Episode 3406

- [Speaker] A water feature can be a focal point in a landscape, adding visual interest, movement, and sound, while also providing for wildlife. Troy Marden checks in with an aquascape specialist to see the options available for any size outdoor space. Julie Berbiglia highlights plants that have a medicinal use on a walk through the Latin American Garden at Vanderbilt University. Plus, Annette Schrader gets a lesson on how to use sustainable growing methods, even when gardening and containers. Join us. Whether your outdoor green space is small and limited or large and expansive, there's an option for adding a water feature that will compliment the scale and style.

- Some of you may have water features in your gardens, some of you may be considering it. Today, I'm going to talk with a master certified aquascape contractor about the maintenance involved in a variety of different kinds of water features. We'll look at everything from full-blown ponds with waterfalls to very small features that are completely self-contained. Let's go find Derek and see what he has to say. So this is maybe kind of a medium-sized pond. Not too small, but it's not the size of a swimming pool. Is this kind of a typical installation for you guys?

- This is probably kind of almost that finished pond. Because most people will start out with maybe like a 8 x 11 and you kind of graduate to this. Most people don't typically go beyond this. I mean, sky's the limit. You can do whatever you wanna do. But this is kind of, the average homeowner, or pond owner, I should say, will either rebuild or redo their pond at least three times. And this is kind of the finish.

- This is what they end.

- And the reason being is once they find out that it's really easy to deal with and low maintenance, then you're more apt to, you know, take up a little more space from your garden.

- [Troy] I'm curious if, you know, having more gallons of water, the temperature doesn't fluctuate as much, those kinds of things. Is it easier in the long run to have something that's rather than a little three by four pond that heats up badly, those kind of things.

- I think heats up. I think that's a key point. The smaller the water features evaporation is definitely more of a concern.

- [Troy] Yeah, and you have more trouble with maybe algae and those kinds of things.

- [Derek] If it's not set up correctly, because if you have a heavier fish load, then we're looking at more balance. So it's, yeah, the more you graduate it, it does get a little bit easier. I agree.

- [Troy] Are there any depth requirements for a pond like this? Minimums, maximums?

- [Derek] Really it's fish health. You don't wanna exceed two feet necessarily. One of probably the safety concerns, 'cause we get any deeper, you know, concerns with children and stuff like that. But you definitely wanna be more than a foot for fish health. Our winters don't get that cold, but we don't want the fish to freeze. 'Cause they do go dormant, their metabolism slows down. So we really just kind of stay at that two foot, you know, footprint. So it just makes a very aesthetically pleasing pond. And it's great for safety and fish health.

- [Troy] If you don't want the full-blown pond water feature, then these pondless water features offer up a great option. Tell us about installing one of these and what advantages these have maybe to the homeowner.

- [Derek] So when we get into the pondless and the fountain scape side, small spaces. It's a big deal. A lot of people want water features, and well, Nashville's growing, right? We have a lot of urban settings. They don't have the space they used to. So this is perfect for those small areas. And not only that, this one kind of has that kind of modern contemporary feel. So it can really fit into a formal garden. It could work into, you know, your traditional perennial garden. But really, there's almost, I can't say zero maintenance, but there's really nothing to do to this thing but add some water every couple, three weeks or something.

- [Troy] You have a pump, which is an electric thing, and you know, at some point that probably has to be replaced down the road. You know, occasional things like that. But a little leaf clean out once in a while. Everything's underground.

- [Derek] Yep. Has the underground basin underneath there. This thing holds about 100, 120 gallons of water underneath. So as you can see, the leaves have fallen. It's just sitting right on the gravel. It doesn't affect the flow at all.

- [Troy] Well, and the thing that I love about this is that, as we're standing here looking, this is, you know, eight or nine feet by 10 or 12 feet. So even if you lived in a condo. Even if you just had a small plot of land behind a condo or a townhouse, something like that, you could do something like this and have a fantastic water feature without having to have an open body of water.

- [Derek] This is as safe as a bathtub. Same responsibility. And birds, I mean, it's amazing bird bath.

- [Troy] This feature is similar in size to the one that we just looked at, but a much more naturalistic approach. Rather than, you know, two big bowls that are spilling water. This is truly a naturally built waterfall. What's the difference in installation and maintenance of this versus, you know, what we've just seen?

- [Derek] Sure. So the installation process, obviously a little more tedious because we're using bigger boulders versus, you know, the spillways and the bowls back there. So installation, you know, a little more aggressive, a little more intense, but it still fits into a small space. So there again, if you have a small area, small space in the backyard, I mean, truly, if you just had this much room in your backyard, this would be pretty sweet to just sit on your patio and enjoy. And just as you can see, we have some plant staged here. So the maintenance is really the same. So the basin down here, well, it's the same basin as the other one. As far as function and pump and maintenance, same process. It just kind of flows into a more, you know, erosion-type gravel basin. So that's the main motivation when we're doing this, is to recreate what nature's doing. This is actually, in the Smoky Mountains, there's a trail called Chimney Tops. And it's just a cool trail. And this is a little section that I've... Did I replicate it perfectly? No, but I just always think about that. So when this was being built, this is a little section that I see. And I love the streams.

