Episode 2808

- [Announcer] This urban farm is part of the campus of New Hope Christian Academy in Memphis. Students here are able to enjoy nature, learn how to grow and nurture, and taste a variety of fresh produce. Matt Kerske takes us along on a backyard makeover project and Marty DeHart shares tips on collecting and storing seeds. Stay tuned. First, a space where children have the freedom to engage in and learn from mother nature.

- We're in Memphis, Tennessee at the New Hope Urban Gardens. This is a product of the New Hope Christian Academy. They believe in the outdoor classroom as a teaching element for their children. They are pre-k through the sixth grade. We are now in the sensory garden, but before we go through those five senses, I wanna introduce you to David Vaughan. Now, this garden has a name, doesn't it?

- It does. We're standing in the middle of the Mandala Garden, and the name for that refers to the way in which the pathways are designed. If you look, you're actually standing at the entrance of one of the keyholes. So, each pathway leads to a keyhole bed.

- [Annette] Or like a horseshoe maybe?

- [David] Yeah, yeah, very similar, and those are connected in a circle. So, there are a number of keyholes connected all the way in a circle, and it kind of allows children to be surrounded by plants.

- [Annette] You know we just said the urban, we already know that we just heard the truck taking away the debris. So,

- That's right.

- There may be background noises to show where we really are.

- [David] That's right.

- Okay now, introduce me to those five senses you've got covered here.

- Yeah, well, I think the biggest one for students, and certainly the one that you pick up on as you walk in, is the sense of smell. So, we have a number of different plants that touch this. In fact, if you look back here, the two shrubs that kind of mark the entrance there, the Osmanthus fragrans, which is the tea olive, fragrant tea olive, and depending on the time of year, October is really when it peaks, but it also flowers in the spring. It literally, you can smell it from all over the garden.

- [Annette] Okay, now, what's the next one?

- The sense of sight is pretty evident, right? So, we have a lot of colors. It's very loud in here and we try to touch on all the primary colors, but we also want the interaction of colors. So, contrast.

- Uh huh.

- One contrast I really like is the combination of the eucalyptus, the shiny, silvery foliage, with the bee balm.

- [Annette] Yes.

- [David] The bee balm is starting to fade a little bit, but when it peaks it is unbelievable.

- [Annette] I see you have the hummingbird feeder, and there's nothing any more joyful than to hear that hummingbird make it's little squeak and hear the sound of those wings as they are fluttering about.

- [David] Right.

- [Annette] So, now, give me another example.

- [David] Yeah, a lot of rudbeckia maxima, the giant cone flower here.

- [Annette] Aren't they wonderful?

- [David] Those are a gold finch draw, which is another kind of cool sensory thing. Not only the noise of the gold finch, but watching them, that kind of deep yellow.

- [Annette] Yes, well we have the sense of touch.

- [David] That's right. So, we have a lot of Lamb's Ear here, which is obviously a huge hit with the really soft, shiny leaves,

- [Annette] Oh yes.

- but, students' favorite, and what most students gravitate towards when they come to this garden, is mimosa pudica, it's the sensitive plant here, and you can see it self-sews every year. So, we actually don't have to replant it, but this is one of those that is absolutely incredible for students. To feel and to see--

- [Annette] Oh, look at that!

- [David] The reaction of the plant.

- [Annette] I've never seen it, oh look! It's just all died right before our eyes I've never seen it used like that as a little ground cover.

- [David] You know, we could thin it and let it kind of, it grows kind of like a vine, but we actually prefer it to be this mass, and I think students will surround this whole section. So, it's a really neat way to show, not only the sense of touch, but also plants defense mechanisms.

- Yeah, defense system. Well, as I walk through here with you, David, I know plants, and I know that there is a lot of things that go into the ground here. How do you get all of this together? Do you participate with the school children?

