Episode 3218

- Amaryllis flowers represent beauty and love, but did you know a single bulb can last 25 years or more? Julie Berbiglia learns the culture of these standouts, and gets tips from an avid grower. There's a new use for this 185 acre campus, bordered by the Tennessee River. Once the home of Lakeshore Mental Health Institute, this is now a public space for recreation. Troy Marden visits with the landscape architect to learn about the plants chosen for this site, and why. Plus, Sheri Gramer collects garden treasures for a vase, sans-flowers. Join us. Clusters of huge trumpet shaped flowers, atop tall slender stalks. Let's learn about hippeastrum. So I grew up with the idea that every year in the winter, you would get an amaryllis bulb in those boxes, and you would plant it, and it would miraculously bloom. And then, well, I know a lot of people that just throw 'em away. And we're going to learn about how you take care of amaryllis, but also some of the misconceptions. So let's talk a little bit about- what I have just found out is quite the misconception, which is the whole name, amaryllis.

- That's an exact misconception because amaryllis is a species that comes from South Africa. And when we get those bulbs that we get at Christmas time, they're actually of the genus, hippeastrum. Hippeastrum is a Greek word, just like amaryllis is a Greek word, but the hippeastrums come from South America.

- [Julie] Clearly, in terms of a houseplant, among all the other house plants, this is one of your favorites I can tell. So let's take a look at some of these, and figure out what I'm looking at, because clearly I didn't learn much about 'em because they were thrown away. So, I do know that this is one that wants to grow up.

- This one is starting to to come up and leaf out, and that's very typical of the hybrid commonly named amaryllis, or hybrid hippeastrums. And they are a mix of different species. They have papery shelling to 'em. They grow bigger and bigger every year, and they should always be potted tightly, and slightly deeply. And these ones will come into bloom usually by March. And they'll have the big red or white, or now, even yellow and orange flowers.

- Oh, beautiful. Because I do remember the red ones very favorably. Now, this seems to be the same one, but maybe the next step a little bit later. Looks like we're getting some blooms.

- Exactly. Julie, this is the next step where either a red with stripes, or pink with stripes is gonna come up. I have about five varieties that I like. I have apple blossom, I have Hercules, I have several others. And they're all doing well for me. This one's probably about four years old. This one's about five years old. And this one's gonna have two flowers in one, and it's gonna have 'em before the leaves. So that sometimes happens. Sometimes you get a leaf, and a group of leaves up, and sometimes you get a flower first. That really depends on whether you're forcing the bulb the first year, or, or you've been growing it for a while by putting it outside, bringing it back inside, which is what I do. amaryllis like light. hippeastrum like to be in a range of environments, but most people err on having them get too much sun. They actually do better with slightly less sun, a little bit of partial shade. So they're the perfect plant. Even if they lose all their leaves, just stick 'em in between your other house plants. You don't wanna over water 'em. That's the main thing. What you, what you always hear on the, on the books, is, "Don't water the bulb." But, what I find is that as long as you're in a colder environment near the window, they actually don't mind having, you know, water once a week. And they do originally come from a wide range of environments, from tropical rainforests all the way to sandy beaches in South America. So they really bring a sense of a tropical vacation to me, you know when I think about 'em, 'cause they've been everywhere before they came here. They grow, there's about 90 species from Mexico all the way down to Argentina. And in Argentina you'll find some that grow in bogs. So you know, those are water resistant. But the ones that grow on the beach, obviously they're not getting much water just when it rains, and then they're free to flower. Oh, there's one thing that makes this different than amaryllis, because amaryllis being from South Africa, really love dry summers and wet winters. And so they hardly will produce leaves, unless they get a dry spell first, and then some water. Most of your hippeastrum will be okay through, through, through the winter months, and through the summer months too. Just keep 'em a little bit dry in the summer, and fairly watered. And then especially well watered once they start sending up their, their bloom. So the blooms don't fade.

