Episode 3006

- [Narrator] Come along as we visit a couple of awe-inspiring landscapes that were designed and installed by talented, hardworking homeowners. First, Annette Shrader marvels at the variety of plants, the multitude of vibrant bloom colors, and, oh, did we mention, so many gorgeous roses, all in one home landscape. Then, Tammy Algood tours a well-planned, well-executed, tree-filled outdoor space that is simply spectacular. Let's go. This garden gets bigger each year and even more magnificent.

- You know, the splendor of spring has disappeared and suddenly, we are left with what's gonna be summer, hot, beautiful perennials. And I am excited to be standing here with April Moore.

- When we first moved here, there really wasn't much here. And I knew that I wanted a garden. My husband wanted vegetables, so we made a deal, and he would till up a small section and I would replace it the following year with flowers. Now we do still have vegetables, but the focus was on the flowers. We designed it from the beginning along a series of color axes. And this is the hot section, the sun garden. So, yellow, orange, red axes, with shots of purple and blue in it, to just keep it from being too hot. It's hot enough in the garden, right now. And then, over time, we actually filled this entire area with a garden, 'cause neither one of us likes to mow.

- [Annette] In here, you've got these beautiful yellow sundrops,

- Yep.

- primroses.

- Yep.

- [Annette] One of the first things I saw, was that yellow coming to greet me, that happiness. Let's, actually, while we're here, tell us an interesting story about these roses.

- So I've, I grew up with roses. My mother loved to grow roses and it was really difficult where I grew up, but I have always loved them and I've always grown them everywhere I've lived. Now, the one on the right is Tuscan Sun. It's a floribunda and it's not particularly fragrant, but it is a stunner and I love how the the blooms change colors. They go from this fury orange, reddish orange to a paler orange, to pink, and it's just beautiful. And it's very tough, like surprisingly tough, especially for some of the modern floribundas. This one, however, is kind of, I would say, my pride and joy. And I don't know the real, actual name of it because it was rooted from cuttings from funeral flowers. And it's been in my family my entire life. It's some form of polyantha. It occasionally produces different color blooms, which is strange. But most of the time, they're this beautiful, beautiful blaze orange. And I would love to know what it is, but this was one that I'm propagating from cuttin's. And this particular bush actually was propagated from cuttings way in the early sixties.

- Wow. So, it is a producer all summer long.

- [April] Absolutely. And in fact, as long as I keep it watered well and follow a good spray program, I do do that for fungicide, then it will just keep goin', and goin', and goin' right through the frost.

- Okay. And on the subject of roses, you have purposefully planted a certain type of roses.

- Yes.

- You don't do the hybrid teas.

- I don't do hybrid teas. I have grown them before. I just found that, even though they were absolutely stunning, it , I don't know, I like, kind of, the romantic cottagy gardens. I like the old standards. And so, I tend to grow, I grow a few floribundas 'cause there are some very nice ones, but I tend to grow a lot of David Austin English Roses, and a lot of Heirloom Roses and a lot of just shrub roses, huge roses, tree-size roses.

- [Annette] Yeah, and those roses were all on their own root. You actually have created a canopy with some of your taller shrub roses to produce a layer of shade for other parts of your garden.

- [April] Absolutely .And then I underplant the roses with things like some of the geranium, native geranium species, crane's-bills, or I underplant them with larkspurs and columbines. And those will recede and spread. And they don't mind competing with the rose for the moisture and they can handle it.

- [Annette] Speaking of columbine, I couldn't help but notice the beautiful yellow native one.

- [April] It's a species native to out West, Colorado, places like that. And, like our own native columbine, which I also grow here,

- The Rocky Mountains.

- Yeah, it's really, really tall. It's just a beautiful thing. And it will bloom for up to two months, or at least it has for me the last few years.

- Well, that's the best thing, is finding those plants that will produce a long-lasting crop of blooms, shall we say. It's not like, here today, gone tomorrow. If you want to attract the moths at night, April, tell us about this fabulous plant?

- Yeah, it looks pretty sulky in the daytime, but this is nicotiana. This particular pink one is a variety called Cranberry Isles. The white one is jasmine tobacco. And both of these are highly fragrant and they have very different fragrance, which you can't really enjoy so much now, but at night they're fantastic. And the blooms just open up and they're beautiful. Easily sown from seed and do really well if you sow in the fall.