- [David] So, I'm kind of behind the scenes with such an expansive space. My job is really to keep things functioning, but we do have mass plantings with students every May, after they are finished with testing. We get every grade level out. Every grade level puts a different seed in the ground. We also have an intensive garden club that meets, about 20 to 25 students after school, and they are upper school students who work very specifically with the mulching, with the composting, with planting. So, all of the sweet peppers here were planted by our garden club students, and so that's more of the intensive hands-on approach.

- [Annette] You say "intensive", but for me it says that you had students that really got into what they were being taught

- Absolutely.

- about the garden.

- Yeah.

- They wanted to go further.

- Right, right.

- And you know, this white cleome, you don't see that very often in that white color. That's so pretty.

- Yeah, I've had a lot of, a lot of people comment on the cleome, and we use it also as a trap crop for Harlequin beetles, which really go after our greens this time of year.

- But I've been walking all this time to reach some berries.

- This is definitely one of the coolest aspects of the overall design of the space. We really struggled when we first talked about building a space here with the fence. So, this fence didn't exist six years ago. None of the trees existed. In fact, this was just a grass lot, but we knew that we wanted our students to feel safe. We wanted to kind of cut that traffic, 'cause a lot of people cut through. So, this was a way to both engage the community and also make it inviting. So, we don't pick any of the thornless blackberries on the other side of this fence, but in mid-summer, A, you can't see the street, which is pretty incredible, but also, you can hear people talking. People come and pick berries over there all the time. I had a MLGW truck stop the other day, as I was leaving, I saw them picking. I've had the City of Memphis bus stop and pick berries. So, it's been really neat to see that interaction with the community.

- You know you keep saying "we". This somebody had a dream. This is the dream child of Mrs. Ramsey.

- [David] Mrs. Ramsey. So, imagine your champion teacher gardener and then think about that times a hundred. She had been eyeing this space for over 10 years. The school had owned it, but because of the heavy slope, they decided not to build on it, and so things just kind of fell into place. The leadership changed at the school. The knew principle wanted to put a lot more attention and money into outdoor education, saw the potential here, and I was coming back from abroad. She knew I had experience, and so it kind of fell into place.

- [Annette] And you were brought on board.

- [David] I was brought on board. So this is all based around the slope, which is really neat if you look at

- [Annette] I do.

- [David] the way that the beds curve. We have actually swales dug out that catch the runoff water. In front of each of these beds--

- [Annette] Called erosion control. All the way down.

- [David] Erosion control. Bald cypress grove, in the center, catches that water as well and creates shade.

- [Annette] And they like that water.

- [David] Oh, yeah, bald cypress, if you go to the Wolf River, They literally sit in the swamps.

- [Annette] How about Reelfoot? Don't get me started. Let's go down there. Also, some blueberries in the making down here.

- [David] There are. This is the peak of the blueberry season, which has been extremely fun.

- [Annette] Well, what type of blueberries? they're all laden. What variety do you have?

- [David] We have a number of varieties. So, blueberries thrive if you have multiple varieties for cross pollination.

- [Annette] Correct.

- [David] So, we have Climax, Tifblue, Premier, I think those are the main ones, and kind of a cool part about these is we planted six at the very front, probably the tallest ones, when we first started the garden, but all of the rest, so these back nine that we're actually right in front of right now, all of these came from a different community garden where they had them in a little too much shade and they were struggling, and we were able to dig them and get them for free and pull 'em here and this is by far our most productive year, and it's really neat to see the kind of community sharing that happens when one garden's like, "Hey, these aren't doing well here. "How about you take 'em?" The other thing we do, you can notice the patch of comfrey here.

- [Annette] Yeah.

- [David] So, this is comfrey all around, and I basically slash and drop this probably five to six times a year, if not more, and comfrey, because of its deep tap root, mines up nutrients and minerals from the subsoil that other plants and trees, even trees can't get to, and so these have been in the ground for a number of years. Their tap root has got to be, probably, anywhere from three to seven feet deep at this point, and so it benefits, I think, to have those around and just to constantly add those to the wood chips.

- [Annette] David, you know I'm not a beginner, but I'm hearin' all these things that are new to me. I can't imagine bringing inquisitive children out here from the three years up through the sixth grade, and it just is a wonderful thing to teach them that there's a world outside of the four walls.

