Episode 3316

- [Announcer] Right plant, right place. Rita Venable tours the beautiful home garden spaces of a landscape designer, where this concept rings true throughout. All the plants are thriving, whether they're in the sunny part of the garden, the shady spot amongst the trees, or the area with drier soil conditions. It's all inspiring. Jeff Poppen finds an array of colorful and eye-catching annuals in the flower fields of Bloomsbury Farm in Smyrna. Here you can pick your own flowers to make a unique bouquet. And Sheri Gramer discovers a wide variety of plants, that are well-suited for a cohesive rock garden display. Join us! First, let's see how a medley of plant tones and textures, pleasing plant combinations, hardscape, and artwork, are all elements of a great garden design.

- Did you ever think about what you wanted to do when you retire? Well, June Mays, whose home we're at in Sewanee, Tennessee, went to England for a year and studied landscape design. Then she started her own landscape business. And when she got a little tired of that, then she decided, "I'm just gonna focus on my home here in Sewanee." June, thank you so much for letting us come today.

- You're welcome, Rita.

- And tell us a little bit about the fence, first of all, and what it was designed for.

- Well, it's a deer fence, as you can see. It's the biggest problem of landscaping in Sewanee. But this is the way to overcome it. I had this gate built because I saw one just like it in England and loved it. Took a picture, took it to a metal worker and he did it. And I love it.

- June, you told me before you actually have a three-in-one garden here. So tell me about the three areas.

- So this is the sun-loving garden, and later on we'll see the drought-tolerant garden, and the shade garden.

- Okay. And let's start off right off the bat with that beautiful vine right there.

- [June] Yes, this is Clematis texensis, and my goal is to have a climbing vine on every shrub.

- [Rita] All right.

- [June] And the bees sure love that.

- Yes, they do. And then we zip over here to the purple cone flower, which looks so beautiful against your Japanese maple, and your Native American beauty berry, which is a great pollinator shrub native. And what you got here? What kinda hydrangea is this?

- Next to the Annabelles. And we have lots of Annabelles here. And I love to share those with my friends.

- [Rita] And the bees are enjoying the pollen on that too, so that's really cool. You've got a native dogwood here.

- Mm-hmm, still living.

- Berenices, that the silver spotted skipper's enjoying right there.

- [June] And another one in front of the phlox polisa.

- [Rita] Yeah, I like the way you've repeated, you know the things that work.

- And look how the purple is picked up in the blue purple of the Veronicastrum.

- Oh, that's gorgeous. Common name of this is speedwell. Very common plant in nurseries and everywhere. And I love your introduction of the chartreuse color there. It's so pretty and it plays well off this hydrangea, the Annabelle in the background. So these pollinators, lots of stuff. Love that speedwell. And it comes in so many colors now. You can get pink and blue and purple and everything. Oh my gosh, you got a yucca!

- You can see the yucca, and the white yucca is going to really look good when this white buckeye blooms in about two weeks. And of course the Annabelles will still be in bloom at that time. And look at how the Eucomis picks up the color of the snail sculpture.

- That's great. That's great. I love that.

- [June] And here's St. Francis, and he is picked up by the smoke bush, Cotinus Grace. You see the influorescence here. Looks like smoke.

- June, I love the shrubbery you've got in here. The variegated American beautyberry?

- Mm-hmm.

- Never seen that before. Got a great blue wild indigo over here. Some peonys in there. Asters that are gonna come on in the fall. Got your Amsonia, some phlox. You've got a great variety. And love your Viburnum there. And look how nice that looks underneath the Forest Pansy redbud and the chartreuse redbud. But what I really love out here is your St. John's wort, because it's such a great pollinator plant for bees. It has so much pollen. Doesn't have a lot of nectar, but it's got pollen. And this is more like a ground cover?

- This is the ground cover,

- St. John's wort?

- Hypericum. And over here is the shrub version of Hypericum. It hasn't bloomed yet. It's not blooming yet, but it will in just a few weeks, or possibly even this week, so. And look at this rose. It buds yellow, but it blooms pink. So it's a wonderful rose called Urban Legend.

- Okay. June, you have got so much depth and coverage here in all of your beds. I don't see how a weed could even survive in this.

- That's a good point, 'cause there are a lot of things to contrast. Like these two redbuds here, Forest Pansy and Golden Sunset. And underneath it we have a whole bevy of black-eyed Susan's waiting to bloom. The variegated red stem, dogwood and valerian. And look how it has made its own way. I planted it here, but it was happier in the gravel, and I'm happy for it to be here.

