Episode 2512

- [Announcer] This time on Volunteer Gardener, we'll get some design lessons, plus insight about great performing plants. As Troy Marden explores this quaint garden of a couple of fellow landscape designers. And Sherry Gramer discovers a variety of trees that work well in bonsai form. Join us. First, pretty from the front curb to the back gate.

- 11 years ago this house in the historic St. Elmo neighborhood in Chattanooga, here at the base of Lookout Mountain, was actually condemned. Scott Drucker and his wife Olga have turned it into a showpiece and I can't wait for you to see it. Well from the Artemisia and the Queen Anne's lace and the roses out by the street, all the way into the little entrance courtyard, this is sort of your responsibility Scott. You've started planting right at the front edge of the property and worked your way inward.

- I created the monster. And now I have to deal with it.

- I gotcha. I completely understand.

- You know it takes care of itself in some ways. And I enjoy it.

- Yeah, and so the little strip even by the sidewalk, it's only 12 or 14 inches wide. It's very narrow. But it probably was just crab grass and bermuda grass.

- It was just always a chore to keep that weed eated. I'll try something native like the Queen Anne's lace, 'cause it should be tough. And it has turned out to be amazing. And also the Artemisia, very invasive spreading variety, was able to be contained in there. And we love the silver foliage and the white to tie in with our theme. Not something you'd want in the garden, because you couldn't--

- No I wouldn't wanna put it in here. But it's a ground cover Artemisia and it mixes with the beautiful white Queen Anne's lace and at night it just glows and it just really, it lightens the whole property, I think, out there.

- [Troy] So the front garden was the first thing you developed, garden wise, after you moved into the house.

- [Scott] Right, just for the curb appeal, of course. And then at first there was no fence and arbor and we just did curb appeal planning. And then fence and arbor came a little later after that.

- [Troy] As often happens.

- [Scott] Right.

- [Troy] You know you have to just sort of wait sometimes. A, decide what you want. B, pad the budget to do it. Those kinds of things.

- [Scott] But we did save that historic gate from our previous historic house. And we knew we wanted to reuse it someday. And I painted it white to go with everything. And we have another one that's gonna go in the back to match. So everyone loves that gate out there.

- I noticed you have a lot of roses and you've got the most sun probably in this part of the garden.

- There's the most here and a little bit in the back too. Some areas.

- [Troy] Are they heirloom roses or are they historic varieties? What's your preference on many of the roses?

- [Scott] I love the antique heirloom roses. So we do have, like this one is called Clothilde Soupert, it's a French name. And it's a Polythantha and it smells and it's a beautiful rose. It's blooming now even when nothing else, most roses have gone over.

- Yeah, there's some other interesting little plants in here that I noticed. This almost looks like a little hollyhock.

- It is, it's Malva Sebrina which is the French hollyhock. And everyone loves that one. And although it gets a little rust like most hollyhocks, you can control it by pinching off the infected leaves. But you can let it, I like to let it go to seed and even though they get tall and ratty looking, like that one over there, you save the seeds and then you can give 'em to friends, you can throw 'em in your garden.

- [Troy] Right, scatter them around and it's--

- They just kind of come up everywhere just like these Cleomees do.

- [Troy] Right. I also like that you used these topiaries and some other evergreens in places. It offers structure in the garden. Probably at a season, maybe even not so noticeable in the summer when everything's grown up, but then in the winter you really get great structure out of them.

- [Scott] I love these Ligustrum topiaries. They're easier than boxwoods. I love boxwoods too, but Ligustrum seem to be tougher than anything. And as long as you prune 'em but they don't let 'em go to flower, and just shape 'em up a little bit, they're pretty low maintenance. And then we have these beautiful tea olives Osmanthus fragrans on this side here, which add so much, not only evergreen, but the smell that you get from these.

- [Troy] Right, and those bloom in the winter.