- [David] Yeah, amen, and I would also say that even past sixth grade, having interns that are in high school, former New Hope students, the ones that are here working with me today, picking berries, they have not only showed an interest, but they have been unbelievable hard workers and their passion for the space and seeing them develop over time has just been priceless.

- [Annette] Well look who I ran into. Hi, Darius.

- Hey, how are you?

- You have a job here, don't you?

- Yes ma'am.

- And you're here to do it. What is it?

- The whole alley, and in particular the butterfly alley.

- Okay, this is the butterfly alley, and you've got pollinators of all sorts in here, and they like all sorts of plants.

- Yes ma'am.

- Well, educate us on some of them.

- [Darius] The first plant here is the hyssop. We also have the scarlet sage right here, and we also have a whole line of zinnias.

- [Annette] Oh yes, look at all these different zinnias. I love that one right there.

- [Darius] Yes ma'am.

- [Annette] Now then, over here, look at the bees working this.

- [Darius] Mountain mint.

- [Annette] Mountain mint. Oh, I see it. How many numbers? There is a hornet and a bumblebee and a regular bee.

- [Darius] It attracts all types of different pollinators.

- Oh, that is very active. I don't really wanna stand there. And I know that this is--

- Honeysuckle.

- just a regular honeysuckle. What do you see gets on that?

- It's kind of all the same. 'Cause all the pollinators kind of congregate to one place. So, they're just all over the place.

- They say, "Hey, wait!" "He's eatin' something over that one. "I wanna go gets some", don't they?

- Yeah, they have plenty of places to go.

- Yeah, so you weed and you clip?

- Yes ma'am. Weed, clip, water. That's the routine. Right here we have the butterfly bush, which attracts all different types of butterflies, and they're scattered all throughout the alley.

- [Annette] Their abundance shows how important they are.

- Yes ma'am.

- Well Darius, I've got hopes and dreams for you.

- Yes ma'am.

- I hope that when you get past your high school that the days gonna come when you're gonna have your own family and your own backyard and I do hope that you'll put all of this knowledge you've learned into that, and it was a pleasure to walk with you.

- Yes ma'am.

- I didn't even see any weeds.

- Doin' a good job.

- [Annette] Well, David, it's obvious, your resources here come from everywhere, and you've put a lot of effort in, but you know what you put in now, you're gonna reap.

- [David] That's right, that's right.

- So, with all of this abundance, how do you distribute the wealth?

- So, we have a number of different ways. During the school year, we actually are blessed to have a cafeteria manager who, bless her heart, does a wonderful job of taking the produce that I give her and being creative with it so that students are trying fresh produce, and we do a "Try it Tuesday". So, every Tuesday, our students know that there'll be something from the urban farm that they'll try, and that's a neat way to use the produce and have students, a lot of students who planted the stuff, try it in the cafeteria. However, we'll always have more than that to share, and so I'll set up a stand during dismissal. We call it the "Pay What You Can, Vegetable Stand." We don't have prices on anything. It's all just sharing the bounty, and so with the "Pay What You Can Stand", we'll have recipe cards, we'll have all of the produce that we have left over, and we'll set up right where parents are walking to get their children, and so, it's been a really neat thing to see over the years, how many families have responded and how parents and grandparents now line up, if they know I have winter greens, kale, swiss chard, collards. That's been a real blessing, and then during the summer, which is always for a school garden, the tricky part is, what do you do with produce in the summer? We actually do CSA baskets for our families. So, we identified 15 to 20 families that live nearby, who come on every Friday. So, we'll harvest berries, we'll harvest whatever warm season stuff we have and share with them and have it all pre-packaged with flowers. So, we share produce not only with our school, but with the community as well.

- [Annette] That's wonderful.

- [David] And they share plants with us, which is great. So, we've gotten plants from all over.

- [Annette] Oh, that's just wonderful, and thank you so much.

- [David] It's been a pleasure. Come back and visit us any time.

- [Annette] I will! I'll be back.

