Episode 2547

- [Narrator] Perennials are the backbone of a well-planned garden. They can provide texture, form, and color for years, even decades. Matt Kerske showcases some of the best for our climate. Plus, Jeff Poppen explains how to achieve and maintain healthy soil without chemicals. Join us. First, plants with a track record of success.

- Life has a funny way of coming full circle at times, and today is no different. I'm out here where my love affair with plants began over 12 years ago, in the land of the nurseries, McMinnville, Tennessee. I'm visiting Mary's Greenhouse, where it began once in the early 1970s, has now blossomed into a 50 plus greenhouse operation. So come along, we're going to be learning about proven plant performers that you need to have in your garden. I'm here with Beth Jacobs of Mary's Greenhouse, one of the family members of the originator, Mary Hamby, here, and we are talking proven performers for the shade, part-shade type areas. Beth, what are we looking at here? We're talking about some of your favorites and some of the varieties that are just time-tested and vigorous, and you know your crop as well as any as being around this for many years. Tell me about some of your favorites here.

- Well, We have some Pulmonaria's here that do well in pretty shady areas. They don't really like to be too dry, but consistent moisture is good. We've had a lot of trouble with the older type of Pulmonarias making it through our summers, but these are the longifolia hybrids and this is Trevi Fountain and this other one here is Raspberry Splash. They produce well for us and they also do well in people's gardens in the shady, moist places.

- That's really a nice, pop-up color there, in the deeper shade areas.

- Nice spring bloomer.

- Gotcha, gotcha. Of course we've got the beautiful hellibores down below.

- Yes we have Pink Frost, which is probably one of my favorite hellibores.

- Real tough.

- She's real vigorous, she has a marbled foliage, dark stems, the flowers open up light pink and they age to a prettier, darker, dusky rose. She starts blooming in January and she'll bloom for week and weeks. They're really pretty right now.

- Right and a good, dry, shade-type of plant. People really need to know that about hellebores.

- Yes, they are very tough. We don't have disease issues or bug issues. The deer seem to leave them alone. These are great plants for someone who has a lot of shade.

- A fan favorite right next to those guys, I see we have some tiarellas, is that right?

- Yeah this is Sugar and Spice, one of my favorite varieties it has a nice shiny leaf, nice dark coloration in it, and a really good bloomer. I've had this one at my house for years and years and it has done excellent.

- [Matt] A bit of a spreader.

- [Beth] Yes, it is a bit of a spreader.

- [Matt] Under tree canopies.

- [Beth] The flowers actually are slightly fragrant as well.

- Right, right, right. Fantastic. And when I say spreading, it's nothing invasive. They're very containable.

- None of this stuff is invasive.

- Absolutely, good point to mention. So yeah, tiarellas are a great spring-blooming favorite and of course no shade environment would be complete without the all-favorite heucheras. And we have some tough varieties here because there are tons of them, I know, in the industry and I know people can get a little boggled with all the varieties and which to choose and which are the toughest. but here in the middle Tennessee region, we always, as gardeners, we want to choose some really vigorous varieties. Tell me about some of the varieties that we're looking at.

- I've chosen all ones that are villosa hybrids because they seem to tolerate our heat and humidity better here in Tennessee. This particular one is Southern Comfort and has a beautiful orange foliage. The leaves get really big. They'll get as big as your hand. The established clumps are really pretty and the Blackberry Ice is one that has been out for just a few years. It's from Proven Winners. It has a really pretty, purple-veined, with almost a sheen across the leaves in the early spring and then it ages to a pretty pewter color.

- [Matt] Beautiful. And then we've got some chartreuse varieties.

- The yellow-leafed varieties are very popular. This is Electric Lime and as the temperature cools off, you'll get some red veining in it in the fall. But it's this lovely chartreuse color in the warmer months.

- That's a really bright pop of color there. And the Tiramisu variety has a little bit, more of a stronger red variegation in the leaf there.

- The Tiramisu has performed, I know it has been on the market for several years, but it has performed very well for us and it seems to do well in customers' gardens as well.