- Things jump, don't they?

- They do. So did the catmint, and so did the dianthus.

- Yeah.

- This is not irrigated. That is irrigated.

- I was gonna ask you about that. Okay. So you have a sprinkler system over there in the sun garden.

- Have a sprinkler system in the sun garden.

- Here they're on their own.

- [June] They're on their own.

- Okay. What was the inspiration behind the drought-tolerant garden? And please tell us about this beautiful wall that's here.

- Well, the wall was built by Dan Pate, a local landscape professional. And the inspiration is because at the time we started this garden, we were having a lot of drought. And if you want to have a beautiful garden, it is possible. It doesn't have to look like a desert. And that's what we tried to do here.

- [Rita] Okay, and you have a gorgeous native bush honeysuckle back here. Not the invasive kind, but the native kind. And it attracts all kinds of pollinators. It's a wonderful shrub. And also...

- [June] Over here we have,

- Sweet shrub.

- the the sweet shrub called Simply Sensational. It's a beautiful deep burgundy color flower.

- What do you do for mulch? And do you have to put extra mulch in here since it's a drought-tolerant garden?

- I mulch everything.

- You mulch everything.

- And I mulch a lot.

- And what do you use?

- This is just a...

- I'd love to know.

- [June] From my tree guy, this is his wood chip pile. And when I order it, he says, "Do you want old or new chips?" And so sometimes I go for old, sometimes I go for new. But we like to lay that on thick. We have some cascading plants here that I did not plan. They just are happy that way. And it makes me happy. This is phlox drummondii. And over here we have more catmint falling over the cladding, cladding the wall here. And next to that we have beautiful, phenomenal lavender.

- [Rita] The milkweed is working its magic in your garden. There are bees all over it, and other little bitty pollinators. So that's the butterfly weed, orange milkweed that we all love and enjoy. But this plant I have not seen. Tell me about that.

- [June] Well, you've seen rose campion.

- Yes.

- Lychnis coronaria.

- Yes.

- This is lychnis coronaria Alba. It was given to me by a friend because it's so different.

- [Rita] It is indeed.

- And it of course, has jumped the fence too, and is down here.

- Oh, it's down here. That is the same thing.

- And one is in bloom.

- Well, aren't you lucky?

- Yes.

- One of the biggest problems people have, or at least that they tell me about, is they know the plants they wanna put in, but how do you put 'em in the right place? You have designed over a hundred gardens for other people. Where do you start when you see a blank slate? What do you do first?

- Well you have to listen to the land. So if you know you wanna have a drought-tolerant, and you know you wanna have sun, and you know you wanna have shade, how are they gonna fit together? So you walk your land, and you figure out where the best spot is.

- [Rita] Different times of day?

- That's right.

- Different seasons?

- And here we had to put French drains in when we moved into the house. And so that we pulled up everything that was here and replaced it with gravel. And that made this a great spot to contrast with this wall. And that made a good place for the drought-tolerant garden.

- [Rita] Gorgeous the way you have taken this and built right up in a crescendo to the stuff at the top, so. Here in the shade garden, I noticed you have used natural wood to do the edgings. Do you use the same mulch here that you did in the drought tolerance?

- I do.

- Okay. And I think you use fallen leaves too, you told me earlier.

- I do, I do. I chew up the leaves and I use them to amend the soil.

- Okay, so no leaf raking here, huh?

- No.

- Just let 'em fall where they are. And the native pipsissewa there, is so old.

- [June] Yes, it's one of my favorite plants. It was was here when we got here. and I just love it.

- And it stays green all winter just like that, doesn't it?

- It does, yes.

- It's gorgeous. A little native plant.

- [June] And over here you'll see the penstemon, which has jumped the fence into the path. And I like to leave it, because I like for it to reseed and self sew.

- [Rita] We've each got a favorite plant on each side of the pathway here. Why don't you tell about yours first?

- I love this Dogwood Samaritan. It's just such a nice contrast with the plants around it. The pieris, the Hosta, the Itea, it all blends together.

- [Rita] How did you get this design for this shade garden? I mean, how did you come up with this?

- Well, a lot of it is because I hadn't really done much of a shade garden before, and I wanted to try things. And so when you wanna try something, you don't start out with nine. You start out with less than that. So that's why you see fewer plants, except in areas like this, pachysandra procumbens, which is a native ground cover. It's not the Asian pachysandra that you see in a lot of people's front yards. But it has totally spread. That started out as two plants.

