my chilly cheeks, I sang my “first draft” of I Like the Rain.

Here in the upper Midwest, we are happiest when we embrace the changing weather and the cold and snow. Memories of my Minnesota childhood—windy day kite flying, snow angels and snow forts, jumpy spring rain puddles, and sunny summer swims—were the inspiration for a whole weather series. Life is just better when we like the weather. Kids know it implicitly—if they are allowed to slip, slide, stomp, and frolic—that weather simply gives us more ways to play.

Weather Perspectives

We adults sometimes forget. I suppose it is the little discomforts we all feel—our achy muscles on a rainy day, a dull melancholy when the sky is very gray. But weather, like a feeling, comes and goes. Clouds drift. Rain passes. Stormy gusts give way to easy breezes. It helps, I think, to get outside in all sorts of weather to frolic and play—or at least to revel as we dig and sow in the many ways that weather makes the garden grow.

As you visit and tend the garden with your children, notice the visible ways that weather helps your plants flourish. Warm sun sprouts spring shoots and opens flowers. Wind carries seeds to new homes. Rain washes green leaves and waters the garden soil.      

Weather also has many less obvious ways of growing the garden. As weather changes throughout the year, talk with your children about these benefits for the garden.

Weather Benefits the Garden

• Snow pack protects the roots of trees and perennials, insulating them from icy temperatures.
• Melting snow gives our gardens the slow, steady soak that helps plants sprout in spring.
• Intense cold kills off some fungi and decreases populations of certain troublesome insects.
• A hard winter freeze (and repeated freezing and thawing in springtime) softens the hard coats of seeds like apple, plum, and wild rose and allows these seeds to germinate.
• Wind blows flower pollen from blossom to blossom, pollinating many of our food crops like cereal grains and nut trees.
• Fog supplies some plants with fresh water as their leaves absorb moisture directly from the wet air.
• A heat wave, like nature’s hothouse, can ripen August tomatoes and hurry-on the autumn harvest.                                      

There really are so many things to like—and even love—about all sorts of weather. I hope you and your families will enjoy celebrating and exploring weather in the garden as well as in the I LIKE THE WEATHER series.

Thank you Michelle and Forks in the Dirt for letting me share these weather reflections.

**********

Thank you, Sarah! 

Understanding how weather affects your plants helps you work with nature to make your garden grow strong and resilient. I really love how Sarah reminds us that we’re all in some kind of weather, so we might as well dress for it and get out there!

I also love that some of my favorite local bookstores are carrying her books! Find them at Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul and Lake Country Booksellers in White Bear Lake. Additionally, gift sets are available to order, or visit SarahNelsonBooks.com. For a peek into more about Sarah and her books, check out this Bookology video link.

Dig in to the great outdoors!
Michelle (and boys)

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