EP 2-10 SHANE SMITH
Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there, folks, welcome to The Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on really interesting people that have had an impact in the Cowboy State. And our guest today has had a huge impact in the Cowboy State.
You might not know his name, but if you have ever been to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, you know about Shane Smith and his work. And that is what we're going to focus on today, is Shane Smith and the work that he has done to raise the visibility, to raise the accessibility, of organic, of horticulture, of growing things in the Cowboy State.
So I'm so pleased to welcome to The Roundup, Shane Smith! Hello, Shane. How are you this fine day?
Shane Smith:
Great. Little cold, but good, yeah, it's a little cold.
Wendy Corr:
That's all right, that's all right. This episode will warm everybody up, and it will get everybody ready for the upcoming growing season, and I think that that is so fun.
Shane, I'd like to to start off by just saying thank you for all the work that you have done in raising the visibility of growing things in what is traditionally not a growing-things-type state. Tell us about, tell us about your love for gardening. How, how did you start this love for gardening?
Shane Smith:
Oh, as a child, I used to weed my mom's strawberries and decided that was almost as good as candy. And she was a great gardener. And then I, as I got older, I decided, what could be more fun than to grow stuff? So having a career in horticulture, which is what the professional name of people who do what I do, is, it's a blast. I did it because it's so much fun, and I haven't turned back.
I mean, it's that old saying, you know, if you love what you're doing, you're not going to work. And through my career, 41 years at Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, I started there when I was 23, I believe.
Wendy Corr:
Wow!
Shane Smith:
And it was east of town and I was a little, you know, naive about Cheyenne and everything else. Iwas in Fort Collins, studying at CSU, and I heard about these folks doing America's largest solar heated greenhouse. So I came up and started volunteering, and next thing I knew, I was hired.
And didn't get paid hardly anything. And over the years, had just wonderful staff, wonderful volunteers that really deserve more credit than I do, and we just made it happen.
Wendy Corr:
You had a great volunteer program there. I remember when you and I first talked, it was two or three years ago now, when we first talked, I did a story for Cowboy State Daily about the horticulture, about the Botanic Gardens. You've got a great story about the volunteer staff.
Shane Smith:
Well, it's changed as of the last five years or so. But while I was there, about 90% of the physical labor was done by volunteers. It was very diverse group of Cheyenne residents. It was, you know, all ethnicities, all incomes.
We had a program that involved kids working off court fines, kids who were exemplary, like Boy Scouts, Congressional Award winners, at least people trying to win a Congressional Award, young people and a number of handicapped folks through the goodwill and through magic city to institutions in Cheyenne then.
And as of late, it's a little more of a narrow group. One of our main missions back then was providing therapy through horticulture, and that's not quite as important there these days, but it's still a great program.
Wendy Corr:
It is. We want to come back to that idea too, here, later in the conversation, but Shane, tell me about the importance and the impact that that Cheyenne Botanic Gardens has had. Why is it, and why was it, at the time, such a novel thing to have the Botanic Gardens there in Cheyenne?
Shane Smith:
Well, Cheyenne is, a lot of people don't believe me, that it's the toughest garden climate in the lower 48. People in Cheyenne believe me. But people in other places are like, No way. You know, northern Maine, northern Minnesota has gotta be worse.
And no, it isn't worse. They have snow coverage. Cheyenne has the least amount of winter snow cover. The front range there, there's winters where Denver has more days with snow on the ground than Cheyenne.
Which means we've got to winter water to keep our trees alive. It's number one in the nation for hail. The town averages 10 storms a year, but the whole town doesn't get hit by hail when that happens. It's very neighbor related, but it still makes it tough to garden.
Of course, it's dry because of its elevation, and it's windy, as everybody knows, it's the windiest city in Wyoming. Cheyenne beats Casper by an average of one mile per hour. Cheyenne has a daily average wind speed of 13 miles an hour. So if you have a calm day, you have to have a 26 mile an hour day to make up for it. God forbid we have two calm days.
And so there's a lot to think about when you garden there and, you know, I jokingly say you'd have to be an idiot to put a Botanic Gardens there, and I was that happy idiot. But the town was so accepting and so appreciative to see a Petunia bloom, you know, or how do you grow tomatoes, and so that worked in our favor to have that tough climate.
