Episode 3421

- [Narrator] There's a special place in Leoma, Tennessee, that's about plants, nature, and community. Hope Botanical Garden with eight major gardens is a beautiful and tranquil space, enjoyed by people of all ages. Tammy Algood takes us on a tour with its founder. Conservation of land, water, and wildlife is a pillar of the Tractor Supply Foundation, and that ideal has been realized with this self-sustaining Pollinator Garden, installed and now maintained by employees at their Brentwood headquarters. Phillipe Chadwick highlights the plant palette that attracts and supports countless beneficial insects. Come along. With a donation of four acres and just a few years in development with an all volunteer workforce, what was once a dream is now a treasured outdoor destination.

- Little towns have big surprises. Stay tuned for a trip to Lawrence County that's full of hope. 10 years ago, this was nothing. Now it's blossomed into a beautiful must-see garden. We're here in Leoma, which is nestled in Lawrence County at Hope Botanical Garden. Jerry Clayton, you are the director of this garden.

- That's right, yes, I am.

- Thank you for inviting us. And give us a brief history of how this wonderful garden came to be.

- Well, the garden actually has been here eight years, and it was just a, always been a vision of mine to have some type of garden for the public to come out and enjoy. And so about eight years ago, this was just a hay field and walked out here and looked it over and had a vision, went to the house, built a model, and so we came out and began to lay in all the beds and all the trails. And so today, after eight years, this is what we have is a very well-established garden for eight years, I think.

- It's lovely. And we're right here in the middle of your rose garden. And tell us about all the work that's gone into this, because you don't have paid people, you're all volunteers.

- Right, we're all volunteers here at the garden. And this was an area that was sort of empty and kind of vacant, and of course, with our native garden, we've still got several years to go on the native garden, so we want to have something that would be kind of a showpiece. And so, we got together and designed this bed here. And all the plants here have been donated into this area here. This is its second year actually to be here. So it's actually matured out very well. And we have the gilded sun roses and we have the peach roses, the lilies, and of course, we have the popcorn drift roses here, and it's just a variety of plants, so we have a huge amount of color from early spring all the way to fall. So this garden here would be the largest of all the gardens, itself. And the fellow who helped me put, you know, he actually he designed this himself. And I've been just kind of a sidekick for him to help him dig holes or help him place plants in here. And, but he's done a tremendous job, and the coloration and the variety of plants has really been amazing.

- [Tammy] Talk to me about this particular rose. You called it a popcorn rose.

- [Jerry] Right, it's a popcorn drift rose, and we have about 54 that lines this garden. And you'll notice on the flower there, that on the rose you have three colors. And generally, you have a kind of a white cream color, you have a yellow, and then you have kind of a pink. And so they bring three colors to the front of this garden.

- [Tammy] And they're all low growing?

- [Jerry] They're all low growing. They are. They'll reach about two feet, and we do a little bit of trimming on them each year, cut 'em back.

- And what I like about 'em is that it mimics the colors as we progress through the garden. So you've got some beautiful day lilies that are interspersed among these. These are some of my favorites actually, and your foliage looks better than mine. I'm just gonna tell you that right now. So, these are nice to have in the garden for pops of color.

- [Jerry] They are. We have several spaced throughout this garden.

- So this segues into this rose, which is, what is the name of this rose?

- This is the gilded sun rose.

- Gilded sun. And I like it because it's white and yellow and light yellow.

- [Jerry] Right. Right. It comes out very beautiful yellow and with time, they gradually go into a white.

- [Tammy] Gotcha, gotcha, so these are older. These are newbies.

- These are the new ones.

- And do you clip these back at all? How tall do these get? These look a little bigger.

- [Jerry] These will actually get about five feet tall. That's about the height they get each year on us. And we cut 'em back down to about a foot and a half and they come back each year. And then we transition from here, as you can see, to the back. We have the peace roses, the pink peace, and those will get seven to eight feet tall. So we have the higher roses back there, and we just transition down to the front.

- [Tammy] And when do you cut these back?

- [Jerry] We cut these back usually in late March and sometimes early April.

- [Tammy] It's amazing how fast they come back after you do that.

