Ramona Frank, St. Martin, has always raised flowers as long as she can remember.It wasn’t until about 11 years ago that she started exhibiting at the Grace United Methodist Flower Show. This year the show will be held Aug. 1 and 2.
“Friends encouraged me to enter the flower show, but with the dairy herd, we were so busy, I didn’t have time. When we sold the dairy herd and I started exhibiting,” she said.
Frank has been a consistent winner at the flower show with her arrangements and individual cut flowers.
She has about six different flower gardens in her yard and around the house, all featuring a variety of flowers. Frank said her favorite flowers are roses and dahlias. “The roses are so delicate and the dahlias come in such varieties,” she added.
At present, she has only two colors of dahlias, red and pink. “I used to have more colors but the aphids ate all the colors but red,” she said. This is her first year trying a pink dahlia again.
She has the majority of her dahlias planted along the fence by the house. Frank uses tomato cages to help hold the dahlias erect but when they get too tall and the cages can’t hold them up, she has the fence available to tie them in place.
In walking around the yard, viewing her flower gardens, she points to her newest garden. “A tree fell over and I wanted to fill the gap with something, flowers seemed the ideal choice,” Frank said. She has planted hosta, lily of the valley and snow on the mountain in this shady area. She even turned over a bird bath to look like a giant mushroom in this flower garden. “I couldn’t keep it clean so I turned it over,” she added.
Among the flowers in her gardens are moss roses, lilies, blazing star, balloon flowers, coral bell, lupin, sedem, moss roses, petunias, impatiens, geraniums, beebalm, sweet alyssum, and mums.
One dainty flower which attracts a person’s attention is her flax. Frank said they flower everyday, by noon the flower petals fall off and there are new flowers on the plant the next day.
Beside the garage is her “rock garden.” Bordering the garden is a pathway of brick. “Judy had the idea of using the brick from the old chimney and made a path in the flower bed,” Frank said. “She also placed several large rocks from the rock pile in the field throughout the garden. I had some flat rocks, but she thought I needed some larger rocks for variety.”