By John Huxman
Freelance Reporter
Special to the Tribune
This fall, on September 7, the Pratt Master Gardener’s are once again hosting a fall garden tour. The tour, which costs $10, will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, September 7.
“We do this as a fundraiser when we can. It didn’t work last year –actually the last two years—due to the extreme heat. We try to find five houses that have different gardens, a variety of different landscapes that people can get ideas and take home to use in their own yards. I think we have a good variety this year,” said Teri Briggeman, one of the organizers of the event.
The Pratt County Master Gardeners is a distinct entity from the Pratt Garden Club. Briggeman said that Master Gardeners have to go through a training program at K-State.
“I’ve always been interested in plants. I always had a love of gardening and so this just helped deepen my knowledge of what I was doing anyway,” she said.
The Pratt Master Gardeners are responsible, among other things, for maintaining the plants in the planter boxes on main street. During the fall tour, there will be one or two master gardeners at each garden to give the tour and answer questions. This will allow the owners of the gardens themselves to also participate in the tour and see one anothers’ work.
In addition to being a master gardener, Briggeman’s own garden is also one of the ones on this year’s tour.
“I am the only one on the tour this year who is a Master Gardener,” she said.
Briggeman said that her garden was also featured on another garden tour in years past.
“Mine is mostly a water garden. I just have always loved that and we had leftover stone when we built our house. Over the years I’ve added to it. I like to have water lilies, and goldfish and koi, I really like lots of varieties of trees and shrubs and all kinds of ground covers. I really think there’s something for everybody,” she said.
The Brigemmans built their house in 1993, and since then the garden has been Teri’s project.
“I did the pond and stream by myself and it took me seven years. My husband did a little bit of plumbing and other than that I laid the stone myself,” she said.
A second house on the 2024 garden tour is that of Aquina Stonestreet. Stonestreet is Teri Briggeman’s mother and her garden is quite different from that of her daughter.
“They have what they called the wildlife area. Which is a grove of wild cedar trees that seeded themselves and came up and she and my Dad would always mow a path down through there so the grand-kids of theirs could hunt Easter Eggs. Then every time the grand-kids came over they wanted to go through that wildlife area, so she started setting it up at other times of the year and not just Easter. It just kind of evolved from that,” Briggeman said. “Hers is just more landscape decorating ideas; whimsical, funny—just what you can do without water in a dry land setting in a grove of trees. And she has a small water garden and she does have a water feature in that wildlife area; kind of a little stream and some fun things to look at.”
Another stop on the fall garden tour will be the yard of Kenny Marsh. This is Marsh’s first year being on the tour.
“I hadn’t even heard of this,” he said. “My niece is the one who put me in for this because I do a lot of work in my yard. So she says, ‘I think you need to be on the tour.’ And I say, ‘well, what tour?’ so she told me about the Pratt County Master Gardeners.”
Marsh said that he has a small vegetable garden, a large number of flowers and grasses, a waterfall, and a couple of arbors.
“Geraniums are getting to be one of my biggest fans; they can take the heat,” Marsh said. “And I’ve got a lot of other things. I’ve got a lot of plant stands and I’ve got a pretty good deck out there.”
Marsh retired in 2016 and now works in his yard and garden to stay busy.
Carol Gordon, another tour stop for 2024, has been gradually growing her garden since she and her husband moved to their home in 1998.
“Every year you make a little more progress on how you want it to look,” she said. “I didn’t have a master plan, I just started planting things; mostly perennials at the time because that’s all that I could afford. As time goes on your perennials keep growing and you divide them.” Gordon’s garden features many Black-Eyed Susans and Karl Foerster grass bunches that provide a consistent theme and framing for shrubs, trees, and roses.
“As you have money, you buy shrubs, and that’s what I have been doing these last several years,” she said.
Her yard has large, curve-edged borders, yard art (often purchased by her husband, Virgil), and a walking path. A recent and prominent change to the garden has been the replacement of an arbor that had rotted out. The new one is made from a pair of doors.
“My sister, she’s a carpenter, so she helped Virgil and I to do this,” she said.
The front yard contains a water feature, which at time of writing, was down for repairs but which is planned to be running again by the time of the tour.
“I do a lot of stone work. Ten years ago I put in a lot of stone edging and then last year I finished it all out, so I have paths all over the place. My landscape is more curvy lines. And one of my goals is to have less grass to mow,” she said.
This will be Gordon’s first time as a garden in the garden tour, though she has taken the tour in the past and enjoyed it.
Another gardener in the tour is Kris Quint. The Quints moved into their current home in 1986.
“We had six trees in the whole yard. It was like a blank slate and we didn’t like that. Over the years it has just evolved. I started with an old world theme as far as the planters and the different things and put in a small pond and I’ve stayed with that with blacks and gray and stone,” Quint said.
Quint was able to get a lot of the stone from friends who have a farm. She said her garden is characterized by hostas, ferns, and vines.
“I’ve tried to go mostly with perennials, but that doesn’t always work. I just love too many things,” she said.
Quint has been gardening her whole life. “I grew up on a farm and we had beautiful gardens, just love to grow things.”
For those wishing to go on the fall garden tour, maps, addresses, and tickets will be sold at the extension office and also at, on the day of, at the homes of the participants. The Master Gardeners will also have flyers available at the extension office with more information.