- Um hmm, they have a very tiny white bloom, but their fragrance is amazing in late fall, early winter. And then we have camellias and cherry laurel on that side and actually banana shrub is in there too.

- [Troy] So that gives you evergreen and privacy, even though your neighbors are very close.

- [Scott] These are great neighbors, but we still like to have a little bit of a garden room feel. So it has mystery, it adds mystery to the garden.

- So as we walk from the front garden to the back garden, it kind of transitions into this really beautiful deck and sitting area. Tell me about the garden back here.

- Well Troy, this garden was a sun garden. And we have roses all around the fountain. But as you can see we have this 100 year old oak tree that came with the house. And then as the tree kept growing, then the roses kept getting leggy, they didn't bloom enough. So we figured that we had to change our original idea. We kept getting more shade. We completely changed the whole scheme and now it's like a woodland garden.

- Right, right, and then you also have beautiful containers around on the deck and other places too. Do you do all your containers?

- Yes we do. We like kind of a woodland loose style, because I like to watch the hummingbirds. I like to sit there and eat and then just see them going from box to box. And we inspire by cutting spire by the gardens in London. So this is like an English mix, southern style.

- [Troy] Gotcha. So you have a lot of hydrangeas in the garden also.

- Yes, we love hydrangeas because they add a lot of color when a lot of other shrubs and perennials are tired, you know are overbloomed in the summer.

- Yeah, so you've got the oak leaves, and then these pretty, blue, just the old fashioned mopheads. This could be any number of varieties probably. But these really beautiful big flowers that last for several weeks. And then on behind you here a little bit we've got lace caps, and then even the Annabelle.

- Yes, we like to match a lot of white to the fencing and like that bench. And for example, we have a snowball viburnum on this side so it looks beautiful in the spring, the big snowballs with the bench.

- Uh huh, you also have a really interesting mixture of trees, shrubs, perennials, evergreens, non evergreens, so is that on purpose, it gives you the most interest maybe?

- Yes, because as you can see, we don't have a lot of annuals. And we like plants that come back. So we do have a lot of the perennials but for example, like the Helleborus is an evergreen and it'll bloom in the winter. So while a lot of things are not blooming, we have the Helleborus and a lot of camellias. Which looks spectacular. And we like to have a succession of blooming in the garden so we have a lot of redbuds and roses and magnolias and so on.

- Yeah, so any season of the year, you can have something beautiful in bloom, and whether you're out here enjoying it or whether you cut it and bring it indoors, there's always a flower to be had.

- Yes, and even if nothing is blooming, like in here, we have the structure with the boxwoods and the beautiful hostas. We get a lot of texture. As you can see we like to mix the with the ferns, the finer leaf with the thicker and broader leaves. So that it looks interesting.

- Right, so you've got that textural combination. And then even in the winter when the hostas are dormant and underground, you've still got the boxwoods and the monkey grass and that sort of stuff giving you the structure even in the winter time.

- [Olga] Yes.

- [Troy] And one of my favorite oakleaf hydrangeas is this double flowered one. It's so beautiful. It looks like it really blooms a long time.

- [Olga] Yes, it does. And we love to combine it with other kinds of hydrangeas because it's so unusual. And it's so bright, the white really pops because as you can see this is a shade garden and it gets kind of dark sometimes. So that adds a lot of light to the garden.

- [Troy] Yeah, it really brightens it up.

- [Olga] Um hmm.

- Well Olga, Scott, I wanna thank you for letting us come and be a part of your garden for a little while. It's obvious that this garden brings you guys so much joy and pleasure and you can really have a beautiful garden all the time.

- We try. What we really try, is just maybe to impart on everybody is that don't be overwhelmed. You know you can always change things, you can move things around. We have the planters that we can experiment and we like to explain that you can have four seasons of interest. So you have to have your evergreen for structure and then your color, your perennials that come back every year for the color. And the little pops of annuals if you like. So you always can have something. You don't have to feel like there's dead seasons and no color. Even in the winter here. So that's what I would say is don't be overwhelmed and just try something and you can do it.