- Absoluteley and then I think we're rounding out the pack with another type of Villosa hybrid over there.

- Yeah that's Caramel. That's problably one of my favorite ones of all time. It's been out for a few years now but it can't hardly be beat.

- Caramel, I have to remember that name. It's been in trade magazines for the last couple years for southern style gardens for the shade and that amber color really does pop. We've got a bit of a hybrid here with a heucherella. Am I saying that right?

- Yes, that's the way we say it. That's a cross between your coral bells and your Tiarellas and the common name is Foamy Bells and the foliage changes with the seasons, so it's always pretty. This one also has villosa breeding in its lineage so it does well, it tolerates the humidity in our area.

- And this one looks like it's called Sweet Tea

- Yes, that's Sweet Tea.

- Sweet Tea, so it might even have some spreading capabilities.

- Yeah, the clumps can get quite large.

- Can get a bit larger. A nice spring bloomer to that as well. Fantastic and that's one of the benefits of working in this production for as many years as you have. You've been around customers and you've heard, I'm sure, numerous gardening stories of what has done well and I'm sure that's maybe affected your buying habit of what you decide to grow for the coming years, to an extent, and these have been in production for a couple years?

- Yeah, some of these are as new as three years. Some of them are as old as 11 or 12 years. Production is a little different than outside gardening. We have to find stuff that we can produce well, that does well in people's gardens as well, so that we both succeed.

- So Beth, here we are with some tough, proven performers for the sun this time. We've got an eclectic mix of mostly perennials here on the cart and a little bit of tropicals down below. Let's start up top here and start talking about some of your favorites that we see right here. What you got?

- These are scabiosas. Thus is a brand new series for us, called the Flutter series. It comes in a rose-pink and a blue and they have done very well for us in production and they're long-blooming. If you deadhead them that will help prolong the blooms Easy to grow and not any real issues.

- [Matt] So pest free?

- [Beth] Pretty much, pretty much.

- Good to know. In front of that we've got a little bit of lavender coming on here. Tell me about Phenomenal series, you're saying? That's a unique name.

- Yes this is Phenomenal lavender. We've had this for a few years now. We've been very impressed with it. It's a hybrid. It seems to tolerate our heat and humidity in Tennessee much better.

- [Matt] Yeah, sometimes that English lavender kind of peters out.

- [Beth} Yes and it blooms for quite some time in the middle of the summer and it's just done very well. It needs short drainage just like the other lavender does.

- [Matt] Little bit of sand and compost mixed in.

- [Beth] Yes and you can actually put it, maybe, on a little bit of a hillside or something to where the water drains off quickly, but it has done very well.

- [Matt] Key feature with lavender and rosemary is that good sanding compost, good drainage.

- Very long-blooming. This has been an excellent lavender for our area.

- Good to know, good to know. Carrying on to some of my favorites here and into the world of new plants for people's gardens is the spurges and the euphorbias I see. And you have two varieties here. One of them being Blackbird and Ascot's Rainbow. Blackbird; tell me a little bit about this one.

- [Beth] Course it has this really pretty dark foliage and these attractive bracts that come up in the spring, early summer. It's just an easy plant to grow.

- [Matt] When it's hot, dry.

- [Beth] Yeah, it takes hot, dry. It also does well in containers.

- [Matt] Uhhuh, nice containers.

- [Beth] Nice container plant. The Ascot Rainbow is a variegated version. Gets a little taller maybe than the Blackbird, but it also has those really pretty flower bracts and it has done well. It's come back good for us in our gardens at the greenhouse. The euphorbia is just a really great perennial.

- [Matt] I've see it come back in the Nashville area, as well. I have seen it in the containers. It's just something a little bit more unusual and sometimes people use them in little bit more modern, contemporary style designs around planters and whatnot. If you pair these with some creeping sedums or succulents and maybe some wavy grasses, the combination is just amazing. Great to know about the couple of different varieties of euphorbias there. And then of course we've got the garden favorite, but maybe a different variety that people haven't really become familiar with. This is obviously the leucanthemum, or the daisy, common garden daisy. And this variety here that we're working with is Daisy May. How long you been growing this one here?

