Episode 2711

- [Announcer] Behind every Pick Tennessee Products logo is a real Tennessee farmer. Pick Tennessee Products has helped people find those local farmers, food, and fun for over 30 years. This garden was planned and plotted by the homeowners many years ago. Now, this mature garden has drama, ambience, grandeur, and habitat for a variety of wildlife. Annette Shrader takes us on a tour. Then, Troy Martin shares some of the design challenges he had to overcome in this large landscape. Join us. First, water features, hard scape, plant selections, all add up to a beautiful place to be.

- [Annette] Today I have stepped into an acre and a half of estate gardens from front to back that are filled, and Debbie Pittman and her husband over 38 years have designed and planted. So Debbie, you start over there with water.

- [Debbie] Right. And I have a lot of swamp iris that are in that smallest pool. I have water lilies, and something called corkscrew.

- [Annette] Yes. What makes this so good?

- Well, this is so easy is one reason, but I have the pickerel.

- [Annette] With the purple bloom.

- [Debbie] That just takes, the only thing we have to do is that at the end of the season we pull some of it out, because it's gonna be, you know, it loves to grow. The parrot feather is right there, and again, all I do at the end of the season is take that out and keep a couple of sprigs, and over winter it. Water hyacinth's the same way. The water hyacinth is not... I have some water hyacinth in there that's blooming, but it will proliferate. So everything is easy. That keeps the algae down, along with the black dye I put in. Everything's happy here. You see the dragonflies, they're happy.

- [Annette] Those herons look like they're real.

- [Debbie] No, they're not.

- [Annette] I know it, but I'm amazed at the number of dragonflies that I see in here. And you have no mosquitoes.

- [Debbie] No, and that's one reason I have no mosquitoes. I also have frogs and tadpoles that help. I put the mosquito dunks on the surface to make sure their eggs don't hatch. But it's easy, its really is easy gardening.

- [Annette] You know, it's just so amazing, I just can't take it all in. And everything about it, aesthetically, what I hear and smell and see is, it's overwhelming to me, it's just...

- [Debbie] You're nice.

- [Annette] That's real truth. And then we can swap over onto the other side, and you fooled me on this optical illusion.

- Yes.

- There's really no water going under this bridge.

- Right, there's three separate ponds, because they're three different levels.

- [Annette] I see a reflection pool, and there is a secret, so give us the overview and how this achieved, Debbie.

- [Debbie] Well, this one is our deepest pool. We wanted to put the fish here. Now, I don't have any fancy fish because I don't trust the raccoons or whatever else, the herons, to come and get them. So it's three feet deep. I just have a lot of goldfish in here. The black dye that I put in the pond keeps the algae out, really, and it also helps show the goldfish when they do come up. I feed them with the duck weed, which is also pretty, we just don't try to let it proliferate too much.

- [Annette] Yes, if it gets out of hand, you just dip it out?

- [Debbie] Right, right. But it doesn't. Whatever I put in here, those fish will go. It's that pond over there that's kind of like my, I grow it there and then put it in here for the fish. Because this is my prettiest one.

- [Annette] Yes, to say. And the ladies over there, they represent--

- [Debbie] There's actually four seasons. The fourth one is--

- [Annette] Oh, I see it.

- [Debbie] So it's the four seasons.

- [Annette] The four seasons, that's what I thought.

- [Debbie] That was a Christmas present, so, yeah.

- [Annette] Well, as beautiful as this is, there's another area that I love, and it's a cutting garden.

- [Debbie] Okay.

- [Annette] You know, Debbie, I myself believe that there never should be a garden that doesn't have a cutting garden, because even though you can see them outside, it's so wonderful to take them inside.

- Right.

- And you've designed this yourself geometrically, and you've placed certain plants in here. What do you like?

- Well, originally, in the spring, I love the peonies, which are all over the place, but they are past their prime.

- I understand.

- And then I have dahlias that I can get to come back. I've figured out a way to make them come back and to bloom twice. So I have really added a lot of dahlias, but then I have some heirloom rubrum lilies that are really old, and then I've just added a lot of Asiatic lilies to have some color in here during the spring.