- Okay, so a little dry, and then eventually start watering when they tell you that they're starting to grow.

- [Matthew] Yeah. Yeah.

- Okay. So you have this absolutely gorgeous flower right here, but I understand that these are not the same.

- Exactly. So when we're talking about those many, many species, 90 species in the Americas, this is actually, the butterfly amaryllis is a common name, and as a scientific name, it's Hippeastrum Papilio. Papilio means, butterfly. So everyone's heard of, you know, papillion. So this is related to that. And it's 'cause it, it really sends out the, the larger pedals to the sides, and smaller pedals down to the bottom. And of all hippeastrums, they always put their style, their pistol, downwards and then upwards. And that helps with the insects that come and pollinate them. And then you can see the anther sacs here. But this being a, a special species, was sold at the lawn, lawn and garden show, and I found it to be really easy to propagate, and it always doubles in numbers. So it's exponential. Once you get one, next year you have two or three, and then soon you've got maybe a hundred, I don't know. And, and as a species, they're from the tropical rain, the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil, and to keep their leaves through both summer and winter. So I like them to fit in between my other house plants.

- Oh, okay. Well I think we have another difference here that I hadn't completely realized. So this one's gonna keep its leaves, but this one's not. Correct?

- For the most part. Though sometimes a hybrid will keep its leaves. It really just depends on what kind of hybrid, and how you're treating it. So remember that any hippeastrum will need a cold spell. So when we leave them out on a balcony, or under a awning, that's the perfect environment, 'cause they're getting sun, but they're not getting too much water. And when you remember the water, 'em, they're fine. And then if you leave them out through the fall, they get those chilly nights, and that's what resets the clock for them to flower, and sometimes lose their leaves. And especially if you'd under watered a bit, you'll lose leaves faster.

- Alright. So let's start taking a look at some of these different sizes that you have, because it sounds like you've been doing some propagating with them. And I wanna know more about how that happened. So the tiniest one that you have over here. Did you pull it off the side? Did you cut it off? Tell me how did you get that little one?

- This little guy got pulled off the side of a large mother plant, probably the size of this one over here. And unlike some amaryllis, they're not fussy when you re-pot 'em, and they'll just sit there and grow in between your other house plants. You can even add another house plant as you go up one pot in size. And then you finally get to one that is probably likely to bloom its first time. This one is probably a first time bloomer. And you can see that once you get a big tall scape, depending on how far away you are from the, from the window, you will get at least two flowers, sometimes four, sometimes even six. So in terms of your upkeep, you get these drying leaves. And just as they dry either you can start pulling 'em off, or you can find the ones that have wilted completely like this, and just grab 'em by the tail, or rip 'em in the middle, and remove 'em. And the same thing with the spent flowers. The spent flowers are important to remove, and they crack open at the very top, Like that. And then you've cleaned up. Now if you've pollinated, which would be where these are now turned yellow, and haven't stayed green, they would produce a slight pod. So I'll pull these out, and I'll show you one that's already bloomed quite a while ago, and that's successfully produced self seed. And that is the pod of the developing amaryllis. This one didn't take. So this one will just take out from the side. And we might leave these. No matter what, we want the stem to dry naturally, and give its food back to the mother plant. People worry too much about the repotting, but obviously the little babies have to be repotted, so, so the moms can be repotted as well. Among the many species, the main thing they can get is a virus that models 'em and keeps the bulbs small, and keeps 'em from reproducing to make more offsets. But, in terms of insects, the only thing that I control for, is a little bit of that fluffy white fly, the, the furry one, and then a little bit, sometimes you'll have thrips if you're letting them dry out too much, or mites. But really these have had no treatment. So I'm glad to say these are organic hippeastrums, or organic amaryllis.

- Now, this brings up something that, that I often see, which is people get that box with that bulb, and put them in just water.

- [Matthew] Ooh, yep.

