Episode 3503

- [Narrator] There's a wonderful oasis of flowers, fragrance, and flavors in this public garden. Designed and maintained by the Herb Society of Nashville, located in Centennial Park, this garden has been refreshed from the soil up with a stunning design that features favorite herbs, basil, rosemary, thyme, plus purposeful plants with showy blooms. Then Troy Marden visits a grower in White's Creek who enjoys a plentiful crop of Muscadines. We'll learn what variety works best for our area, plus tips on proper spacing, pruning and sturdy trellising. Join us. This garden is a pleasant and rejuvenating place for people and a nourishing environment for pollinators.

- Mid-September, downtown Nashville. We have a special treat for you today where all your senses get to be on overload. Nashville Herb Society provides us with this, and we want you to visit this public garden. We're here with Cindy Winker and she's one of the designers of the new gardens. They've redid 'em all. Cindy, gosh, I'm standing here and it smells so wonderful. The aroma is just breathtaking. Breathtaking, I don't know, but it smells pretty good. Tell me about the basil behind us.

- The African blue basil is kind of a monster. But look at all the bees, they're so happy and the fragrance is just overwhelming and cool that these bees fly over to the island and make some honey over there that Metro Park sells in actually the gift shop. So we are feeding honey right here and the bees love it.

- [Sheri] And then behind you we have garden sage.

- [Cindy] Garden sage. This is garden sage. Garden sage great for a lot of different things.

- [Sheri] And the leaves are a lot bigger on this.

- The leaves cooked leaves are a lot bigger. And they're great fried with a little glass of wine in the evening.

- And right in front of you?

- Parsley. This is a flat parsley.

- [Sheri] Wanting to go to seed.

- [Cindy] And it's wanting to go to seed. And we let them happen, we let that happen.

- [Sheri] For the butterflies?

- Right. Right.

- And then over to my left, we have some beautiful rosemary. What variety is that?

- This is 'Arp'.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- And some 'Hardy', so 'Hill Hardy'. So there's a mixture of Hill Hardy and Arp in here, and it's done very well. You know, Rosemary sometimes doesn't like our humidity and the moisture, so we've been really pleased that...

- [Sheri] And you plant these two varieties because they are winter Hardy and just 'cause of what you said, they are adapting to...

- [Cindy] They're a little more tolerant of our our growing conditions here. The marigolds, obviously, are just everywhere and again, very happy. They just make you smile.

- And then beyond the left, I see some lavender.

- We have some lavender, lavender struggles here, you know? Again, doesn't like the moisture, but we've got some happy campers right there.

- [Sheri] Do you know what variety that one is?

- [Cindy] That's Phenomenal.

- [Sheri] Okay. Which is my favorite now. Gosh. I love that at home. And then you have purple sage there.

- [Cindy] Purple sage again. And the garlic chives are interesting. I love the bloom on the garlic chives. And in the kitchen, they're such a good, easy substitute if you don't have garlic. Just chop 'em up and throw 'em in your dish.

- And a note to our viewers, cut them seed heads off or you'll have it everywhere. Oh my gosh.

- Absolutely. They be everywhere.

- Yes, yes, yes. Well, let's move on down here. I'm gonna go around the corner and see what else you have in this garden. It's gorgeous.

- Great.

- [Sheri] One of my favorite, favorite things is our scented geraniums. And you have a beautiful display here. Tell me about the variety.

- [Cindy] So this is 'Rose of Attar' and it has this fabulous rose fragrance. And when you take the leaves especially, and you massage the leaves a little bit, you just get this fragrance. It's just very pleasing and very light, very soft fragrance. And even brushing against it, you'll get that.

- [Sheri] You know, in Victorian times when they planted these, they'd have 'em potted in their houses. And the ladies with their hooped skirts would come whisking through the house and their hoops would brush against the rose geraniums and it would permeate the room 'cause you know, we didn't take baths like we do. So that was the natural air freshener back there.

- [Cindy] It's one of our favorite, This is an interesting herb kind. I've had not seen it until we sold it at our plant sale last spring. And it's called Lippia dulcis. It's sweet Aztec herb and native to Mexico and Central America. It is a good kitchen herb. If you're trying to avoid sugar. If you taste it, it's very sweet.

- [Sheri] So, it's an annual then?