- [Annette] Yeah. This is backed up by something that really protects them. Tell us about your cryptomerias.

- [Debbie] Right. The cryptomeria are about 10 years old. I never thought they would get this large this fast, but they give a lot of texture to the grounds, really, when you look at it, because they add a lot. And then I repeat them in the back, and anyway, I like cryptomeria.

- [Annette] You know something else, because that's west, this is north. This is a wonderful windbreak.

- Yes.

- Because your bad weather and all in the wintertime comes from that direction, so you're creating protection--

- That's correct.

- For the plants that are in here.

- I've tried, and the Burford Holly do the same thing.

- Yeah.

- So yeah, we've got it pretty much enclosed.

- Yes you do. Debbie, in a garden of this size, what's surrounded by these magnificent trees, you do have some shade, also. And as we go along through this shaded area here, you've got a lot of wonderful plants, but this is such a beautiful spotlight right here, and I believe you said you have two annuals in this kind.

- Right, well that one, that's a fern, and then my mandevilla.

- [Annette] That is remarkable. Because people fill in sometimes with annuals, but you don't need to.

- [Debbie] Well, it's low maintenance, so I'd rather not buy them every year.

- I find that a little bit low maintenance that just came out of your mouth, but I don't believe you.

- Lower maintenance, let's put it that way.

- Okay. And I'm enjoying walking with you, because I know that you are the gardener here. It's you from the very beginning.

- And my husband, right.

- Right, exactly. And in this shaded area, you are afforded the luxury of hostas, aren't you?

- I have lots and lots of hostas. I like them and they also keep the weeds down, so that's another reason.

- [Annette] That's good, that's another mulch.

- [Debbie] So lower maintenance.

- [Annette] That's good, it still holds down the moisture. It keeps it in, too. And I see you have azaleas, and they bloom well in here?

- [Debbie] They do fine. They do great. This is deciduous, so they still get enough sun in the early spring to bloom great, yeah.

- [Annette] I can tell that, and the wild ropy's happy also.

- [Debbie] Yes, that's again a way to just, less expensive way to line your borders.

- [Annette] Well, it camouflages, and strolling through this path, it's very cool and the breeze is in here, so I think that you probably enjoy this area.

- That's right.

- With these two chairs to sit in.

- [Debbie] And we sit over there, that's right. It's the coolest place.

- I wanted to talk to you about this Solomon's Seal now.

- Right.

- Is this native, because it's not the variegated.

- [Debbie] No, it is native. I think I put in my first variegated this year, but I'm not sure where it is. It's just one plant.

- [Annette] They're actually relative to the lily of the valleys.

- [Debbie] They look like that, they do look like that.

- [Annette] They're in that family, and then there's something else that you've included in here that gives you green in the wintertime, is your hellebores.

- [Debbie] I love them. I've had those probably 20 years, and they just--

- [Annette] And they self-propagate?

- [Debbie] They go all over the yard, and I let them go.

- [Annette] That makes it exciting.

- [Debbie] Right, yes. Because they're beautiful from December until, I mean, they're still pretty.

- [Annette] So Debbie, I noticed an interesting sign at the front of your driveway. You are participating in the natural wildlife...

- [Debbie] Wildlife federation, and it's an urban wildlife habitat. And so that is encouraging people to, in the suburbs, to understand that they can enliven their gardens by adding the three things that animals need, which is food, and water, and a place to hide. The things that are desirable, the butterflies, the bees, you're looking for pollinators. I added even a bat house. So it's just, when you look outside, it doesn't look boring. It looks very active and fun. There's always something to look at. It just makes you want to sit outside. So that's why I do it, and that's why I talk to other people about doing it.

- [Annette] Debbie, this alley of white Natchez Crape Myrtle is fabulous and it's a good example, to me, of how it takes time to make a garden.

- Right.

- It takes two people willing to work together. They may not have the same sight and vision, but they cohesively work together, and you have created a masterpiece.