And luckily, we've always had a greenhouse to work out of. We moved to Lions Park in 1986 and a very similar type of solar heated building. And then we expanded eight acres of grounds, award winning children's village.
And, you know, we grew, and I think this still is the right number, 50,000 bedding plants, and planted them all across town with volunteer help, and tried our best to beautify Cheyenne. We were kind of the extension agents. This is where people came to get their gardening information. So we did lots of classes, lots of workshops, that, of course, still goes on,
And, you know, the new conservatory opened about five years ago or so, and it amazes me to this day, because it's unheard of that a town the size of Cheyenne has a large tropical conservatory. 28,000 square foot. It was about all set of close to $20 million, voted in by the people of Cheyenne as an optional sales tax, plus we raised another $2 million and we were able to put it together.
And there's a number of big cities that would give their right arm to have something like that in their town, and it's free, and you can walk into the tropics when they're open, and sit under a palm tree, you know, and which would be a big boom right about now.
Wendy Corr:
I bet that tropic garden is real popular right now.
Shane Smith:
And we built in lots of places to sit and hang out and read a book or stroll. And another thing that I think is interesting over the course of the history of the gardens are the number of interesting firsts that the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens had.
We were the first passively solar heated Botanic Gardens in the nation. We were the first Botanic Gardens to generate electricity using photovoltaics. We also have a wind generator. We were, there's a thing called LEED certification, that is green building.
And you have to get certified. You have to build in a certain way. You can't have waste water, runoff, light pollution, recycled materials, that kind of thing. And our children's garden, the Paul Smith Children's Garden was the very first LEED certified children's garden in the world. It was the highest level of LEED certification at platinum. I believe it was the first platinum in the state for LEED certification.
And then it's the first children's garden to have a theme of sustainability, the sustainability, past, present and future. So we show how farmers’ windmills work next to a solar powered pumping system from underground.
And then we are the first, I'm pretty sure the only Botanic Gardens in the world to have a navy submarine periscope.
Wendy Corr:
I thought that was so cool. Yes, it's worth visiting just to see that, right?
Shane Smith:
Yeah, yeah. And so anyway, it's the kind of thing that probably should never have happened, but it did anyway, and it did because of the can-do attitude of the people of Cheyenne, the volunteers, staff.
And it's kind of like, I see similarities to Frontier Days. You know, Frontier Days. Why Cheyenne? You know, you'd think it would be in a big city, but it's not. Cheyenne did it and made it happen. And they did it with volunteers too. And so it's just kind of the can-do attitude that occurs in Wyoming.
Wendy Corr:
So, it really is a tribute to the people of Cheyenne, that all of these things have been able to happen - and it's a tribute to you, obviously, in so many ways. This is your life defining work.
Shane Smith:
Yeah, it was. I mean, I did other things. I have done national consulting. I've done some international work. I worked for orphanages in Venezuela before Venezuela got kind of scary. I'd love to go back, but I don't think I'd make it home again. And Mexico, I worked in high altitude villages, working with kids, with school gardens and teaching them how to do garden techniques.
And then I also write books on greenhouse gardening for the homeowner. One is still out there in print, and it actually still sells quite well. And I've lectured in about 28 states and consulted with all kinds of programs.
So I've had a lot of fun, and I still am having fun.
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely. You know, you retired in 2019 from the Botanic Gardens, but you said something just a minute ago about high altitude gardening, and you are doing that now. When you retired, you're at high altitude. When you left the Botanic Gardens, you have gone on to a different part of the Rocky Mountains, but you doing really great work where you're at now.
Tell us where you're at and what you're doing.
Shane Smith:
We live in a town called Paonia, and it's a small little town about an hour south and east of Grand Junction, an hour from Montrose. It's nestled in a valley, and this valley is famous for having the most organic gardening farms in the Rocky Mountain area.
So we have orchards, we have just all kinds of local meat, local grains there. There's a bakery that's encouraged farmers around here to grow their own wheat, heirloom wheat varieties, things like that, and so if you like to garden and eat, it's great around here.
There's vineyards, about 29-30 vineyards around here. And yeah, it's, it's got a very interesting cultural diversity. So I kind of went and decided that after 41 years in one of the toughest garden climates in the lower 48, I'd go to western Colorado and found one of the best garden climates.
And we have a lot that all set is close to a half an acre. So I'm happily building Peony Botanic Gardens here on our private land, with all kinds of different gardens and fruit trees and varieties and so it's been a lot of fun.