- [Annette] So you planted the seeds last fall,

- Mm-hmm.

- wintered them over. Inside or out side?

- [April] To be honest, I let this one grow in this pot on its own. And it was fine over the winter.

- Wow.

- I did cover it a couple of times when it got incredibly cold.

- But you cut it to the ground.

- Yep.

- Wow, well that's-

- They do really well; they seem pretty diverse. And they seem to self-seed pretty easily, too.

- Something else is quite interesting to me because I'm familiar with this plant, but I'm not familiar with this bloom. Tell me about this.

- [April] This is a variety of rose campion called Gardner's World. It has a hint of red in some of the blooms, but it's also a double, which makes it fairly unusual.

- [Annette] Right, and that, they're very interesting in the garden because they just produce that coordinating color to combine other things.

- [April] That goes super well with the sweet Williams I already grow. And I have a type of salvia, here. When that comes out, those colors will all complement each other very well. Plus, pollinators love them.

- [Annette] And this plant, right here, looks different.

- Ah, Black Knight Scabiosa daisy. I did kind of go on a red and burgundy colored flower kick and this one hasn't started really blooming yet, but it has beautiful pink cushiony, burgundy blooms. It's gorgeous.

- [Annette] Shrub roses can work for many purposes. Can't they?

- They absolutely can.

- [Annette] They can give us shade, but I like this, what you've combined, here, with this rose.

- [April] Well, in this garden, we had to manufacture our shade and I, kind of, chose to do it by growing massive roses. But one of the things I love to do, and it's something that they, that's pretty popular in English gardens, is I love to grow clematis at the base of them, so they'll clamber up and just, kind of, fountain out the top. And so, here, we have, in this English Rose, this is the variety Teasing Georgia, we have the Multi Blue clematis. And then, also below it, I like to plant under my roses, geraniums. And this is geranium phaeum Samobor. And look at the color of those-

- Oh, isn't that pretty?

- blooms And look, I see, under that loop, right there, I see a nice big bloom

- Yeah.

- from the Clematis.

- Yeah. Yup.

- Right here.

- [April] Oh yeah, absolutely. And so, leaf colors, the bloom colors, all coordinate very well. And plus, they're very happy here under the shade of this rose.

- Great eye candy.

- Yeah.

- [Annette] Yes, and you could even plant two or three different kinds of clematis, 'cause this will support it. We're gonna switch colors. We're in the red, purple zone, now, and lots of plants to showcase these colors. And this salvia, tell us about it.

- So, I've grown a number of different salvias for some time. I absolutely adore them. The hummingbirds love them, bees, and butterflies, as well. This is the variety of Maraschino and I have several of these that I actually started and put into pots. I also have a lot of them in the ground, as well, but they're wonderful plants, absolutely wonderful. And they will bloom all, they'll bloom well into June, July, and then they'll usually take a break during the driest part of the year. And so, but then they'll come back with a vengeance in August, September, October, and just keep right on blooming right into frost.

- [Annette] Yeah, they like that little cool-down, even though they are a hot plant. Tell me about this.

- [April] That's a creeping verbena. It's related to Homestead Purple, which a lot of people are familiar with, but this is a lot purple variety. I got it from one of my swapping friends, plant-swapping friends.

- [Annette] Aren't they wonderful groups?

- Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, I'm very excited to see that; I've never, never seen that. And then, of course here's another salvia, but it's a different variety.

- Yeah, it's a different variety. They do really well in my garden. They like the sun that I get here. And as long as I throw them a little moisture occasionally, they do great.

- Yeah, yeah. And then, yet, I'm drawn to another salvia.

- [April] Yeah, that's the variety Amistad. And that one isn't hardy here, but it roots easily from cuttings. And so, every fall I take cuttings and propagate it. There's one other I do that for, as well. And just keep them going because I've, literally, had hummingbirds dive-bomb me to get to those blooms.

- [Annette] Wow. Of course, I know that you have a wonderful little secret place that has a nice clematis on it. What is the variety of this?

- [April] Oh, okay. So, this is a variety Julia Correvon. And I do love the color of that. And that's just kinda my little, my little nook there. I can just hide. At night, it's really peaceful, there. And you can just, kinda, sit there with your glass of wine and enjoy it. Plus, I love my Puss and Boots statue I have back there.