- It bloomed so early in the year.

- And it's good, good contrast

- Really early.

- with these other plants that are around it.

- [Rita] Love that. You have fabulous mapleleaf viburnum here, which is a native shrub. And the flowers, flowers is kind of diminutive, not really, but the berries, the birds absolutely love the berries, so.

- [June] We'll have a lot of birds after this later on this year. And this plant was here when we bought the house. It was not planted by anyone.

- So it's native native, like native to this ground.

- Yes.

- That's the best native you can get. I love the way that this is not too crowded here. Everything's kind of spaced out like it would be in a woodland garden. Did you do that on purpose?

- Yes, I wanted to have plenty of room for two people to walk on the path. And I wanted to have a definite separation between the planting area and the path. And that's where these fallen limbs come in handy. And there are plenty of those around here. And if one rots, I just throw it away and get another one.

- That's handy. This spot June, you have put in a whole lot of the variegated Solomon's seal. Then you only have a Hosta or two. And then you have, tell everyone about this.

- [June] Right, just one of several plants, but they look good together. The Fairy Wand, the Jack-in-the-pulpit, the Hosta, some ferns and the heuchera all use a great background here in the variegated Solomon's seal. And look up. That is the big leaf magnolia. And it gives the perfect amount of shade for this garden, right here.

- And dapple shade.

- Dapple shade.

- Which is so beautiful. Where did you get that?

- [June] This was done by Robert Taylor, who is a sculptor in Birmingham.

- Okay.

- And he did several of the copper sculptures around the garden.

- Okay, I love that. You have so much experience with garden design. Do you have any advice for people that may be wanting to design their own garden?

- Well, I think doing the triage that I had to do to get ready for your visit, is an important thing. If you take your garden and divide it up into beds, just with names, and then try to identify every plant that you have, and then do a spreadsheet that shows the light, the soil, the bloom, the height, it really tells you these should not be together. These should be together. So I'm gonna be doing a lot of moving of plants after your visit.

- So don't be afraid to move your plants around.

- Nope,

- I guess that's the-

- don't be afraid to do that, and spend the time making a list of what you have.

- Okay.

- Because sometimes these little plant labels disappear.

- They do.

- Very often, the squirrels.

- June, thank you so much for letting us come to your garden today. It is absolutely exquisite. I have learned a lot from you, and wish you could, you were still in the business even. I can put you

- I have no time for my own garden.

- That's true. I know how that goes, but thank you so much,

- You're so welcome.

- for letting us come.

- And thanks for coming.

- We enjoyed it.

- Flowers make people smile, and that's reason enough to grow 'em. But we're here today at Bloomsbury Farm in Smyrna to learn how to grow lots and lots of flowers. Hey, Lauren.

- Hello, Jeff. Thanks for coming.

- Good to see you again.

- Yeah! Thanks so much.

- Yes. And man, this looks beautiful.

- We're standing in front of a bunch of cosmos here, and we use these in a pick-your-own opportunity here at the farm. And also we cut and sell them fresh to Nashville and surrounding areas. But yeah, it's been lots of fun to kind of grow a little bit more flowers this year. And we've tried lots of things. Some worked, some didn't, but it's been lots of fun for sure. It makes your smile

- [Jeff] Well and something like this, do you save these seeds? These would be, you know, be good to plant right back.

- [Lauren] We do not, but they will come up in the spring next.

- [Jeff] They'll volunteer.

- [Lauren] They'll reseed themselves.

- [Jeff] I see besides the orange cosmos, you have some pretty purple and pink ones, and over here some yellow ones. Do you find that these attract insects?

- [Lauren] Absolutely. We have them strategically placed up next to our tomatoes and lots of summer vegetables along this way. So we do think adding the beneficials to our crops are a good thing.

- Great, great. And oh, what do you have over here?

- [Lauren] We have zinnias, we have Xelosia, we have Gomphrena, it's this purple guy, and a big patch of Sunnys that is about to pop in the next couple weeks.

- [Jeff] Now tell us about the Gomphrena here.

- [Lauren] Yeah, so this has a dual purpose. We're using it for fresh cut now, but we also can put it up and keep it for a dried arrangement later this fall.

- [Jeff] Oh, they dry out real good.

- They do. The little petals are kind of stiff, so it keeps really well.

- Yeah, and what do you do for weed control here?

- We are using a black plastic with a drip irrigation.