- Right, they do. They come outta the ground. It's like, when you cut 'em, it initiates that new growth, and they grow very fast. These, you know, two or three weeks ago, they were just probably only about a foot tall, so you can see how much growth we've had. It's the last large garden to go in, and it's approximately 225 feet long from one end to the other. And it sort of meanders around the trails, and it goes back to the end there. And behind it, you'll notice we have what I call the perimeter hedge. It's a Nellie R. Stevens holly, and it surrounds the entire garden.

- [Tammy] It's a beautiful natural fence. And talk to me about how high these will get, how tall these will get.

- [Jerry] Okay, well, if you look beyond the woods here at the garden, just across, behind there, you'll see some that's about 30 feet tall. Those are also the Nellie R. Stevens holly, which I planted back in 1987. So, many years have passed, and we're probably gonna do a little bit of pruning on these to keep 'em maintained in a smaller height.

- [Tammy] So eventually, will these get as big as those?

- [Jerry] They would if we let 'em go, yes.

- [Tammy] Oh, got it. Got it. Well, it's a perfect fence to kind of keep noise and privacy.

- Actually, it isolates the garden completely, all the way around. It's like going into a little sanctuary and just leaving the world on the outside.

- [Tammy] And you planted how many?

- There's 395.

- Oh, nice. And this is one of how many different gardens in the botanical garden?

- [Jerry] We have actually eight major gardens, and then we have some sub gardens I call 'em, that are smaller, that just kind of fit into various places.

- [Tammy] We've transitioned to a different garden here at Hope Botanical, and where are we now, Jerry?

- [Jerry] We're in the perennial garden, and this garden was put here about three years ago. And as you can see, we got a lot of stone work that we... It's more raised, a lot of raised bed areas here. And we're actually standing on an area that's kind of low, and we have a lot of water, sometimes water's standing here, so we raised the beds up to accommodate for that. But we have a huge variety of plants, as you can see. We have the lilies, the bee balm. We have, I love the sundrops.

- I do too.

- Those catch your eye. And we have, of course, these are the white wedding hydrangea, and they'll be blooming very soon now. And of course, we have the lilies in the background. And then we have the white velour crape myrtles to kind of give some color back there as well. But this is about a three-years-old project, and it changes every year with perennials. You're always adding something, taking something out, changing things out, so it's a lot fun.

- And I like the tiers of the beds too. So, and look how healthy these elephant ears are. They're happy.

- Yeah. Last year, that one you're looking at there, we had a leaf on it that was five feet long, so it gets very large.

- [Tammy] That's like a little fan, isn't it?

- Yes, yes, it was.

- [Tammy] Yet another garden is the water garden, and I love water gardens. They're so soothing.

- They are, yes.

- So, you've got a variety of plants here that are quite interesting. And the one that catches my eye immediately is this purple passion that's right here. What is this plant?

- That's a pickerel.

- Pickerel.

- Pickerel.

- [Jerry] We have two large clumps of it in the pond.

- Does that bloom all summer?

- Not all summer. It blooms and then it'll quit blooming for a while, then it'll bloom again later, so it has a different bloom pattern.

- I got it. I got it.

- Just like the water iris. Did you see around the pond we have the water irises?

- Yes.

- They bloom one time in the spring, early, and then they're gone, but you have the foliage to enjoy the rest of the season.

- [Tammy] But I like how you've surrounded your pond with these, those are quite nice.

- Right, of course, you see surrounding you, we go to our water lilies.

- Yes.

- [Jerry] And now the parrot feather, you can see pieces here, we have koi in the pond and koi just like to shred the parrot feather to pieces, so you can see it's kind of in disarray here.

- [Tammy] And then, as you circle back around the pond, we've got in the center here is...

- Papyrus.

- Papyrus.

- [Jerry] Papyrus, yes, and the koi love the papyrus.

- They do, that's another little-

- Yes, they thoroughly enjoy it. They'll under it. You can see now, as we're looking across here, even some of the goldfish and all are kind of in that area. It's just a nice plant because we're out in the open here. A little shade is good for the fish as well as the water leaves, which brings the shade to 'em as well. But they'll seek that out. The temperature of the water, we checked last year, reached about 91 degrees.

- Really?

- [Jerry] A little bit on the warm side.

