Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Let's Garden with Scott Berline Saturday morning,
March twenty. First, I'm here with Jennifer Smith, a good
friend of mine. Good morning, How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good good Jennifer. You are an award winning pollinator designer
or garden designer. You've been with Wimberg Landscaping now for
six years, but I've known you for a lot longer
than that. You've bounced around volunteering here, doing this there,
and just have done an amazing job with gardens, your
(00:31):
own gardens sort of sometimes, but more and more other
people's gardens. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We met, I think when I was working at Horticulture
magazine possibly, and then oh gosh, yeah, too many years.
We're aging ourselves. We shouldn't say those stops. And then
I took two years I called my sabbatical job when
I was working at the parks, and you would come
and visit when I was working up the whole park.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was working or volunteering.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, I volunteered there for several years and then just
had to get out of the office and they said
we'll pay you. I'm like, so you're going to pay me?
To do what I volunteer perfect. So I did that
for two years and then went back to F and
W and worked for an artist magazine for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay, yeah, you're involved in all kinds of things, you cross, Stitchy.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Your key, I told you. The key is coffee.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Lots of lots of coffee. Yeah, yeah, you have enough
this morning.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No, No, we're going to have to get some carded in. No,
we're good, We're good.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
We'll have it delivered somehow, we'll get it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
The funny thing is, I was just thinking this morning,
you do more than anybody I know when it comes
to horticulture in the Cincinnati area. And now you have
this radio show, which is super exciting because people that
don't know you are going to get to meet you
and learn from you how to garden. And then you're
bringing in all these experts like that we're going to
be talking to today, so now they're going to be
(01:59):
in fired. So your net is just getting super wide,
and we're just glad to be along for the ride.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
You know, you build a big net and you have
something to fall on there you go later on. That's
the whole point of it. So you you have got
you studied horticulture and landscape design you see University of Cincinnati.
You have written for a horticulture magazine and was a
garden writer and photographer at the Civic Garden Center of
(02:30):
Cincinnati Greater Cincinnati. You ran the adopt a plot thing
at allt Park. Yeah, so you are in contention for
doing more than I.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
No, my stuff is much easier, I think than what
you do. But you know what, you just find ways
to garden. And I live in a condo, so I
don't have a yard. So it made it easy to
go out and adopt lots of gardens at All Park
because that was my garden. It wasn't like I have
a home garden now I'm trying to do that.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So yeah, but you landed in a good spot. You've
got this great job at Wimberg where you design, you
do a lot of marketing outreach, which you're really really
good at, and then you put in this amazing I
guess display garden really for your clients, which is very naturalistic.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yes, yes, well I lucked out because Peter Wimberg, the
owner of Wimberg Landscaping, really likes natural gardens. So I
think it was about fifteen years ago, he took out
his entire front yard and said, why do I have
a lawn if what I like in the woods is
what I want to see. So he started planting that way. Yeah,
and then I started working for him, and then the
(03:41):
Zoo was doing the planting for pollinators programs right and
people were learning about it. So it was just this
perfect series of events that everything kind of came together
at the right time. And he had the focal garden,
which we could.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Do right also at All Parks at All Park, which
was really kind of a formal thing, and it's been transformed.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
He's had that for I think it's been twenty years,
so it's gone through lots of different designs, kind of
reflecting the way people garden. Yeah, and now it's more
pollinator based right.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Right, and still really attractive, very popular with visitors to
the garden. It looks great, Oh thank you. Yeah, as
almost everything you touched. The garden at Wimberg is beautiful.
The little pocket display gardens you do along the walking
trail and other things just amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah. The Wasson Way Garden at the corner of Paxton
Wasson is just it makes me happy every time I
see it. It's just considering we planted it in the
hottest week. Yeah, there's no irrigation, it's heavy traffic, it's
so much exposure, and you're thinking, oh, this garden's just
going to get beat up. It looks like impeccable, like
(04:54):
no one's touched it.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I was talking about that with Ed Lyon, who was
in town for the symposium two days ago at the
Zoo and where they had put in a garden at
a public school, you know, a kind of tough part
of town. And I forget what city it was in.
It might have been Des Moines, but they were worried about,
you know, vandalism and problems with it. Haven't seen a problem.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That very rarely happened. Yeah, I think I can count
on my hands five times as something unfortunate happened. But
the adopted plots. But I tell people that will happen,
but then you're going to have at least twenty times
more good experiences exactly, people saying thank you, we love this,
this is our favorite garden. I saw a butterfly. Or
(05:40):
what's really fun is when kids say what you're doing, yeah,
and you sit down with them, you start gardening and
they get into it, you're like, there you go. We
just cultivated the next gardener. And that's why we do it.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, there's nothing better than getting kids involved. And you know,
so many of them don't have the exposure to gardens
like we had or older generations growing up, and you know,
that's a missing piece of something. I think that's pretty
vital to just our health and well being. And getting
kids involved more and more is so important because without that,
(06:16):
it's just you know, it's kind of an ironic term,
but you know, the grounding that comes with putting something
in the ground is very real.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yes, yeah, And we often talk about so how do
you get into something art, music, gardening if you've never
had someone to introduce it to you. So if your
parents don't garden, well then hopefully the park you go
to has some gardens. And I think part of our
job when we garden in public spaces is to spend
time with people visiting the gardens. We are gardening for
(06:50):
the pollinators, of course, for the park, but mostly for
the people.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Right, And if you can.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Sit down for ten minutes with some kids and say,
have you touched a lamb's ears?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Or the little boys love rattlesnake Master.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, take it off.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
They're like it's like a weapon, and they just find
this unique way to relate to plants, and now they're interested.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I'll tell you what. We're going to take a break
and when we come back, well, we will roll through
the National Days of It's something I like to do.
See how it relates, especially to horticulture. You are listening
to Let's Garden with Scott Berlin. Will be back in
just a few minutes with Scott Berlin. That's me one
eight hundred eight three eighty two fifty five. I'm here
(07:30):
with Jennifer Smith, a good friend of mine, and it's
time for the Days of I like to do this.
