Fargo, North Dakota.

North Dakota State University has a history of agricultural-related research. Near the west end of the campus, a small garden is easy to miss without noticing its presence. In early September 2020, my wife and I took a short drive to capture the garden on a late afternoon. There is a very small parking lot on 18th Street North, just off 12th Avenue North. It doesn’t hold many cars, but I’ve never seen the lot full.

The five gardens include a handicapped-accessible area, a daylily garden, a perennial garden, a shade garden, and an annual garden. The view in the above photo looks west from near the Annual Garden.

One section features a large variety of prairie grasses. Most of the plants in the garden are identified on small placards.

Humans aren’t the only species to visit the gardens on any given day. This chipmunk was enjoying a snack, paying only passing attention to the people wandering around the garden.

This beautiful orange flower was identified on the placard nearby as Bracteantha Viscosa. Of course, I knew that. (Not.)

For more details about the gardens and their operation, you can find several pages of information here. During more normal times, summer tours are available for clubs, church groups, and others. While you can learn a lot by taking notes during a self-guided tour, much more detail can be gleaned from a tour guide that likely also volunteers to work in the gardens.

A lot of work is required to keep these gardens looking nice. They need people who would like to spend time in the garden doing simple maintenance tasks such as weeding, spreading mulch, or otherwise contributing to the garden’s upkeep. I submit for your review, a collection of images captured on that afternoon visit to the small botanical garden that is a fitting display for the NDSU Agriculture and Extension Division of North Dakota State University. In most browsers, you can click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner