Episode 2813

- [Narrator] The Ethnobotanical Garden at Vanderbilt University features more than 50 plant specimens, all native to Latin America. Julie Berbiglia is excited to learn about those that have medicinal properties. Plus Annette Shrader tours a home garden in Memphis that reflects the diverse passions of its keepers. Join us. Plants for sun and shade. And, speaking of shades, was Elvis here?

- One thing I've come to realize, Memphis is blessed with large trees. And underneath, there's glorious shade. And we're gonna walk through what's thrivin' in this beautiful shaded garden. I sure am enjoyin' talkin' to Connie about all of this beautiful plants that she's put under the might oak tree. Let's just go right over there. That beautiful hydrangea. So, that- What did you do to do that?

- [Connie] It's a variety of hydrangea. I haven't done anything to make it that color. It just blooms that color.

- [Annette] Might you have the variety name?

- [Connie] No, I have no- It was a gift.

- [Annette] Oh. Well then, that's good enough.

- [Connie] And I have no idea.

- That is your friend's gift, right. Okay. Well, you know, and then you have this hydrangea, which the leaves are different.

- Yeah, and its another variety and yet again, it was a gift. My family loves to give me plants.

- Well, I think that's a great family. I think what you've done in the back, how you've planted that Japanese painted fern, that just sort of shines outta there, doesn't it.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I do love that fern.

- Well, and on the subject of fern, here is a great example of our native fern, the Christmas fern. And, you know what I like about it, it's everywhere.

- [Connie] Yes.

- [Annette] And you know it's already got its little spores on the back of the leaves there and actually, they will come up or it'll actually propagate from runners. So, that's a really happy one.

- [Connie] Yeah.

- Well, Connie, I would allow this plant to have all the room it wanted. It likes that spot.

- Yeah.

- It's happy there. This is your ligularia. There's a lotta different varieties on this plant, but no doubt, it's got a happy home. And I call this really a monumental plant in your garden. And you also have some fern that you like. The holly fern.

- [Connie] The holly fern. That's another evergreen.

- [Annette] And that's the beauty, because I love the blooms of the hydrangeas and all, but when wintertime comes, it still has beauty, doesn't it?

- [Connie] Yeah. It's nice to have some green still.

- Well, I've enjoyed my stroll with you in this shade garden, but I think Jimmy is waiting in the back for me, 'cause he has a few things back there. Well, they said I'd find you back here.

- Yeah, and here I am.

- Well Jimmy, I see that you like plants among your architecture.

- I love all of it.

- And you're in the construction business.

- That's right.

- Well, you know, even though I see lots of things you like to collect, I do see some fine specimens of horticulture back here.

- [Jimmy] Well, thank you, dear.

- [Annette] And one of the things I see first is behind us, you've got a crossvine.

- [Jimmy] I have.

- [Annette] And you said the variety?

- [Jimmy] Is tangerine orange.

- [Annette] I see her up there.

- [Jimmy] Ripe.

- [Annette] Right under your garage light.

- [Jimmy] Yeah. And that comes on at night, all these lights in the whole yard come on.

- [Annette] Oh, I bet that's- That's spectacular.

- [Jimmy] It is. It's very cozy.

- [Annette] And I do like your choice of a dwarf crepe myrtle.

- [Jimmy] That was one of the first things I put in back here, including the box woods.

- [Annette] Yeah, it's just accentuates all of this collection you have.

- [Jimmy] Thank you.

- [Annette] And you know, I know we all have to do that, don't we?

- [Jimmy] Oh, yes.

- [Annette] But you've managed to work in some wonderful plants in the midst of it. Well, for instance, right there. I didn't recognize that at first.

- [Jimmy] Yeah.

- [Annette] That is a loropetalum.

- [Jimmy] It is.

- That you have pruned up into like a topiary, you know, but it's a good background plant there and it does provide a little shade.

- It loves that spot.

- And it's so pretty when it blooms, isn't it?

- It is. It's gorgeous.

- There was a beautiful cat named Summer. Anyway, she was here for a minute. Jimmy this is a happy flock. And this is the traditional welcome of summer for me. But let me just show you a little tip about the flock, what you can do. You can actually go in, say part it a little, cut you off one down here, because where you trim down here it'll grow some auxiliary blooms from there and it will give you different heights and different time of bloom. And another good reason to do that is because they sometimes get powdery mildew.

- [Jimmy] Right.