I'm also involved in a local radio station doing some work related to gardening. And it's a five day a week, very short program that I produce, and I do a lot of free consulting in the valley to more smaller growers and so it's kind of fun to be able to give back like that.
Wendy Corr:
Shane, what is it about the climate there in western Colorado that can't be reproduced here in Wyoming. What's the difference? Is it just the altitude? Is it the latitude? What is it?
Shane Smith:
You know, you can, even in Cheyenne, you can grow all kinds of fruit trees, but they hardly ever set fruit. They survive the winter, but they don't set fruit. And what it comes down to is there's other minor things that are important, but it comes down to dependable springs.
Anybody who lives in Wyoming, especially Cheyenne, knows that we can have a spring that can last a week sometimes, or we can go into full blown spring, and then a Mother's Day Blizzard, and, you know, below zero and things like that. And that's what makes it hard for the trees to set fruit.
The flowers get hit, and when the flowers get hit by frost, there's no fruit. Now that that's not every year. Every once in a while you'll get a nice crop of certain fruits, and there are some recommended fruits for Wyoming that as a result of some of the early work done by the High Plains horticultural research, which is now known as the High Plains Arboretum, but that's really a lot of it.
We're not much different altitude than Cheyenne. You know, the temperatures are a little colder as you go further north, of course, but in western Colorado, at least for me, is very much like being in Wyoming, in terms of, it's not real populated. It's nothing like the Front Range.
Very similar type of folks that you find in Wyoming. You know, lots of agriculture, like in Wyoming, although it's both ranching and horticultural crops, because we can do it here. So that works out.
Wendy Corr:
I find it so interesting that you have really stayed within the things that you love, even after retirement. You've started, you've got a certification, or you're an expert in something called horticultural therapy. Do I have that right? What is that? It sounds fascinating, and it sounds like it's something that would be beneficial for everybody.
Shane Smith:
Yeah. Well, it is. I mean, every time anybody walks into a garden, they feel good when you're when you garden, you feel good. You know, to get to the roots of it.
Wendy Corr:
Pun intended.
Shane Smith:
Yeah, right. There's a poet who's also a farmer by the name of Wendel Berry, who's written a number of wonderful books. And he talks about - it really opened my eyes - he talks about how farming and gardening bring meaningfulness back to your body.
He laments how we often treat our bodies like a pet. We take it out for a walk or a run. We take it to get a workout. You know, we have to do our exercises, but after all that, what do we have to show for that? That burning of calories and sweat and muscle - where gardening is great exercise, and when you're done, you end up with stuff. You end up with food and flowers, and it makes you feel good.
And so horticultural therapy is actually something you get a degree in, and at a few different colleges, and you can also get certifications through some independent programs. One is the Horticultural Therapy Institute out of Denver, and these people with degrees that want to practice it, end up at nursing homes, VA hospitals, running community gardens, working at Botanic Gardens.
You know it's, it's not a very well known thing, but there's research that shows it lowers blood pressure, gives people self esteem. It adapts to all kinds of disabilities, whether it's mental or physical. That’s something you can do with a garden.
You know, we had 95 year old volunteers cleaning house plants once a week, sitting in a chair in our coffee break room, and they were having a blast. And we've just seen all kinds of different levels you can adapt horticultural therapy to.
You walk in and a plant's wilty, you water it. By the time it's time to go home, the plant looks great again. You know, you've saved a plant. So there's, there's and things you can work on with it, you know, planting, lifting, harvesting, bringing home, salads, things like that.
So it's a great career that if people have any interest in horticulture, and I should say that horticulture, the field of horticulture, like many fields in America right now, is facing shortages.
Just not enough people are going into that field, thinking it doesn't pay good. You're just going to mow lawns or something like that - where the reality is, there are lots of great paying, very rewarding jobs that can be a Botanic Gardens or garden centers, or landscaping, landscape architecture. I mean, they're just all kinds of things you can do with it.
Wendy Cor:
And it’s all good for your soul, right? It lifts you up. I'm very inspired. I have no green thumb. I have a really hard time keeping plants alive. My mother is great at it. I have no idea how I am not, but I'm not, but I'm getting inspired by what you're saying. And I think that's fantastic for those of us who don't have green thumbs.