- [Troy] Well thank you both so much.

- [Olga And Scott] Thank you.

- [Scott] Thanks for coming.

- [Sheri] How can you have a forest in a relatively small space? Or even on a table top? How 'bout, bonsai gardening? We're here today with Don George. Don, you've created quite a little oasis of bonsai back here in your backyard.

- [Don] Well I started doing bonsai probably 30 years ago. And you can see I have amassed quite a collection. And this is one of the traditional specimens or bonsai, that most people think about, the pine tree.

- And what does that word mean?

- Bonsai? You pronounce is bone sigh, not bonseye.

- Uh huh.

- And bonsai means tree in a pot. And the artistry of bonsai comes in coordinating the feel of the tree and the feel of the pot. So you don't put a rugged tree such as this in a very delicate pot.

- [Sheri] As this grows then you wrap it with wire.

- [Don] I do, and if you can focus in I'm wiring this tree with copper wire to bring the branches down this way. I'm not quite finished here yet.

- [Sheri] How old is this specimen?

- [Don] Well I knew you'd ask that question. And really it's somewhat of an inappropriate, I don't wanna say rude question.

- [Sheri] Question to ask, 'cause we don't ask their ages?

- [Don] That's right, because bonsai trees are supposed to look old. And so when you make a bonsai you expose a lot, I can tell you the parts, but asking the age is actually a compliment, because it's supposed to look old.

- But they can be very old, is that correct?

- Oh yes. This tree's probably 300 years old. I went to the National Arboretum and the Emperor of Japan gave Ronald Reagan a tree that was put in pot in 1400. So they can get very old and they're almost immortal.

- [Sheri] Don, what is this one? It's gorgeous.

- This is a specimen of a white oak that I got in Colorado from a friend's yard. He asked me if I wanted it and I said sure. And you can see it's got a beautiful trunk. A lot of large leaves I haven't styled it too much, but oak trees are, people always ask "Can you do bonsai of any tree?" And you can, but some trees don't look quite as good. And oak trees are that because the leaves don't shrink. A lot of the deciduous trees, as you keep them in a pot, year after year, the leaves will get smaller and smaller. Next is a beech tree. An American beech. And the leaves are smaller on this tree. It's only been in the pot for a couple of years. I collected it in the woods.

- [Sheri] So really you can just go out in the woods and find something that you think will be ideal and then bring it back and pot it up and start toying with it.

- [Don] As long as you get permission to take it out. But yes you can. You can do bonsai just about any tree. But again some, like a sycamore, the leaves don't shrink as much.

- [Sheri] Don, this reminds me of an ivy. What kinda tree is this?

- This is called a Trident maple. And a Trident maple is one of the classic trees used for bonsai. Because the leaves do shrink very small. I don't know if in other gardening you can leaf prune and you can defoliate the whole tree about this time of year. And then when the new leaves come out, they'll come out much smaller. Like the size of that leaf. Rather than some of the larger leaves that you see. So the Trident maples are very nice for bonsai because the leaves will shrink and you can defoliate them. So I have a couple more of those trees around here.

- And where did you learn all this? You said you've been doing it for years, but self taught, self read?

- Well pretty much self taught Everybody's probably seen The Karate Kid with Mr. Miyagi, wipe me on, wipe. Well the tree that he was trimming on, I took a lesson from the guy, that was Roy Nagatoshi, whose tree he was a Japanese master and so I've taken classes from him and some other masters. Instead of just having single trees in pots, you can do a grove or a forest of trees. And this is a Dawn Redwood forest. Typically with a forest you put the larger trees in the front and the smaller trees in the back to give it depth. Again, you put it in somewhat of a more rugged pot. But this isn't terribly rugged, but I added a rock. And again when you wire the branches, so that they look old. If you admire trees out in the forest, the young trees have their branches going up and the older trees are sagging because of the snow and the ice. And that's the look that you're trying to achieve.

