Episode 3505

- [Narrator] Bees and butterflies are drawn to this flower-filled front yard located in a busy neighborhood. Troy Marden gets insight from the passionate and talented gardener about her plant selections and how she combines them to create beautiful and cohesive vignettes. Then Julie Berbiglia visits Farm to Yards, Nashville's first commercial-scale hydroponic vertical farm. This great looking lettuce is grown 25% faster and 90% more efficiently than traditional farming. Amazing. Come along. Pretty border beds, delightful pathways with plants all around, and eye-catching trees and shrubs make for a cohesive urban landscape.

- I love a fellow do-it-yourselfer. And in a small urban setting just near downtown Nashville, my friend Brandy Trigiani is a do-it-yourselfer and has created a beautiful garden. So I'm sure this front garden posed a little bit of a challenge because it's on a fairly good slope. Brandy, tell me how this garden came to be.

- Well, actually when we first moved here, there was just like a concrete knee wall and this was straight grass slope that went straight up. So when we looked at it, it was me and my husband and I'm like, "How am I gonna make this home retirement friendly?"

- Right.

- So we slowly notched out the garden and he actually did me a dry stack wall on both sides. We have repurposed all these stones. There's been so much construction in the neighborhood.

- Right.

- We have repurposed that. We did hire a guy to build our wall for us.

- Sure.

- And so we've just worked our way up. And so up top, just limited amount of turf left and it's just, I wanted, this is all sun all day and I just wanted just pops of color, chaos.

- Right.

- And it just kind of came from that.

- And you can do that because you have such good structure. So you've got lots of hardscaping. Obviously you raised the wall so that your slope wasn't quite as steep.

- Yes.

- And then when you have lots of really good structure and good hardscape the garden can be a little more chaotic.

- It is. And I try to because I've got like, you know, I've got my blue spruces there and then I've got my hortens. So, you know, so I try... It may not seem like I've got an idea of what I'm doing. But I do try to have some calm, some repetitive things. I do try to have the chartreuse pops of that as it moves through the garden so that repetition, so you kind of see that and the eye moves with it.

- Right. And I always kind of liken the shrubs like the blue spruces and the spireas and those as kind of the punctuation in what might otherwise be a run-on sentence.

- Absolutely. Absolutely.

- Yeah. You mentioned the spruces. And you've got this chartreuse spiria, but you've also got a lot of flowering plants in here. Color throughout the season, I'm assuming.

- I do, yes. And so there is not one month in the year that there's not something blooming in my garden. And I need that. Especially if you're trapped inside the house in the winter. We've got Hellebore and such in the back.

- Sure.

- So there's always something going. Yes, if something is fading, there's always gonna be something coming up behind it to give me some color.

- [Troy] Right now the cone flowers are really showing off.

- [Brandy] They are. And I just saw some yellow finches right before y'all got here. So I'm super excited about that.

- [Troy] Yeah, they'll come in. So have these just reseeded themselves?

- Yeah. So everything out here is all just reseeds. Even my California poppies. They supposed to be annuals, but they come back. The cosmos, pretty much everything out here has just reseeded and I kind of will have to just go through and thin it out because you know, they kind of go wild.

- Right. Yeah. Those annuals like the California poppies and a lot of times we don't see those down here in the South because it's so humid. But I'm assuming probably up here on this wall for one thing, really good drainage.

- Yes.

- And you're on still a little bit of a slope.

- Absolutely.

- So they just come back every year?

- They really do. And they'll self-seed. And even you'll notice the cosmos, they're down in the cracks of the sidewalk and the wall. And so I always like that saying, you know, bloom where you're planted. So even here in the urban heat, concrete, you still can have some flowers that are blooming.

- Right. It's always amazing to me where something will seed in and eke out a life.

- Absolutely. And then I will create this beautiful hole that I've bought this wonderful plant for it to bloom and then it dies. But yet here these guys are living in concrete.

- Right.

- I don't know.

- Well, I know there's a lot more to see, so let's go up to the top.

- All right, let's.

- [Troy] So is it a challenge to get grass to grow here?

- Yes. As you know, we're in the transitional zone in middle Tennessee. So out here we've had grass on both sides, but we could not get it to grow on the other side. So my saying always is, if you can't get grass to grow, hardscape it.

- Right.

- So my husband built me a beautiful stone walkway on the other side so I was able to incorporate more plants and stuff.

- Sure, sure.

- So yeah, so this is about all that's left out here. Hopefully eventually it'll be gone too.