- [David] All right.

- [Annette] Thank you.

- [David] Yeah.

- Well today's a great day, ladies and gentlemen, because I get to take you with me on a world of what I get to do every single day with Gardens of Babylon, and that is taking small spaces, large spaces, and transforming them into amazing outdoor living areas, and what we got going on right behind me is that exact same thing. We're out transforming this backyard into, and adding so many elements from hardscaping, and planting and irrigation. We've even got an informal bocce ball court going on, that's gonna be installed in the coming weeks. So, I'm really excited to share it with you. Come on, let's take a look. So a lot of the elements going on here at the job, one of them, very important, was drainage. We have the garage in the back here, in the backyard, and the yard was just kind of pitching and sloping down. It was just newly built. So, we really have to drop this soil line at least six to eight inches from this seal of the garage. Get this soil line brought down. Add some box drains on the site to make sure that that water is really clearing away very quickly. Now, because we're dropping the soil line so severe, we're gonna have to come back and install, maybe a one foot to 18 inch, mini retaining wall that acts to separate the two soil grades and levels and keeps the main backyard more on a flat plane, but drainage is very important for any major landscape projects. That needs to be considered very, kind of as the first phase, if you will, before all the fun stuff can really happen, but let's take a look at some of that fun stuff. So, since this home has varying levels of grade on it, it makes the site a little challenging. One of the other items, besides the box drain systems that we're installing on the property, is using large river rock swales to kind of swoop that water in and make it go where exactly where we want to go. We've had an issue with mulch washout going on on this side of this pathway. This is a great idea using a two to eight inch size river stone to be a permanent fixture to keep that mulch from washing out. Over here, on my other side, we're gonna take this whole river rock swale and swoop it all the way down through their backyard, kinda creating this nice little river rock effect to make sure that this water drains through the box drains and out around the property, making sure that we put this really heavy-duty weed fabric underneath the stones to keep any weeds or grasses from growing up from later on. Another element that we're putting in at this home is gonna be a really nice patio seating area with a seat wall around it and fire pit right here in the middle, and big thing to talk about a lot of times with new hardscaping projects is a lot of people really don't understand how much work goes into the base preparations, and this really makes a huge difference in the world of hardscape and how long it will last without failure. We take a lot of pride here because we go down and dig down a good four, this is a footer, so we're puttin' a footer underneath that retaining wall and the seat wall. This is gonna go down a good foot by almost 18 inches to 24, doin' crush stone in here, running a compactor over it. We're gonna do a nice four inch compacted, crush stone layer over top of the patio. That's going to be out of concrete pavers. So, just whatever you're doing with hardscaping, it really pays to put in the base preparation to make sure it lasts a long time. So in total, we're looking at about a three to four week project. What we're doing right now, the demo and the bed preparation, that's gonna take about one to two weeks, but it's not always gonna look like this. It's gonna be beautiful, and so here we are, it's the finished product. The hardscaping's in. The river rock swale, I'm really excited to show ya'll all the details. So, let's get goin'. So, here we are at the cobblestone patio, which really serves as a great space for relaxation and socializing for the homeowners. What we have here, we have, we're surrounded by a nice seat wall, 18 inch seat wall, around this gas fire pit. We had to go ahead and tie in to the gas line that was running to the grill and we just spurted off into this gas unit here for the fire pit. That turned out really great. Behind me, you'll see how