- [Cindy] It's an annual here, but it has a big camphor bite on the end, so you have to be prepared for that camphor bite.

- [Sheri] But I love how it's cascading down the wall here. Very, very beautiful.

- [Cindy] It kind of, it was a tiny little plant when we put it in there.

- [Sheri] This is just one plant?

- [Cindy] That's one plant.

- [Sheri] Oh my goodness. That is beautiful. Well, you get a lot of bang for your buck on that one.

- [Cindy] Well, it's in the mint family, so you can expect that kind of behavior from something in the mint family. And then I wanna talk about behind you. You have some beautiful pink globe amarathi.

- [Sheri] Can you tell me about that?

- [Cindy] I can. So Gomphrena, interesting plant, it's one of our favorite. We have in several places in the garden.

- [Sheri] And several colors.

- [Cindy] Several colors and has antioxidant properties, has antimicrobial properties. You can make tea with it and use it for an astringent on your face. It's has cultural significance in Asia where it's native because those blooms will dry, they'll stay the same color, they'll stay the same shape for a really long time. It's considered symbolically to have the herb or the flower that represents long life.

- [Sheri] Well, it's gorgeous in the garden today for us. Share with our viewers what this is.

- It's a 'string theory' Amsonia and it has a gorgeous cluster like blue bloom kind of powder, blue sky, bloom in the spring and early summer. And then it has this gorgeous foliage.

- [Sheri] It's very unique.

- [Cindy] Yeah. And it's just so, I always call it airy fairy, you know, just kind of open and blowing in the wind. But in a few weeks this is gonna start turning orange.

- [Sheri] Oh wow.

- [Cindy] Kind of a golden orange. And so you have for fall, you have that color in the garden. And it is a fun plant.

- [Sheri] Just keeps on giving all seasons.

- [Cindy] Well, I always say herbs are the plant that keeps on giving.

- [Sheri] You have quite a few varieties at thyme. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- [Cindy] I think we have about eight different varieties. You can see some are tall, some are short, some are hugging the ground. The spiral was designed by one of our members, former chairman Bronwen Wallace. And it's really just is a great focal point for the garden. Provides a nice, not backdrop, but front drop for the artwork here. And of course, thyme is a valuable culinary herb.

- [Sheri] Well, it's very pretty today.

- I'd like to share with our viewers how this refresh came to be. So we originally, Herb Society of Nashville originally planted this garden in 1977, professionally designed. We maintained it for all those years. And you know, as gardens will do, it began to get a little bit tired. Cherries trees needed to be replaced. So we did the refresh in the summer of last year, refreshed the soil, composted, designed new plants.

- And you saved a lot of the perennial herbs when you were doing this.

- We saved as many of the perennial herbs as we could. Saved as many of the permanent plantings as we could. And then in August we started planting, we planted some in the fall. Mostly most of this was planted in the spring of this year.

- And what are you leaning towards? You had mentioned native herbs. Is that something this garden is gonna lean towards now in the future?

- We don't, native plants are great and we use them whenever we can. But there's so many culinary herbs.

- Correct.

- That are not native. They're mostly Mediterranean, that we will always have those. So we'll always have plants that are some native, some non-native, native where can.

- [Sheri] And so how many hours a week are you in this garden working with your little elves.

- [Cindy] So I'm not here every week. We have a fabulous co-chairs that are here every week and they organize, make sure the volunteers are here. But we probably spend four to six, sometimes if we're planting, eight or 10 hours a week.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- [Cindy] It's all volunteer.

- In this garden just as Nashville Herb Society, you partner with the city of Nashville. Is that correct?

- That's correct. We partner with Nashville Parks and Recreation, and they've been a wonderful partner, have supplied some of the permanent plantings for us. The Herb Society has supplied the rest, but it's...

- Most of the funding comes from...

- Most of the funding comes from the Herb Society of Nashville.

- And so if our visitors, or excuse me, if our viewers wanted to visit, tell us how they would enter this garden.

- So you enter this garden from the art center, which faces, the garden is really behind the art center. I always say it's one of the best kept secrets.

- It's like a secret garden. Absolutely.

- It's a secret garden. So you come in through the art center and it's only open when the art center is open. So you'd have to check the hours of the art center, but come in here, visit. We get a lot of visitors from the healthcare facilities. Coming here to sometimes it's not so great part of their lives to find rest and peace in the garden. We're really proud that we can provide that.