- Right. And behind us you have a really beautiful magnolia.

- [Brandy] Thank you. So this is Teddy Bear Magnolia. He's supposed to be a dwarf, but a lot of the plants in my garden don't pay attention to their tags.

- Right.

- And they kind of do what they want to do sometimes.

- We say often plants don't read the tags. And the other thing to always remember is that the dwarf form of something that grows 75 feet tall in the wild still may get pretty large.

- Absolutely.

- Yes. So speaking of dwarf, or at least compact-

- [Brandy] Right.

- [Troy] I love this hydrangea that's down here.

- Thank you. So that's tiny tough stuff. So it's just gone over, but it's a great specimen and it's one of those that blooms on old and new wood so it's not gonna be persnickety if we have a hard freeze in the winter.

- Right.

- [Brandy] Then I've got a snow queen hydrangea here and just this year when we had that bad polar vortex that came through middle Tennessee two years ago, I'm just now still seeing damage from that. So we've lost actually half of him this year.

- [Troy] Oh, that's too bad.

- I know. So I've kind of pruned it and hemmed it up. So I don't know what. I'm in flux as to what to do because his neighbor on the other side even more of him is gone. But I kind of left him for now because I loved the scent when they were blooming. Bees and stuff were all over it. So I'm just gonna kind of let it finish its blooming and then I have to make some hard gardening decisions as we all do.

- Right. Well, that polar vortex even though it's been a couple of years ago, like you said, we're still seeing some long-term damage from that.

- Absolutely.

- And I think it's just going to continue slowly.

- I agree.

- [Troy] So I love the window boxes on the front of the house, but I have to ask you, how much of a challenge is it to keep them going and looking good all summer long?

- [Brandy] It's actually, those will retain water. So I got those online somewhere. So they're not too bad and the geraniums I maybe probably water them maybe two or three times a week. I've got some good soil retention, you know, moisture retention soil in there. And like I said, they're kind of quote unquote self-watering, but they do hold moisture well.

- Good.

- So I'm able to kind of keep them going.

- And the geraniums are pretty tough anyway.

- They are.

- They don't mind drying out a little bit.

- They are. And I like having just another pop of color up there just as you're looking, you know, coming down at the bottom of the garden and as you're, you know, sweeping your eye up.

- Right. It brings you all the way up to the house.

- Brings you all the way up. I want you to be able to take advantage of all of the landscape because I like to go up as well, not only down.

- [Troy] There are bees all over these sunflowers. And did you plant these?

- [Brandy] Well, God did.

- [Troy] Ah, there you go.

- These are these are volunteers. So I had sunflowers. This is lemon queen, this variety. Planted them probably like two or three years ago and it just keeps, it just self-seeds.

- Every year a few come back.

- Yep, and I've got all my cosmos are self-seeding as well. So it's really nice and they are so robust and yes, and the bees are bonkers for them.

- [Troy] Yeah. And I'm sure the bees go crazy over the Monarda and the phlox and the butterflies too.

- Absolutely. And it's great. You know, and I just, and there'll be sleepy bees in the morning. I'll come out in the morning and they're all just resting and stuff. So it's really a high traffic area. And I even threw a little dwarf cherry tomato plant, so if I'm out in the garden and I need a snack, I can just grab a tomato.

- Something that you can grab?

- Yeah, just so I don't have to run in the house.

- Well, speaking of bees and butterflies, I love garden art.

- [Brandy] Oh!

- [Troy] And I love to visit people's gardens and see people's homes and see their creativity. So tell me about these two marble mosaics.

- Well, thank you. So this is credit to my husband, Mike Trigiani. So he loves, he's out in construction and he finds things all the time here in Nashville. So he has found all of these marbles on knockdown houses, job sites and stuff. So he has big jars of them and I said, "Well, let's take them and let's do something with them." So I just left him to it so whenever he was pouring this and setting this concrete pathway, he just did on his own his inspiration, and did the mosaics, the bees and the butterflies.

- I love it.

- Thank you.

- [Troy] You've got some other cute garden art over here too. Lots of found objects.

- [Brandy] A lot of found. This, I call it the Garden of Oddities. So just an old sign from a job site and so "The best safety device is a careful man." That's some sage advice, wouldn't you say?

- [Troy] I would say so.

- [Brandy] So, and then that old Tonka truck and the little toy was like from my grandmother's when we were breaking down her house. So I though, "Well, you know what? Let's just put it all together."

