Episode 2507

- [Voiceover] With a focus on sustainability The Compost Company is an innovative leader. They recycle organic waste from businesses then compost it into several soil blends and enhancements. Then, we'll meet a gardener who has an affinity for plants with a prehistoric look. Stay tuned. Amazing plant combinations and gorgeous deep border beds.

- [Voiceover] We're in Nashville, Tennessee and I'm looking at one of the most beautiful gardens that I've seen in a long time. Lisa, tell me what you have going on here.

- Well, I was really excited to create a bee garden. And you can see because we've got all different kinds of bees, that they're really excited about it. So we have several colors of lenarda and cardoon, and I wanted it to be purples, reds, and fuchsia.

- [Sheri] I think that's a good point that you bring up. Most people would not put this combination together. And I think it works really really well. I think it might be the silver pulling off everything else that pulls it all together. You know, bees like bright colors.

- [Lisa] Correct. So I chose the three brightest colors I thought the color palette that went together.

- [Sheri] Ooh, look at all the different kinds. It's just so fun.

- [Lisa] But, I also love prehistoric looking plants and I thought that the cardoon, the silvery splashes and the dramatic leaf structure would just be pretty with. It makes a beautiful bloom that's similar to an artichoke, it is related. But if you cut that off I actually have cardoon in other parts of the yard that has existed for, you know, six or seven years. As long as you take the bloom before it develops then it will continue.

- [Sheri] So like most herbs, if you let it go to seed or flower, then it stresses the other plant because it's working on just creating that beautiful flower, correct?

- [Lisa] Exactly.

- [Sheri] Okay, all right. But then the traditional beebamb, as everyone knows it, is beautiful. And I have to say those blooms are quite large. And then you've got them edged nicely here for a little detail of your boxwood.

- [Lisa] Thank you.

- [Sheri] And, what do you have down here?

- [Lisa] Sunny Border Blue, Veronica.

- [Sheri] Veronica, yes. And then you've carried on the purple throughout this garden through here, and it looks great because you've edged it. Which kind of makes it look nice and compact.

- [Lisa] Thank you.

- [Sheri] I think with the boxwoods.

- [Lisa] Yes. The Ruby Glow , again, adds some wonderful red.

- Lisa, in this cute little vignette here, you've got something growing that I'm not familiar with and I want to share it. Tell us about it.

- [Lisa] Oh, well this is a Variegated Acanthus. The variety is called Whitewater. And it's just really interesting. It's unusual, it's hard to find. When the leafs first emerge, they're very white. Though sometimes I give it a little bit of shade until it begins its variegation. Just, another prehistoric plant. It's clear that's the theme in my garden, isn't it?

- [Sheri] Yes. But they're cool. And then you've got a wonderfully large pot with a spiral boxwood in there. Do you train that yourself?

- [Lisa] You know, I did. Lots of fun, David and I kind of like to trim and train things over the years and it's kind of fun.

- And then you have beautiful lavender coming. And I notice in most of your gardens you are edged and bordered with boxwood, is that a favorite thing of yours? Do you just like the English garden look?

- [Lisa] I don't know it's much as the English garden is I really like the structure of boxwood and then how you can tell unstructured I am a lot of times in my beds. I kind of let things if they play happy together I let them be together. And so, sometimes it's a little crazy looking.

- Lisa, I like what you've done here. Explain to us, please.

- Oh thank you. Well, this is a contorted filbert and the nature of it is the foliage is all the way to the ground. But, I appreciate the branching structure. So I remove the leaves. First of all, that I can see out the window. I have a wonderful light that casts the shadows at night. I really like what it leaves me with. And then of course, we've got the Chinese ginger under and all kinds of little ferns. It looks like a little fairyland to me.

- [Sheri] It's very cute. Very cute.

- [Lisa] Back to the prehistoric again, my little I think, succulents, again, look like they could have lived long ago. My little prehistoric garden.

- [Sheri] Lisa, I love your containers here. Tell me briefly about these.