- Well, that's beautiful. It's beautiful. Let's get on the ground and we're gonna go see some more herbs. This is a lovely pink and this is a type of sage. Can you tell us what it is?

- [Cindy] It's Agastache, and this is, I believe the variety is rosie. It's interesting culinary herb and pollinators. It's a great pollinator for you.

- [Sheri] Yeah, the bees are loving it. I can see that.

- [Cindy] The culinary uses for this are mostly teas, infusions. You can use it to flavor your drinks. It has a sweet, some people call it anise hysso. It has a sweeter flavor and a bit of a licorice fragrance.

- I know it's an ordinary herb, but let's talk about it anyways. Because you know, it has two flushes in the summer. Smells wonderful. Bees love it. So the pollinators are loving it. Let's talk about it.

- The Nepeta. So, it does add a really interesting color to the garden too. That gray green sage like texture is a, it's kind of a favorite in the garden. It's fairly easy to grow. You can trim it back, it'll flush back out. It's a nice good plant to try in your gardens in the border.

- [Sheri] And I wanted to talk to you about the mushroom compost that you guys swear by here. Can you share a little bit of that with us please?

- [Cindy] When we refreshed the garden, we knew that our soil wasn't as rich as it needed to be. Again, because soil gets tired. And your plants are only as good as the soil that you've planted them in. So we did a heavy composting with mushroom compost over the entire garden. And I think it has paid off.

- [Sheri] It looks great. Another specimen. Beautiful blue flowers. Can you explain what this is and how you might use it? You have a couple good uses for it.

- [Cindy] I have a use for it. It's borage. Again, pollinators love all those gorgeous blue flowers. And you know, we don't have a lot of blue that we can put in our garden. So it's one of the great blue flowers for our garden. Planted in the spring, pops up, has these gorgeous blooms, then it kind of doesn't like the heat. So it fades away in the summer. And then it has reseeded itself. So almost all of the plants that you see here were reseeding from the original plant.

- [Sheri] So you didn't deadhead it?

- [Cindy] We didn't deadhead. We may have a bit, but not anything extreme. We just let it do what it does. And the really fun part of this is, when you have your cocktail in the afternoon, you can go out and pop one of those blue blooms and float it in your gin and tonic and you have a gorgeous drink on your hands.

- [Sheri] Beautiful yellow flowers in September. What type of coreopsis is this?

- [Cindy] It's lanceleaf coreopsis.

- [Sheri] And it's bloomed like this all summer, you said.

- [Cindy] Bloomed like this all summer. Requires very little deadheading, very little maintenance. It's just a dependable garden plant that, pollinators love it. And you can see a few on there now, but one of the kind of interesting tidbits about coreopsis, it's not really just another pretty phase. There's currently significant medical research underway for its efficacy with diabetes and leukemia treatment.

- [Sheri] Oh wow.

- [Cindy] So there's a treatment, a lot of research underway for that right now. So many of our herbs not do we only enjoy eating them, many of 'em serve a medicinal purpose in current pharmaceutical.

- [Sheri] Just FYI for viewers, when you say cut back, obviously you can't do every flower head individually. Do you grab a bunch and cut it?

- [Cindy] Yeah.

- [Sheri] Okay.

- You know when it's no longer pretty and it started to fade and it wants to go to bed for the winter. You know, you can cut that back pretty low to the ground and have it come back and be gorgeous in the spring.

- And then right behind there for some height, we have another beautiful, beautiful fennel plant.

- [Cindy] It's bronze fennel and the yellow swallowtails.

- [Sheri] Love it.

- [Cindy] Love the bronze fennel. So we try to support as many of our butterfly friends as we can.

- Tell me about the money aspect of this. I know you said it's mostly funded by the Nashville Herb Society. Where is your funding within that group?

- Our funding within that group comes from our membership dues of course, which is not a significant portion of our funding, but our major funding comes from our plant sale that we have every spring.

- And that's usually in April? Is that correct?

- It's the first Saturday in April.

- And where is that at?

- At the fairgrounds.

- [Sheri] Okay. And if somebody was interested in attending that, how would they find that information?