- [Sheri] Tell me about how you take care of these when it's so hot out. We've had intense heat lately.

- [Don] Yes we have, and the pots are made out of ceramic and can get very hot. In fact, over 100 degrees, which would damage the roots of the trees. And so besides watering several times a day to keep things cool, I'll often cover eat pot with white fabric to reflect the sun from that.

- [Sheri] And you don't like drip irrigation?

- No, drip irrigation is unreliable and many of these trees are very expensive and plus I like them. So if the irrigation failed I'd have problems. So I hand water every day. At least twice a day. And one of the main considerations with bonsai is the soil. There's no organic material in this soil at all. It's all inorganic clay. This is called akadama, double fired clay from Japan. And then we have lava rock. And then some hummus. So there's no organic material whatsoever. So when you water the tree, the water goes straight through. And each bonsai pot, if I can show you a pot later, has several large holes in the bottom so that the water just flows straight through. And then you'll also have to fertilize very well. Because everything just runs through. The akadama is made to hold nutrients. That's why we use this. And it's rather expensive. You have to ship it in from Japan. But it holds nitrogen and it holds phosphorus and all the chemicals. You can see the roots very nicely on this tree. And most Japanese maples do that. And that's called the nebari. You have different parts of the tree, the nebari, and the trunk and then the branches. And they're supposed to be in harmony together just like a painting would be. And so when you style some of the bigger trees you want to have all these features in it. Bonsai is not just putting a tree in a pot. There's an artistic flavor to it.

- And I'm curious about the deciduous ones as well as the pine and evergreen. I saw some too, I think. What do you do when the weather turns cold?

- That's a good question. All of these trees I take into my own heated garage in the winter time. You can mulch them into the ground covered with pine straw that we have. The last few winters we've had have been kinda chilly and I've lost a tree or two. So I decided to put them in the garage. And then it's in a wagon and I can wheel it into the sun if it's a nice day and back in during the night.

- Do you continue to water them throughout the winter then?

- Oh yes, yes you need to do that. It brings up another great point. We often go to shows and the public asks, "Can I buy this bonsai? "I wanna bring it in my house and put it on my desk." You see all these trees are outside and they never, ever go inside unless it's for a show for one day or something.

- [Sheri] So Don, this is a starter. Tell me about this. How do you go about starting one?

- Well this is a juniper, a Shimpaku juniper. And the Nashville Bonsai Society had a workshop with a Japanese master about a month ago in my barn. And these looked like bushes that you would buy at the plant nursery. And between wiring these trees and trimming these trees, this is the way that you start designing true bonsai.

- That makes me come up with, I'm thinking of a question. So if I wanted to start one of these, I wouldn't buy a dwarf evergreen? I would start with a regular evergreen, not a dwarf or a miniature, like are available now.

- No, you can buy a regular evergreen at any plant nursery. You would make sure it has plenty of branches. And then have some wire and some snippers and away you can go. But you don't need dwarf.

- No?

- Anything'll work.

- [Sheri] Well great.

- And this next year, I'll put this into a nice bonsai pot, so it compliments. And so the bonsai is really living art and so you need to compliment this tree with a nice pot. But you can't do it this time of year. You have to wait until spring to really--

- Why is that?

- Well, the plant is growing actively now and using the roots. When you repot a bonsai, if we took--

- It shocks it a little maybe?

- It does, but if you cut off 30% of the foliage, you have to cut off 30% of the roots. So that it complements. And at this time of year the roots are actively working. If you cut off 30% it would probably kill the tree. So the trees are almost immortal because as you repot, like this tree would be repotted every five years, you retrim the roots so it grows new fibrous roots every five years so it can almost live forever.

- [Sheri] I know that you belong to a couple organizations. Are there help groups as well?