- And if you thin out some of the foliage so that you can get more sun light into it. But you know what? I see you have another plant in here. It's called seven steps to heaven and it is a rambler, isn't it?

- [Jimmy] Yes, it is.

- [Annette] And it's got beautiful purple blooms. But anyway, go in at different heights and levels and cut you back some.

- [Jimmy] Okay.

- So that it'll fill out some in the center, too. And, I see you've already done your iris beds, that's when, July is the time to divide and replant them. So you're a little ahead of the game. But now here's that fern. That is beautiful. And I have to say it's richly planted, because it's very large and very prolific. I guess that's one in the same, but in the sun, how it's doin'. It's just, it's not burnt up. It's acclimated to-

- It does.

- What you've introduced it to.

- Yes, yes, yes. It has never had any problem with it in the heart of the summer.

- [Annette] Well I did note that you also have, you put some perennials in some containers.

- [Jimmy] I did.

- [Annette] Well, let's go see what you selected for that. Jimmy, your window box is glorious.

- [Jimmy] Thank you.

- And in addition to that, you've used a perennial, the Russian sage. And you know this is a pollenator plant.

- Yes.

- And you probably noticed the bees in the early mornin'.

- [Jimmy] Oh, we get, we have, that's- we are gettin' so many bees in our yard now that we've started planting these type of things.

- [Annette] Well, and the bees are necessary.

- [Jimmy] I know. I don't use any kind of insecticides or anything.

- [Annette] Well, another effective thing that you have done with putting a perennial in a pot is with your spider wort. A spider wort is a wonderful, morning blooming blue flower, but it kinda closes up at noon. And then it's just not much is it?

- [Jimmy] It's green.

- [Annette] You have an eye for design, because I see it from the one corner to the other corner of what you've embellished through this garden.

- [Jimmy] Well, thank you. I love saving things. I really get upset when people, when I'm tearing their houses out or whatever and there's just throw it on the dumpster, you know. And I can't do that. So I have to have a place to put it rather than to storage building. So I decided the fence was a good place.

- [Annette] Yep.

- [Jimmy] And hopefully it won't fall down.

- [Annette] It won't. You've effectively put together two different worlds. Our plant world and our need to collect and show the loves of our lives. Well, you told me that Elvis visited here once.

- [Jimmy] Yes.

- [Annette] He left something behind, didn't he?

- [Jimmy] He did. And I've never moved 'em since he's been here.

- [Annette] Well, whether your joshin' or not, I think he left his sunglasses on your piece of quartz.

- [Jimmy] He did. That is the, that's exactly where he left 'em.

- [Annette] Oh, I'm havin' a heat stroke. No, I'm being very facetious with you. I appreciate the time and the effort and the work. No matter, a gardener's eye is very personal.

- [Jimmy] Yes.

- And you've taken plants and used them to accentuate the other part of your life and I thank you and Connie both for the effort you've put into this and sharing it, you share it for your community to come and walk through your gardens. Thank you. Thank you so much.

- Thank you. And I thank y'all for comin'. I really appreciate it. I'm so excited, I mean.

- [Annette] Well, just go ahead.

- [Jimmy] I can't believe this is happenin' to me. You know, I just started out with the...nothing.

- [Annette] Don't faint on me.

- [Jimmy] Nothing. I mean, I am.

- [Annette] No, seriously. Thank you.

- [Jimmy] Thank you. And we really appreciate you.

- [Annette] Thank you.

- Well, we can learn so much from gardening. We can learn about other countries ad we can even learn about the medicine that they traditionally make from all of the plants that they grow. Well, I'm at the Latin American Studies Garden at Vanderbilt, and Avery, tell me what is going on here?

- Yeah, so this is our Ethnobotanical Garden. So we've got over 50 species of plants that are all native to Latin America and that are either used for medicinal or culinary purposes. There's a few plants that serve mainly as ornamental purposes, but all of these plants are native to Latin America. And I'd love to tell you about some of the medicinal uses.

- Oh, my gosh, yes. So, this has the most beautiful leaves. Tell me all about it.

- So, this is known- This plant is native to Mexico and Central America and it's called yerba santo, santa in those regions. And it contains safroil, which you may know is the active ingredient in the sasafrass root that was traditionally used to make root beer. We now know that safroil is a carcinogen, but it does supply this very peppery, spicy, anise-like taste that's very delicious. And so, one of the uses of this leaf, in addition to its culinary uses, is that it can be put on your skin directly to take care of any skin parasites.