- [Cindy] It's on our website. So we have a great website, herbsocietyofnashville. You can go on that website and find out all the plants when, where, parking, all the details

- [Sheri] And if somebody wanted to join you?

- [Cindy] Absolutely. That's place same place to go.

- Cindy, I wanna tell you, thank you very much for sharing this. And the Nashville Herb Society does such a wonderful job. And you said there was two other ladies that are very instrumental in these gardens. Could you mention their names for us please?

- This is Beth Huff and Joyce Abram. And this garden would not be what it is today without them.

- Well, thank you ladies. And thank you very much for sharing with our viewers. I hope they all come out and see this. And come and help fund it in the spring when you have your plant sale.

- [Cindy] Absolutely.

- [Sheri] Thank you.

- [Cindy] Thank you.

- [Beth And Joyce] Thank you.

- You know there are a lot of fruits and vegetables that we think of as iconic in the South. And perhaps where fruit is concerned, none is more iconic than the muscadine. We're a little far north in the Nashville area to be really successful. But I want you to meet a gardener who has been very successful for the last 10 years. So David Sprouse has been growing muscadines up here in Whites Creek, Tennessee. And you've been pretty successful about it.

- Yeah, it's a struggle. This, you know, muscadines in our climate here in Tennessee, it can be a challenge.

- But you found a few varieties that are particularly good here. So tell me what those varieties are.

- Well, there's two varieties of muscadines in terms of color. There's obviously a purple and a white

- Right.

- As far as the purple grapes go, there's a variety called Cowart, which I've had, it seems to have, can survive our climate. As far as white varieties, Magnolia is a good one and Carlos is a very good one. And you know, there's a third one that's white caught a fry, and there's an early fry, a late fry, one blooms earlier than the other one. I'm not sure which one that I have. But the fry, even the books say that it doesn't do well in terms of cold weather. But it has done well for me from my experience, so.

- So before we get into the real nuts and bolts of how to grow them, is there, do you have a preference over the red or the white? Have you found something different in them that you really enjoy?

- Yeah, probably my favorite tasting grape is probably the oldest one. It's called the scuppernong, which it was found on the Scuppernong river in North Carolina by some of the early settlers. And it's flavor is just outstanding. And what people may not realize too, is how big these grapes get. You know, some bigger than others, but they can get as big as a quarter. This particular variety is called a Noble, it's a purple grape. And it has survived some of our cold winters. I planted it a little bit later than the others. But it's known for its wine making properties and the berries ripen more evenly.

- [Troy] Right.

- [David] Many muscadine, they do not ripe evenly. You have to pick the berries individually, which can be an enormous task.

- So in this section of the garden, you've got, these are actual grapes, not muscadines, but...

- Right, they're American grapes from the Labrusca family. There's two types of American grapes, the muscadine and the labrusca. These would be like your Concord, your Niagara. This happens to be a reliance grape. It's a red grape.

- [Troy] A red grape. Yeah. So they're still green right now because they're young, but they'll rip in later in the fall. So tell me a little bit about your trellising system and the kind of the care and maintenance of both the grapes and you know, the muscadines.

- Well, the American grapes, which would be like your Concord, they generally take a two wire system. There's a specific name for that. I don't remember at the moment. But most of those you use what you call cane pruning, which you'll pick a healthy cane from your main trunk and you know, each year you get basically four canes, sometimes more you can, you know, run a cane down to the lower wire. And a lot of it's done to keep control as well. I mean, I hard prune these pretty, you know, pretty vigorously. And you can see that they've done really well. You know, there's still space to walk between the rows.

- Right, you're trying to get these to come out. You prune back this way, but you leave the long canes trained.

- Yeah, you don't want a long cane that's hanging out easily, you train it to the wire.

- And grapes and muscadines and all of the, you know, these vines are very vigorous vines. So pruning is one of the most important parts of this whole growing process.

- [David] I mean, I've never gone a season without pruning every vine.

- Otherwise they would just be so overgrown you couldn't walk between the rows. And you've got a good six or eight feet here between this row and the one next to it. And they would easily grow together in a season if they were left.

- Yes, absolutely.

- So this is a southern muscadine, our native southern grape. And this is a little bit different beast than, you know, than the regular grape. Just as far as size and all of that. This is on a little bit different kind of trellising system.