- [Jeff] Okay, I see it. So you have an irrigation line under there?

- We do.

- Yeah. Probably don't use it.

- It is not foolproof as you can see, but it does kind of give them a good start when we first set them out, so yeah.

- [Jeff] These marigolds are pretty. What do you do with them?

- [Lauren] So we're not only selling them as cut flowers and putting them in our bouquets, but chefs will actually use them in culinary dishes.

- [Jeff] You can eat these things?

- You can, you can, yeah.

- I'll be darn. What do they taste like?

- [Lauren] You know what, it's just like a petal. It's just kind of like a soft, little, it's like eating a flower. It's kind of a fun experience for sure.

- Cool. Yeah. And I notice over here you have some amaranth pigweed, we call it up on the farm. Boy, that's a real weed in our gardens, and I see you have a few of them. But I noticed that you also have some amaranth varieties that you grow for flowers.

- We do, we do.

- That's interesting.

- It was kind of a hard sell to add it into our flower program.

- I don't wanna buy an amaranth.

- Right, right. It produces a nice flower on it that's just been fun to add to the mix, too.

- [Jeff] Yeah, so you make mixed bouquets.

- [Lauren] We do, uh-huh.

- [Jeff] Yeah, and these are a couple different varieties you have.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Jeff] This plant is spiny amaranth, and it has little thorns on it right here, that, oh my gosh, when you pull something up like this, you can get a thorn in you. Yeah, so they're a real menace in the garden. Well, this one looks like it's in the amaranth family also. What in the world is it?

- [Lauren] So yeah, we're using this as a dried addition to our fall, our bouquets. So we'll put this up, but we love the striking purple color, so that'll add a pop.

- [Jeff] Yeah, it's interesting how they hang down like that.

- Right.

- [Jeff] I noticed over here you have another flower we dry, called strawflower.

- [Lauren] Yes, it's super fun.

- [Jeff] Yeah, this is a pretty flower, isn't it?

- [Lauren] It even like, squeaks kind of, when you brush it.

- Feels just like straw.

- [Lauren] It sure does.

- These seem extra tall. Do they always get this tall?

- Yeah, Jeff, they'll grow as tall as you.

- Wow. Yeah, I've only seen the shorter varieties.

- [Lauren] We're pinching them off, which is encourages them to grow taller.

- Oh, really?

- And have more,

- More blooms, yeah, yeah.

- more stem, yeah.

- [Jeff] Why, this looks like tobacco.

- [Lauren] It is a tobacco flower.

- [Jeff] It sure is. Does it smell like it?

- [Lauren] Does it smell?

- [Jeff] Yeah, not really. Huh. So they don't smoke this one though?

- They do not. This is another cut flower that we've incorporated this year, that's just been lots of fun. This is a white variety. We do like, a pink one too, that's been lots of fun.

- [Jeff] Yeah, and is the name Nicotiana?

- [Lauren] Nicotiana, yes. Mm-hmm.

- [Jeff] I've heard that you don't really wanna grow tobacco near a tomato patch. Is that true?

- Yeah, they do not get along. I think there's diseases that start here in the tobacco that will be detrimental to the tomato plants.

- [Jeff] Yeah. So best to have 'em far apart.

- [Lauren] Correct.

- [Jeff] Well, this statice is pretty. I don't think I've seen one this color. It's got like, a pink and a yellow in it.

- [Lauren] Mm-hmm.

- [Jeff] Do you successive plant, so you have blooms later?

- [Lauren] We do, yes. So we will use some in fresh cut, but also put some up for the fall.

- [Jeff] Well, I recognize borage. I've grown that before. It's pretty, culinary, and maybe even medicinal?

- [Lauren] Yes, it's like a three-for. And yeah, so flowers, eating, and medicine.

- [Jeff] And it looks like it brings pollinators too.

- [Lauren] Absolutely.

- Well, that's a pretty patch of sunflowers. Looks like you're gonna have a whole lot of blooms in about a week.

- It's a staple that we enjoy having on the farm. We will sell them wholesale, also have people come and pick them. We love a good photo opportunity too, so the sunflowers definitely bring a lot of people out.

- Yeah, and birds love them. Well, it's been so nice to to come here again. I know that you grow a lot of other things besides flowers.

- Yes.

- And this is mid-July, so we're, you know, expecting blooms soon. But what else is growing in your vegetable garden?

- Yeah, so we're heavy in tomato season right now.

- Oh, boy.

