Environmentally conscientious gardeners should strive to grow a range of late-flowering nectar plants to provide insects with energy to migrate, or build them up for winter hibernation. Rita Venable, author of Butterflies of Tennessee, joins Marty DeHart to discuss top-performers such as goldenrod and New England aster.
Orchids are popular house plants and can produce beautiful blooms over many years, if they receive the proper care. Annette Shrader sets out to de-mystify orchid growing with an orchid hobbyist and member of the Orchid Society of Middle Tennessee. Growing medium, proper watering and fertilization, re-potting, pests + solutions are all discussed.
More folks are growing their own food these days, so perhaps a nut crop could fit into the home landscape. Tammy Algood goes to Bethpage TN to learn about seed germination, what's needed for good pollination, and expectations of yield over the course of the tree's life (which can be 150 years).
Marty DeHart visits with a passionate plants person who hybridizes and cultivates hellebores. It's mid-March, and these 'jewels of winter' are showing off their colors in beautiful blooms. We learn the successes of hybridization: the new characteristics, bloom size, colors, and habit are evident in the several cultivars we examine.
Annette Shrader tours a country estate landscape that has some of the very best cultivars of the daylily, earning it the status of an official American Daylily Society Display Garden. She learns which characteristics of this easy-care perennial this collector enjoys the most. Hint: its the variety in colors and petal forms, and the way one plant can have blooms over a period of several weeks. His collection tops 1,800 plants.
