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Group works to restore luster of Marie Aull’s rose garden

Crew has only planted about one-third of the garden so far.

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By Doug Page, Staff Writer 12:20 PM Thursday, June 25, 2009

ENGLEWOOD — The classic rose garden north of Marie Aull’s former home has lain fallow for the past 11 years.

This year, Lynn Millikin and Glen Pottenger led the four-person Aullwood Gardens crew in a planting party, restoring the rose garden the late Mrs. Aull doted on.

“We’re in the process of rehabilitating all of Aullwood Gardens,” said Pottenger, the forest gardens’ assistant park manager. The 10 acres of gardens, interspersed among towering trees and two spring-fed creeks, is part of Five Rivers MetroParks. Another 20-plus acres are untouched.

Which can pose a problem for the horticulturists.

“Bambi just loves our hostas,” said Millikin, who has worked for MetroParks for 31 years, 27 at the gardens. In the early years, he worked at the direction of Mrs. Aull.

Millikin recalls one visitor walking up and asking, “Why do you prune your hostas in such a strange way?” It was deer doing the pruning.

So far, the deer have not disturbed the rose garden. When they do, Millikin and his crew will take action — though nothing drastic.

Kim Strader, one of the four horticultural technicians working the gardens, delights in telling of Millikin’s battles with Bambi. There are at least three, including a fawn, who graze on the gardens, despite a deer fence surrounding the 10 acres.

“All three of them will get in, but the fawn hasn’t figured how to get out,” Strader said laughing. “Lynn has carried it out of the gardens a number of times.”

In his own defense, Millikin said Mrs. Aull always considered the gardens a combination of nature and horticulture. Though she did not mind the deer, she saved her ire for the moles. “She had a whistle she would blow when she spotted the signs of one,” he said.

“And we’d come running to dig it out if we could.”

The gardens rehabilitation includes hardwood mulch for the first time in many years. Millikin prefers leaf mulch, but there was not enough this year.

Pottenger said the new mulch sets off the beds from the grass in a pleasing fashion.

“The rose garden was one of her babies,” Pottenger said. “We’ve only planted about one-third of it because we want to sneak up on it. We want to know what problems (from disease, insects and animals) there might be.”

Working in the gardens is a different experience, said Michael Belcher, another of the crew. “It’s peaceful,” he said.

But lots of work.

Much of the heavy lifting is being done by the crew’s junior member, intern Bobby “Forklift” Hunsaker. A Clark State student, Hunsaker adds some book knowledge — besides the strong back — to the crew.

One rose bush has been there longer than any of the crew has walked the earth. Planted sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, it still blooms in vivid pinks.

Much, perhaps, like Mrs. Aull, who died in 2002. She was 105 and left behind her gardens and farm for public enjoyment and contemplation.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2290 or dpage@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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