- [Lisa] Thank you. These are Faux Bois that are hand painted from a single piece of limestone. Most of them, in the early to mid 1800s. And again, the prehistoric look of all the variety of succulents just mixing color and texture the end of the hot summer these will, this will just be filled and gorgeous. I just like the look.

- And I've got to say, this is so cool.

- Thank you so much.

- [Sheri] And you braided this yourselves?

- [Lisa] Well, you know it's just fun to try different things. So they can grow all straight but thought that might be good.

- [Sheri] So this is what it looks like before you've trained it, correct? Before you've braided it? This new little baby here?

- [Lisa] Exactly.

- [Sheri] Something to aspire to, I guess. I love your meandering border perennials back here. Let's talk a little bit about this.

- Thank you.

- In the forefront we have.

- Creeping Jenny.

- Which, some don't like, but you know, it's such a beautiful contrasting color to everything else.

- [Lisa] Yeah, it's certainly bang for your buck, isn't it?

- [Sheri] It keeps the weeds out, as well. And then what's right behind there?

- [Lisa] Well, it's one of the many epimediums, or Barrenwort. I think there's 44 now and we have 31 of them in the garden. They're not really blooming now, but I still think they add architectural interest. I love the heart shaped leave. And of course, when they're putting off their orchid like blooms, they're just incredible.

- [Sheri] And this right here, you also think this looks prehistoric?

- [Lisa] Yeah, that's a Euphorbia Ascot Rainbow. Again, a beautiful foliage, but the flowers also pretty spectacular.

- [Sheri] Lisa, let's talk about this prehistoric plant.

- [Lisa] Yes, this is an accampus, of course related to the Whitewater you in the saw back, and it's in bloom. We mustn't touch though, it's awfully sticky. And then we have Ligularia, and this is Othello. I absolutely love the beautiful fan and the red underneath. It's just a lot of bang for your buck and produces a beautiful canary yellow bloom a couple of times a year. This is Ascot Rainbow again, but bloomed. I just, you know, how you can you not appreciate the gorgeous foliage and how it's perfectly variegated through the middle with that beautiful little yellow red flower. And then the sea pods on the end. I mean, it's just exquisite.

- [Sheri] I'm impressed, I mean, you have really textbook borders as far as your Oak Leaf hydrangeas. How you've got the tall blocking your neighbor's and your fence row. And then you go to the medium and you go low in front and then you go the creeping, I just think it's spectacular.

- [Lisa] Oh, thank you so much.

- [Sheri] And we have another Wort Lisa, what kind is this one?

- [Lisa] Ah, this is Lung Wort. Not many people want to grow it. I don't think the foliage is especially pretty, sometimes I, excuse, the flower are especially pretty. Sometimes I pick them off. But I just love the foliage and just think it's fabulous and what a great name.

- [Sheri] That would be great in cut flower arrangements, as well, just because of the variegation.

- [Lisa] Oh, good idea.

- [Sheri] You know, we've coined the phrase prehistoric plants, they're really not, but let's talk about this one right here. What is this?

- [Lisa] I just think it's the most incredible Euphorbia. Some people call it a Cranial Euphorbia, or an Upright Euphorbia. And it's just really special. And I have two of them.

- [Sheri] Well, it is spectacular. One of my favorite cedars Lisa. Blue Atlas. How long has that been there?

- [Lisa] This has been here for 17 years. Underplanted by all kinds of seedum and then mostly thyme. This is a constantly changing thyme bed, because as you know, some grow more aggressively than others.

- [Sheri] Well, let's talk about that for a second. Because not everybody realizes, they think they can just plant thyme and it will just mingle and get along with each other. But it doesn't.

- [Lisa] Oh no. Oh no. And so I'm constantly, you know, when someone offends someone else, I'm moving him around and I don't let anyone take too much space because as you can see, sometimes they take advantage before you get to 'em. But I like to continue to add other colors and textures upright and low growing for interest.

- [Sheri] Let's talk about your different heights of your boxwoods here.

- [Lisa] Well, this is a collection of miniature boxwoods that actually have also been here 17 years. And I have not begun clouding these yet because they're just not large enough and I've just begun clouding these. But yes, all different varieties. Some of them more rare than others. And just, again, architectural interest.