- Oh, this sounds upsetting to you, Matthew. So tell me about, about that form of growing 'em.

- So the, the companies will tell you that they grow without soil, they grow without substrate, and they grow with, without too much water, in fact. But really to get 'em to be like this in the future, it's better to put 'em in soil, treat 'em like a plant that could go inside, outside. Every plant likes being washed off by natural rainfall. And that's what I do with my plants. I keep 'em on a balcony, I move 'em out to the country. I have 'em for a bunch of reasons. And then they're almost like orchids. You bring them up to show, or in between some of the house plants, they look great when they suddenly surprise you, and you didn't see that they were sending up a stem of flowers, and they got all the flowers that you want. I also think they're, they're really great for teaching about flowering plants, because they're typical of the grass families. They have, aveny amarylla daisy, which is the right family for the hippeastrums. They have the six parts. They always have parts in three. Okay? And so they're more related to the grasses than they are to other flowering plants. So I think that explains their good resistance. You know, I've had gardenias go down in, in month and a half, but, but these will survive. These have survived. Some from four years, and some up to six years, or maybe even seven, so far.

- Well I am just fascinated now, by this wonderful flower and plant that I have misnamed and miscared for for so many years. And next time you see one of these, just imagine all of the many countries it grows in, and that you can grow it in your living room.

- Today we're taking a look at something a little bit different than what we look at on "Volunteer Gardener" a lot of times. And we're in a public space. We do some public gardens, but this happens to be a big public park in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we're with John Ridenhour, who's the landscape architect on this project. John, tell us how you got involved, and a little bit of the history about the park and how it, how it came to be.

- Yeah, thank you. I'm with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. Thomas Woltz is our principal and owner, and we've been involved in the park, and the master planning process for the park for about five or six years now.

- Yeah.

- And the park itself, historically it was a mental health institute all the way back from the late 19th century.

- [Troy] Right.

- And it closed, the official closing of the facility happened in the late 90's early two 2000's. And it's 185 acres in a glorious space and site with views of the Tennessee River and the mountains beyond. So it's really a kind of a gem, and a really important park to the citizens of Knoxville. When we started, there were actually a number of buildings, outbuildings from the historic hospital. There were buildings all throughout the park, and you kind of, you see footprints in the topography of where these buildings used to be. So we're slowly erasing that kind of history of those, those specific buildings. But the historic buildings, this is, this was the administration building to the larger complex in the late 19th century. And with, with historic, that's character and charm. So the building occupies the highest point of the site, and looks directly at the, the river, and the mountains at the river mountains beyond. And there's this very distinct axis from the center of the building all the way to the river. And what we've done here, as part of the master plan, or continuing to do currently, with additional construction going on, is looking at civic scale gestures, that make sense with the topography, and the views of the site. And that's what this initial phase that we were involved in represents. It's a massive esplanade from one end to the other, an arcing esplanade that is kind of at the scale of, of the site and the building as well.

- [Troy] Right. So as a landscape architect on a site this size, you have to take into consideration what fits on the property. The same way that you do in a residential setting, but on a much usually smaller scale.

- [John] Right. At 185 acres, we're kinda working at that scale. Also working at the scale of public use. And the Lake Shore Park Conservancy, our client, you know, wanted this space to occupy or to be able to have relatively decent size events.

- [Troy] Sure.

- So there've been weddings here with more than 500 people.

- [Troy] Wow.

- This space specifically, this plaza is sized for tenting events, cocktail receptions, et cetera. We also just the scale of the site.

- Great. Well, I'd love to walk around a little bit and take a look at some of the other things you've done.

- Sure.

- So planting in public spaces is a little bit different also. And you have to think about the usage of the space, and the fact that there are, you know, it is open to the public, there are gonna be people around all the time. And then how the space transitions into the future. Tell us a little bit about how you go through that process.

- Well this, this portion of the, of the site on this side with the perennial gardens is a transitional landscape through the seasons obviously, but also through time.