- [Tammy] And do you do anything to treat the algae here, or do the plants take care of that?

- [Jerry] We have a UV light system that we pass the water through and our waterfall across on the other side. That's the only treatment we do besides a little bit of coloration in the water does reduce the algae.

- [Tammy] Is this a popular place in the botanical garden, Jerry?

- [Jerry] I would say that this pool of water here, the pond and the chain we have down through here is the most popular in the garden, it is. All the young people, the kids love it, the adults love it, and there's just something about water that just draws us. And I don't think that a botanical garden could be complete without a water feature.

- [Tammy] I totally agree. It makes you feel cooler.

- [Jerry] It does. It does.

- I'm lost.

- Well, you and me both.

- I get lost quite often in here. I cut the grass and when they were small, I could come through here with a lawnmower and be out in five minutes. But now I get in here and I say, "Well, now which way am I supposed to go now?" So even for me.

- So this your maze.

- It is. It is.

- This is a maze. And it's built completely with plant material.

- Right, we used the emerald green arborvitae, and these are about seven years old. And when we planted it, they were only two inches tall when we planted them, so they've done very well in seven years. And there are 840 that make up the maze.

- Wow.

- And the maze is actually in four sections, it's almost an acre. It's in four sections and the way it's designed, you can come in one garden, and you can go out into another garden. So it's just like a little pin where we just go in and out, in and out, in and out, if you choose to.

- Right.

- [Jerry] We do have the bypass trails, just in case.

- It's fun though, isn't it?

- It is, and the kids love it. They come out here and the parents do too. We've had people actually get lost. In the evening, at night, we've had flashlights out here with the kids and some families got lost, so they were hollering for help, "We can't find our way out." So it's a lot of fun, very enjoyable.

- And tell me the hours of the gardens, so that people can come and see you.

- Okay, we're closed on Monday, but now Tuesday through Saturday, we're open from 9:00 to 6:00, and on Sunday from 1:00 to 6:00. However, what we do here, we're kinda laid back a little bit, so we're actually making our hours in the summertime to sundown, so unofficially, to sundown. Some folks come out and stay till the sun hits the ground, and that's probably the better time to see the garden.

- [Tammy] Absolutely. It changes it, doesn't it?

- [Jerry] Right, it is, and we allow that. Certainly, people come in the evenings. We allow 'em to go ahead and stay until they wanna go home.

- [Tammy] You have you and your team, because I know this is a team effort, have done such a lovely job of implanting lots of different things into relatively small space. And you're to be congratulated on that and also, doing it in a relatively short period of time. It's been a privilege to be here and see what you've done here.

- Well, we appreciate you being here certainly, Tammy, and it means a lot to us. We wanna provide something to our community and even beyond, a place to come and enjoy, come into, relax, rest, enjoy, you know, and use the garden to better their lives. And so we appreciate folks coming and we hope we see more.

- Wildlife and insects play a vital role in every garden. We are looking at a native pollinator habitat that is only about a year and a half old. It's consisting of rudbeckia and echinacea and all kinds of wildflowers. I can't believe that this is just a year and a half old.

- It is.

- Tell me about this.

- It is amazing. So a year and a half ago, we came out here with about 30 employees. This is the Tractor Supply Store Support Center in the back by the trails in Brentwood. And we dug up the grass, came up with our size, and planted seed. And we were kind of worried over the winter time, what's just gonna happen with these seeds? In spring it was beautiful, but let me tell you, a year and a half later, this is in all its glory.

- Right, because the first year or so, they're really getting their, especially if these are grown from seed, they're getting their roots in, they're getting their energy. So it was probably a lot of green, maybe a few things blooming, but-

- It was very green at the beginning, but you could start to see life come out of the soil. It's absolutely brilliant now. But it's amazing what you can do with a pack of seeds, a spot that used to have a little bit of an erosion problem up the top of this hill, and now it's just beautiful, and it's attracting bees and monarch butterflies. And as you said, such a wide variety.

- Yeah, and I think a fun note, you said you even had some deer feeling comfortable and safe that they wanted to get in here.

- You can see a spot behind us, and there's a deer that comes out of the woods by the trail here and just makes itself at home, and so a bed of flowers.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, so what I'm looking at here is we've got some echinacea, some rudbeckia, even some yarrow, which is this white here. And sparsed in there, I think, were some milkweed here and there, but these are definitely dominating this part of the season.