- [Sheri] Lisa, thank you to you and your husband. You have done such a wonderful job. Magnificent, actually.

- [Lisa] It was a pleasure to have you. Thank you.

- [Voiceover] Well it's no secret that compost does wonders for improving the quality of your garden soil. Most good gardeners I know have a small compost pile around their house allowing their organic matter to break down. But what happens when those small buckets of kitchen scraps turn into large dump trucks of food waste and landscape debris? To find out more about large-scale composting I'm out here at The Compost Company in Ashland City, Tennessee. So we're standing out here in what looks to be a big piles of woodchips and landscape debris. And look, I imagine this is kind of the first stage in the compost cycle. I'm here with Clay, he's head of The Compost Company and we're gonna learn a little bit more about where all this stuff comes from.

- Well, as you can see we do get a lot of wood debris from tree trimmers and landscapers. And they bring it to us out here at our site. And we use that as an important part of our process material. Our carbon nitrogen ratio is really important and wood provides a really great source of carbon to mix into our compost.

- [Matt] I imagine this is getting diverted from what might usually go to a landfill over here to a composting facility, is that right?

- That's correct. We are able to prevent a lot of this waste not only tree trimming debris, but also food waste in large measure. Would be going to the landfill. And, by keeping it out of there we provide an environmental benefit because organic waste in a landfill does the opposite of what it should do which is break down aerobically. In an aerobic environment it produces methane which is a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. So by keeping it out, we prevent a lot of that methane production. And also, in processing it into final compost we're able to put it back into the ground where the stuff really belongs. And, it provides an additional environmental benefit by improving the soil quality in a great way.

- Outstanding. And when you say anaerobically that is, from what I understand, without oxygen. So what you're doing is you're taking these inputs and turning it and adding oxygen to really keep those methane levels down, right?

- That's right. We do everything in an open windrow process. And aeration is a really important part of what we do. In the most natural setting, if you threw an apple core on the ground, it would break down aerobically which is the natural way for it to do so. But when you cover it up in a landfill environment it's deprived of that oxygen and everything just goes a little bit haywire.

- Right.

- And so we like to do it right here, right out in the open the way mother nature intended.

- [Matt] So we're out here looking at about 15 tons of lettuce. And I'm here with Ed Wansing, another member of The Compost Company. Ed, tell me what we're looking at here.

- Well, as you mentioned Matt, we've got a bunch of lettuce out here. This is produce that was unable to be sold to customers for quality control purposes. So instead of sending this to the landfill we were able to use this as the nitrogen source of our compost. So we've got the heavy carbon wood source and then we need to add some green materials some nitrogen material to that to get it cooking to get it heated up. And that also adds a great amount of moisture too. So we mentioned the moisture aspects. So this lettuce gives us that nitrogen source as well as the moisture we need to really get these piles started off right.

- I got ya'. And for the home gardener this lettuce might come in the form of kitchen scraps or grass clippings. But for you guys, it's dealing with local farms that are looking for you guys to as a tipping source to get this mixed in with your carbon, huh?

- Yeah, yeah, we're able to provide that large-scale resource for the farmers that need a place to go with their produce.

- [Matt] Well that's fantastic Ed. I'd much rather see it out here getting put to good use as opposed to in the landfill.

- [Ed] Yeah, definitely.

- [Matt] So Ed, we're talking about the diversity of what goes into this compost operation. It looks like we're here looking at some animal bedding, is that right?

- That's right Matt. We do have a very diverse range of feed stocks. This is some animal bedding coming from one of our producers in Nashville. And it really helps to give us that diversity that we were talking about. So you want those different organisms and different microbes and fungi that are gonna break down these piles and really make a high quality compost.

- [Matt] So Clay, we're looking at some pretty big piles of compost here. Tell me what we're looking at.

- [Clay] These are our compost windrows. This is sort of the method by which we process all of our compost. Once we have ground a lot of our material up we bring it out here to our processing pad and lay it out in what we call windrows. When they start out, they're roughly about 10 feet wide by, in some cases seven or eight feet tall. And, as they break down, as we turn them with our compost turner, they start to get a little bit smaller and smaller. We see about a 20% volume reduction over the life of the breakdown process. Generally we lay them out and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-200 feet long and that helps us process as much material as we can on our limited amount of space.