There are other things, though, that we can do to be outside. You mentioned landscape architecture. You mentioned things like that in Wyoming, where the growing season is not great, if you want to get outside, you want to get your hands in the dirt, you've got great ideas for landscaping. You've got great ideas for things that we can do, especially that's specific to Wyoming and its climate - rock gardens, things like that.
Tell us about the benefits of those and what are some ways that those of us in Wyoming, where it's again, the growing season isn't great, but we're inspired to be outside and do something and make a difference outside.
Shane Smith:
Yeah, there's an old term called yardeners, and then there's gardeners. And, you know, yardener just mows the lawn and doesn't have much of an interest in it, and that's fine, but a lot of yardeners want to become gardeners, and how do you go about doing it?
And you can, even in Cheyenne, have a very nice flower garden, a very nice vegetable garden. And if you don't believe me, go visit the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, and you can see that in action. If you could do it in Cheyenne, you can do it in most every town in Wyoming.
And so, I would tell people to start small, don't, you know, go plow up an acre of ground, you know, start small your first few years and see how you like it. And there's lots of information. I mean, there's no shortage of that out there with YouTube and everything else.
The Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, we have a lot of how-to publications we put together over the years on the website at botanic.org, and so you can learn from that, you know, lot of basic stuff if you want to start your own seeds.
We're coming to that point in time where, you know, March is a great time to start all kinds of plants and save money at the garden center. And so, you know, you gather up your seed catalogs, and you want to look for short season when it comes to vegetables. You want short season plants.
And you look at the seed packet, and you see days to harvest. And if you see 110 day to harvest tomato versus a 60 day to harvest tomato. If you live in Wyoming, you want to go with a shorter amount.
Now, it won't be exactly right, because it's kind of like EPA mileage figures. It may vary a bit, but you know it's one good thing to start with.
If you're looking at landscape plants, you need to think about, will they survive? You don't want to go to the garden center and come back with plants that aren't going to make it. And I hate to say it, but so many of our big box stores, this is a big problem in Wyoming, they will bring in the same palette of plants that they send to Oklahoma or Michigan, and they don't realize that they're sending stuff that's not going to make it, or, you know, might live a year or two.
So before you go shopping, make sure you know what zone you live in. The USDA has a zone chart, and, you know, it's different depending on where you live in Wyoming, and it's mostly based on temperature. They're not taking into account wind and hail and things like that. But you know, Cheyenne is that, for instance, zone five. I think Casper might be close to that too.
So you don't want - the higher the number, the more south you need to be, the smaller. So you can grow anything from zone one to zone five in Cheyenne, there's always exceptions.And you might also call the Botanic Gardens, go on the website, look and see what the recommended trees are.
Cheyenne has a great urban forestry department. They can help you out with tree selection - and when it comes to landscaping, you know, trees are the big thing, and people get sticker shock. I do, when you go to a nursery and see what a tree costs, fully potted up, ready to go.
And I tell people a couple things. One is, you don't need to buy a gigantic potted tree, get a smaller one, and in about three years, you won't be able to tell the difference between the one you spent a lot of money on, or the one that was in a smaller pot.
Wendy Corr:
You’ve gotta be in it for the long haul.
Shane Smith:
Yeah, right. And another thing, and research is very recently bearing this out, and that is that bare root trees are way, way cheaper than potted trees, and very few nurseries, sadly, can sell bare root trees. I mean, they can, but it's just harder for them.
Wendy Corr:
So what is it? What's an example of a bare root tree?
Shane Smith:
A bare root tree has no soil around it, so it's been stored with some moist peat moss in a cool room and or you do mail order, it arrives in a box wrapped in plastic with with moist sawdust or peat moss around the roots. When it arrives, you try to get it in the ground within a day or two.
And it is a fraction of the price of a potted tree, and it will grow every bit as big and fast as a potted tree. In fact, there's some research showing that it grows better than a tree that you buy that's in a pot with soil around it.
Wendy Corr:
I hope people are taking notes right now, because this is great information for anybody who is looking to do some landscaping or or just feel the need to - I feel like I want to grow something!
Shane Smith:
Yeah, and if you can't find a nursery that has bare root trees, and now's a good time to be shopping. you don't want them to arrive now, of course, and usually can tell them what date you want it to arrive. But, yeah, they sell out a lot. But virtually any tree you have an interest in, you can order bare root.