- [Beth] Well, we've had this one maybe three or four years and we've been impressed with it. It has done well for us. Becky is the garden standard, I think. It's been out forever and it gets about three foot tall and that sometimes is a little tall for people.

- [Matt] It does.

- [Beth] And Daisy May gets more like 18 inches or maybe up to two foot and I think it fits in those little, smaller spots.

- [Matt] Sure, a little bit of a more compact grower and it just gets so rangy. Sometimes people think they want to put it in front of the border with really, three or four feet like that Becky, sometimes just gets a little out of control.

- And if you deadhead, I think it prolongs the bloom and the blooms can get three inches across and it's quite showy when it gets going.

- Great little cut flower there to the garden. Can kinda stash them in some tight spots in the garden. We drop down below here and on the left-hand side of us, we've got some different varieties of dianthus.

- [Beth] Yes, these are part of the Star series. We have Fire Star and then we have the double magenta one there in the front, that is Starlet, and we've been pleased with these. These are very long-blooming. Also, if you deadhead `em, I think it prolongs the bloom. And they smell wonderful.

- [Matt] Ah, you've gotta smell dianthus sometime. You just gotta stop and smell this dianthus.

- [Beth] They are wonderful.

- [Matt] A sweet, peppery smell.

- They stay nice and compact with that pretty blue-gray foliage. Really nice plants.

- Hot and dry. I've seen these around some brick retaining walls and good drainage really. And they kinda clump and they can be divided also maybe as the years go on, but a really good addition. And of course we're gonna wrap it up with some old-time favorites that are coming around again. I think they're making a really popular comeback in the industry, really. Succulents.

- Yes.

- Tropical succulents that we're looking at here. Some more unique varieties that people can grow maybe in some part-sun to shade parts out on their patio.

- [Beth] They do very well in mixed pots where they need very good drainage, but I would protect them from the hottest part of the sun. These are easy to grow. This is Blue Fingers; this is a senecio. This is a Coppertone sedum and a lot of people assume that, since it's a sedum, it's hardy but this one is not.

- [Matt] Good to know.

- [Beth] And this is an aeonium, which is called Kiwi, which has that pretty little red variegation around the leaf. It's a real attractive, easy grower.

- [Matt] Gotcha, gotcha. So some really unusual varieties here down in your greenhouses and good to know that they love sun, but just not a hot, midday.

- Not that hot, midday sun.

- Exactly right, and good drainage as well. Well that's fantastic. It's good to know that you guys grow such an eclectic mix down here for every one and it's really great to see all the tough, proven, sun varieties that you have in your greenhouses.

- Thank you.