- Fantastic. And I see we're covering these piles is this in relation to the moisture management?

- That's right. We like to leave our piles wide open in the early stages so they can soak up some rain water. But when they get a little bit more mature and have started to break down we want to control the water that they're being exposed to. Because, like I said earlier, they compost is famous for its ability to hold onto water. And so if they get too wet they can become a problem. So we leave 'em covered up for a good part of their lifespan. And then when we're ready to actually screen them we'll uncover 'em, let 'em soak up some sunshine on a day like today. And then we screen it into the final product.

- [Matt] So Clay, we're standing in kind of a cut out of one of your large windrows here. How can you tell when a pile like this is ready?

- Well, we monitor this material throughout the entire process. From start to finish we are kind of using our best tools for composting which are eyes, nose, and our thermometer. We spend a lot of time poking into these things with some very large reo-temp thermometers to make sure that things are cooking along. And we also spend a whole lot of time picking it up and looking at it and making sure it's not too wet. It's not too dry. Smelling it is an important part of things, if it doesn't smell quite right we know something's going wrong. If it's too hot, or it's too cold we know that something needs to happen. It's not unlike baking, in a way. We spend a lot of time making sure that any ingredients are mixed together properly, and that it's all happening at the right temperature over the right amount of time.

- [Matt] And I imagine that's what the homeowners are really looking for as an end product is some of that larger debris worked out of that soil into something a little more finer.

- [Clay] That's right. Inside of all of this, you can see that there are the finer materials and so if the last phase of the process we run it through, what we call an organ screen and that takes out any of the larger wood particles that haven't finished breaking down yet, or any of the things that end up in the process that we don't want to send out to the end user. It, they're looking for that crumbly, black wonderful stuff that we sort of affectionately joke is called crumbly black moon dust. And we want all of that to look just like that when it goes out the door.

- [Matt] I'm kneeling down next to some of your finished product here. It's quite beautiful, dark and rich. I understand this is one of your four compost blends. This one, in particular is called the secret blend, is that right?

- That's right. This is kind of our fine wines, so to speak. It's our most carefully blended and longest aged compost. We generally sell this for use as a top dressing material or for greenhouse beds. It's got a really good manure content and a lot of food waste. A lot of the fruit and vegetable pulp that we get from juice bars and restaurants and things goes directly into this. And we age this a little bit longer so it has that really fine texture. It's screened down to even less than half an inch. And you can tell it's gotten really mature and has that clean wonderful smell that a lot of people associate with that black gold.

- Absolutely. It almost has a kind of a sweetness to it it doesn't smell at all. It looks real rich and dark. I'm sure it does wonders for the soil.

- [Clay] It is, it's the best stuff you can find. We're pretty proud of it.

- So Clay, you've got a fantastic operation here. It's almost kind of like a composting recycling movement. Tell me a little bit about some of the organizations that are a part of helping you get to your end movement.

- Well thanks Matt. We get material from all sorts of places. We've got companies and entertainment venues like the Music City Convention Center in downtown Nashville. Or U.S. Mobile Tobacco brings us a lot of their waste material that they can't use. We've got commercial food manufacturers, and restaurants, and grocery stores. We've even got a hospital, or two that are currently trying to see that their waste gets handled in a more responsible way. We are happy to bring material to Nashville, to Clarkesville, to Ashland City. We cover most of middle Tennessee. There are a few places we haven't been yet. Part of the reason is 'cause there's very few people offering this kind of compost which we think of, in our humble opinion, is the best you can find.

- [Matt] Well thank you for your time, Clay.

- [Clay] Thank you Matt. I appreciate your time.

- [Matt] We'll let you get back to it.

- [Voiceover] Native plants are always a hot topic in Tennessee, and I can't think of anywhere that there are hotter topic than at Reflection Riding arboretum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Here with John Evans who is the nursery and horticulture manager here. And we're gonna talk about some of these fabulous native plants that you all grow and display, and promote to the public.