- Sure.

- And when we installed the nyssa sylvatica sylvatica, the blackgums,

- Right.

- They were a fair amount smaller. So we calculated this, for this strip, we did some sun studies calculated it, it was about 15% shade, you know, 70, or 85% percent-

- Sun.

- [John] Sun.

- Yeah.

- [John] And so, but that's obviously transitioning over time. So our goal was to find plants that could take a little bit of both.

- [Troy] Right.

- And with the obvious understanding that some of those plants are gonna need to be removed and updated over time.

- [Troy] Right.

- [John] Certain species such as the amsonia blue ice, and the carex cherokeensis kind of, can really move in both directions quite easily.

- [Troy] For sun or shade?

- Exactly.

- [Troy] Yeah. Yeah. And the asters probably over time will maybe transition out as this becomes shadier.

- [John] Yeah. I think that's the goal. I think the goal also, is we need to cut back these a fair amount, and really let the geranium and the sporobolus, and the-

- Other things-

- [John] The cat. The cat .

- Okay.

- But the goal was for that, this to kind of be overflowing. It's a matrix planting kind of overflowing onto the paving. Whereas the opposite side of the esplanade is more mineral and occupiable.

- [Troy] Right. Right. So this sort of softens everything, and your hard edges are over on this side. And it actually, that way keeps kind of your view all the way out across the park uninterrupted.

- [John] Right. We, we think of this whole space, this whole esplanade as almost like the front porch to the park, and the front porch to the administration building above.

- [Troy] Right.

- So thicker, denser on the backside with benches kind of set within that planting with views outward.

- Yeah. And I know like the blackgums, was there a, a reason for selecting blackgum here?

- [John] We looked at a number of species. I think we a shortlist of four or five, and it-

- Yeah.

- [John] It came down to, you know, the fact that it's obviously a native, native tree. Although it's the cause of our wildfire fire, which gets a nice spring kind of bright maroon flush. We looked at Catalpa and some oaks, but this was the scale of the nyssa, the native character, the fall color,

- [Troy] Right.

- the spring flush. It's kind of what helped us decide on the specific tree.

- [Troy] Yeah. And you've also got a little bit of a, an experiment going on with these nyssas, because they're grafted trees.

- [John] Correct.

- And you can see at the base of the trunk where they've been grafted, they've actually been grafted low instead of high like we see in some species, but they're grafted onto a root stock of a, of a different species of nyssa that in theory is maybe a little more tolerant of the conditions that are here?

- [John] A little bit more tolerant of both wet and very dry conditions. So I think the, the fact that it was grafted helps in the hardiness of the tree.

- [Troy] Right.

- And you know, we planted I think 40 or 42 of these trees in total. And we haven't, knock on wood, we haven't had any issues thus far, so.

- [Troy] That's great.

- And it's been about four years, and they're finally starting to take off,

- [Troy] Look like they're thriving here. We've also got a big bank of hydrangea blooming back here that is gonna add a bunch of summer, starting to add some summer color now, but gonna peak here in a couple of weeks it looks like. Specific variety on this one?

- [John] This is a little lime.

- Little lime? So one of the paniculatas.

- [John] Correct.

- Again, a good tough, heat tolerant drought tolerant hydrangea.

- [John] Yeah. It's a, it's a, a client favorite.

- [Troy] Yeah.

- It's also, you know, it's just, it's thick and full, and blooms for a long period of time, and it just has amazing flower heads. throughout the fall and winter.

- [Troy] Right. Because winter they transition all the way through several seasons. So this is a multi-season interest plant.

- [John] And we usually leave those, those heads on throughout those spring as well.

- [Troy] Even through the winter. Yeah. So you get that architectural form. As the park itself transitions, as these beds transitions, what's, what's the future for Lake Shore Park?

- [John] Well, we're working on, you know, we did a master plan in 2017, 2018, and working on the next phase of that, currently in the park, and the southern half of the park, which is focused on ball fields, and recreation, and playgrounds.