- [Annette] Oh, well you can kind of sneak away and you know-

- [April] It's a good place to read a book.

- [Annette] We have to have a place to daydream, even though we look at our gardens, say, "well, okay, phew, I've got this section finished. "Oh, but you know what?" We stop, and we start to imagine and dream. And we need these places.

- And if you don't ever take a break to appreciate your work, why are you doing it?

- Exactly?

- You know?

- Well, I want to go see some more of your work and there's some more plants that I've got to see.

- Okay.

- [Annette] We're gonna do a little English gardening now. I like your selection of plants, in here. Why don't you start us off, right here,

- Okay.

- with your snapdragon?

- [April] Okay, so this is a variety called Black Prince. I grew these from seeds. I have very good successful with snapdragons. A lot of people think of them as annuals-

- They're not.

- But, they are not. They will come back for two or three years, at least, sometimes longer, if you're lucky. And then, beside it, I have one of the pink yarrows, Achillea, which is a very nice color. I have mostly pinks and purples in this area with a few departures into burgundies.

- [Annette] Yeah, and then, this beautiful peony, which is, we are at the very end of that, this peony season, which has been the most beautiful, I believe, I've ever experienced.

- [April] Yeah, this is a nice one called Festiva Maxima. And I thought I'd lost it. It had been shaded out by other things and I moved it three years ago and this year it rewarded me.

- [Annette] That's wonderful. And then, another beautiful clematis. This variety is what?

- Comtesse de Bouchaud, or Bouchaud, I think, it's, how it's properly pronounced. And I used to have a giant rose, here, but we had to take it out because of rosette. And so, I replaced it with this clematis and I also have Jackmanii, up there,

- Oh, I see the purple.

- above it, as well.

- [Annette] Up on the wall.

- [April] So, I'm trying to trail them all the way around the window.

- Oh, that's nice.

- [April] So that it'll just be a window surrounded by clematis.

- [Annette] Yeah, that's another whole world of plants and lots of things we could discuss, but let's talk about this pink rose.

- [April] This is a variety of English Rose called Bow Bells. It's a David Austin English Rose. And this is one that I can no longer seem to find available to America. And so, I may have to actually break down and propagate this one by cuttings. 'Cause I would like to get another one. But it's a beautiful variety. But, of course, we don't actually get all the ones. They don't continuously provide them to the, to America.

- [Annette] And this continually puts a flush of blooms out. It doesn't do just spring and fall. It's kind of all summer long?

- Yeah, pretty much all the roses in this garden are like that. They'll be blooming throughout the year.

- [Annette] I do like what the garlic creates, this element, here.

- Yeah It does the little swan-neck thing and the best thing about elephant garlic, other than the fact that it's very edible and it's a very mild-flavored garlic, is the fact that it has such cute little blooms. The sheath from the onion head will come up and make a little cap. And they're just really ornamental, as well as delicious.

- And it looks like the reeds in the water that the fish are gonna make their, weave their way through.

- Yep, that's intentional.

- Oh gosh, I love it. And I definitely do love this. And I'm gonna put my fingers in this water. That's real water. It feels really good . Oh, and I'm gonna have to ask you about this plant, right over here.

- Oh, the Chinese foxglove. Yeah, I really like that. I've tried to grow regular digitalis foxgloves, here, and they never seem to do well, but this does quite well, here, in this semi-shady spot. Doesn't seem to mind it when it gets a little dry in the heat of summer, and just does its thing. And it just kind of sprawls over the columbines and the spiderworts I have.

- [Annette] And, it's not something that is very common in lots of gardens. And so you had to know something.

- [April] Or someone.

- [Annette] Right, or someone. That never hurts, does it?

- No.

- Well, there's one specimen, the creme de la creme of your garden that I've been wanting, would like to go and see and talk about.

- Okay.

- [Annette] This is a beautiful rose bush with a beautiful beginning and outcome. Tell us about it.