- [Marti] We came in the next fall. So again, this is a one-and-a-half-year cycle and put some additional milkweed, having worried, did the birds eat it when the rains came, did it wash out? But it really didn't. You can see everything is here. And things kind of come in waves. So we started to see this purple cone flower first and then these black-eyed Susans came in. And you know what I think about with this? It's just such a peaceful place for others. But we get native bees, a lot of bees from Tennessee. There's a gentleman right behind the trail there that has bees in his backyard. They've made their way over here, and so bees travel a long ways.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, that's so fun. I love that.

- [Marti] It was the perfect engagement opportunity for our team members here at Tractor Supply Store Support Center, because twice a year, we bring them out. In the fall, we come out and we take everything that's getting a little bit crisp, really kind of make it almost dust in your hands and put it back out, because that then helps with the regeneration. In the spring, we come out and make sure there's no grass growing in there, because we just built this in a grassy area. We have a little bit of edging. But to me, it's so beautiful. And then we did a second volunteer event, planted 100 red buds along that tree line.

- [Phillipe] Oh nice.

- [Marti] And then did some invasive species removal. There's a ton of honeysuckle back there. So we just wanna make this a peaceful place, a beautiful place and a place that kind of takes care of itself, it's self-sustaining.

- Yeah, it really is a win-win situation with native plants.

- It is.

- Yeah. 'Cause also their ease of care and their support for native wildlife.

- The thing that I find interesting too is I've come out here in the morning, like we're now at this morning light, and it looks one way. You come in the afternoon with the sun baking down and everything really opens up, so it's almost kind of waking up in the morning, but really awake in the afternoon. We had the most beautiful blue-tipped dragonfly this morning and the blue tips on its wings and just settling back there, so what a place.

- Yeah, it is. That's so nice. So it's mid-July, it's hot, but this garden is really just showing off.

- It is, and it's amazing different times a year, how it looks different, and later on in the year, we'll get those monarch butterflies. So you see the whole process, you see the caterpillars and the chrysalis, and then eventually, those monarchs that come out. And so this is a good stopping place for them along their migratory path.

- Yeah. So one of the benefits of having all these native plants and including these native trees, our magnolias here and red buds and all kinds of things is they're so drought tolerant.

- Yes.

- They're so accepting of the oppressive heat that we're used to. They just love it.

- Yeah. And these magnolias, they're just magnificent to me. And they're starting to have their flowers come out, but really stay green year round. This will go down in the fall and then we'll come out, and we'll kind of clean it up just a little bit. But this is self-sustaining, which I think is such a great thing to put in your backyard. That's wonderful for us here at Tractor Supply, because I just think it's a great place to come out and have a meeting, walk on the trail, sit at the picnic table and see this and all its glory.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, and people that may not be as in tuned in to nature, this is gonna make them stop and say, "What's that?" And come look at it and learn a little bit more about it.

- [Marti] At one of our volunteer events, we actually took seeds and made little seed packets that people could bring home. So you can do this with your kids. You can do it with your neighbors. It's just a great way to use space, make it self-sustaining, not have to mow it.

- Right. So on that note, what's kind of the... Gimme a short version of the year maintenance that y'all have of this?

- It's just an opportunity twice a year in the fall and the spring to bring people out to clean it up, make sure the grass is not getting in. But then we planted 100 red buds along here. We did some invasive species removal. So it's our way of giving back. We do that during Earth Week, which is so important to us. We also had the biologists from the Tennessee Environmental Council come out and do a talk out here-

- How wonderful.

- [Marti] so people understood what is in here, how they could do it themselves, and then we got them working. So you kind of learn and give back all at the same time.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, so do y'all, do you cut this back at any point in the season?

- No, we just let it go. And all of these dry out very similar to this. So you just take them when they're dry, put 'em together like this, and then the seeds are here, sprinkle them back, and they'll come... Next year when we're standing here, we'll be able to seed from those.

- [Phillipe] Yeah, oh, wonderful. Wow. I know everyone loves it, that the park's here. And I love people that don't know that it's here and then just kind of surprise, look at that over there.