- [Troy] Sure. All right, so through this corridor from the front garden to the back garden, you make a big transition. And the thing I love about this is that you've really taken advantage of your vertical space. So tell me kind of how you've done that.

- [Brandy] Well we have got some trellises that we've mounted to the house. And so I've got clematis, I've got climbing roses, and we've even got a passion vine as well. So just once again, we have all of this that's happening at the bottom, but I want to always try to have something to draw your eye up.

- [Troy] Right. And you've also kind of mirrored that on the other side of the path with your very vertical crape myrtles, especially the way they're trimmed high and you really expose those trunks.

- Yes. And this is Pink Velour and this is as big as it gets.

- Right.

- So it's a nice, it's well-behaved. So it's great. So it gives me a nice canopy so I'm able to put a lot of shade plants in there. We'll get some afternoon sun, so the phlox will get just enough sun to where they'll flower for me.

- [Troy] As we mentioned at the beginning of our visit, we are in an urban setting here. And so you do have urban city life to deal with, construction and traffic and all of those things.

- Yes.

- But you have transformed this backyard, this little urban backyard into an oasis. So what was here when you started?

- Just this hackberry tree. So this was just grass when my husband and I moved here 17 years ago. So we have strategically planted trees. He's etched out beds for me. When we first moved here, there was an empty lot next door and so we planted these trees knowing that eventually something was gonna go there.

- Right.

- So trying to plan for the future. And yes, the noise, there's always city sounds and stuff. So, but yes, when I come back here to the garden I can actually tune it out and just kind of relax.

- Right, because mixed in with all of those sounds, we've got the birds singing. You've created a place for nature to exist here too.

- Thank you. Yes.

- So you have lots of hostas back here because it's shady.

- Yes.

- More hydrangeas. Any particular favorites that stand out to you?

- Oh, probably as far as my tree, I love this maple here. So that's brandywine maple and she gets this beautiful purply red in the fall.

- Right.

- And of course she's named after me, so why wouldn't I love her? As far as hostas go, I can't pick one.

- You can't pick a favorite.

- I can't. They'll all get jealous. It'd be terrible.

- [Troy] You do have a big tree that you had to take out.

- I did.

- Also part of gardening life.

- [Brandy] Absolutely. But we've left the trunks, and that just got taken down so I'm gonna try to do some kind of eclectic design with it. No sure what's gonna happen yet. But yeah, so we try to just, I don't know, use the material, use what we've got here and work with what we've got and obviously working with the sound. So we put in a little water feature so that you can have some water sounds and try to relax and yeah. And so it's funny, I look back here and even the patio in the back, that was grass as well. And so we had that stamped concrete put in just to kind of, it was an underutilized space.

- Right.

- So that way we're able to like, you know, barbecue and hang out.

- [Troy] Back there you're really working in the deep shade. So probably growing grass back there was a challenge.

- [Brandy] It really was. and it was just wasted. It just, you know, so you kind of look at the area and you're like, well, what benefit is it giving me? And then also too, you know, when I try to help people do their little garden designs, what do you see when you're looking out the window? So I wanted to be able to look out and create something that I can see from the kitchen window.

- Sure. I have to say this specimen of little honey oak leaf hydrangea is spectacular.

- Aw, thank you.

- It is not the easiest thing to grow.

- No.

- So how old is this? Any idea?

- Probably 15 years old.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- It's beautiful.

- [Brandy] Yeah, I got it a mail order when I got it, 'cause you couldn't find it commercially. You couldn't find it locally at the time.

- [Troy] Sure. And the special thing about this is that when it leafs out in the spring and there's a little bit of new growth on it now that you can see, it is bright chartreuse.

- [Brandy] Absolutely.

- And then it greens up a little bit in the summertime as it begins to flower. But typical oakleaf flowers. And then a really interesting plant that I personally don't see enough of in gardens, that Tovara painter's palette.

- [Brandy] Oh my goodness. Yes. And it is such a wonderful just ground cover, self-seeder. You'll see many of it out in the garden.

- Right.

- Around the yard and stuff. But yes, it's a great plant. My friend Georgia-Anne McCoy gave me a piece of it several years ago and it has just been a wonderful addition to the garden. You get some nice contrast, you get that white, the red, the chartreuse. I really enjoy it.

- [Troy] Yeah, and I don't know if we would classify that as a true perennial or kind of a half-hearty annual. It comes back and it sort of reseeds itself.

- Yes.

- And it moves around to different places, but gosh, it's a great plant.

- Yeah.