This is weird, mostly on why these days exist and
how they came to be, I don't know, but let's
roll through it. Fourth week of March National Cleaning Week.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I think that for gardeners, clean your tools and clean
your garden. We can circle all this back to gardening
if we try really.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Hard, really can. Yes, physicians for the challenge. Physicians, they
would tell us.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
To garden because it's good exercise and good for your
mental health.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They would National Quilting Day. That's a little harder. You
could quilt a garden scene. There you go.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, okay, you stumped me on.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
One French Bread Day. This is Saturday, March FIRSTUS French
Bread Day.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Well, you better garden. You can eat all that bread,
that's right, because.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You're you're burning off all those carbs. It's also California
Strawberry Day. I don't know why it's specific to California,
but it is strawberry Day for California Fragrance Day. Now
this this applies.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
What's your favorite fragrant plant? And you just told me
you can't smell me.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I know, isn't that depressed that I really can't smell
things very well? But I can smell the street tree lilacs? Yeah,
plus they're beautiful. And then the spice bush burnam right.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
The Korean spice bush judd Y Burnham's, Yeah, mohawk. Those
are some of the I have three or four in
my yard and when they're it smells. You know what
I think it smells like. Are the way those Valentine
Day candies, the heart little ones that you get. Oh,
I think it smells like that tastes that's kind of weird.
(09:16):
But you told me something even weird a minute ago.
You told me you thought a plant smelled like glass.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
The most candles when we go to like buy candles,
I can't smell the sense of candles.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, no matter what, the scent is not really Oh
that's you. That is weird. That's something.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Smell really good soil when it starts for warm up. Yeah,
I can smell the mountain mint.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, that's a little much. And that grolo sumac, which
I just think is horrible sense.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So so you're you're smelling most of the bad stuff. Unfortunately,
Common courtesy day today, so everybody get out there and
just be commonly curdic.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
See what's the curtious?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Curteous? That's it. That's the word. As you're eating a
corn dog, because today is corn dog day. And this
is also the day in eighteen fifty nine the first
zoo in America opened Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Which I am sure is a very fine Zoo's second
two the Cincinnati Botanical Garden End.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Zoo exactly, which got really cool polling in the USA
Today poll this week. Congratulations on that gas potanical guard,
which Longwood was behind us. I'm like, that makes me
cringe honestly.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Well deserved.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, well it goes to show that our community really
likes our zoo and potanical garden. The zoo rated number
three in the country, so we're way up there. Sunday
tomorrow goof off day.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What better way to goof off than the garden. It's
gonna be eighty too. Yes, didn't we just have the
first day of spring?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
We did, and now it's summer.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That's how it works, so everybody's feeling behind in their gardens.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Basically West Virginia Day. Can you can you sing? Can
you sing?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
We don't want that early in the morning. No, No
one's ready for that.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Monday, March twenty third and important one. John Bartram his birthday, yes,
in sixteen ninety nine. Very important figure, especially in now
when we're really throwing so much attention on native plants.
He was, you know, searching for plants in North America.
(11:34):
He went all up and down the Eastern seaboard, well
into the frontier land and collected and found new plants
that were shipped back to England.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
So, yeah, Bartram's boxes. People could sign up for a subscription, yes,
and you would get this box of plants from America
and they were highly sought after. So a lot of
the English gardens are built from Bartram's boxes, plants that
we just take for granted. They were just coveted and
they spent wild some of monch.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
What the plants of North America meant to England when
these plants they were completely exotic, amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Plants, you know, sycamore trees.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Sycamore, so many plants that he sent back a really
really cool and then his son continued the business for
a generation after he died. Uh Susan Jane Cunningham, the
mathematician who founded Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, was born on
this day. Swarthmore College is the grounds of Scott Arboretum,
(12:40):
which is one of my favorite places on the planet,
such a great collection of trees. The first day that
the word okay was used in print was today. I
should have wrote down what year that was. I didn't,
so let's just say it was a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Who went back and said I want to find this out,
did the research and why. That's still exciting to know.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
There are people that'll do anything. They just become possessed
about something. Chia Day for the highly nutritious chia seeds
that were revered by the Maya and Aztex Near Miss Day.
I don't know what that means. I don't think I
want to know.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
No, that could go bad. Puppy Day, well there you go.
We've bounced it out with puppies.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
You can't get her on there. Tuesday, National Cocktail Day.
I can get into that.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Well, if you had a near mess, you might need
a cocktail.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
To get over that trauma. Tuesday, March twenty fourth is
a vice day. It's National Cockday, Cocktail Day, National Cheese
Steak Day, and National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day. You can
put on a lot of weight on Tuesday. Wednesday Whole
Grain Day, Manateee Appreciation Day. And you said, what about that?
(13:56):
That was a cool line.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Oh the sea cows, yeah, oh, and that's right. They're
vegetarians yet horribly overweight. So exactly, eat the chocolate covered raisins,
you eat the French bread. It's all good.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
The manatees would if they could. Little Red Wagon Day.
I love Little Red Wagons, you know, it's a great thing.
Tolkien Reading Day for the token nights out there. Thursday
Spinich Day, and you said hard pass And on Friday,
it's Jane Colden her birthday. Jane Colden, the first female
(14:31):
botanist in the country, born in seventeen twenty four, grew
up in the Hudson Valley. And you wrote that you're
actually been you've been researching her.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Well, I'm putting together a talk on the history of
women and landscape designs, so I'm researching lots of women.
So I haven't been able to dig too deep yet.
But she's fascinated because she explored plants. She knew all
the botanists. She did huge collections. We just don't know
about her because sometimes their work isn't published, and if
(15:01):
people weren't buying her plants, there wouldn't be continuous records
of what she's done. So yeah, while the Bartrams were
going strong, we had this lady as well, doing the
same thing.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
It's amazing, you know, that was just such a period
of time when people were just discovering science and exploring
the planet for cool things. I guess there was enough wealth,
especially in England, where there were people who could dedicate
time to this study and there was so much to learn.
(15:33):
And I'm thinking about Bartram, you know. One of the
cool stories about him is he discovered the franklinea tree
along the a lot of Maha River in Georgia. I
believe found this tree, collected it, sent it to England,
planted a few in his garden in Philadelphia. Named it
after Benjamin Franklin, by the way, and from those collections,
(15:58):
any franklinea tree in the world, that was where it
was sourced. Because it was what we would call endangered
at the time. It was like a single population. No
one ever found another population again. It's it was gone
by the time his sun went back to look for it.
And so you know, here's one of the stories of
(16:20):
where horticulture kind of does conservation in that case unknowingly.
But you know, it's pretty cool that tree still exists.
It's a beautiful tree with really large white flowers all summer,
incredible fall color, incredibly hard to grow. You kind of
(16:41):
have to be a savant or lucky or whatever to
get that thing to grow. So a cool story. You know,
if you can track that tree down and then grow it,
you're a wizards. Yes, you are listening to Let's Garden
of Scott Burline's Saturday March twenty first. We have some
(17:04):
great guests coming up doctor Bill Fountain will be up
next with some talk about salt damage, which we've seen
a lot of. So we'll be back in just a moment.
Two three eighty two fifty five. You are listening to
Let's Garden with Scott Burline and I've got Jennifer Smith
(17:26):
with me, longtime friend, great horticulturist, and let's talk about
some favorite plants that are catching our attention right now.
You sent me a list of some interesting stuff. I'm
thinking blooms and you're thinking, you know, grasses, grasses.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, well, I'm loving the little bluestone we've put in
all the gardens. They are standing up perfectly, as if
they didn't even know winter came, or these snowstorms and
that thunderstorm we had the other day. Yeah, perfect, certain ones,
right or is this standing ovation?
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Standing ovation?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And then I put in some as a hot hot tonka.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
What a cool shift beautiful.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, she's she's a little shorter, which I like. So
I think that'll be more conducive to the home gardens
because even little blue stem is pretty tall in proportion
to some people's front yards.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Right and flop. You know the species and some of
the cultivars, some of them fall apart.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, but that standing ovation's the ha ha and it
has extra seeds on it.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yes, it glows well. Not only that, but it's a
hairy plant. It has little fine hairs along the stems
and you get a little back light on that, and
it is it just jumps out of the landscape. It
looks so amazing. And then we're talking all summer, and
then now we're talking March. It's been through an entire
(18:46):
winter still standing.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
It looks perfect. Yeah, it looks absolutely perfect. And I
think it might have been Dan Pearson that I was
reading that said, when you work with grasses, always make
sure they're not put up against the shrub or something
like that, because you want to see that light coming.
You're kind of like when you look at the color
Guard Yakka, which I know not everybody's a Yaka fan,
but color Guard Yaka is fabulous. But when that morning
(19:09):
or evening light hits that, it glows like stained glass
windows and people will stop and say, oh, that's beautiful.
I'm like, that's why you pick certain plants to give
you those haja moments.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So at the New York Botanic Garden, I was visiting
there and it was late in the season, low light
in the background, and they had on this basically a
cliff face or you know, a rock garden area, and
at the very top of it, they had little blue
stems along there and it was glorious. They were moving
(19:40):
in the wind. You know, it was just one of
the most beautiful things. The next plant you listed is
probably the most common plant in the world, but for
every good reason.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Exact Carl Forster. Yeah, if you can grow it in
a parking lot around Kroger's, you know it's going to
grow in your yard. Yeah, abject neglect, abused, never watered
over mult She's like, I don't care. I'm still going
to do a great job.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And pretty much every season of the year right now,
it's just coming up with tough sub grass, which are
fresh and beautiful.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
But then it comes through with long, tall stems. It
stays narrow and tight, comes through with long flowers that
last a long time, that turn into seedheads that last forever,
and it's just a stunner. And you can grow it
as a single plant and it looks great, you know,
a small clump, it looks fine as a mass. It's
really amazing. So You can't really go wrong using it.
(20:35):
Just put it in a tough site with full more
or less full sun, and it's rocking and rolling.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
And it's so easy this time of year. You just
grab the top of that old stems, run your hand down,
break it, crunch it up, drop it in your garden.
That's your free mulch.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Kind of run your fingers through the grass to kind
of fluff it up.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That's all you have to do forever. That's it. Full
gamut of yearly maintenance is what you just just describe.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
No garden tools required.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Betany, what do you have to say about it?
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I fell in love with this, Jamelo, Yeah, okay, yeah,
And I don't know why I found it. I probably
saw it in a pe old off garden of course.
Of course that's where we find all the new loves
of our lives, in one of his gardens.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
But she.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Stays evergreen, gets a little bit of like a reddish
color to it in the winter that will bloom if
you dead head it. It'll bloom even if you don't
dead head it. So whatever you want to do is fine.
It spreads politely, so it's just going to make this
lush stand and then if you leave the seedheads up
through winter, they stand through winter, so you get that
(21:43):
really cool winter interest and interesting texture. And again you
don't feed it. You don't only have to water it.
Just give it well draining soil and she'll take care
of herself.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Right. It's a smaller plant, so you want it more
in the front of the garden. Yes, I always think
it looks a little bit better when there's a small clump.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Of more than one Yeah, yeah, by herself. I think
she would just get overwhelmed with other plants. And if
it's by the front walk too, it's nice to have
groupings to really catch people's attention to.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Now you mentioned seedums, and that caught me by surprise.
But then I started to think about it, and you're right,
that new fresh foliage is really really nice this time of.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Year and our autumn sun. Those all the old stems
from last year stood through winter without fail. So I
just broke the back and then we have like a
stone crop seedum garden along the shop. And I did
a little editing last weekend because some can get a
little vigorous. Yeah, and it looks ready to go.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I have fairly large groupings of seedom cam Chatticam, which
I don't know the common name on it. It's one
of the more common ones. And it's a low grower,
very dark green. It spreads really nicely and it can
deal with your dryer sites, but it can also handle
(23:06):
just ordinary garden and this time of year it just
starts to form this beautiful carpet and it's one of
the only maintenance you need to do on that is
the old flower stems. They look pretty good all winter.
They're kind of neat to see, but just run a
string trimm or over the top about now, blow it
off and it's just stunning.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
And a lot of those seedums, you know the way
they grow, you can sculpt with them because they're really
easy to edit and kind of chop out.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Some of them.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
You can just grab it stick it well. So again,
no garden tools, right, you don't defeed it. They're going
to pretty much take care of themselves. Just everyone's all
edit them so they don't go totally wild on you.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
The best grouping of it I have at my house.
I have a wall, a dry stack wall across the
front of my yard and it comes down and gets
pretty low at one point maybe only two or three
rocks high, and that's sort of filled with soil, loosely
filled with soil. And I have that seat them growing
(24:05):
along the top of that, flowing down the wall and
into the garden, and it looks so cool.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's a great effect.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, I'm a little happy every time I see that night.
I think you were genius. That was a mess, not
a near mass. That was Yes, that's exactly right. You
mentioned getting finally around to something that's blooming. You mentioned
pulmon areas, which are just about the pop I think
yours are blooming.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Okay, we're overachievers at the office, you know, like Ita
look good in case company comes.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Mine are suffering. They're they're under maples and competing with
the roots that they might be a little slower. But yeah,
and past flower one of my absolute favorite plants. Now
you you're talking the native, right.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Or I honestly don't know, because I tend to whenever
I'm out and about if I see a nursery, like
we must stop and buy something. So I probably bought
one of something. Of course, lost the tag. It's purple.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It's probably all I can tell. The vulgariston, the common
it's blooming like mad.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, for two and a half weeks already.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It's a it's a spectacular plant. I just love everything
about it. It's an old fashioned plant, but not common nobody,
you know, you really don't see it around much. But
it has this nice it's a small little thing. Uh,
and it'll come out with a mass of you know,
anywhere from ten to twenty flowers, you know, all in
a in a bunch coming out. They're big, they're oversized
(25:31):
for the plant. Yes, And you know it's called past
flower because it blooms at Easter and I have found
in my yard that whether Easter is early or late,
it always is in bloom. Oh yeah, it's kind of weird,
kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
We have ours growing in about four to six inches
of chipped limestone.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Like. Yeah, it's very adaptable. I think probably the only
thing it really doesn't want is a lot of shade
and wet soil.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Well that's kind of the death nail for a lot
of plants around here, wet cold soil in the winter.
What does our plants?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, right, yeah, that's I wouldn't like that, I know
for a fact, you know, I wouldn't do any good
here the what else did you mention here?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
So like the Rebecca Maximus are starting to send up
their foliage that beautiful spring gering color. What's not to
love about that?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I know?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And the Rebecca Autumn sun Now their foliage doesn't have
that smacks of spring look to it, right, but it's
just coming up in these big clumps, and you just
know in a few weeks they're gonna be bolting. So
it's kind of like your note to get going, start
gardening because soon they're going to be going full boar,
(26:52):
and you want to make sure you've gotten the weeds
out and other stuff cut back before they get too
far along.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
No, we had we had a lot of tragedy this
week where we dropped down. We had some more. We
had a cold winter, yes, then we had a few
weeks of seventies, you know, back and forth a little bit.
Every early magnolia went and cherry went into full bloom.
It was like the first day they came out, the stars,
(27:18):
the Sulangiannas, the even the Yushino cherries, definitely the subur telependulas,
the weeping higgin and we got that seventeen degree night
and it just laid waste to all of those things.
It's like, oh, I guess we'll wait for next year. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Those type of plants kind of remind us just to
slow down and really appreciate it. So really, if you're
driving around and you see one of those saucer magnolias
in bloom, yeah, take two minutes and just appreciate it,
because you can't say I'll get back to that tomorrow.
They may be there tomorrow. Well they'll be there, but
they'll look horrible. The star magnolias when they get hit
by raining cold and they drop their petals.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, it's just a mess, it is. Yeah, there's still
worth They're still worth using because you know, I think
you get lucky two out of three years and then
you have the bad year. It's still worth it. Yeah.
Those are such spectacular and those.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Trees are also giving us great structure and form. So
some of those if you prone them properly, they look
like sculptural art pieces.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, i'll tell you what. We're going to take a
break and when we come back, Bill, doctor Bill Fountain
will actually be here this time. I announced him a
little bit too early before, but he is an absolute
genius tree scientists. Plant biologist, professor of horticulture, and he
(28:45):
will be talking about salt damage, which we've had a
lot of salt on the roads this year. We'll see
how that turns out and what he has to say
about what we can do mitigate things, make things better.
So we'll take a break. You're listening to Let's Garden
with Scott Berline. Will be back in just a moment.
Let's Garden with Scott Berline eight three eighty two fifty five.
(29:10):
We have on the line doctor Bill Fountain. When I
think of tree health experts plant health experts, Bill is
the man. He is an instructor with the International Society
of Our Borer Culture. So he's teaching the best arborists
in the world. How to you know, learn aircraft and
(29:31):
learn trees. And Bill, how are you today?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
I'm doing well, and particularly since we're officially, according to
the calendar anyway in spring, uh huh. And so I
know that you're you're rejoice, rejoicing as I am with
a little bit of warm weather after the cold weather
that we've had in warm weather cycles off and on
through the what was the end of winter.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Sure is nice to get out like yesterday was so
beautiful to walk around with short sleeves on, and it's
a whole different way of life from what we've been experiencing.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
It is, yea, And it looks like the next couple
of days are going to be equally as enjoyable. So
I'm glad to see the warm weather, but I'm afraid
that we're going to see some repercussions from all of
the cold weather that we had.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. That's I saw. I've
already seen a lot of damage on conifers along the
roads where salt has gotten on the foliage and caused damage.
So what should we expect? A lot of salt went
down this year.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Well, the salt does help us out. I know that
many times I wondered, as you probably did, where is
that salt truck? I can't get out of my street,
my subdivision that I'm in. But salt is sort of
a double edged sword. It does help us in our
driving to melt the snow when the temperature is in
(31:01):
the warmer temperatures but is still freezing. So salt works
until the temperature gets down to about nineteen degrees and
that's a positive nineteen degrees and temperatures below that, the
salt is still put down, but sometimes it acts just
as a grit to help the tires in the bottom
(31:24):
of the shoes to grab a little bit of a
traction and dig into that ice.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
How does it harm plants?
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Well, salt is sodium chloride. That's what the chemist would
call it, and salt that they put down on the
roads is essentially the same type of chemical that we
have on our dining room table. In the salt shaker.
The sodium does a number of different things. As the
sodium and the chlorine go into solution, the sodium will
(31:56):
actually raise the pH or make it a lot more alkaline,
a lot sweeter the term this sometimes use. And so
it does raise the pH and sometimes we see the
pH even going up above ten, which is way too
alkaline for most plants to be able to tolerate. When
(32:18):
we see this happen, it makes elements like iron and
manganese unavailable to the plant. So those high phs anytime
that the pH gets above about seven, iron and manganese
start to become limiting. This can result. This can result
(32:41):
in the oaks and the maples and sweet gums, white
pine spruce birch, rhododendron, a lot of other plants turning yellow.
Iron and manganese are important in the chlorophyll molecule.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Now, how long does this last where the pH is
so high.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Oh, it can, and it's just about forever, or at
least in our human life span. So it's a real
problem when you start to raise the pH because sodium
binds really tightly to that clay particle and that's what
causes the pH to be high.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
You know. So, is there anything a homeowner can do
to protect their trees and their plants from salt damage?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yes, there is. There are a number of things that
we can do. In addition to raising the pH, it
also kills all some of the microorganisms. Now, plants are
not living in the soil just because just by themselves.
So the microorganisms help to build soil structure. And we
talked about everything from the worms all the way down
(33:50):
to the bacteria and the fungi, and the soil structure
is just like it sounds, it's the way the soil
is put together. The graining is that the way it
breaks apart, and that really helps with uh uh, you know,
with the drainage of water. You know, through the summer
and through the fall and for many years after that. UH.
(34:12):
Some of the things that we can do is if
you can get out and shovel as much of that
snow off as possible, uh, and that'll reduce the amount
of salt that you have to put down if you
have if the snow and ice have already been salted,
try and keep that salty snow, salty slush off of
(34:34):
the soil. UH put it out into the street, which
is not good because that does go down into the
uh the streams and the rivers and can affect people
down downstream from us.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
UH.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
But keeping that snow, salty snow and ice off of
the soil will help. I like to use a little
bit of sand or kitty liver, kitty livers uh out there.
I've seen a lot of people put hot water out
there on the walkways. We had to do that this
(35:09):
past winter during one of our freezes when we had
a thick layer of ice down on the concrete and
it just wasn't possible to chip it, and it was
cold and state cold. That can cause a lot of
problems by cracking the concrete with that sudden change in temperature.
One of the things that does help and is not
(35:32):
quite as harmful as salt as calcium chloride.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yes, I've heard, and so this is yeah, this is
one of the yeah, go ahead though, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Okay, this is one of the things that does help
the plant a little bit more so. The calcium does
not change the pH as much as the sodium would be.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, Bill, I'm sorry. We're going to have to go
to a break. I should have left you more time.
I'd like to have you back to talk more about
this and several other things. If you're if you're a game, oh.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I'm certainly willing to look forward to it, and uh
wish you good.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Thank you much. You're listening to Let's Garden with Scott Burline.
We'll be back in just a couple of minutes.
You are listening to Let's Garden with Scott Berline Saturday morning,
March twenty. First, I'm here with Jennifer Smith, a good
friend of mine. Good morning, How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good good Jennifer. You are an award winning pollinator designer
or garden designer. You've been with Wimberg Landscaping now for
six years, but I've known you for a lot longer
than that. You've bounced around volunteering here, doing this there,
and just have done an amazing job with gardens, your
(00:31):
own gardens sort of sometimes, but more and more other
people's gardens. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We met, I think when I was working at Horticulture
magazine possibly, and then oh gosh, yeah, too many years.
We're aging ourselves. We shouldn't say those stops. And then
I took two years I called my sabbatical job when
I was working at the parks, and you would come
and visit when I was working up the whole park.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was working or volunteering.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, I volunteered there for several years and then just
had to get out of the office and they said
we'll pay you. I'm like, so you're going to pay me?
To do what I volunteer perfect. So I did that
for two years and then went back to F and
W and worked for an artist magazine for a while.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay, yeah, you're involved in all kinds of things, you cross, Stitchy.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Your key, I told you. The key is coffee.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Lots of lots of coffee. Yeah, yeah, you have enough
this morning.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No, No, we're going to have to get some carded in. No,
we're good, We're good.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
We'll have it delivered somehow, we'll get it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
The funny thing is, I was just thinking this morning,
you do more than anybody I know when it comes
to horticulture in the Cincinnati area. And now you have
this radio show, which is super exciting because people that
don't know you are going to get to meet you
and learn from you how to garden. And then you're
bringing in all these experts like that we're going to
be talking to today, so now they're going to be
(01:59):
in fired. So your net is just getting super wide,
and we're just glad to be along for the ride.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
You know, you build a big net and you have
something to fall on there you go later on. That's
the whole point of it. So you you have got
you studied horticulture and landscape design you see University of Cincinnati.
You have written for a horticulture magazine and was a
garden writer and photographer at the Civic Garden Center of
(02:30):
Cincinnati Greater Cincinnati. You ran the adopt a plot thing
at allt Park. Yeah, so you are in contention for
doing more than I.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
No, my stuff is much easier, I think than what
you do. But you know what, you just find ways
to garden. And I live in a condo, so I
don't have a yard. So it made it easy to
go out and adopt lots of gardens at All Park
because that was my garden. It wasn't like I have
a home garden now I'm trying to do that.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So yeah, but you landed in a good spot. You've
got this great job at Wimberg where you design, you
do a lot of marketing outreach, which you're really really
good at, and then you put in this amazing I
guess display garden really for your clients, which is very naturalistic.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yes, yes, well I lucked out because Peter Wimberg, the
owner of Wimberg Landscaping, really likes natural gardens. So I
think it was about fifteen years ago, he took out
his entire front yard and said, why do I have
a lawn if what I like in the woods is
what I want to see. So he started planting that way. Yeah,
and then I started working for him, and then the
(03:41):
Zoo was doing the planting for pollinators programs right and
people were learning about it. So it was just this
perfect series of events that everything kind of came together
at the right time. And he had the focal garden,
which we could.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Do right also at All Parks at All Park, which
was really kind of a formal thing, and it's been transformed.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
He's had that for I think it's been twenty years,
so it's gone through lots of different designs, kind of
reflecting the way people garden. Yeah, and now it's more
pollinator based right.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Right, and still really attractive, very popular with visitors to
the garden. It looks great, Oh thank you. Yeah, as
almost everything you touched. The garden at Wimberg is beautiful.
The little pocket display gardens you do along the walking
trail and other things just amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah. The Wasson Way Garden at the corner of Paxton
Wasson is just it makes me happy every time I
see it. It's just considering we planted it in the
hottest week. Yeah, there's no irrigation, it's heavy traffic, it's
so much exposure, and you're thinking, oh, this garden's just
going to get beat up. It looks like impeccable, like
(04:54):
no one's touched it.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I was talking about that with Ed Lyon, who was
in town for the symposium two days ago at the
Zoo and where they had put in a garden at
a public school, you know, a kind of tough part
of town. And I forget what city it was in.
It might have been Des Moines, but they were worried about,
you know, vandalism and problems with it. Haven't seen a problem.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
That very rarely happened. Yeah, I think I can count
on my hands five times as something unfortunate happened. But
the adopted plots. But I tell people that will happen,
but then you're going to have at least twenty times
more good experiences exactly, people saying thank you, we love this,
this is our favorite garden. I saw a butterfly. Or
(05:40):
what's really fun is when kids say what you're doing, yeah,
and you sit down with them, you start gardening and
they get into it, you're like, there you go. We
just cultivated the next gardener. And that's why we do it.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, there's nothing better than getting kids involved. And you know,
so many of them don't have the exposure to gardens
like we had or older generations growing up, and you know,
that's a missing piece of something. I think that's pretty
vital to just our health and well being. And getting
kids involved more and more is so important because without that,
(06:16):
it's just you know, it's kind of an ironic term,
but you know, the grounding that comes with putting something
in the ground is very real.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yes, yeah, And we often talk about so how do
you get into something art, music, gardening if you've never
had someone to introduce it to you. So if your
parents don't garden, well then hopefully the park you go
to has some gardens. And I think part of our
job when we garden in public spaces is to spend
time with people visiting the gardens. We are gardening for
(06:50):
the pollinators, of course, for the park, but mostly for
the people.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Right, And if you can.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Sit down for ten minutes with some kids and say,
have you touched a lamb's ears?
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Or the little boys love rattlesnake Master.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, take it off.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
They're like it's like a weapon, and they just find
this unique way to relate to plants, and now they're interested.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I'll tell you what. We're going to take a break
and when we come back, well, we will roll through
the National Days of It's something I like to do.
See how it relates, especially to horticulture. You are listening
to Let's Garden with Scott Berlin. Will be back in
just a few minutes with Scott Berlin. That's me one
eight hundred eight three eighty two fifty five. I'm here
(07:30):
with Jennifer Smith, a good friend of mine, and it's
time for the Days of I like to do this.
This is weird, mostly on why these days exist and
how they came to be, I don't know, but let's
roll through it. Fourth week of March National Cleaning Week.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I think that for gardeners, clean your tools and clean
your garden. We can circle all this back to gardening
if we try really.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Hard, really can. Yes, physicians for the challenge. Physicians, they
would tell us.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
To garden because it's good exercise and good for your
mental health.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They would National Quilting Day. That's a little harder. You
could quilt a garden scene. There you go.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, okay, you stumped me on.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
One French Bread Day. This is Saturday, March FIRSTUS French
Bread Day.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Well, you better garden. You can eat all that bread,
that's right, because.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You're you're burning off all those carbs. It's also California
Strawberry Day. I don't know why it's specific to California,
but it is strawberry Day for California Fragrance Day. Now
this this applies.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
What's your favorite fragrant plant? And you just told me
you can't smell me.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I know, isn't that depressed that I really can't smell
things very well? But I can smell the street tree lilacs? Yeah,
plus they're beautiful. And then the spice bush burnam right.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
The Korean spice bush judd Y Burnham's, Yeah, mohawk. Those
are some of the I have three or four in
my yard and when they're it smells. You know what
I think it smells like. Are the way those Valentine
Day candies, the heart little ones that you get. Oh,
I think it smells like that tastes that's kind of weird.
(09:16):
But you told me something even weird a minute ago.
You told me you thought a plant smelled like glass.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
The most candles when we go to like buy candles,
I can't smell the sense of candles.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, no matter what, the scent is not really Oh
that's you. That is weird. That's something.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Smell really good soil when it starts for warm up. Yeah,
I can smell the mountain mint.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, that's a little much. And that grolo sumac, which
I just think is horrible sense.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So so you're you're smelling most of the bad stuff. Unfortunately,
Common courtesy day today, so everybody get out there and
just be commonly curdic.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
See what's the curtious?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Curteous? That's it. That's the word. As you're eating a
corn dog, because today is corn dog day. And this
is also the day in eighteen fifty nine the first
zoo in America opened Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Which I am sure is a very fine Zoo's second
two the Cincinnati Botanical Garden End.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Zoo exactly, which got really cool polling in the USA
Today poll this week. Congratulations on that gas potanical guard,
which Longwood was behind us. I'm like, that makes me
cringe honestly.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Well deserved.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, well it goes to show that our community really
likes our zoo and potanical garden. The zoo rated number
three in the country, so we're way up there. Sunday
tomorrow goof off day.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What better way to goof off than the garden. It's
gonna be eighty too. Yes, didn't we just have the
first day of spring?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
We did, and now it's summer.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That's how it works, so everybody's feeling behind in their gardens.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Basically West Virginia Day. Can you can you sing? Can
you sing?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
We don't want that early in the morning. No, No
one's ready for that.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Monday, March twenty third and important one. John Bartram his birthday, yes,
in sixteen ninety nine. Very important figure, especially in now
when we're really throwing so much attention on native plants.