- Lots of squash, peppers, eggplant. It's very summer in middle Tennessee, and lots to share.

- Great. Well thanks again for having us.

- Thank you Jeff. Thank you, thank you.

- As a gardener, we always think about rock gardens as being ground covers, low-growing things. We have a new option for you to think about today with raised bed, so to speak, rocks. We got some vertical heighth, and we have a lot of other plant material that you might not have thought of for a rock garden. I'm here with Jeff Bennett today at Bennett Nurseries, north side of Huntsville, Alabama. Jeff, tell me, I wanna start at the bottom. Tell me about your soil, and work me right up to the plant material.

- Certainly. We obviously, in this area, have large rocks that we've placed in a variety of positions. And we have the advantage of making our own soil mix, or putting in whatever we want instead of tilling into the ground. Now we've chosen to use a mix that's very similar to what you might find in a rooftop garden. It has quite a bit of a stone in it. It's called PermaTill. The PermaTill is actually a slate. It's been heated in a kiln, crushed, tumbled, and it actually holds water, as well as dries up, so we have really good drainage. Along with the PermaTill, we have worm castings and compost and hen manure. So that makes up the bulk of our above ground bed.

- And now your plant material, you have a really nice selection, lots of different colors popping and going on.

- Well, when I bring most folks out here, I like to show 'em some plants, that basically once they're established, they can take care of themselves. So you'll see a few succulents in here, especially along the edge. This is a Watchchain Sedum that's blooming yellow. Right beside it is a type of ice plant with the magenta flowers here. What I like to show people here, is this is called Santolina, or Lavender Cotton. And it has a fairly unique odor to the foliage. Once you smell it, it smells a little bit like Vicks VapoRub. Along the edge we have a silver mound Artemesia, very sun-loving, drought-tolerant. And looking across the bed, you'll notice this sea of blue right here. That was a perennial of the year, several years ago. That's called Walker's Low catmint. And for us it makes a very nice mound, easy to care for. If you needed to go in there, and really shear it back hard to get rid of the old flowers, you could, and it'll just, boom, be right back blooming again.

- And although most of your plant material, the base of it is green, the color is what's popping, that's poking up, like your Russian sage back there.

- [Jeff] Correct, the Russian sage starting to bloom right now. We actually have a lot of silver and blue in this particular bed. The Artemesia is gonna be silver. Tucked down in this hole we've got a silver blue spruce Sedum. But then we also try to use a little bit of a contrasting, either dark green of the creeping phlox, or this Sedum on the back right here, called Lidakense. And it also will have a fuchsia flower to it late in the summertime.

- But I wanna talk a little bit about the rocks, because they are so big and large, and we are in the South. And the heat on the rocks makes all the plant material in your soil a lot warmer. Are you watering more frequently, or you just letting them kind of go on their own?

- Well, this bed has really been left to its own devices. We do certainly come out and water, but it's not that we have to water twice a day or anything. It does get hot, and it's plenty sunny and windy in this location, but most of what you see is just having to fend for itself.

- All right, let's talk about the plants here.

- Powis Castle Artemisia, which is just getting started here, it will completely cover this rock by summer's end. A fall-blooming anemone in the back. The Spanish lavender is actually doing its thing right now. Really nice purple flowers to it. There's a few conifers in this bed. This is Gyokuru, a dwarf Cryptomeria in the back, very unique texture.

- [Sheri] Is it three, or is it just one?

- It's just one. It does have the multi trunks up in it. But it's more of a shrub form Cryptomeria instead of a large tree. We've got Degroot's Spire arborvitae. We have a Paul's Gold, Golden Mop Cypress, which is more golden and more dwarf. And then the real tall, slender Italian Cypress there. We live in an area here where there's plenty of heavy red clay and poorly drained soil, so anytime you can go above ground, you control your own soil, and then of course, your plant material is up to you. But that good drainage and pockets here and there to stuff a little Sedum or other perennial, it's always fun to work with.

- [Sheri] You did have annuals in here to filler, and now your perennials are taking over.

- [Jeff] Correct, as we can tell, just a couple years later, some of these perennials take up a lot of area, so you don't wanna go in there with a rock bed, and just pack it full of permanent plants, and then not expect for it to change. So we did fill it with annuals to fill it up, but now we've removed those annuals completely.

- [Sheri] Well Jeff, this has been a great example of thinking outside of the box, and it creates a beautiful garden. Thank you so much.

- [Jeff] Thanks for having me.

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