- So, we call this, in my family, Mama's Rose, but I believe it is actually the floribunda form of America. And you can often see America offered as a climbing rose, but I've not been able, recently, to locate a floribunda form. My brother and, well, my mother and my brother, rooted these from cuttings from the original plant, from our home, where I grew up. And this was a Mother's Day rose my brother gave my mother in 1974. And so, since that time, we've been growing this particular plant continuously, and I've personally grown this one for the last 25 years. This is one that I'm propagating with, by cuttings, right now, and distributing to a few friends, as well as myself to ensure that if I try to transplant this and it doesn't make it, that I still have the rose.

- [Annette] And what's exciting, when I see this bush, is I can see it's very, very happy and very vigorous because, down inside it, I see brand new canes. I see brand new buds. All of that means there's a lot of vigor in the roots, and this is on its own root. It doesn't have to depend on that graft.

- [April] Yeah, it's pretty astonishing that it's actually done so well as an own root rose, which kind of makes me think that maybe people should try that a little bit often.

- [Annette] Well, I know you are a plants person. You are as sharing person.

- And a crazy plant lady. And a crazy... And if I knew that you had one, I would've wanted one. Just like a plant. I like your shirt. But seriously, thank you for the effort and the time that you've put into this to share the beauty that we've been given to take care of.

- [April] Thank you so much, Annette. I appreciate it.

- [Annette] It's been a very good, very good day.

- [April] Yeah, I agree.

- [Tammy] We're about to see a dramatic home landscaping project. It involved excavation and tons of stone. Jim and Will, the ultimate do-it-yourselfers, dreamt it, engineered it, and did the heavy lifting. They wanted us to see the finished project together. So, let's go look.

- Look at these rocks!

- These are floating rocks, here, this is one of the last things I did. This has 20 rebars in it. It's not going anywhere. Good luck trying to push that over.

- [Tammy] Right. But they look so natural, there.

- [Jim] Yes, that's everything in this, everything is planned to look natural.

- Oh my gosh, look at all-

- So, this was, nothing grew here. I think a lot of people can relate to this. They have this, kind of, crappy piece of side yard between houses where it doesn't really get enough sun, the gutters are taking all the water away, and it's too dry, grass won't even grow.

- Right.

- [Jim] That was the spot. And we just put rock here. Everything's sloped perfectly, about one inch for every six feet. And 'cause that's one of the first things I learned, being married to an engineer, is that you need to know where water is going around your house,

- Absolutely.

- [Jim] Otherwise you can have problems.

- [Tammy] Absolutely. This is just, every little spot I look, is another little thing of interests.

- [Jim] Check this out. This is the Bletilla striata, big Bob hardy orchid.

- [Tammy] You go, Bob.

- It's a deciduous orchid. So, you don't have to worry. It's not like high maintenance, like an orchid. You just put it, here, and you can't let it get hit by frost, if it's a late frost.

- [Tammy] Look at these levels and these different little spots where you just want to stop.

- [Jim] Do you know how hard it is to make a stone curved? Putting in sedges? Sedges are my new kinda favorite thing the landscape with. They have really great textures and different kinds of color.

- Right.

- [Jim] They're very low maintenance.

- [Tammy] So we only go so much.

- Yeah, and they only grow so much. You don't have to trim them. They look great in the winter. So, I got a box full of, I think, 40 plugs, the sedges coming in the mail, here, in a couple of weeks, so I'll be busy.

- So you're just going to intersperse them among all the-

- Being a little squirrel, planting all the little sedges everywhere.

- [Tammy] It's just beautiful here. It just keeps getting-

- Foam flower,

- Gorgeous.

- sensitive fern,

- ostrich fern.

- All your pretty shades. Oh, I think we're approaching the sunken patio. My heart is so happy right now. And you placed every single one of these rocks

- Yes, and-

- and it looks, it doesn't look placed. It looks like it just was meant to be here.

- [Jim] That's what we were, I'm so happy to hear you say that 'cause that's what we were going for.

- [Tammy] I mean, this is beautiful. Usually, when I'm walking on something like this, it's a little wobbly. This is incredible.

- We spent hours leveling every little spot.

- It's incredible.

- It was not easy, but it was important.

- Yeah, and you know what? Aren't you glad you did, now?

- Yeah.

- At the time, I'm sure it was like, okay-

- In July.

- Can't we just let this slide?

- Especially around July, it became a little tiresome, you could say.

- I guess so. I guess so. And then, look at what we have here. Oh my!