- [Don] Oh yes, most of the cities, Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis all have bonsai societies. You can probably look them up on the internet. Our society is very eager for new members and we're happy to help anybody who's interested in learning about bonsai.

- [Sheri] Well thank you so much Don. It's been wonderful. And I just think this is absolutely so peaceful and tranquil out here. Thank you for sharing.

- [Don] It is very nice and peaceful. And come back and visit anytime.

- [Sheri] Alright, thanks.

- We're gonna make really adult refrigerator salad today. So these are refrigerator pickled peppers. You can pickle a lot of things, but we're gonna utilize sweet peppers today, just because they're colorful and fun to use. So what we're gonna start with is our vinegar mixture. So we've got to make a brine solution in order to pickle the peppers. I like to use a combination of three different vinegars. So you can utilize white distilled vinegar, cider vinegar or white wine vinegar. Again, I like to use a mixture of the two and you're gonna make three cups of this. We've got two cups of water in our sauce pan over medium high heat. And we're going to add our vinegar to that water. Okay so now we've got to add it so that it's got a little brine to it, which means salt. So we're going to add salt to this mixture and then to keep it good and palatable we're going to add granulated sugar to that as well. So we're gonna leave this over medium high heat and allow this to come to a boil. Stir it so that you agitate the mixture and you dissolve the sugar and the salt. We're bringing this to a full rolling boil and then we're gonna pull it off the heat so that it can cool a little bit while we prepare the rest of our salad ingredients. Now one of the things that I like to do with this salad is do the prep ahead of time. So when you've got a little bit of time in the kitchen when you need a mindless task, go ahead and seed and julienne your peppers and slice your cucumbers and your onions. Then when you've got time next to the stove, you can just put this salad together really quickly. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is go ahead and start adding our ingredients to this decorative jar. It needs to be a nice tall, beautiful jar like this one if you've gone one. If you don't have one, you can utilize a big, Rubbermaid or Tupperware tub such as this one. Just make sure you've got enough room in your refrigerator to accommodate this. And then after it has soaked for three days, you can transfer it to a pretty container. So we're gonna just start with this one. Your natural inclination with this is to layer these ingredients so that you've got these beautiful layers all through this jar. But the problem with that is that when you get ready to utilize the salad mixture, you've got to dig to the bottom of this to get all of the ingredients. So instead, the easier thing to do is to kinda mix this with your hands as you go, just like I'm doing here. And you can see that I've used a mixture of red peppers, all sweet, orange, yellow and green. And so I'm just mixing all this together along with just some sliced red onions and our seedless cucumbers. Alright, so I'm just gonna keep mixing this with my hands here. See how pretty that is? It's really beautiful. And again, you can utilize anything you want. If you wanna use carrots for this you can use carrots. You can change this and use more cucumber and less peppers. So you can really tailor this to whatever your family likes. But this is gonna be lovely after it has had a chance to soak in the refrigerator. Okay I'm gonna add a few more cucumbers to this. And maybe a few more onions, just because I like them. And let's just top it off with this. Okay, one final little mix here. And then we're going to add some peeled garlic cloves. So I like the whole clove, no mincing. We're just gonna stick those kind of down in there. And we're going to add some mustard seeds to this. So this is around a teaspoon. You can add more to that if you want to. I'm gonna top this off with just a few more peppers here. Okay and all I'm going to do is take this and ladle this over our vegetable mixture. So everything, you'll see how nice and clear it is, everything's dissolved, your sugar and your salt. And you're just gonna keep ladling this over the top and then the key is that it needs to sit for about three days in your refrigerator. And that gives it time, really, to pickle. So we're taking this brine solution and just like you were doing if you were canning, you're gonna go ahead and pull this all the way to the top and then make sure that all of your vegetables are completely submerged down in that pickling liquid. And it's gonna look just like this. You've got a mixture of your peppers in there, versus layers of peppers. So that it's easy to get out and use.

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