we added in just a large amount of river rock because we were having such a problem with drainage and water flow coming off of this walkway and washing a lot of this mulch, and so this project came up fantastic. We put a really heavy-duty weed fabric, again, just to keep the weeds from growing in through all this mulched area and then we have box drains sporadically placed out. The box drains pretty much just disappear when you mulch everything in like this and once all the plants get growing in, you'll almost never even notice 'em. So, one of the challenges that homeowners often face on jobs that have existing stonework, when they're adding in new stonework, is trying to match and tie all this in to where it has that fresh look and appeal and all the colors and tones kind of match, and what we had to do with this existing fieldstone walkway was we had to come in and do an application of muriatic acid, which really helps to clean a lot of the tree debris, the hackberry sap, the dark soot that tends to grow on these patios and walkways surfaces, and it really brings a new fresh look and a new life, and it really helps tie everything in from the new hardscaping in the stone that we used on the site. Another consideration that homeowners need to look at when they are adding on new hardscaping to try and match their existing hardscaping is just tryin' to get the general overall layout of some existing seat walls that did exist here and limestone-gray finish, tryin' to carry that over with the design of the new fire pit and the new seat wall. We also had to kinda take in to consideration the retaining wall finish as this whole backyard was sloped, and what the homeowners were lookin' for kind of a more flatter area, usable space for the kids to play on and even though it was small, retaining walls can really add that ability to adjust grades really well, while also at the same time mitigating water and directing it in the right way. So, I think overall, it turned out really great, and sometimes when you have these small spaces on the side or in the backyard, you can get really creative with your landscape design plans and try to create a little duel function of design space, meaning we had a side entrance walkway, here on the side of the house, where the homeowners were kinda still lookin' to still utilize. The challenge here was it was really muddy, had a lot of tree cover. So, nothing was really growing back here. It was kind of a muddy walkway. So, we came back in and added this decomposed granite surface, nice chip surface to walk on, nice and soft, but it also serves as kind of a play space for the kiddos, maybe used as a informal bocce ball area. So they're really exited the way everything turned out on this side. So, on this side of the house, you can see everything turned out really great with the river rock border to mitigate this mulch washout. We've had some really heavy rain so far this spring and the drainage system has held up exactly the way we wanted to, which is always a great sign. Couple of the last elements that we're adding on to wrap up the project are landscape lighting. I can't stress it enough how much ambiance that landscape lighting does add during the night time. These are some aluminum pathway lights. We're gonna be adding some more up lights on the garage. So, very happy with the way the lighting came out, and the plants you can see around me, they're all just waking up. Everything is coming out of dormancy, a little bit later with the temperatures coming on. Gotta be a little bit patient, but very happy with the health and the vitality that we're seeing so far. This property sits in the urban core of Nashville, which is highly desirable right now with people of all ages. This family like the vibrancy and convenience of being close to downtown, and this lot is smaller than what you would find in the suburbs. So, it was important to this family to maximize the utility of every square foot of yard space. I can say with confidence that we took the time to make sure the water on the property will drain properly to make sure there's a solid foundation underlying all the paths and structures, and selecting the right plants for the right spot. All of this works in harmony to create this outdoor space I'm sure will be appreciated well into the future.