- [Troy] Right. Okay.

- And so that, that will be finished, the work is happening now. That will be finished in spring of '24. And then there are other portions of the park that we're starting to initiate design on currently. So, it's a long effort. We've been at it for five years, and it'll probably be at least another five moving forward.

- Wow. Well thank you so much for letting us come out, and being with us, and telling us a little bit about your involvement in the, in the park project, and giving us a little glimpse into its future.

- Great. Thanks so much for coming to Lakeshore.

- Thank you.

- Picture this, it's the middle of summer, there aren't very many flowers blooming in your yard, and you're having people over for dinner. What are you gonna do? Go back out in that yard, and look for different things to put in vases. There's textures, colors, always available out there without flowers on them. Now you could use branches, you could use rocks, anything in vases. But I find that when you start looking, there really are more ideas out there available for ya. So what, one of my favorite things is just a simple, simple, simple, simple. Just a fern frond. If you just were to strip off a few of the little leaves on the bottom. And you could put several of these on the table, different shapes of jars, maybe some apothecary jars would look cool. You know, it's always an option to do something like that. Even some Japanese maples. If you cut a couple of these little twigs off, again, remember the colors. Look at these colors. They're just gorgeous. So you could pick different colors, or sometimes less is best. You could just go with a couple simple plain ones. I love this. I think this is so fun. When you get a, a plant or a a fern outside, and a frond or a branch gets broke, just cut it off, bring it in, and put it in another vase. I think, I think that's a great idea. Here's, let me grab this here. This is a huge vase, and it would take a lot of plant material, or flowers in here in order to create anything beautiful. Lemme grab these little jars here. So what I think is kind of fun is if you take, we've got some bronze leaf fennel here. We're gonna put these in here like this. I'm using three, I'm stealing this, this vase here. We'll go this way. What I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna stick this right down in here, squish it in there. You could use gravel. In the fall, you could use little pumpkins, or gourds in here, but you get the idea of it. You just wanna play with it. And you know, I think that's stunning. I mean, it's simple, yet it's elegant. Another one we can do, I'm gonna slide this over here. Don't forget some of your perennials that you don't think of until they're blooming, some hellebores, the leaves. Those are fabulous leaves. Look at these leaves. I love 'em. You could pop again. I would, I like with the little jars, I like just one, one type of leaf. Or we could do, we have a huge hosta leaf. Now what about that? That's different. If you look in magazines that are selling furniture, they always have this, these cool vases, they might be big vases, short vases, it doesn't matter. But they always seem to have one or two fronds of something, something interesting, and big and different, that is kind of out of the box. We could take a nice little basket vase and you could actually make a bouquet out of just your different colored plant material. Got some lavage, and our Japanese maples. As with flowers, you don't want the leaves in the water, because they will turn your water yucky really fast. So you just want that exposed, whoops, there's one in here. Come on. I could smell that lovage. I just love that fragrance. For those of you who aren't familiar with lovage, lovage is is an herb, it's a perennial. The stems are hollow. And it tastes a lot like celery. The best use, I think is for stews or soups, because even though it tastes like celery, the stems are quite stiff, I would say, or tough. That's the word I'm looking for. Tough. But what they're really good for is cocktails. Bloody Mary's. If you like celery in your Bloody Mary's, you're gonna love lovage in it, because you can use it as a straw. You can sip right through that piece of lovage, and it would be great. And again, look at the colors. The colors are fabulous. Now, if you only had a couple, one or two flowers in there, maybe some roses are blooming still, you could pop those in there as well. Some little hosta leaves, some variegated ones in there, which are fun. So I guess the, what I'm trying to tell you, is the most important thing, is to think out of the box. Go walk around in your yard and see what is available. Don't look for flowers, look for color, look for texture. And the most important thing is, is have fun with it. Leaf it up.

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