- And then one of my favorite ground covers always has been ajuga. And there have been some great new ones that have come out the last few years. Kind of a bird series and this one is maybe Cordial Canary or one of those.

- I think it is. Yes. I think it is. And it's a great spreader and you can propagate it so easily. You literally pick it up and stuff it in some dirt.

- [Troy] Right.

- [Brandy] It's been a great plant and I've repurposed it all throughout the garden.

- And again, summer heat, it's greened up just a little bit. But when it comes up in the spring, it is bright gold with blue flowers.

- Absolutely.

- It's such a spectacular show.

- [Brandy] 100%. I love that. And that nice contrast, it's eye catching. I love it.

- Well, we've come full circle literally around the other side of the house. And this last little vignette that I want to look at are your beautiful containers full of hostas and Heucheras and other plants. I love the cobalt blue. A girl after my own heart. I think cobalt blue is great in a garden.

- Agreed.

- So tell me about your inspiration here.

- Well, this inspiration is to feed my addiction. So you know, we planted the trees, so it was kind of rooty, and so I wasn't being able to do a lot of perennials. So I was like, let me just do some pots. And I saw a hosta magazine and they had just tons of them in pots and so the inspiration was born. And then it's a way to continue to have more plants. I can put five or six in a spot where only one would exist.

- [Troy] Right. Because you can alternate the height of the pots.

- Absolutely.

- And pack them closer together and grow more plants, which is always a great thing.

- [Brandy] Always. Any way I can get more plants in the garden I'm gonna find a way.

- And like you mentioned, combating tree roots also. So that keeps-

- Absolutely.

- [Troy] And with your hostas, it keeps the roots cold in the wintertime, which the hostas love.

- [Brandy] They do. And these pots will handle our winters. So it's great. I don't have to move them or do anything with them.

- Well, thank you so much for letting us visit. Your garden is beautiful and it's always an inspiration to see what people have done with small urban lots.

- [Brandy] Aw, thank you. It's been great having y'all here. Glad to show it.

- Well, if you're staying in the Nashville Yards downtown, it's hard to get a more local lettuce than we can right here at the Farm to Yrds operated by Greener Roots. These lettuces are amazing and soon people are going to be eating them. So William, how often are these beautiful lettuces harvested?

- Thanks for being here. We harvest every Wednesday here. So it's about a four week cycle from the time that we put a transplant in here to the time that we cut it and deliver it to the restaurants here in the Nashville Yards.

- [Julie] Well, they're really gorgeous. What kind of varieties are you growing?

- [William] We've got about 2,000 heads in here at any given time. We're getting ready to work on an upgrade that will move it to 4,000 heads. So typically we have somewhere between seven and nine varieties. These are red leaf and green leaf lettuces that we mix together into a blend that we call the Nashville Yards Blend.

- [Julie] I like it. And it's just so local here.

- [William] It is.

- Now, I understand that this system is different than a lot of the ones I've seen. I'm used to seeing the ones that are out on tables. And in those kind of rows. So tell me about how this works.

- This system is meant to maximize the space that you're using for growing hydroponically. These are vertical panels that use a drip system in order to irrigate the plants. And everything is run and operated by a computer. There's a program set up that Freight Farm established that manages the light, the nutrient dosing of the water and then how much water each of these plants get. So the thought is we've got plants growing vertically on the sidewall and they're being irrigated from top to bottom on a cadence that we set on that computer.

- [Julie] This is a shipping container, isn't it?

- [William] Right, right. Yes I don't know the exact square footage, but it's les than 300 square feet. And we are packed in here, as you can see, but it allows us to move around very well. The system functions where we've got a harvest area up front and a growing area in the back so that we can move the panels easily from back to front. And then, you know, everything that we do right here, we don't need a cooler. We have a cooler in one of these adjacent shipping containers, but we literally pack it and we walk it right across the lot here into the Grand Hyatt's cooler or the Union Station. It's very efficient.

- Well, that is very, very efficient. And it's also super environmental friendly because you're not driving it across town or from another county. Now, along with that efficiency and environmental friendliness, what about your water use, especially during the summer?

- Sure. So right now, as you can see back here, our system has a 55 gallon tank. In the winter, we fill that up two or three times a week. In the summer, we're actually water positive because of the HVAC system. There's a line that comes off of it, off the condensate. So we don't have to add water at all from about March to November, given the climate that we're in here in Nashville, Tennessee. It's very efficient, especially when we don't have to fill it up.

- [Julie] Well, this is a great use of our natural humidity.