- [Marti] You know, you think about a secret garden, this is definitely it.

- Right, right. Very cool. So, is this who you partnered with for this project?

- It is. We gave a grant to Tennessee Environmental Council. We've partnered with them for years with river cleanups and a lot of other things. But they came to us with this idea. So they really have taught us what to put in here, brought all the tools, we brought all the people and just made it happen, which is a great thing. They are a good partner for us. And it also gives a great website so people can go and learn about it as well, generate some buzz.

- Yeah. Yeah. So one of my favorite things about this is it's low maintenance. I don't know about you, but I spend most of my time in the summer watering and something like this needs practically no additional water here.

- It doesn't. It's completely natural. It's self-sustaining. We're not out here weeding. It's taking care of itself. We kind of clean it up during Earth Week and then again in the fall when we make sure. But it's just a great thing to have. And think about all of this color if you had this in your backyard without the weeding and without the watering.

- Right, so if you at home want to create something this spectacular, this can be done at a home, a school, a church, you know, anywhere with a couple hundred square feet of area that's in the sun is really all you need. A little bit of work up front and planting seed at the right time of year, you can create something this spectacular. Thank you so much for showing us this garden and telling us about the process of it.

- Thank you so much for being here. We love this garden. Conservation, land, water, animals is really near and dear to our hearts and one of our focus pillars of the foundation. So we love this and thanks for letting us share it with you.

- Of course. It's a win-win for everyone.

- So David, today we are mulching with mushrooms. We're gonna be sheet mulching or doing lasagna gardening if people know that process. But the thing is, is what most people don't have is the cheese for the lasagna. And so, fungus is the cheese for lasagna layer.

- Okay. Okay.

- And so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna add cardboard, and then we're gonna put the cheese on the cardboard, and then we're gonna add the meat or-

- Wood chips.

- The wood chips.

- [Interviewer] Gotcha.

- And then we're gonna have it out here on the orchard to help sheet mulch that and suppress the weeds. But we're also not only feeding ourselves, we're feeding the soil in this process.

- [Interviewer] Gotcha, and this is an important tenet of permaculture, which is building the soil, really paying attention to the soil so that it can be healthy for the plants later on. Is that right?

- That's right. So the idea is that we're really trying to suppress weeds in the beginning, and so we're just gonna lay this cardboard down, and that's gonna be the primary layer. And then we're gonna take this mushroom spawn, which is essentially just wood fibers and some other agricultural waste products. So some people use soybean hulls or corn hulls. So it's more of like an upcycling process too at the whole time.

- [Interviewer] Are you using inoculated with wine cap mushrooms?

- That's correct, uh-huh. King stropharia is another common name for that, a real meaty mushroom. It's got a really nice burgundy cap. Very similar to a portobello in its flavor profile. We're gonna rub this spawn on the cardboard here. We're just gonna try to break it up and just kind of spread that cheese as far as we can.

- [Interviewer] Kind of inoculating, using it maybe for a wood fiber or a cardboard fiber as maybe a food source, keep it moist and everything?

- That's right. Yeah. So again, everything's made outta wood here, everything from the cardboard to the spawn to the wood chips. So that mycelium is just gonna be breaking that down into water, carbon dioxide and macro-micro nutrients for the plant. So it's good to use this when it's wet. You really kind of wanna wet the chips down, and luckily, we've had a lot of rain over the last couple of weeks. So just do a layer of wood chips here. And now you can lay another layer of cardboard on top if you want. If you don't have it, it's not that important. But the cardboard adds that layer, to where that fungus can just really run on there and have a nice bottom layer to work with.

- Right on.

- So then we'll just add a little more cheese on there, and we'll wet this down. And you know, if we don't get a rain or so in the next week, we'll wet it again. But again, that mycelium is really breaking that stuff down into its own water, so it's just essentially watering itself, and it's also watering this tree that we have here. Over the course of four years, this'll break down into really enriched soil.

- Fantastic. Well, as we've learned here today, permaculture is a very multifaceted science that has so much language and so much information to give to not only the people, but also to Mother Earth. So, in your own time, please consider following some of the various links that we've provided to learn a little bit more about how you can incorporate permaculture into your everyday life.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org and find us on these platforms.