- [Troy] On landscape design projects of any size, there are always challenges. But big projects like this one often present even more challenges. One that we had here was a downhill drainage swell that we needed to control the erosion in. So in this instance, we used a dry creek bed. But that was not the only challenge that we faced on this project. This stone arch that serves as the entrance to the house and the forecourt is inspired by the stone arch at the Sewanee Cemetery, which is about the same size and proportion, also covered with wisteria, but we made a conscious choice here to use our native wisteria. This property sits right on the edge of the mountain and backs up to pristine woodland. So we didn't want to take a chance with the Japanese or Chinese forms of wisteria that are so capable of escaping into the wild. So we used wisteria frutescens amethyst falls, which is one of the cultivars of our native species, one of our native species. The thing that I love about this plant is that it's less aggressive, so it's easier to maintain its size and shape on this arch, and it flowers more than once a year. We get a big flush of bloom in the spring like we see now, and again two or three times during the summer we'll have a smaller flush of repeat flowering. One of the most spectacular shows of the year happens right here at the front of the house. The iris are just coming into bloom now. We're not quite at peak, but we're close. And in another week or so, this will be a 200-foot long river of iris. We have three species in here, iris versicolor, actually have two species of iris versicolor. Iris virginica, and then flowering right in front of me, a cultivar of iris virginica called contraband girl. And I chose these because these are water-loving iris, and we have a space here at the front of the house that stays damp all the time. So this was the perfect plant as a solution to a wet place. One of the big challenges in any garden this day and age, whether you're in the city or whether you're in the country, are animals. We have deer, raccoons, chipmunks, voles, you name it, especially up here on the mountain. We have all kinds of challenges. But one of the biggest is deer. And we learned our lesson early on. So you see cages around all of our smaller trees, and that is to keep the bucks from rubbing their antlers when they're trying to shed them in the fall. We didn't do that early on, and we learned a hard lesson. We lost some trees, and these trees that are two or three inches in caliper, that's the perfect size for them to hook their antlers around and rub up and down trying to shed those late in the fall. And they can really do very serious damage in a very short period of time. One of the many challenges of this site was the steep slope on the back side of the house. We wrestled with a number of ways to sort of alleviate that and make this house feel like it wasn't just perched on the ledge of the mountain but was actually kind of growing up out of it. And the solution to that problem was this, what ended up being one of our favorite features, this large, three-tiered terrace that takes you from the main level of the house down to the level of the garden without having a 12 or 15 foot drop off at the back of the house. We regraded this. We planted thinking that we were basically in a drier area that would need irrigation, and about a year into the planning and planting, this became a wet area. We have a little wet weather spring that seeps out from under the terrace, and so our original planting did not work. We moved many of the plants. Unfortunately we lost a few. And we have now come back in and replanted plants that will tolerate having wet feet, like the Virginia sweetspire. We even have some water iris growing up here. It's wet enough throughout the season that we're able to grow iris that normally would be found on river banks. And I even have some true bog plants growing up along these edges, like marsh marigold. So in this particular area, when we were faced with a challenge, we had to rise to that challenge and find something that would really work. One of the really important things in this garden was to take advantage of all of these sweeping vistas and views that we have here. From every point on the property, there is something to see, and we really tried hard to take advantage of that. And then again, on the list of challenges here on the property, here about a year ago we had a big wind storm, and we had one of our largest trees come down, and in a very fortuitous move by Mother Nature, she laid it down right across the end of the garden without hitting anything else, and we've decided not to take the tree out but to just let it be the end point to a beautiful, natural garden. One of the final challenges we faced in designing this garden was to create a sense of privacy, because while we are up here on top of the mountain, we do have neighbors on either side. So we created evergreen screening with arborvitae, magnolias, Nellie R. Stevens Hollies, and I think we've really created a sense of privacy. We also had to maintain those other challenges that we faced, with wet areas, with water moving on the property. We are on the side on the lip of the mountain up here, so we have a lot of water movement and we had to address all of those challenges, and I hope that we've done that in an effective way.