- Yes. Single wire trellis from my research is probably the best for a couple of reasons. One reason it's easy to maintain and the other reason if you have equipment like I do, you know, with lawnmowers in between the rows, it's easier to maintain in that way. Probably the ultimate trellis for a muscadine is what they call a Geneva trellis, which is a double wire up here and it sits up a little higher, I think the double wires maybe four feet apart. And you sort of get, sort of like a single wire twice if you want to describe it that way.

- [Troy] Almost like a clothesline effect.

- Yeah, clothesline effect would be a good way to say that. I did have a wire underneath in the beginning, but I tried to do, you know, what happens is the top shades out the bottom. You can see it's so vigorous that you can do that in the beginning and you may maximize the fruit, but as the plant ages, the wire underneath just doesn't, you know.

- [Troy] Right, so if we look up under the foliage, I mean, I'm lifting up three or four feet of vine here. Is this all one season's growth?

- Yes. I prune this, what they call spur pruning, which what you really do, you can see some buds right here. One, two, three. You prune it back to approximately three buds, each cane. And believe it or not, the muscadine is that aggressive. Sometimes you get lazy after you prune a bunch of 'em and you'll go through with your shears and get, you know, the bulk of it and then you'll go back with smaller pruners. But you can see there's, you know, I have a few little extra, but generally you want to keep this to one runner going down. But, you know, as the vine ages, it's a little more of a challenge to keep it to one runner.

- Sure. So what time of year will these ripen?

- Well, believe it or not, muscadines as other grapes some ripen early, some ripen mid season. I would say generally muscadines are more of a fall.

- A fall grape is kind of the way I think of them.

- I have 'em, you know, even riping at frost.

- Right.

- And some of 'em a little earlier, probably late August is when you start to see them and then September.

- [Troy] And into early October.

- Exactly. And there are actually two types of muscadines. I mean, I'm from the Carolinas, you know, some people say, well, they're scuppernongs and some people say where they're muscadine. With the scuppernong actually refers to the white. It was the earliest white variety of muscadine.

- [Troy] It's an actual variety.

- [David] It's an actual variety. But many of the white varieties in general are referred to as scuppernong and you know, the purple ones as muscadine, but they're all muscadine.

- [Troy] Sure. So this is a brand new plant?

- [David] Just planted this spring.

- Just planted this spring. And you know, again, here, just to show how much they grow, a brand new little cane and then you've already got a good 12 or 14 inches of new growth just off of this. And even even longer up here.

- And what you want to do with a muscadine, I know this sounds vicious, but you want to get rid of all these little shoots. You know, if you're diligent, but not too much. Now, you wanna leave some leaves. But you know, in the winter, usually I prune, you know, right before spring, you'll really clean that trunk up, you know.

- And get all of your growth up here to your wire so that you have a good, strong trunk.

- And train one up to here, and the V here is called the crux. You generally want to try to keep it clear so it good ventilation and air. And get those arms on either way.

- So there's quite a difference then between a newly planted plant and even just one year worth of growth.

- And we can look at one I planted last year.

- So one year's worth of growth actually already has fruit on it.

- [David] Yes.

- [Troy] And has grown 10 to 12 feet.

- [David] Possibly.

- [Troy] Possibly as much as that. And then eventually we'll actually take up a whole 20 foot stretch.

- It doesn't take, you know, within three years you can have it trained 20 feet, yes, easy.

- Whereas the American grapes that we looked at a bit ago were planted on eight foot centers. So, or 10 foot centers maybe. These actually take up 10 feet in each direction.

- Yeah, 20 feet is the ideal spacing for muscadines.

- [Troy] I have one more question for you. Sources?

- [David] My wife, when we first moved here, she gave me a little pamphlet and it was from Isons nursery in Georgia. She just knew I loved muscadines. We both grew up in the south, and they happen to be the biggest breeder of muscadines in the US.

- [Troy] Okay. And they do mail order?

- [David] Yeah, mail order. You can go online and buy from them. And they're wonderful people in terms of giving you advice. They've even asked me what, you know, varieties I have grown.

- [Troy] How you've done with them.

- [David] So I would highly recommend Ison as a reference for muscadines.

- Excellent. So whether you choose a table grape or our iconic muscadine, you can grow grapes very successfully in Tennessee.

- [Narrator] For inspiring garden tours, growing tips and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org and find us on these platforms.