He was, you know, searching for plants in North America.
(11:34):
He went all up and down the Eastern seaboard, well
into the frontier land and collected and found new plants
that were shipped back to England.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
So, yeah, Bartram's boxes. People could sign up for a subscription, yes,
and you would get this box of plants from America
and they were highly sought after. So a lot of
the English gardens are built from Bartram's boxes, plants that
we just take for granted. They were just coveted and
they spent wild some of monch.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
What the plants of North America meant to England when
these plants they were completely exotic, amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Plants, you know, sycamore trees.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Sycamore, so many plants that he sent back a really
really cool and then his son continued the business for
a generation after he died. Uh Susan Jane Cunningham, the
mathematician who founded Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, was born on
this day. Swarthmore College is the grounds of Scott Arboretum,
(12:40):
which is one of my favorite places on the planet,
such a great collection of trees. The first day that
the word okay was used in print was today. I
should have wrote down what year that was. I didn't,
so let's just say it was a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Who went back and said I want to find this out,
did the research and why. That's still exciting to know.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
There are people that'll do anything. They just become possessed
about something. Chia Day for the highly nutritious chia seeds
that were revered by the Maya and Aztex Near Miss Day.
I don't know what that means. I don't think I
want to know.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
No, that could go bad. Puppy Day, well there you go.
We've bounced it out with puppies.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
You can't get her on there. Tuesday, National Cocktail Day.
I can get into that.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Well, if you had a near mess, you might need
a cocktail.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
To get over that trauma. Tuesday, March twenty fourth is
a vice day. It's National Cockday, Cocktail Day, National Cheese
Steak Day, and National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day. You can
put on a lot of weight on Tuesday. Wednesday Whole
Grain Day, Manateee Appreciation Day. And you said, what about that?
(13:56):
That was a cool line.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Oh the sea cows, yeah, oh, and that's right. They're
vegetarians yet horribly overweight. So exactly, eat the chocolate covered raisins,
you eat the French bread. It's all good.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
The manatees would if they could. Little Red Wagon Day.
I love Little Red Wagons, you know, it's a great thing.
Tolkien Reading Day for the token nights out there. Thursday
Spinich Day, and you said hard pass And on Friday,
it's Jane Colden her birthday. Jane Colden, the first female
(14:31):
botanist in the country, born in seventeen twenty four, grew
up in the Hudson Valley. And you wrote that you're
actually been you've been researching her.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Well, I'm putting together a talk on the history of
women and landscape designs, so I'm researching lots of women.
So I haven't been able to dig too deep yet.
But she's fascinated because she explored plants. She knew all
the botanists. She did huge collections. We just don't know
about her because sometimes their work isn't published, and if
(15:01):
people weren't buying her plants, there wouldn't be continuous records
of what she's done. So yeah, while the Bartrams were
going strong, we had this lady as well, doing the
same thing.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
It's amazing, you know, that was just such a period
of time when people were just discovering science and exploring
the planet for cool things. I guess there was enough wealth,
especially in England, where there were people who could dedicate
time to this study and there was so much to learn.
(15:33):
And I'm thinking about Bartram, you know. One of the
cool stories about him is he discovered the franklinea tree
along the a lot of Maha River in Georgia. I
believe found this tree, collected it, sent it to England,
planted a few in his garden in Philadelphia. Named it
after Benjamin Franklin, by the way, and from those collections,
(15:58):
any franklinea tree in the world, that was where it
was sourced. Because it was what we would call endangered
at the time. It was like a single population. No
one ever found another population again. It's it was gone
by the time his sun went back to look for it.
And so you know, here's one of the stories of
(16:20):
where horticulture kind of does conservation in that case unknowingly.
But you know, it's pretty cool that tree still exists.
It's a beautiful tree with really large white flowers all summer,
incredible fall color, incredibly hard to grow. You kind of
(16:41):
have to be a savant or lucky or whatever to
get that thing to grow. So a cool story. You know,
if you can track that tree down and then grow it,
you're a wizards. Yes, you are listening to Let's Garden
of Scott Burline's Saturday March twenty first. We have some
(17:04):
great guests coming up doctor Bill Fountain will be up
next with some talk about salt damage, which we've seen
a lot of. So we'll be back in just a moment.
Two three eighty two fifty five. You are listening to
Let's Garden with Scott Burline and I've got Jennifer Smith
(17:26):
with me, longtime friend, great horticulturist, and let's talk about
some favorite plants that are catching our attention right now.
You sent me a list of some interesting stuff. I'm
thinking blooms and you're thinking, you know, grasses, grasses.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, well, I'm loving the little bluestone we've put in
all the gardens. They are standing up perfectly, as if
they didn't even know winter came, or these snowstorms and
that thunderstorm we had the other day. Yeah, perfect, certain ones,
right or is this standing ovation?
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Standing ovation?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And then I put in some as a hot hot tonka.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
What a cool shift beautiful.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, she's she's a little shorter, which I like. So
I think that'll be more conducive to the home gardens
because even little blue stem is pretty tall in proportion
to some people's front yards.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Right and flop. You know the species and some of
the cultivars, some of them fall apart.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, but that standing ovation's the ha ha and it
has extra seeds on it.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yes, it glows well. Not only that, but it's a
hairy plant. It has little fine hairs along the stems
and you get a little back light on that, and
it is it just jumps out of the landscape. It
looks so amazing. And then we're talking all summer, and
then now we're talking March. It's been through an entire
(18:46):
winter still standing.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
It looks perfect. Yeah, it looks absolutely perfect. And I
think it might have been Dan Pearson that I was
reading that said, when you work with grasses, always make
sure they're not put up against the shrub or something
like that, because you want to see that light coming.
You're kind of like when you look at the color
Guard Yakka, which I know not everybody's a Yaka fan,
but color Guard Yaka is fabulous. But when that morning
(19:09):
or evening light hits that, it glows like stained glass
windows and people will stop and say, oh, that's beautiful.