- Right. Yes, well we've got just a few of our many many things that we sell here.

- Right.

- We cultivate a lot of things. We sell them. We also plant them around the property.

- Uh huh.

- This one, I'm sure, most people are familiar with, if you're a plant enthusiast, you know this plant. This is Butterflyeeed, it's a type of Milk Weed. It's Ascepeas Tuberosa. When it's blooming out in the field you will see a lot of pollinators gathering around Butterflyweed.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] As well as the other Milkweeds, there are several species. And we carry those, as well.

- [Troy] A lot of buzz right now about Milkweeds because everybody's concerned about the monarch.

- [John] That's right, yes.

- [Troy] And this is not only in the case of the Orange Butterflyweed, a great pollen and nectar plant, but also the Milkweeds serve as the larva plants for the monarch.

- [John] That's correct. Yes. And we pay a lot of attention to fodder for larvae here at Reflection Riding. And here are two other examples. This is Spice Bush. I just clipped this back. But, this isn't very showy in and of itself. But, it's critical to the larva of the Spice Bush Swallowtail.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] They have to have something in this genus to feed on.

- [Troy] Mm-hmm.

- [John] And our local is Lyndera Bonzoean. Spice Bush.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] We carry that. This is also very interesting.

- [Troy] Uh huh.

- [John] This is a Dutchman's Piper Pipevine.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] Aristolochia macrophylla is this species. We also carry Aristolochia . This, the macrophylla, the big leaf.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] Is better if you're at a higher elevation with cooler temperatures and conditions. If you're down in the valley where you're baked in the heat, I would go with the Tomentosa.

- [Troy] Okay.

- [John] So they both have their niche.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] And it is critical to the Spice, or not the Spice Bush, but the.

- [Troy] But the Pipevine swallowtail.

- [John] The Pipevine Swallowtail, yes.

- [Troy] Yeah. What are these little seedlings coming up in this flat?

- [John] I'm very excited about these. This is Tennessee ironweed, and I collected the seeds last year, kept them in a refrigerator and I planted them just last week and they're already coming up like gangbusters. What's interesting about this particular plant, Tennessee ironweed, is that it's endemic to just this area.

- [Troy] Okay.

- [John] There are a few counties in Tennessee. A couple in northwest Georgia. Northeast Alabama. That's it. That's its entire world distribution.

- [Troy] Wow.

- [John] And as far as I know we'll be the first nursery to carry Tennessee ironweed. And I'm very excited to be able to offer it. We can help ensure its perpetuation in the wild simply by making more of them.

- [Troy] Right. Speaking of saving species.

- That's a fun one there.

- Yeah.

- That's Franklinea. Or the Franklin Tree.

- Yeah.

- It's actually named after Benjamin Franklin. John Bartram named it. It was discovered along the Altamaha River.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] In Georgia. They made a botanical trip down there where they collected some. They thought it was wonderful. They brought it back to Philadelphia. They propagated them and they kept them in the botanical garden there. They returned some years later and looked for more of them. They were gone.

- [Troy] Mm-hmm.

- [John] tHey've never been found again in the wild.

- [Troy] Right. So the only way that you can get this plant is through cultivation.

- [John] Yes.

- [Troy] Through a place like Reflection Riding or through a commercial nursery that is growing and propagating them, but the wild species is essentially extinct.

- [John] It's extinct in the wild.

- [Troy] Yes.

- [John] And it's a perfect example of the role that botanical garden or even home gardeners can play is the preservation of species. A lot of times gardening and landscaping is guilty of eliminating species.

- [Troy] Yes, exactly.

- [John] But we can also.

- [Troy] Or become kind of a monoculture.

- [John] Exactly.

- [Troy] Where you plant lots of mandena and burning bush and those kinds of things where we really can be much more diverse and actually help in preservation.

- Right, exactly.

- So, moving on. We mentioned pollinators a bit ago. And certainly, this is a great pollinator plant to have out in the garden right now.

