A garden grows in St. Cloud: world-class gardens in a small Minnesota city

Parks & Recreation, Jan, 1998 by Bridget Falbo

Violet ageratum and yellow marigolds colorfully engulf the stone supports of an engraved wooden sign erected by a city park and recreation department. For most city parks, this small offering would be the extent of the flowers planted. This sign, however, reads "Munsinger Gardens," and these accent flowers offer only a hint to the visitor of what is to come.

The Munsinger Gardens and the newly created Virginia Clemens Rose Garden and Clemens Gardens, located in St. Cloud, Minnesota, display a profusion of flowering annuals and perennials amidst rock and brick walkways, set on the banks of the Mississippi River. The St. Cloud Parks and Recreation Department in this central Minnesota city of 58,000, known for its granite deposits, manages the gardens and has established a few "firsts" in regards to gardens and parks departments operating in the upper Midwest.

It is one of the few parks departments in Minnesota -- and the upper Midwest -- that grows all of the plant material for its gardens. In greenhouses located next to Munsinger Gardens, the staff grows about 100,000 bedding plants each year. A unique white garden in the formal Clemens Gardens has the distinction of being the only public white garden in Minnesota. The Virginia Clemens Rose Garden and formal Clemens Gardens display more cast-iron ornamentation in benches, balustrades, and arbors than any other public gardens in the upper Midwest. To pay for all that cast iron and to create and maintain the Virginia Clemens Rose Garden and Clemens Gardens, the park department received the largest gift to a city parks department in Minnesota from a single private source, a sum totaling $4 million.

This much appreciated park resource began with the foresight of a city to set aside prime real estate on the banks of the Mississippi and the dedication of a flower-loving parks superintendent. The people of St. Cloud have long considered their gardens to be a tremendous resource for the St. Cloud community. In 1946, The St. Cloud Times described the gardens as one of the real beauty spots of the country, "Munsinger Gardens, blazing with flowers and patterned with shrubbery, trees, stone walks and cobblestone wells, attracts visitors from many states."

Today, the two gardens, part of 38 parks in the St. Cloud park system, draw more than 200,000 people annually. According to Jay Vachal, executive director of the St. Cloud Visitors Bureau, the Munsinger and Clemens Gardens are the biggest attraction in the area. "I've heard from many visitors, like the travel writer I just talked with from the United Kingdom, who've said these are one of the best gardens in the world," said Vachal.

Dig this Plot

Joseph Munsinger became parks superintendent in the 1920s (upon his retirement the city named the gardens after him). Although not a professional horti-culturist, with a background as a plumber then a city fireman, he loved plants and was genuinely interested in flowers. In the 1930s, Munsinger began work on a flower garden on land the city purchased after a sawmill that previously occupied it was abandoned. This strip of parkland alongside the river totals 55 acres and extends one mile along low banks of the Mississippi. Munsinger Gardens occupies about four city blocks on the south end of this park.

Munsinger designed the flower beds and the rock-lined paths and engineered the digging of the lily pond. He began construction in the middle of the Depression and hired crews of unemployed quarry workers and farmers to create the first gardens. Once the gardens were established, Munsinger built a greenhouse and began the tradition of growing plants for the gardens.

Munsinger and the present staff seem to have followed the landscape design style of Beatrix Farrand, a garden designer of the early 1900s. A garden writer described her landscapes as "always made to live in, as well as to look at." A few hours spent at Munsinger Gardens illustrate the accessibility of these gardens.

The meandering paths under the 60-foot-tall Scotch pines of Munsinger wander around grassy open areas for picnickers, as well as through the floral landscape. Re stone paths take the visitor by the fine mist spray of a fountain surrounded by purple perillafructens and gomphrena, along the spring-fed spillway that runs under the cobblestone wishing well and curved wooden bridge to the original lily pond. Benches offer a place to meditate on the multitudes of pink and white impatiens, spiky smartgrass, and wide-leaved hostas. Climbing the stone steps on a hill of fiery red salvias offers a vantage point to view the restful gazebo amidst the pines, the one-room log cabin turned interpretive center, and the ever-flowing river. Benches positioned near the river provide ideal spots for readers and thinkers, and the path at the river's edge carries joggers who get a view of the running water and sprawling colors in one broad sweep. Everywhere colors of pink, white, blue, yellow, and violet outline curves and accent corners, inviting visitors to stay a while and absorb it all on the benches and soft grass.