- It never-

- This is where I would live.

- It never gets old.

- I would never leave this spot.

- When you have a really stressful day.

- And look. You got little things-

- These are, I am so proud of this area. These are all huge rocks that we hand-carved. You had to strike it and then you chisel it out. And these are all basically the horseshoe rocks built just for our friends, the trees, so that they can grow healthy and happy here. Underneath all these rocks, is limestone fines, about six inches, I think, if I remember correctly, that allowed us to perfectly level all these stones around. This wall is setting on a three-foot-wide by two-feet deep steel rebar, reinforced concrete slab, horseshoe. The stone yard laughingly told us that, "we'll just put all, "put 30 tons of rock on just about two feet "of a quarter-inch stone gravel "and you'll be fine." And Will nixed that idea. 'Cause we would have a disaster on our hands, is what we would have. So, this wall hopefully is not moving anywhere. It's engineered. If we had a choice of engineering it, we over-engineered it.

- [Tammy] And, you know what? I like, how you got things growing-

- Yeah, I just-

- with it.

- [Jim] Stone crops, I can't even name all the stone crops.

- [Tammy] It's just beautiful. It looks natural.

- Well, that's-

- It looks like it-

- [Jim] Well, it's funny you should say that because this was inspired by all the National Parks that we visited. And we got married in Glacier National Park and we wanted to experience a little piece of Glacier every day.

- Sometimes, a fool's task, to try and lasso Mother Nature, but you've done it by using her own things.

- Yeah.

- And that's what I like about this; it just feels like a little cocoon of Mother Nature, right here.

- [Jim] It's a funny spot because we're so close to downtown. You get both nature sounds and you get some city sounds. It's a dichotomy, but sometimes it's harmonious and it's-

- Absolutely.

- [Jim] It's kinda like, it's a perfect setting.

- [Tammy] And you've worked in a ton of trees.

- Oh yeah.

- So how many trees have you planted in this?

- I stopped counting after 70

- Wow.

- So we're surrounded by a lot of Japanese Maples. So, I just pack them in, and pack them in, because they will just kind of dwarf in size. The ones that would normally grow a little bigger, if you keep them packed in, they'll dwarf. And we've got-

- And the foliage, It's just so gorgeous.

- Yeah, oh my gosh. Right now, this is maybe the first, second best time in the season to experience Japanese Maples.

- [Tammy] It's an interesting space, Jim, because it feels big. It's not, but it feels that way.

- I'm glad you brought that up because that was a part of the plan. That was a part of the design. This, we removed over 30 tons of soil here. So, this was just a gentle slope down. I didn't realize this would be 30 tons. We actually increased the volume of the space. Everything's hand-carved as well, including this bird bath. I just saw this flat rock and it was like, "That would be an awesome bird bath." This is, actually came at the end of the project. After we stopped moving rocks, I sort of became addicted and it was kind of like, "I need to work on something," and I'm like, "I'm gonna make a bird bath out of this "and put it right here." But this was, sort of, one of the last projects that we did. And knowing that we wanted to put some kind of water feature, here, it's a hundred-gallon system, and we just basically dug about three feet down. There's, I think, 25 bags of concrete, here.

- [Tammy] Wow.

- [Jim] We had to use some ingenuity to form the concrete to the space perfectly. There was no wood form or anything that you could easily build.

- [Tammy] This seems like-

- Critter paradise?

- a wildlife habitat.

- [Jim] Yeah, it is by design. When we first moved in here, I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I was thinking more uniform rows of things. I was thinking, actually, just got a row of crepe myrtle, keep it simple, row of crepe myrtles here. Crepe myrtles are a Southern, kind of, wonderful tree to be around. And Will's like, "No, we need to do something "for the critters." We made, I think his words were "bird paradise". We need to create bird paradise.

- I love it, I love it.

- I'm like, "Well, I really like that idea, "but it's a little more complicated "to do a bird paradise." And so, from that point forward, we started planning the space for the critters and us in mind. So, one of the wonderful things about this backyard that we absolutely love is we've got lizards, skinks everywhere. They're kind of fun to watch them scurry around. Will and I have become the birding people, now, like watching the birds.

- [Tammy] Okay, so Jim, we're going from water to the garden to all

- Garden!

