McCook garden started small and keeps growing

Courtesy photo/Peg Niebur Peg and Rod Niebur of McCook, have created their own little oasis in the city with their garden. Violets, dianthus, peonies, iris and more cover a well pump area in the front yard.

McCOOK, Neb. — It all started with a well pump in the middle of the yard.

When Peg and Ron Niebur first moved into their home on Cornhusker Drive outside the city, Peg wanted to cover the area of the well pump that was unsightly.

Twenty-four years later, she still hasn’t stopped and now the front, back and side lawns are filled with perennials, shrubs, trees, roses and anything else that strikes her fancy.

McCook Gazette Peg and Ron Niebur relax for a few minutes in front of a bed of red celosia in front of their home.

“If I like it, I put it in,” is how she put it. She must like a lot, as evidenced by her garden.

Her favorites are her roses, Peg said.

“They’re my love,” she said, even with the thorns. “It’s like life, you’re always going to have thorns and you can’t concentrate on that.”

Courtesy photo/Peg Niebur Hostas planted under a row of limbed-up cedar trees mingle with container plants. Peg and Ron Niebur both swear by “Preen” weed and feed.

The color starts in the spring with crocus, daffodills and tulips and continues with iris, peonies, dianthus. Then it’s the roses, followed by brown eyed Susans, asters and ending with a mass of mums.

Peg said she doesn’t know the names of all her plants but many have come from family and friends, like the dozens of “Naked Lady” lilies from her daughter that surround a cherry red barberry in August, peonies passed down from her family and a lilac bush from her sister.

As gardeners, she and Ron have learned to roll with the punches. An ice storm several years ago knocked off many of the lower branches from a row of 30-year old cedar trees. They limbed up the trees and have since planted varigated hostas that have thrived in the location.

Wildlife is another factor they learned to live with, with rabbits eating her potted annuals and an occasional bull snake. Ron guides the snakes out the garden, she said, and as for the rabbits, she’s tried pepper flakes.

“Ron said I should just give them chips, too,” she laughed.

There’s even a fairy garden, made out of a dead tree stump that her granddaughter helped to create and a vegetable garden that is now “about one eighth what it used to be,” Pat said. Still, there are tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and canteloupe.

Ron helps out by doing all the mowing on the the large lot and keeping track of the underground water sprinkler system. The system is hooked up to WiFi through his phone and automatically turns off if the wind is more than 20 mph or it’s raining.

Now that they’re both retired — he worked as a police officer in Denver and she recently retired as a para educator at McCook Elementary— they have all the time they want to spend in the garden. And although it takes a lot of work, they wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Green Ribbon Gardens” is a new page the Gazette will have each week during the summer. If you or someone you know has a great garden or lawn, call 308-345-4500, option 5 or email reporter@mccookgazette.com.