- Well, Avery, for a Latin American garden, I'm seeing all kinds of things that are familiar to me, like this milk week, here.

- Yes, this is a Mexican milk weed, so very similar to the species that we have here and of course, it's very important for the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, that migrates from Mexico all the way up to Canada each year, and really needs this plant to lay its eggs and for its caterpillars to eat when they first hatch. But it also has a number of medicinal uses. Most importantly, the roots can be dug up and used in a tea to induce vomiting or to be used as a laxative. The sap of the plant, which also gives the milkweed plant its name, as you can see, there's a little bit of this milky sap, this is an irritant. It's what makes the caterpillars taste bad to other, to any predators, but it also is an irritant to our skin and can be used against warts and other skin parasites.

- Oh, what a neat thing to learn about. And then, I also see, well it looks a bit like our beauty berry.

- [Avery] The one that's native to the Southeast of the United States is the American beauty berry. This is the Mexican beauty berry, same genus, different species. And it grows very well here. This one grows from Mexico all the way down to Bolivia. And you can make a leaf tea to treat stomach aches and diarrhea. The other thing that people, the Yucatec Maya used the plant for is they will boil the woody parts, the stems and the roots, and essentially distill them down to a concentrate and then put that in a sweat bath. Throughout Meso-America, we find that Maya people rely on sweat baths. They're very spiritual, sacred spaces. They're also very practical. It's a way that people bathe. It's very important in prenatal treatments for women and when a person is sick, they will go to the sweat bath to heal themselves. And so this liquid that's made from this plant is put within one of the sweat baths to help decrease the effects of rheumatism and to decrease fevers.

- [Julie] So, this looks like the hibiscus that I grow at home.

- [Avery] Yes! It is. And it has medicinal uses that you may not be familiar with. And so, people in Mexico will take the flower, which is, of course very beautiful, but they'll boil it and make a tea out of it and it's very effective against sore throats and coughs and things like tonsillitis.

- [Julie] Well, these beautiful flowers here look like a jasmine to me.

- [Avery] Yes, so this plant is native to Chile and it's known as night-blooming jasmine because the flowers open at night. Or the scientific name is cestrum parqui and it is very important for the Mapuche people. So they will take the leaves and chop them up and dry them and then smoke them as a tobacco. They also believe that the plant has spiritual force called contra, that is able to ward off black magic. And so they will take the woody stems that you can see in here, make them into crosses and put them around the outside of their house to protect them from any sorts of affects of black magic. The other thing is more recent, is that a French group in 2011 did a study of the leaf extracts of cestrum parqui and found that it had spermicidal properties. And so they are now looking at this plant as a potential organic contraceptive.

- [Julie] I love the smell of lemon verbena, but I understand, Avery, you have a personal story with this.

- Yes. So, lemon verbena does smell delicious and is delicious and it's used for a number of culinary purposes, but it also has medicinal purposes. And so, primarily, that would be using the leaves to make a tea to treat stomach ache and vomiting and diarrhea, so gastrointestinal disorders. And you can find it in Argentina and in Peru, in Brazil. And I was actually hiking in the Colca Canyon in Peru and on the way down into the canyon, started throwing up and felt terrible. And by the time I got to the house where I was spending the night, the woman who owned the house made me a tea of lemon verbena and I woke up feeling great the next morning and ready to hike.

- [Julie] I see you have a pineapple sage, which I just love for the flowers.

- Yeah, the flowers are red and very beautiful and the leaves have just a lovely scent, which, of course, is where the name pineapple sage comes from. But it can also be very effective as a medicinal plant. And so, again, making a leaf tea and drinking it helps with insomnia and anxiety and it's actually been shown in a scientific study to be very effective against hypertension.

- [Julie] Wow, there's just so much study that's being done on all of these different plants. So it seems like so many of the medicinal plants, the way that you make medicine is to make a tea our of them.

- [Avery] Yes, and again we have another example here. This is tagetes lucida. Also known as Mexican tarragon. So, that first of all tells you that it is also used in cooking and the leaves have a really nice flavor. But if you make a tea of the leaves in this plant it's very effective in reducing stomach cramps.

- [Julie] Well, so, I know it's a little late for them right now and a little hot, but the primroses, I do see them all over the place.