And in fact, there's a movement afoot among horticulturists that they - not all are in agreement. I am, though. They would tell you, wash all the soil off the tree roots before you plant it in the hole. That's thing called Root washing. And they're finding that the roots establish much quicker when you knock the soil off, not knock it off.
You know, you don't want to hurt the roots, and the reason for that is the roots do not want to leave that nice, sweet, chocolatey soil of the potting soil in the pot. And so if you rinse a lot of that potting soil off and then plant it, the roots are much quicker to say, hey, there's nothing here. Let's get out of here and go find what we need.
Where, if it's in this nice potting soil, the roots are just going to, let's just circle around and think about leaving. You know, it's pretty nice here, so they can almost become pot bound in the ground. And so this movement is really catching on with a lot of gardeners. I root wash even tomato transplants, and get much quicker establishment.
And I first learned it from our rock garden expert who designed and built the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. A crevice garden, a fellow by the name of Kenton Seth, who's co author of a book called The Crevice Garden. Great book. And Cheyenne has just a wonderful crevice garden, thanks to him.
And I saw him one day, he's taking these potted plants that are going to go in the rock garden, and he's washing all the soil off and then planting them in the crevice garden. Like, what the heck you doing? And, and now I'm a convert.
Wendy Corr:
That's fantastic. I love all the different types of gardening that you're talking about. I love all the different ways that you can make your gardens grow. But you mentioned that this is too early now. You can order something now, you don't want to plant it now. When do you want to plant trees, shrubs, things like that in Wyoming's climate?
Shane Smith:
Well, most things, it's good to learn your last average frost date. And every town is going to be a little different. And in most parts of Wyoming, unless you're super high altitude, it's going to be in May, like mid May, approximately.
But let's say you live in a place where it's May 15. That doesn't mean that's the day you go out and throw your tomatoes out and get everything planted. Because look at the weather report. Go listen to Don Day, and he might be saying, not yet. You know, there's a cold front coming in. So, you know, be smart about that. And so that's, that's number one.
And there are certain plants that can go out and take frost just fine even in Cheyenne. I would set out on the front porch blooming pansies towards the end of March and early April, and they can take the frost and just surprise everybody.
And there are things like the Cole Crop family, which is cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, they can all take a light frost. So you could plant them even with a cold front coming in. Peas, both ornamental and edible. Peas can take a light frost. Spinach, lettuce, a lot of the leafy crops, a lot of the root crops, can take a light frost.
The things that absolutely can't are anything that makes a seed, like corn or beans or fruit, like tomatoes or eggplant, peppers, they will not take any frost at all.
Wendy Corr:
That is great advice. That's fantastic. You're making me hungry, talking about all of these things. You know, that is something though, right now. I mean, we're talking about looking at the idea that groceries might go up. We're looking at the idea that eggs are really hard to come by right now and are very expensive.
I think that's got a lot of people thinking, you know, maybe we should think about growing our own gardens. Maybe we should think about these, the idea of making our own salad, salad gardens. What are your thoughts on that? For people who are looking to, can you do that? Can you feasibly do that in Wyoming? Grow a lot of food in a lot of parts of Wyoming, including Cheyenne?
Shane Smith:
In fact, and nationally, gardening is taken off. It started taking off with the COVID period. But even before that, it was starting to take off.
Historically, we had a thing called the Victory Gardens during World War II, when America was encouraged, really, a lot of advertising saying, Go plant a garden. Go plant a garden. Well, America started growing about 45% of all its produce in backyards and in special community Victory Gardens.
So, yeah, food is very expensive. It's also, God forbid you want to be able to afford organic food. You know, we kind of have a class system now with food, we all used to just eat the same thing. Now you can pay extra and get organic, or if you want to save your money, you don't get organic and hope that it's not too poisonous, you know.
But the workaround is, it doesn't cost you anymore to grow food and know exactly what you need to spray on it, and if it's, you know, if it's good for you or not, and how to go about it. And gardens are very, very cheap to have.
You just need some decent soil. It's a good thing to start a compost pile. Start getting in the habit of composting your kitchen scraps. Don't compost anything salty, like potato chips or pickles, meats, not a good idea. Critters get into that. And there's all kinds of things online to learn how to compost.
And look up wide bed gardening. That's a technique. You know, a lot of people erroneously think we should have our gardens look like a farm where everything's in a row, and you end up having to walk up and down every road of weed, and you trample your soil.
