This year, Primus met a man who claims to be the first person from Israel to canoe the entire Mississippi - an adventure Primus would love to take, if only she wasn’t responsible for more than 100,000 plants. “So we keep a log of all the people we get to talk to that are doing that, and follow them on their Facebook page or website.” “We get to meet a lot of people who are canoeing the Mississippi, going from source to sea, because they have to portage around the dam,” she said. “Certain areas are more wet than others, and you have plants that don’t like to have their feet wet.”Īlthough Primus is an expert in all things that grow and bloom, what she enjoys most about her job are the things that don’t sprout from the ground each spring - the people she meets at the gardens. “It’s a learning curve on where things should be,” she said. It all works out in the end.”Īnd with each spring comes a new chance to perfect the placement of plants so they can flourish. “You see a flower and think, ‘Oh, I really want to use that flower next year,’ and work around that color,” Primus said. “Next year, this garden is going to be pink and purple, and the formal garden is going to be orange, lime and purple.” “This year was a lot of orange,” she said of the gardens’ theme.

“It’s sad, especially if we get an early frost, but there’s always next year,” Primus said.Īlthough garden staffers sometimes mourn the coming of winter, fall is when Primus begins dreaming up the design for the next year’s gardens. The end of growing season is a solemn time. And all but three staff members will leave before Halloween.

The roses will get cut back and covered with construction-grade blankets. In the next month, everything that is not a perennial will get ripped out. “Rudbeckia are always the first ones to go.” “In the fall, we start ripping out annuals as they are dying,” she said. From July to mid-September, Primus focuses on maintenance, which involves removing dead flower heads, weeding and cutting back perennials. When Primus plants in the spring, she focuses first on the special areas that get reserved by community members for wedding photos. In the gardening world, work is dictated by weather. “I just like working with the crew and seeing what we can pull off in a day and in a season,” she added. We get complimented every day on how great the place looks.” You work in any other department for the city and all you do is get complaints. “Being able to supply this beauty to the public is a big perk, and talking to people every day from different places,” Primus said. That sentiment doesn’t fall onto deaf ears. “The gardens are very important to this community.” “We expect the highest quality,” Zlotnik said. While Zlotnik oversees eight programs, from forestry to shelters and rinks, Primus is responsible for one of the city’s most aesthetically unique and popular landmarks. “She’s just someone who really takes her job seriously.” “Not at all,” said Scott Zlotnik, park and recreation director for St. So does it surprise Primus’ boss that she can name 500 varieties of annuals? I spend a lot of time in my kitchen, and my staff knows it. “I’m not a gardener, I’m a manager,” she said. Primus did not grow up spending much time gardening - her mother had a simple vegetable garden, she said - and she does not maintain a garden at her St. Primus supervises the gardens’ full-time and seasonal staff who help tend to the plants and maintain the garden properties, including the fountains, urns and gates. When the nature center closed in 2008, Primus joined the staff at Munsinger and Clemens gardens. Cloud State University and started working for the city at the nature center in 1999. Cloud and graduated from Tech High School. “As the person who orders all the flowers, I have kind of a photographic memory where I can remember the pages and see it in my head,” Primus told the St. The charts list every flower, which garden the flower is in, how many were ordered and what company the flower came from. It took a few years for Primus to memorize all of the flower varieties, but now she is able to quickly spit out each flower’s name without referencing one of her intensive spreadsheets. Then the plants are transplanted to the gardens around the end of May. Over the course of six weeks, staffers plant the seeds in an on-site greenhouse. Primus orders plants during winter months, and shipments of seeds arrive in March. Between the 21 acres of Munsinger and Clemens gardens, Primus’ staff plant about 100,000 annuals and 10,000 perennials each year.

St cloud gardens