- Yeah, so these grow really well in Nashville. This is the Mexican evening primrose. There are over 150 species that belong to the primrose genus, which is oenothera. It is native to the Americas. This one, of course, is native to Mexico and it has really beautiful, pink flowers. But it's also very effective as a medicine. The oil is valued, and this is true of this plant, this species, but is also true of primroses in general, the oil is valued and can be used to treat eczema and psoriasis. Very effective treatment for that. There is still a lot of knowledge about medicinal plants. I would say that indigenous people and people that live closest to nature are the best holders of that knowledge. And plants are really important as medicines for many of the people in the world. About 80% of people in the world rely on plants as their first defense against illnesses. And many of our pharmaceuticals that we rely on here in our country and in other developed nations were actually derived from plants. So, for example, aspirin is derived from a compound in willow bark. Quinine, which was very important historically in treating malaria, is derived from the cinchona tree, that's native to Peru. And the list goes on. But plants are very important as medicines. And it's very important that we keep the biodiversity of this planet alive, because it turns out that plants with the most bioactive compounds grow in areas in rainforest regions, in more tropical regions that we need to protect these days.

- Well, thank you so much for giving us a chance to look at this. Now, if people wanna come out first hand and learn more about these plants, how can they do that?

- Well, first of all, you can stop by any time. We're located right here on 31st Avenue and this is an open garden. We welcome people coming to visit it and walking through. We're working on additional signage and information so that you can give yourself a self-guided tour. But you're also welcome to look us up on The Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University website. And you'll find a tab for the garden and contact us if you wanna organize a tour.

- This is fantastic. Thank you, Avery, so much for this time out in your garden.

- [Avery] Thank you!

- Well, one of the go-to places for all kinds of iris here in middle Tennessee is Iris City Gardens, owned by Greg and Macie McCullough our here in Prim Springs, Tennessee. And we're with Greg today. Greg, tell me a little bit about these beautiful iris that we're seeing here, growing alongside these water lilies.

- These are Japanese water iris. The species name is iris laevigata. And it comes in various forms, but it likes lots of water. It will actually grow in standing water, as these are. This species is a beardless iris, so there's no beard, there's only a signal marking.

- [Tony] Right.

- [Greg] Where the beard usually is.

- If people had water lily ponds, koy ponds, those kinds of things, and wanted to add some marginal plants along the edges, this would be an option?

- This would be perfect. Yeah, it would go right in their pond. You grow 'em in pots, with no holes, so that the dirt doesn't come out and we put a little sand on top of ours to keep any of the soil material from floatin' out and keep 'em, the edge a little bit above water keeps the fish from gettin' in 'em.

- [Tony] This is, I think, just an especially beautiful one. And you mentioned not having any beards and the iris that we're used to seeing in the garden, or I think what everybody would think of is a typical, old-fashioned iris, has that sort of furry beard, if you will, that comes down the fall.

- [Greg] A caterpillar.

- [Tony] Yeah, kind of like a little caterpillar. And this is in a different group of iris that we would call beardless iris, which you mentioned.

- And they like lots of fertilizer and lots of water. So they can be mulched real heavily, also, then that helps hold the moisture in. So that's the way we generally grow 'em in our beds.

- Well, and I noticed some others, too, that I've grown successfully in my garden beds. And several of them are native. So, let's go take a look at those.

- Okay.

- So, up here, we're looking at some native species and some selections and cultivars of those native species, iris versicolor, and what other ones do you guys grow?

- We grown iris virginica, we grow iris pseudechorus, we grow several Louisiannas.

- [Tony] I think I saw some fulva?

- [Greg] Yeah, iris fulvas. We grow a fair number of natives. And then native crosses. We grow a pseudochorus crossed with Japanese irises.

- [Tony] And my experience has been that with iris like iris virginica and iris versicolor that are a little more marginal plants, as far as where they grown, I can grow them pretty successfully in my garden beds.

- [Greg] Yes. They'll grow in just good, rich soil with, you know, you can mulch 'em real well, but they don't have to be dry.

- [Tony] They don't have to be standing in water.

- [Greg] Correct. But they can grow in water.

- Right. They can do either way. They'll either grow in the water or, I mean, I tend to grow them with things like my day lilies and those plants that I'm watering regularly anyway. So they'll survive, even thrive, actually, just fine in those conditions.

- That's right.

- [Tony] As you can see, you can find an iris for every situation.