- Nitrogen is a fascinating element. Molecularly bonding really tightly itself. It's the sixth element on the periodic table and is in all living matter. Hence, extremely important for plant growth. A major difference between biodynamic practitioners and other farmers is the way we view nitrogen. We insist that our nitrogen come from the biological activity of the soil in the form of amino acids, rather than as nitrate nitrogen, that you get out of a bag of artificial fertilizer or chicken manure. We want to have our nitrogen come into our plants the way that nature intended and farmers having been growing plants forever. 78% of the atmoshpere is nitrogen. So there are 70 million pounds above every acre of soil. You don't need or want to buy it. Nature has effective methods for getting this nitrogen from the air into plants. You can taste the sweetness in a biologically fertilized plant and the bitterness in food grown with nitrates. That's because the plant has to convert the nitrates into amino acid nitrogen and that takes energy which, in the plant, is sugar. Insects can't digest sugar, so they leave naturally fertilized leaves alone. But they love plants fertilized with nitrates. This crimson clover patch was planted last September, with a nurse crop of buckwheat and daikon radish. It will supply a major portion of the next crop's nitrogen needs, which this year will be sweet potatoes. A bacteria called rhizobium grows on the roots of crimson clover and other legumes like that. So right there is a little nodule of nitrogen and that's the amino acid nitrogen that we want to have. All farms had to grow clovers and legumes before the synthesis of nitrogen. That's how they got the nitrogen for their crops. In the 1800's, it was actually a law that you had to grow clover every two years out of four on your cropland. This beautiful biodynamic compost has billions of microorganisms in every spoonful. Many of these are also capable of fixing atmoshperic nitrogen. The amino acid nitrogen then finds its way into the plants through feeder roots. A plant actually has two kinds of root: one for bringing up water and one for getting nutrients. We don't want our soils to have water-soluble fertilizers because then, when the plant wants a drink of water, it's getting these nitrates into it when it's not asking for it. Then it will grow in an unbalanced way and be susceptible to diseases and other problems. We want the plant to get nitrogen from the soil life when it asks for it, in a proper amount and in balance with all the other nutrients that it needs. All farms had to have livestock before the discovery of how to synthesize nitrate from the air. A cow's stomach gives away the very microbes the soil need to fix nitrogen, but it's best to compost it for a year to turn any nitrate into amino acid nitrogen. Nitrate is a key ingredient of gun powder. It was at the beginning of World War I, when Germany, who couldn't import mined nitrate, developed the factories for making it. Those factories sold weapons to both Germany and England, prolonging the war for six more years. And then they became fertilizer factories. Once farmers started using nitrate, they had to continue because the nitrate kills the very microbes that fix nitrogen. Don't worry about nitrogen and don't believe the experts who say that you have to buy it. There's nitrogen everywhere. Just use compost, cover crops, and no chemicals, and microbes will return that can fix nitrogen into your soil from the 1,400 pounds of nitrogen that's above every square foot of your garden.

- I'm here today with Jack Corn. We're in one of his beautiful, beautiful hollows.

- This is called Artist's Hollow. It was named after man that lived here whose name was Artist. We call the road over there the Healing Path because it's so pleasant and quiet and it will heal you if you're in a bad disposition.

- And we are inside Millersville.

- Right, inside the city.

- And how vast, how much land do you have here?

- There's 200 acres in this farm. This particular acreage is probably on 10 acres. This property has many varieties of wildflowers in this 10 acres as there are in a lot bigger places. Not more than the Smokies or somewhere like that, but in such a short space we have a huge variety of `em. There's about 125 varities year-round. This is Jacob's ladder and it's just blooming today. And it's beautiful. Little, bitty, tiny, violet flowers. That's a white trillium that hangs on the bank. That's White Nodding trillium, which is a little bit late. This is a spring beauty which is an early flower. Normally it'd be out in March.

- And you said it was the first thing that reminds you that spring is here.

- Yeah, it comes up and when I see it, I know that oh, it's spring again. It's right next to a little baby trillium, a little baby Sweet Betsy. I teach the kids it's a toad shade. I tell `em toads get under it to get outta the sun. This is the wild ginger that the Indians and early pioneers used. The flower grows down on the ground, under the leaves, and the ants and other crawling bugs pollinate it. Each little flower has a little geometric pattern in the middle of it.

- And then we have the Tennessee Star.

- The Tennessee Star, a chickweed, and it's a fairly early flower, too, but it blooms later than some and it's a beautiful flower. They're all over the place this year.

- [Sheri] And also surrounding us, we have the wild delphinium.

- [Jack] Wild, purple, spring larskpur; it's everywhere. Probably this year we've had more delphinium than any year we remember and we don't know why, but they just are very prevalent this year.

- [Sheri] Tell me about your wood poppies that I see growing up that hill there. Just so beautiful.