- Lovage. I kind of thing it's a well underused herb in this area. Has the flavor of celery, although it's a little bit tougher. It's good for soups and stews, anything that cooks a long time. But my favorite thing about lovage is the stems are hollow. So if you snip it, strip the leaves off, cut it, and if you like Bloody Mary or any other drink, you can use it as a straw because it's hollow and you get the flavor of the lovage which is a celery flavor. Try some lovage.

- Have you ever wondered what it's like to grow million of African violets and other flowering house plants? I have. It's always been one of my aspirations in life. To make my dreams a reality, I'm here at Holtkamp Greenhouses in Nashville, Tennessee, the world's largest producer of African violets with 11 acres under production. So I'm here with Russell Kerchner of Optimara. He's one of the key account managers here. I understand you've been with Optimara for quite some time now, huh?

- Yeah, 10 years now. So Matt, welcome to Holtkamp Greenhouses.

- Thanks a lot, man, it's really great being here and seeing this amazing place. And I understand this is just one of the sections, there's many others, where this is more of a finishing house.

- [Russell] Yeah, this is section four for finishing of the African violet.

- [Matt] So from start to finish here, Russell, what are we looking at as far as from a seed to a finished product?

- [Russell] Well, the stages vary. My typical average answer is about eight weeks. But like I said, that does vary.

- [Matt] Okay.

- [Russell] That's different stages. Combine that to about three different stages, so you're looking at about 24 weeks.

- [Matt] Wow, that's pretty impressive. A little quicker than I thought. Now tell me, I know Optimara is world's largest grower of African violets. Can you give me an estimation on the number of units that you kick out in a given year?

- [Russell] Well, we do, and that's of course top secret, but I always like to say, just millions.

- [Matt] We'll keep it at the millions. That's large enough for myself. But I understand Optimara didn't always grow African violets in this location. There was some history to this site, as I understand.

- Yeah, the previous was Tanjoy's Farm and Greenhouse, and they were in the early 1900s, and they did a lot of cut roses and some nursery stock. Holtkamps came over from Germany. Holtkamp, Reinhold Holtkamp senior bought this place in the late 70s and tore down some of the older greenhouses here and start through the early 80s built some of these sections you see now, and got the production of the violets just strong, strong growing with a lot of research and development, creating some of the color patterns and the different bloom styles that you see, and just did a whole lot of innovation for the African violet. And the Holtkamps are now working on their 4th generation.

- [Matt] Now Russell, so we've got quite a collection here of African violets. Are these particularly the ones that maybe my older generations like my mother or grandmother grew?

- Not these particular ones. These are of the My series, which have been released from Holtkamp in the past five years.

- Pretty new, then.

- These are new varieties.

- What makes them so unique, I guess?

- So the center color, and then the white outer ring, and there's about seven varieties to that, so you kind of see different colors but all with that white outer ring on the bloom. And then you kind of look at this one, which is a My Joy, but it's not supposed to be that way. It needs to have more white on the outer. So it's kind of a defect. We need to get that one out of the gene pool.

- [Matt] Defect in the gene pool. Got to clean it up a little bit. So we got a bit of solid color leafs and a little bit of irrigation in the leafs as well, huh?

- [Russell] Yeah, then a couple of the other ones we have are variegated. Optimar has these nice variegation in the leaves. We have a few varieties of that. And then we go to a solid white one where we have a few solid white varieties.

- [Matt] I gotcha. Well, these are gorgeous. Russell, we're standing in some spectacular African violets, a little bit more unique than anything I've ever seen. Tell me a little bit about these.

- [Russell] So this is the new variety, called My Sensation.

- [Matt] Okay.

- [Russell] Interesting trait for this particular violet is the very long life of the bloom.

- [Matt] Like what are we talking about here?

- [Russell] Three or four times more than the standard.

- [Matt] So almost a couple months then, maybe of color.

- [Russell] Yeah, it's the chlorophyll in the green and kind of the yellowish in there that makes this bloom last tremendously long. So we could probably go a good two months with this bloom stem like that.

- Two months, and then after that, I'm sure you cut back on some of the dead flower blossoms.

