Temperatures will continue to fall over the next few days

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Well, it's not a dance step or stingy gratuity. 


It's a life-saving gardening move that protects nearly 3,000 rose bushes from winter in Leif Erikson Park in Duluth along the rocky shore of Lake Superior. 

The Minnesota Tip keeps the plants warm enough to prevent winter kill, but cold enough to remain dormant.


And Duluth has put out the call for volunteer tippers to do the work for free — no tips. 
 


Like a dance move, there are several steps to know, said Robert Dunsmore, a lead worker with the Duluth Parks Department.

Step one: Moisten the soil. Then spray the rose with a protectant — usually a liquid lime sulfur.


For step three, tie the branches tightly with twine.
 

"The next step is to get it below the soil surface about two inches so that you have plenty of soil that covers the rose," Dunsmore said as he dug a trench about the size of the rose. 
 


Then poke a potato fork to loosen the roots, lay the rose down in the trench and cover it with a few inches of soil.

Bury the impulse to call it a burial. That's too morbid. 

 
"We want to stick with tipping here, that's the focus," Dunsmore said. "The 'Minnesota Tip' method." 


 
No tip, no roses. Left exposed, most of the 2,800 bushes at Duluth's Leif Erikson Park Rose Garden, built on top of an I-35 freeway tunnel, wouldn't survive the winter. 

 
"We need to protect them from the sun," he said. "The sun is out in the winter — you know how dry and cold the wind can get — and we really need to keep them from evaporating and losing that moisture." 

 
Duluth parks workers and the Lake Superior Rose Society are recruiting volunteers for the annual Tipping of the Roses at the city's Rose Garden Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to noon, and again Tuesday from 3 to 6 p.m.  


 
Then next April volunteers will be needed again for the annual "raising" of the roses.
 

Dunsmore concedes it requires a lot of work to keep roses in the north country alive. But he said the payoff, the scent and sight of thousands of blooming flowers, is worth it. 

 
"When the roses are in full bloom, it looks like ants around here," he said. "There are so many people everywhere who come to see the roses."

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Dan Kraker

Author

Duluth parks workers are on the lookout for volunteers to help "tip" the 2,800 roses at Leif Erikson Park underground to enable them to survive the cold, dry winter.

Dan Kraker | MPR News

Robert Dunsmore demonstrates “rose tipping” 

Duluth seeks volunteers for the 'Minnesota Tip'

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