- The technical name of those is celandine poppy, but it's commonly known as the yellow wood poppy. It grows in profusion and it's been yellow mixed in with the blue and the purple is really pretty. They grow right up the side of the hill, just clinging to the side of the hill. Huge yellow flower and it's just absolutely, stunningly beautiful. Every year that rue anemone grows in the pocket or little hole in that carve. There's some dirt down in there. We haven't planted it. We haven't done anything to it. The blooms are weak now, they're about gone because the rue anemone comes early. But every single year that plant grows in that tree in those roots and a lot of other stuff grows in there, too. But we love that tree and we love that scene.

- Jack, I'm interested in how you maintain this and how you got started. I know you said you didn't plant any of this. Explain to me how this all came to be.

- All this came to be by nature itself. The good Lord did all this. We didn't do anything but clean. We first got here, it was all grown up, and we cleaned it out and the next year the blue-eyed Mary's showed up, and then they got more widespread and more widespread and more widespread. We maintain it by mowing it. We don't mow it every part of it, but we mow the flat areas to keep down the wild rose bush, the honeysuckle vines, and the other invasive plants. And the small trees. We find that when too many small trees get in there, the flowers go away and it's probably the root system and taking the nutrients, but I don't know that for sure. Places that we've cleared out with small trees, we've gotten lots more flowers, but we really don't do anything but just keep it as it is, is really what we do. The blue-eyed Mary's are an endangered species in Tennessee and on the poster of endangered flowers, it's right in the middle. We think this is one of the largest stands, if not the largest stand in Tennessee. It is a huge amount of them and they grow some in Taylor Hollow, one place in the Smokies, but they're not anywhere else. They come up about the last week in March. They start up and they finish normally the third or fourth weekend in April. But this year's been especially, there've been more of them in a shorter space, a tight space, and they been really light blue all year. Normally they'd be looking a little ragged right now. But they're not and we're very pleased with that. It's just a joy to see them.

- [Sheri] They are gorgeous.

- This is the bloodroot and it's red and Indians used it for dye. I think they actually, after they boiled the dye, I think they probably ate the root. It's a big white flower and the bloom usually only lasts one day. This is the leaf, which is a great big leaf, and is very attractive and stays here a long time. If you put it on you, you can see how the Indians would use it for decorations. Skin decorations and so forth. And the roots sometimes are very long and they look like a finger that's bleeding.

- [Sheri] Jack, I notice there are some sedum growing up in this moss and sedum is one of the hottest things right now in potted plants and container gardens.

- [Jack] Yeah, I know it is. We have a lot of it in the woods. It just grows everywhere. It's growing on top of another moss. I think it's beautiful, I love to see it. I love the way it climbs the tree. This is goldenseal. It's all one word, goldenseal, s-e-a-l. The bloom grows on the leaf with three points and the bigger leaf has five points and is opposite there and there are more leaves at the bottom. It has a very yellow root and it was used for medicinal purposes. It's used to cure colds and coughs. About 1918, the Department of Agriculture estimated there was 200- to 300-thousand pounds of that stuff sold in the United States and it is sort of endangered now because so many people dig up the roots and sell them.

- [Sheri] Jack, there are three gorgeous shades of purple here. Tell me about these three wildflowers.

- [Jack] This is called the wild blue phlox, even though appears to be lavender or purple here. This is the phacelia, which I think is beautiful in spring. This is the spring larkspur over there.

- [Sheri] Tell us what this is.

- [Jack] This is spiderwort, which is a really beautiful plant and I don't know if you know or not, but whenever you hear wort it just means plant. And I can't tell you why this one's cut down and why it's blooming. I think it's lovely.

- [Sher] It sure is. Well, Jack, I wanna tell you thank you. I think we're very fortunate to get to view all this. I know you're not open to the public.

- [Jack] We do have selected groups come sometimes. Sometimes a garden club we'll let come, because we don't want to shut if off and not have anybody ever see it. That'd be foolish. But really we can't be open to the public. But it is, to me, is just a beautiful place and we're very proud of it.

- [Sheri] And on this spot we're standing, you call the Healing Path.

- [Jack] The Healing Path.

- [Sheri] And I think it would wash all your cares away. Thank you so much for letting us come enjoy your hollow.

- [Jack] Thank you.

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