- Combination pots are incredible popular. And these days, we have such a wide selection of plants to choose from. And a lot of times, what looks great together doesn't necessarily have the same requirements, in terms of how much water it takes, etc. Particularly the watering. Today, I'm gonna put together a combination pot for you that has a succulent with non-succulents. You may say, gosh a succulent, you don't wanna water it too much. Here's how you do it. Every pot has a hole, drainage hole, or if it doesn't, you've got problems. And the classic thing is to take a busted piece of pot and place over that hole so that the dirt doesn't come out. But another thing you can do, if you don't wanna trash a pot or don't have one, is you know those obnoxious styrofoam peanuts that we get when we buy stuff? And it comes and your like, it goes everywhere and it's a mess? Save it. This is what it's for. You just put that in, it'll block up the hole, it won't go through, keep the dirt from going out and it doesn't add to the weight of the pot. If you are, by the way, potting a great big container, put several inches of these at the bottom. It really works great. So that just stays there. The wind wants to blow it around right now, but I'll make sure it's in the right place. Now I just open this bag with my trusty box cutter that lives with me always. You can see this dirt. You can see that it's rich, it's got a lot of compost in it, but it's got these hard, little expanded slate. They're light weight, this doesn't weigh a whole lot. They've been heated so they expand. But it really improves the drainage and plants like succulents and all kinds of plants love this, conifers loves this stuff. So, I'm just gonna put some in the pot. Now, what I'm combining today are three things. This is the succulent, this is echeveria. It looks like hen and chicks, you can see it puts the little babies out. It also sends up one stalk of really nice, usually yellow or orange flowers, depending on the species. This is gonna serve as my filler. And you have read about making containers, the formula is spiller, filler, thriller. Thriller is the big thing, filler is the middle sized thing and spiller, which is gonna be this, goes over the edge. And it gives you interest and heights and different textures and shapes. This is gonna be my spiller. This is mecardonia gold dust, that has this delightful sort of cascading habit. Sweet little yellow flowers all summer long. Loves sun, as do all these plants that I've got. So one thing you do is, I don't know how to make a pot that has a full shade plant combined with a full sun plant and have that be successful. I can put succulents with non-succulents, but not shade with non-shade. And the thriller is angelonia. This is a fabulous, non-stop bloomer. Has great vertical habit, as you can see. This particular one is called lavender and I am just gonna stick him in like this. Now, I will come back and fill in and tuck very carefully. You may be thinking, what about fertilizer in this pot? Well, anything in a pot, even if it's something that will grow in pretty crummy soil in nature, if it's in a pot it has nowhere to go, so you've gotta feed it. And you feed it a lot more than you would feed it if it were in the ground. So, even these would need it. Now, I don't use osmocote, but a lot of people do and have great success. I have nothing against it, I just don't use it. But you could put, mix osmocote in with the soil as you were filling to keep it fed for months. What I would do, myself, is I would come back in a couple of weeks, water this in, let it sort of start to get established. And what I'll do is in a couple of weeks, I'll come back and sprinkle a little flowertone, which is an organic, granular fertilizer, over the surface of this and water that in. And that will keep it going. I might do that several times over the course of the summer, depending on how hot it is. But because you water a container a lot, even a container with succulents, any kind of container's gonna dry out fast. Once again, much faster than the earth and the ground. So you do keep an eye on it. But you can see how sweet that looks. And one thing about containers is there's a thing called the bonsai affect, you say, but angelonia, I've had it get huge in my garden. Yeah, but it won't in here. It'll stay sizeable because root constriction downsizes plants. So, whatever you put into a container will never out grow the container. It just won't. That's the way nature works. So things tend to stay in a nice shape. This will spread and fill, this will get wider like this and this will fill out the back. I've put together a coupla other little combinations that are quite possible that I also like. This one's kind of a hotter color. This is, the succulent is this little seedum that's gonna spill out over the edge of this pretty pot and it's got sort of a cream that goes to this orange gerber and this hot red salvia. This is salvia coccinea, by the way. Humingbird magnet plant. Just put this out on your patio and you will be visited. This is, once again, the thriller, this is the filler, this would be the spiller. And then you can do these little, sort of, interest pots, where you break that formula, that code, that three part code goes for a container that's big enough to hold three plants. But I really love this little combination. This would do it part shade. This little echevaria will take a little bit of shade as will this lovely, beautiful little double wax begonia. This wax begonia will just get about like this, while the echevaria will stay low, like this. And I love the contrast of these colors against this pot. And remember, the most critical thing is put 'em in the right dirt. This really fast draining, rich but fast draining soil that every plant in the pot will love, including the succulents.

- [Narrator] 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.