- [Troy] The other thing I noticed about this one that you've done that I think is really cool is that there's lighting in here. There's waterproof little fixtures that you can put down in a pond or in a waterfall or wherever. So this is the largest of your sort of pondless features that you have here on this particular property. And is there anything different about doing something like this versus something a little smaller?

- Sure. You can kind of see the creative freedom. 'Cause we really are not restricted to how big. If you have the space, we can install it. This one is great for commercial setting. So as you can tell with the road noise, here we are, we're in front of the garden center. But this is a great space, you know, you can put it in front of restaurants, apartment complexes. And there again, it's a safety thing. So with traditional ponds, they typically don't do that because of a safety concern right. Here, you know, I mean, what do we have, like an inch of depth of water consistently running? So, and there again, we're bringing in wildlife and attracting birds. So it's just a larger expanse and well, we can jazz it up too. So the drama that you can create.

- [Troy] Yeah, of course. you've got a much wider area to work with. Or you, you make the areas bigger as small as you want. So you can create a really dramatic effect with your waterfall, multiple steps. And, you know, we've got one up here and one down here. So the larger you can go, the more opportunity you have to do creative things.

- So Troy, like we were talking about before, small spaces.

- Yes.

- This is a relevant small space. So actually, if this kind of six foot, eight foot footprint is where we started, and like we were talking about before, the average customer will expand or build on at least three times. Case in point. We added another 12 feet to this particular water feature because they enjoyed it so much. And as you can see, they got their chairs and stuff. This is where they sit and just enjoy.

- [Troy] What a great way to fill sort of a difficult space. It's pretty well sloped. So I would imagine that in a space like this, you know, if it was just a mulched bed, every time it rains, you're gonna have mulch running down the hill and all of that sort of thing. So a perfect way to utilize a spot to me, you know, with something that really takes advantage of the natural lay of the land.

- Right. And we've filled the space. So I mean, we talked about maintenance and low maintenance. There's really not a lot going on here, even with the landscape.

- [Troy] Right. Ivy that needs to be trimmed once in a while, you know, that sort of thing. A few Japanese maples. So I noticed in this feature, like in your others, the little light fixtures that are along the stream. So as we were saying before, you know, you get more than just the daytime enjoyment out of this. If you're sitting on the porch in the evening, or if you have guests coming over, you get a different experience at night than you do during the day.

- Absolutely. So imagine, these are on a photo self. So you come home in the evening, you've had a long day at work, you're greeted by, you know, tranquility. And just to, you know, take the worries away.

- So it's just, and all those, and we try not to over-light too. It's probably kinda hard to tell 'cause we do try to hide the lights discreetly. We don't over over-light the area. We still wanna have some shadows and some interest. And there's a safety factor.

- You know, you come home in the evening and this area's lit, so not only you feel invited and glad to be home, but there's, you know, well, we're walking along steps. So, you know, a tripping hazard. So there's multiple, multiple benefits. The daytime water feature. The nighttime water feature.

- [Troy] Now if you are a homeowner, a gardener, and you're looking for something that you can just sort of tuck away as a hidden surprise, this seems like the perfect thing to me. This is all completely self-contained. So here we're looking at, what, basin underneath?

- Yes. Same basin. Same concept as as the other concept. So this is, you described it well with just that really small space. I see this as like a vignette. So it's like you have that in your garden, you don't see it when you first walk in. You're meandering through and this is what you find.

- [Troy] Yeah. And you hear it. You know, that's the thing that I think would be so interesting in a landscape, large or small about this, is that you would hear that long before you ever found it. And it kind of becomes a scavenger hunt then through your garden to go, you know, "Where is that water? I know I hear water." So they either have a feature or they have an irrigation leak.

- [Derek] One of the two. Something's going on. Absolutely.

- [Troy] But this is so... I love this because I think this is something that anybody, no matter the size of their garden, large or small, can accomplish easily. Again, it's lit so you can enjoy it day or night.

- [Derek] And if you have a little bit of algae that starts to grow on the rocks, you can just cut this one off and let it sit off for a day. The algae will dry up, you can take a hose and just wash it right off. So it's really simple. And this again is pet-friendly.

- [Troy] What we really haven't talked about is the bigger picture of the ecosystem of the whole garden. And once you get a water feature added, then you know, you've sort of completed the picture.

- [Derek] You have everything.

- [Troy] The element of life.

- [Derek] Yeah, exactly. You can't have life without water. So, you know, good karma.

- [Troy] Well, I can't thank you enough for taking a little bit of time to show me and of our viewers a variety of different ways that we can add this element of life to our gardens.

- [Derek] Exactly. I appreciate it. Everybody wants a water feature, they just don't know yet.

- [Troy] Right.