- [Tammy] Of which I love. Take me through this wonderful garden.

- [Jim] These are my Taj Mahal of garden boxes.

- [Tammy] I love them!

- [Jim] So, when we first moved in, I had to have a garden. I've been gardening my entire life. In fact, that's what I got in trouble, as a kid, on the farm, I would go and plant gardens where they shouldn't be.

- Oh, you just-

- So, I had to have-

- You little stinker.

- I had to have my garden boxes. And Will said, "Well, they're gonna be difficult "to put a garden box here." I said, "Well, how difficult can it be? "It's just a rectangle." It's in, and he said, "Well, it's on the side of a hill." And I said, "Well, okay, so one side's gonna be "a little taller than the other." Well, flash forward, we have, on one side, it is a four, four feet. And on this side it's one foot.

- It's really sloped.

- Three, in four feet, it drops four feet. And then, so there's, these garden boxes have 16, four-by-four columns, cemented, perfectly leveled in the ground. There's 120 lag bolts holding them together. There's reinforcements holding them together. So the weight doesn't push them out.

- [Tammy] Right.

- [Jim] I lost count after 15 yards of soil.

- [Tammy] 'Cause soil is heavy, as you know.

- Oh, yeah, and you've got to have good, as you know, you can't have a garden without good soil. You have to start with good soil by itself.

- And you know,

- So that's what these-

- Jim, what you've done, is you've made it easy on yourself because all I've got to do is reach over.

- Oh yeah, on each side.

- And garden. I don't have to even get down on my knees,

- We even put perfectly leveled stone on that side as well.

- Of course you do. Of course you do. And you've got all your plants here, ready to go.

- Oh, yeah, you want some tomatoes and peppers? You, everything-

- Because, do you think you've got something, you've got enough?

- I've got, every gardener that plants seeds has.

- Do you have specific plants that are your favorites-

- Oh, yeah, absolutely.

- in this garden?

- One of our favorite trees is this Virginia pine. A lot of people don't use Virginia pines in their landscape.

- I don't know why.

- [Jim] I don't know why. I think it's just the texture, whatever, but, I mean, it's perfect for the space. We have service berries for the birds. Everyone's says

- Nice.

- [Jim] "You can make service berry jam and stuff." I was, like, "Well, yeah, if you can beat the birds to them."

- [Tammy] Yeah, and good luck with that.

- [Jim] Yeah, they're there for the birds. Our favorite tree has to be the Bigleaf Magnolia. According to my grandparents, I knew, I grew up in southern Indiana, and according to my grandparents, I knew every tree by name before I knew my ABCs. So, I know all the trees in the forest. And so, when we moved down here to Tennessee, I knew a lot of the, there was a lot of familiars and a lot of my, trees that I knew, but there was one tree that stood out to me. I'm like, "What is that?" It was in Fiery Gizzard, at the state park, here, just about an hour outside of town. And it just looked like an enlarged Pawpaw. And I'm like, "Well, this, what is this? "This must be some kind of weird variety of Pawpaw "I've never encountered before." I didn't know that. And I kept seeing it. I'm like, "This is no Pawpaw." And so, I got to the books and I found that it was the Bigleaf Magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla. And the leaves get this long and this wide. It's like an elephant ear tree. It's like, it's so impressive.

- [Tammy] It's appropriately named. It's perfect for your landscape.

- Yes, yes.

- I love it. So tell me all about this.

- This is the Flintstones couch, here. This was supposed to be, well, we didn't really know what to do with this space. So, it was kind of extra large and either it was going to be a garden bed or an extra large path. And we're like, "We'll just put a bench here. "How difficult could a bench be?" Famous last words. All of these boulders are all irregularly shaped. They had to be perfectly leveled so that the sitting experience, here,

- It's nice.

- is wonderful.

- It's the perfect height. All these things go into planning a bench. The whole project was built with love. But if you could talk to these stones, they would say otherwise.

- [Tammy] I understand. Jim, you have really combined hardscaping, landscaping, and gardening in one area. And it has just been a pleasure and a privilege to see it. Thank you so much for having us, here.

- [Jim] I'm thankful for you to be here, as well. So, it has been a real treat to have you. The hardscaping's been waiting for you.

- I'm coming back.

- Okay.

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