- [William] Yes, no doubt.

- [Julie] I appreciate that a lot. So how is everything working here?

- Sure. So we actually germinate our seeds at our vertical farm on the other side of town. We've got a system set up for that. This system has that, but our system's not broke, so we're not gonna change it, right? So we germinate over there and then we bring these germinated seeds over. And so you can see here, this is a peat moss plug or this is actually a red tango. This is what we call a transplant, right? So this is at the stage where it has germinated. We've had it under lights for about two weeks. It's gotten now to the point that it can be in a more high density space. So we transplanted these about four days ago and it will stand here for four weeks and then we will harvest it. So this is, as you can see, the roots are coming out. The roots will go towards the water in the panel as it irrigates. And it's got enough space here for the, and it'll grow towards these LED lights that we have on for about 15 to 16 hours a day.

- [Julie] Now, are you doing any cut and come again, or is this a system where you remove the whole thing and completely start over?

- [William] Once we harvest, we do pull it all out. We clean it, sanitize it and then start over. We've found in our systems, across our three farms, that the ability to clean it out, get the biomass out, sanitize it, and start over helps reduce pathogen and pest pressure.

- Now I know that growing lettuces and all these greens, you really have to get your nutrient mix right. So tell me a little bit about that.

- Sure. We've got a formula that's worked well for us for going on 10 years at our other farms. And so we utilized our recipe here. The only difference is they have a dosing system built in to this farm, and so it knows when the EC levels that we have it set and the pH levels that we have it set when we need to dose. So these little dosing pumps in here, will dose. We've got nutrient A, B, and C, and then we have a pH down solution. We're using a combination of calcium nitrate, a potassium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, iron, and then we've got a base fertilizer that we buy from Hort Americas.

- This is really fascinating. I mean, obviously higher tech than I'm going to do in my house. But I am really fascinated now with the future of this. What are some other things that could grow in this kind of system?

- Sure. So there's all sorts of content online that show people growing different things in here. Microgreens is another popular one. They're using a lot of these containers for mushrooms because of what you can do with the climate in here and this enclosed space. You can get real specific with it. There's a lot of herbs and then ornamental flowers has been really popular.

- [Julie] William, I can't count the number of lettuces here. So tell me, what is your yield now and what are you moving towards?

- [William] Sure. Right now we've got a little over 2,000 heads of lettuce in here. We're moving towards doubling that with the system upgrade, so close to 4,000 heads. Right now we're getting and delivering somewhere between 35 and 40 pounds of lettuce per week every Wednesday. And that upgrade will take us somewhere closer to 80 pounds of lettuce per week.

- [Julie] That's a lot of yummy salads.

- [William] Yes, it is.

- Well, gardening has so many different forms. Maybe you like to get dirty. Maybe you like your plants hanging on a wall. But we've learned a lot here at Farm to Yards and you know, next time you're eating downtown Nashville, you might be eating something from right here.

- Garden support is very important. This concrete wire that I use for tomato cages fantastic for support, but it's not limited to just tomatoes. What I've done is taken that same concrete wire and I've stretched it out in a length that you can see runs about 25 feet. And this is to support our corn. We all know that we have storms in the summer and once our corn gets up, it can blow over very easily. So what I like to do is run this down the middle of my bed, which is three feet by 25 feet, and then just anchor this with stakes so that I've got something to tie the corn to if it starts to blow over. This is a great support. It's less than $10. You can find it just about anywhere and it will last you for decades. I've been using this for about 15 years and it's still just as fine as the day that I bought it. Another great support system that you can utilize in your vegetable garden are these cattle racks. Now this was actually started to help people grow gourds. You know how heavy gourds are by the time you get ready to harvest them. But then somebody figured out, "Hey, this is just as easy to use for me to grow peas, beans, cucumbers." And it makes any kind of trellising plant, it gives it great support. So what I've done is I've bought two of these and I've anchored them together. And then I've arched them over into my beds. Now what this does is it gives you a canopy. So the best part about this is that all summer long I can harvest from inside as the plants are growing up. I can harvest from the outside and it keeps the plant up off the ground. That also resist disease pressure by keeping it up off the ground. You've got good airflow through here, so that also cuts down on any kind of fungus or mold problems that you may have with your plants. And it's just so much easier for your harvest. Again, this is gonna cost you about $20 per panel, but I've been using this for 20 years and it's perfect. So again, what you want is support. Don't forget about support, but then don't forget about yourself either. You want to make it easy for you to harvest the good things that you're growing.