- Sure, you pull them as needed, as they grow apart, and then of course let your violet just continue to grow and continue to bloom for you.

- An average space in between bloom time on an African violet would be...

- I'm not sure about this particular one, because it is a little bit different, but for other ones you're looking at about six to eight weeks.

- Six to eight weeks. So it's okay if you don't see anything happen after two weeks. Give your African violets a little time to sleep, and keep them fed and keep the highlight on them and they'll come right back.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- Sounds great. Now Russell, we are surrounded by beautiful plants here, and this is one of the older areas of Holtkamp greenhouses, Now, your typical standard size in the African violet is four inch, but around us is something a lot smaller.

- This is the miniature two inch.

- Gotcha. And so these are also popular as well.

- Oh, very popular. A 5.5 centimeter, a true semi-miniature Optimara African violet.

- [Matt] Beautiful. Even though they're small, they still pack a flowery punch there.

- [Russell] They do indeed.

- [Matt] And so around the African violets, we also have an assortment of foliage plants as well. These are some of the other varieties that you grow here?

- [Russell] That's right. We do foliage in the two inch as well. Strong numbers in foliage and ferns and that kind of caters to the miniature world of gardening and the fairy gardening, and--

- [Matt] Great for the kids.

- [Russell] Oh, wonderful.

- [Matt] So we're growing millions of African violets around here, Russell. What kind of tips can you offer the homeowner that brings one of these beautiful things into their house for optimum success?

- Back to the basics. The water. The water needs to have a steady feed of fertilization, like a liquid soluble fertilizer.

- Okay. Like a once a month, or every time you water?

- Every time you water.

- Every time you water, okay.

- Every time is a good time. Room temperature water, do not use cold tap water out during the winter time.

- Shocks them a little bit, maybe?

- [Russell] Yeah, it kind of shocks them a little bit. So they like room temperature's optimal, whatever would be a good 70 degrees inside the house. They want lots and lots of light, but not direct sunlight. They need to be--

- [Matt] Strong filtered light?

- [Russell] Exactly, there you go. And then there's holes on the bottom that when placed on the table, we flood the tables, and so the water soaks up from the bottom.

- [Matt] So water always from the bottom and never from the top. I guess it disrupts their foliage a little bit.

- [Russell] That's right. When you get water on it there and the sun shines through the little beads of water, that's where you get your little magnifying glass.

- [Matt] Yeah, a little magnifying glass leaf burn.

- There you go. The bloom cycle is anywhere from six to eight weeks, and then you're gonna have a time of rest, and then you'll have more buds come through. Now, if you follow those three criteria of that. A lot of times you'll have plants that just have a really nice foliage but no blooming. You need to get some light to it.

- Get some light and maybe some additional fertilizer, to help kick charge that bloom.

- [Russell] There you go.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- [Russell] One of the things we do here is we'll pull the buds from the flowers, which people just absolutely hate.

- [Matt] Oh, that would scare most homeowners away.

- [Russell] That's the process we do. And then you take that, and you see all the good roots out of there, that's a nice, healthy plant. And we'll stick that right into a six inch, so that's how you bump up your size. So then we're sending all the energy to making leafs and roots and no buds right now. So the plant gets bigger, then it puts on a nice set of buds and flowers come in later.

- [Matt] I understand that Optimar is only a grower wholesaler, and that you have retail locations that you're shipping them to. Where else can customers find your product?

- [Russell] We have a personal violet online at selectivegardener.com, as well as the local box stores in town, and the local retail garden centers here in Nashville.

- [Matt] Fantastic. Well Russell, I really appreciate you helping me make my dreams come true today. I see we've got tables coming at us from all directions. I understand you're the leader in African violet product. You've got a big shipment coming out. I'll let you get back to work, and I appreciate your time.

- [Russell] Matt, it's been a pleasure, real pleasure. Thank you, sir.

- [Announcer] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org, or on YouTube at the Volunteer Gardener channel, and like us on Facebook. Behind every Pick Tennessee Products logo is a real Tennessee farmer. Pick Tennessee Products has helped people find those local farmers, food, and fun for over 30 years.