- It's late September, which means it's the height of seed setting season, and I'm here today to show you folks what fun it is and how easy it is to collect your own seeds for next year, and you can collect seeds of annuals, you can collect seeds of perennials, you can even grow things, bushes, trees, from seed. It's not that hard, but the first thing you gotta do is have the seed to grow. So, I'm gonna show you what I do and I do, believe me, thousands and thousands of seeds every year, so. First, I'm gonna show you some of the types of seeds that are ripe now. Like I said, this is the height of seed season, but seed season actually starts June for the spring flowering things. So, it pays to keep an eye out, but right now you can go out into the wild and you can get, this is Joe-Pye weed, and these are the kind you see floating around. You can see there's a breeze today and the wind just carries those little seeds off, but those are the seeds. Those little teeny, piney, with like a little parachute on top, so that's a seed dispersal mechanism. So, the wind will carry them and distribute the seed around the countryside. These are really easy to grow. They're everywhere, very easy to collect. You can get stuff out of your garden. My friend Annette Shrader, another Volunteer Gardener host, brought me these lovely Jewels-of-Opar. They're called Talinum, and you can see each one of these lovely, little, multicolored capsules is a seed, has seeds in it, and as they turn kind of beige, you crack those open, they'll crack in half and little seeds will come out. That's easy. Here's something everybody loves, which is flowering tobacco Nicotiana and look how tiny the seeds are of this. They're like little tiny, it's almost like dust. Here's another interesting seed. This is a really popular spring flowering plant called Baptisia, and I don't know if you can, I hold it near the mic. Sounds like a little baby rattle. This is a member of the pea family and you can kinda tell 'cause of the pods, and inside the pods, what you're hearing rattle, are all those, there goes a bee around my face, all those little tiny, dry seeds inside. Easy to grow from seed, and a lot of fun too, and they're easy, also sometimes if you haven't done it before, it's easy to grow larger seed, Baptisia's a good choice. Another very popular plant, coneflower, and this is a coneflower seed head, and coneflower is prickly. You might want to wear gloves if you do this. The seed is that beige-y stuff that's comin' out. All the rest of that is chaff. Coneflowers are like that and also this is Goldsturm Rudbeckia seed head, same deal, little gray seeds down in amongst that chaff. Now I'm gonna show you what you do when you collect these seeds. There's several storage mechanisms that are useful. This is really a good one for home seed growers. These are called coin envelopes and you can get these at any office supply store. I get them locally, and they're really fine for just, you just plop the seed in. Make sure the seed is dry by the way, and then write on it what it is, seal it up, store it in, I store mine in a fridge. I use a, you can buy those plastic shoe boxes at big box stores like Walmart or whatever. I just make dividers for A to Z. You don't even have to do that, depends on how many seeds you have, and I just store them alphabetically in there, so you can find them when you need 'em. These seeds were a little moist when I collected them. There was a lot of dew on the seed pod. So, I'm putting 'em in this bag and I'll leave 'em there for about a week. That'll dry down. Any moisture that's on there will evaporate off. Then I can store them, but you don't ever wanna put away anything too wet because when you put it away in the wet and the cold, it'll either rot or sprout when you don't want it to. It's also time to start collecting, you can see here some oak. These are acorns. This is water oak. I don't know if you can see 'em in there, but you can see I have written on there what they are and where they came from. Great time to do this. So, I showed you the coin envelope. Another great way to store seeds and a way that I frequently do as I just showed you is Ziploc bags. Boy, these are my best friend. I store most of my seed in this. Of course, I'm storing significant volumes, but even if you're not, it's really handy and you can write in a sharpy on these very easily, as I've shown you and on that oak bag, and it's really handy. It keeps it, there's a little bit of oxygen that actually transpires through this plastic, so it's not a complete seal. That's good. Your seeds need some oxygen. You'll notice this is not a freezer bag, which is a thicker plastic. This is just a storage bag, and if I'm only storing 'em for a year or less, this is what I use. If you plan on, think you might need to keep your seeds for longer than that, use freezer bags 'cause they do last longer. I use the gallon bags for bigger seeds. Now, there's a whole category of seed like this. This is off of a sweetbay magnolia. This is a tree and magnolias, every type, has a variation on this theme, which is this seed that come out on these interesting little threads. Birds, by the way, love magnolia seeds, so you sort of have to beat the birds to the tree, but any seed that is fleshy like this, that has a meat around the seed, you need to get all that fleshy stuff off of there, and the reason is because there's a germination inhibitor in the flesh of the seed. In that orange part are chemicals that keep the black seed from coming up, from sending out a little root and starting a little plant, but if you've got a bunch of 'em, what I do is I put 'em in water, and that's what this little jelly jar is here. I just put 'em in water and I let 'em sit, and I'll go through and prop all of these out. I won't do it on camera. Takes too long, but basically, I'll clean all of these and drop them into that jar and let 'em sit in a warm, room temperature is fine. Let 'em sit there. What'll happen is they'll start to ferment and the flesh will start coming off of those seeds. I'll pour that off. Renew that water with clean water a few times, and do it through a screen and rub it a little bit, and they'll come completely clean. Then I dry the seed. They're ready to store or put into stratification, whatever you need to do. It's a great nature lesson and it's just enjoyable, and you really feel a connection to what you're growing. It's a lot of fun, and you know exactly where your plants are and where they came from and how they got there. I recommend it to anybody.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergarderner.org or on YouTube at the Volunteer Gardener channel and like us on Facebook.