- Well, we can learn so much from gardening. We can learn about other countries and 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 plant is native to Mexico and Central America and it's called yerba santa in those regions. And it contains safrole, which you may know is the active ingredient in the sassafras root that was traditionally used to make root beer. We now know that saffron is a carcinogen, but it does supply this very peppery, spicy, anis-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 milkweed here.

- Yes, this is a Mexican milkweed. So very similar to the species that we have here. And of course, it's very important for the lifecycle 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 plants, 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 any predators. But it also is an irritant for 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.

- 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, that the yucatec Maya use 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 Mesoamerica, 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.

- 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 effects 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 and 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 out of them.

- 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 of 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 and 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. 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 firsthand and learn more about these plants. How can they do that?

- Well, first of all, you can stop by anytime. 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.

- We're about to have sustainable agriculture that will be accomplished inside of a container. And there's a layering process and Tom Anderson is gonna show us how we can have great results.

- Well this is kinda like lasagna gardening, where you layer everything and use all natural products, whatever you have on hand. And like this here is kitchen scraps that we save from vegetables that we eat.

- [Annette] No meat products.

- No meat products at all. No bones. And used coffee grounds. That's the best thing in the world for earthworms. And the bottom is out of this one.

- So when these get to where they're rather crackly, you could take the bottom out.

- That's right.

- Okay, I see all that good stuff in there then. And then the worms will come up.

- That's right. Then what you do, I save all the little cardboard.

- Paper towels rolls, toilet tissue. Oh, what's that?

- That's green. That is a bunch of green. You chop 'em up, just dump it all in there. That's layered. So you've got kitchen scraps first, you got coffee grounds and you got cardboard, and then you have greenery. This here come off of the cans.

- [Annette] Oh yes. So, all right. Now what comes next?

- You can layer it again. I just layer mine all the way up until about six inches from the top. And then I'll use either some old garden soil out here, whatever, you know, for the top for a seed to be sewn in. Because you can't just sow seed in this, this here will rot.

- Yes. Well that was gonna be my question to you. As I see you doing this, this will compost down and your soil level will continue to go down.

- That's right.

- What do you do then?

- You just keep adding to it. You just keep adding, just like lasagna gardening. You just keep adding layers of different color. You know, I'll add leaves to this. That's gonna be my next, there will be leaves out here, which I've got already falling. And chop 'em up a little bit with your lawnmower if you want to. You don't have to, but it keeps it from matting down. And I put them in there and you just keep starting over.

- Yeah. So you would do that if you had to rebuild the soil, maybe when you're not actively growing anything. So over the winter, you couldn't do that. Okay, well I interrupted you. Now what's your next layer gonna be?

- Well the next layer would be leaves. Then it'll come back in with some more kitchen scraps, which I'm a vegetarian, so I get them every day. And I put some more of that in there. Then I put some more coffee grounds in there.

- Okay.

- Just the same layer, just keep coming up with it. Then the last six inches can be a potting mix. It's gotta be so he can sow your seed in.

- Yeah. Right.

- That's right.

- Okay, now where did I get the idea that you might put a little bit of the hugelkultur process in this box?

- You can put limbs, chunks of rotten wood. You don't want use green wood, you want to use rotten wood because green would draw your nitrogen down below the root zone. So use your rotten wood. Any rotten pieces you find laying around your yard, little twigs, anything you can put in there, that's hugelkultur and you just keep building it up for that and them of these green limbs and browns.

- Okay. Well right here before this you say these have been together long enough to have been working and are the finished products, didn't you? You put walking onions in this one?

- Yes. That's Egyptian walking onions.

- [Annette] Okay. I don't find anything in here except the roots to the Egyptian walking onion. And that's another beneficial plant, isn't it? Okay, now dig in that one. Show us what's in it. Oh, I see grass clippings.

- [Tom] A lot of grass clippings.

- [Annette] How long long has this been together?

- [Tom] This one here. Probably about since August. I mean July.

- [Annette] July. Okay, three months.

- [Tom] Your grass clippings have already broken down, really.

- [Annette] So three months ago, this looked like an assembled one once you get through with the layers over here.

- [Tom] See there's your soil.

- [Annette] Yeah. I see that. Yep, I do. Well you need to add some topsoil to this one, don't you? So you can plant it.

- [Tom] See right now, that's about the highest I get.

- I call that black rich dirt. That's black gold. That's what that is.

- And you'll put maybe a three inch topsoil or three inch potting mix, potting soil. Not potting mix, but potting soil.

- If you have good garden soil.

- Yeah, if you got good garden soil, you can put that in there.

- You can put that in there too. Okay.

- You want is something that that seed can get started in.

- Yeah, and so what you really will have achieved by adding all of that in there, right here, you had enough soil that you planted these purple top turnip greens.

- [Tom] That's right.

- And the deer won't get these over here, will he? That's one of their favorite things. Well this is an amazing process. And you know what? I'm almost your age. We got to look for an alternative way to garden, don't we? I think this will produce for us.

- It will.

- And anyone else.

- You can see it growing.

- Exactly. Thank you.