- [John] It sure is. That's the obligatory Purple coneflower.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] You can find these in garden shops everywhere. They're a very popular plant. Echinacea Purpurea It's not only a great pollinator plant but when the seeds mature like Eastern goldfinches, they love, it's like candy to them.

- [Troy] Yeah, I know in my garden when those heads mature in the fall the goldfinches are just all over them.

- [John] Just trips from the to the plant.

- [Troy] Yeah.

- [John] Now less common you won't find this nearly as often with in garden shops is the pale Purple coneflower. It's a different species. Echinacea Pallida. We like to carry several species. We also have Tennessee coneflower, Echinacea Tennessee . Another thing I would like to mention, as an aside, you'll notice the color difference between these two plants, they're both Echinacea Purpurea. But because we collect the seed ourselves you see the genetic variation.

- [Troy] You're always going to have a little variation.

- [John] Right.

- [Troy] Some may be deeper, some may be paler

- [John] Right. And that's a good thing. Is to have that genetic variation and to perpetuate that in your garden setting. You can buy a cultiva and they're all have rubber stamp copies of each other.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] But you don't get the genetic variation in that way so that's why we like to collect the seed. Lobella Cardinalis, the cardinal flower. Hummingbirds love this.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] When it's in full bloom, these are beautiful tubular flowers. Brilliant scarlet color.

- [Troy] Uh huh.

- [John] And hummingbirds are just drawn to them,

- [Troy] Of course.

- [John] Want to eat them like candy.

- [Troy] Right. And then Beebalm.

- [John] Beebalm. Also very popular with pollinators. Bees, obviously. But also butterflies and other pollinators.

- [Troy] I know in my garden, this seems to be a favorite of the Tiger Swallowtail. That beautiful yellow and black striped Swallowtail, I always seem to have those on the menarda. And on the summer flocks. This shrub is in bloom right now but the blooms are just really tiny little flowers. But what happens after this is finished?

- [John] Well, you get a beautiful clusters of very brilliantly colored purple berries.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] And it's called beauty berry.

- [Troy] American beauty berry.

- [John] American beauty berry, there is a Japanese.

- [Troy] Yeah.

- [John] But this is our Native American beauty berry. Interestingly enough there was a study just published by the University of Alabama. There are a lot of folk remedies for things.

- [Troy] Uh huh.

- [John] And some of them pan out, and some of them don't. But the University of Alabama just demonstrated that the rem, this has been reputed to repel mosquitoes.

- [Troy] Oh really?

- [John] Right, so people have used it traditionally they've crushed up the leaves rubbed them on their arms and it's supposed to keep mosquitoes away.

- [Troy] Interesting.

- [John] It turns out it's true.

- [Troy] And that's scientifically proven now.

- [John] That's been scientifically proven now.

- [Troy] Now I'm gonna have to put beauty berry back in the garden. All right, we have one more plant sort of peeking over your shoulder here. That appears to be a coneflower of some kind.

- It is a coneflower. This is the giant coneflower.

- [Troy] Yeah, it's as tall as we are.

- [John] It's as tall as we are and if it were in the ground and well-established it would be taller than we are.

- [Troy] All right.

- [John] They're pretty cool, and of course butterflies love these they're a real attraction for them.

- So the nursery here at Reflection Riding, is it just for the purposes of supplying the arboretum, or can people come here and make purchases for their own garden?

- Oh of course, yes. We have, traditionally have had two big plant sales every year.

- [Troy] Uh huh.

- The spring plant sale, and the fall plant sale.

- [Troy] Right.

- And those have been real events, I mean people come together for those sales and it's an old tradition.

- [Troy] Uh huh.

- What we would like to do is start inviting people to come by any time.

- [Troy] Right.

- During the growing season. Shop around. Take a look. We won't, we won't turn you away. We'll sell you some plants, if you like.

- [Troy] Excellent. And so this really has now been become a place where people in and around Chattanooga and beyond, if you're passing through the area or coming to visit for the day and you want to add native plants to your garden you can find them here.

- [John] Right.

- [Voiceover] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects visit our website at VolunteerGardener.org. Or on YouTube at the VolunteerGardener channel. And like us on Facebook.