Where wide bed gardening is a three foot wide bed that you never step in. You reach across and work in it. And it can be a raised bed, or it can just be three feet wide on the ground, and you get much better yields doing that, much healthier soil.
And yeah, and then you just, many things. You can start direct from seed. Most of your leafy crops and root crops, really the main thing to start is transplants, or your fruiting plants, like the tomatoes and peppers and that kind of thing. You can direct sow corn, of course.
And I would encourage people to get a number of seed catalogs, but there's also regional seed companies that have done a lot of work to try to figure out what will grow in short seasons. There's a couple here in Colorado, three that I can think of. I don't know of any seed companies doing vegetables in Wyoming. If there are, that'd be great.
But what is called Miss Penn’s garden seeds, she's been selecting for high altitude, specializes in tomatoes, but she has all kinds of other things. There's a high desert seed company doing a very similar thing. They're located here in Paonia, Colorado. There's in Carbondale, Colorado wild mountain Seed Company.
And you know, they're finding that if they start with tomato variety, that's pretty good for short seasons, and they grow it year after year and save the seed every year, that it gets even better for high altitude areas and short seasons. It doesn't get worse, and it doesn't stay the same. These seeds get better.
So that's a good place to start and then you can get into saving your own seeds. But I have one important tip - if you're going to save your own seeds, and that is, if the plant you love and grow or that you even bought as a transplant, has the word hybrid in it, you cannot save the seed from it with great results.
You can save the seed, you may not have great results. They don't come true from seed, if it's there's a lot of catalogs like the three I just mentioned, and there's some national ones that focus solely on non hybrids, so you can really get into saving your own seed.
Hybrids are not bad. In fact, they tend to out-yield non-hybrids. They tend to have more vigor, more disease resistance. So I don't want to vilify them, but you can also find some very good non hybrids, and I tend to grow a mixture of both, knowing full well which ones I can save seed from and which ones I can't.
Wendy Corr:
So Shane, I feel like I've gone to class here and this has just been fantastic, and I hope, and I'm sure that the rest of our audience is feeling the same way. I've learned so much from this conversation. Shane, I know that we're about out of time here. I wanted to say number one, thank you. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for sharing your expertise and for your love for this organic gardening, for horticulture, for teaching.
And I know that those of us who have been to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, those of us who have yet to go will now want to make a trip there, for sure, but in the meantime, where can we find this great information? You mentioned botanic.org - and that is it's amazing to me that the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens got that.
Shane Smith:
Yeah, I snatched that before the other big gardeners got it, because we were the first on the internet, and they didn't wait to go, or they just gave you the name. So way to go, yeah, the big gardeners tease me about it, but too bad you get that, yeah. Well, so we can go there to get great information.
Wendy Corr:
Where can we go to buy your book, Shane?
Shane Smith:
Well, of course, online, and you know, good bookstores will carry it. It's out there. It's called Greenhouse Gardener’s companion, and it's food and flowers for the home greenhouse. It works for solar heated greenhouses, which are a thing, and and it works for heated greenhouses. Cut flowers, food, all that sort of thing.
And it's great for Wyoming people to have greenhouses, because then you can be picking fresh salads in the winter, tomatoes that are out of the hail and out of the wind. And there's also season extenders that can do that, both small, little, miniature greenhouses you can use.
So there's information there, if you're interested in crevice gardens, like I mentioned the crevice garden book. And I also want to mention that this coming June, the National rock garden society is having their annual conference at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. And there'll be a lot of talks on rock gardens, crevice gardens.
And they're excited to come to Wyoming, because Wyoming has so many great native plants that do so well in rock gardens. So they're going to be touring around the state as well as meeting at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. So go to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens website. I think there's information there.
Or National American Rock Garden Society’s website, and there's information there, I think it's a limited sign up, so if you have an interest, don't hesitate.
Wendy Corr:
Very good. Shane, thank you for your time today. This has been a fascinating conversation.
Shane Smith:
Oh, my pleasure. It's always fun.
Wendy Corr:
Folks, thank you for tuning in today. Thanks for being a part of our conversation with noted horticulturist Shane Smith, who's the founder of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. Please look his work up and visit the Botanic Gardens if you're there in Cheyenne and make that trip. I know I will be!
So thank you, Shane, thank you folks. Have a wonderful week. Join us next week, we'll have another great guest.