I'm like, that's why you pick certain plants to give
you those haja moments.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
So at the New York Botanic Garden, I was visiting
there and it was late in the season, low light
in the background, and they had on this basically a
cliff face or you know, a rock garden area, and
at the very top of it, they had little blue
stems along there and it was glorious. They were moving
(19:40):
in the wind. You know, it was just one of
the most beautiful things. The next plant you listed is
probably the most common plant in the world, but for
every good reason.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Exact Carl Forster. Yeah, if you can grow it in
a parking lot around Kroger's, you know it's going to
grow in your yard. Yeah, abject neglect, abused, never watered
over mult She's like, I don't care. I'm still going
to do a great job.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And pretty much every season of the year right now,
it's just coming up with tough sub grass, which are
fresh and beautiful.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
But then it comes through with long, tall stems. It
stays narrow and tight, comes through with long flowers that
last a long time, that turn into seedheads that last forever,
and it's just a stunner. And you can grow it
as a single plant and it looks great, you know,
a small clump, it looks fine as a mass. It's
really amazing. So You can't really go wrong using it.
(20:35):
Just put it in a tough site with full more
or less full sun, and it's rocking and rolling.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
And it's so easy this time of year. You just
grab the top of that old stems, run your hand down,
break it, crunch it up, drop it in your garden.
That's your free mulch.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Kind of run your fingers through the grass to kind
of fluff it up.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That's all you have to do forever. That's it. Full
gamut of yearly maintenance is what you just just describe.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
No garden tools required.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Betany, what do you have to say about it?
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I fell in love with this, Jamelo, Yeah, okay, yeah,
And I don't know why I found it. I probably
saw it in a pe old off garden of course.
Of course that's where we find all the new loves
of our lives, in one of his gardens.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
But she.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Stays evergreen, gets a little bit of like a reddish
color to it in the winter that will bloom if
you dead head it. It'll bloom even if you don't
dead head it. So whatever you want to do is fine.
It spreads politely, so it's just going to make this
lush stand and then if you leave the seedheads up
through winter, they stand through winter, so you get that
(21:43):
really cool winter interest and interesting texture. And again you
don't feed it. You don't only have to water it.
Just give it well draining soil and she'll take care
of herself.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Right. It's a smaller plant, so you want it more
in the front of the garden. Yes, I always think
it looks a little bit better when there's a small clump.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Of more than one Yeah, yeah, by herself. I think
she would just get overwhelmed with other plants. And if
it's by the front walk too, it's nice to have
groupings to really catch people's attention to.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Now you mentioned seedums, and that caught me by surprise.
But then I started to think about it, and you're right,
that new fresh foliage is really really nice this time of.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Year and our autumn sun. Those all the old stems
from last year stood through winter without fail. So I
just broke the back and then we have like a
stone crop seedum garden along the shop. And I did
a little editing last weekend because some can get a
little vigorous. Yeah, and it looks ready to go.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I have fairly large groupings of seedom cam Chatticam, which
I don't know the common name on it. It's one
of the more common ones. And it's a low grower,
very dark green. It spreads really nicely and it can
deal with your dryer sites, but it can also handle
(23:06):
just ordinary garden and this time of year it just
starts to form this beautiful carpet and it's one of
the only maintenance you need to do on that is
the old flower stems. They look pretty good all winter.
They're kind of neat to see, but just run a
string trimm or over the top about now, blow it
off and it's just stunning.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
And a lot of those seedums, you know the way
they grow, you can sculpt with them because they're really
easy to edit and kind of chop out.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Some of them.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
You can just grab it stick it well. So again,
no garden tools, right, you don't defeed it. They're going
to pretty much take care of themselves. Just everyone's all
edit them so they don't go totally wild on you.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
The best grouping of it I have at my house.
I have a wall, a dry stack wall across the
front of my yard and it comes down and gets
pretty low at one point maybe only two or three
rocks high, and that's sort of filled with soil, loosely
filled with soil. And I have that seat them growing
(24:05):
along the top of that, flowing down the wall and
into the garden, and it looks so cool.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's a great effect.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, I'm a little happy every time I see that night.
I think you were genius. That was a mess, not
a near mass. That was Yes, that's exactly right. You
mentioned getting finally around to something that's blooming. You mentioned
pulmon areas, which are just about the pop I think
yours are blooming.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Okay, we're overachievers at the office, you know, like Ita
look good in case company comes.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Mine are suffering. They're they're under maples and competing with
the roots that they might be a little slower. But yeah,
and past flower one of my absolute favorite plants. Now
you you're talking the native, right.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Or I honestly don't know, because I tend to whenever
I'm out and about if I see a nursery, like
we must stop and buy something. So I probably bought
one of something. Of course, lost the tag. It's purple.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
It's probably all I can tell. The vulgariston, the common
it's blooming like mad.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, for two and a half weeks already.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
It's a it's a spectacular plant. I just love everything
about it. It's an old fashioned plant, but not common nobody,
you know, you really don't see it around much. But
it has this nice it's a small little thing. Uh,
and it'll come out with a mass of you know,
anywhere from ten to twenty flowers, you know, all in
a in a bunch coming out. They're big, they're oversized
(25:31):
for the plant. Yes, And you know it's called past
flower because it blooms at Easter and I have found
in my yard that whether Easter is early or late,
it always is in bloom. Oh yeah, it's kind of weird,
kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
We have ours growing in about four to six inches
of chipped limestone.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Like. Yeah, it's very adaptable. I think probably the only
thing it really doesn't want is a lot of shade
and wet soil.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Well that's kind of the death nail for a lot
of plants around here, wet cold soil in the winter.
What does our plants?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, right, yeah, that's I wouldn't like that, I know
for a fact, you know, I wouldn't do any good
here the what else did you mention here?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
So like the Rebecca Maximus are starting to send up
their foliage that beautiful spring gering color. What's not to
love about that?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I know?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And the Rebecca Autumn sun Now their foliage doesn't have
that smacks of spring look to it, right, but it's
just coming up in these big clumps, and you just
know in a few weeks they're gonna be bolting. So
it's kind of like your note to get going, start
gardening because soon they're going to be going full boar,
(26:52):
and you want to make sure you've gotten the weeds
out and other stuff cut back before they get too
far along.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
No, we had we had a lot of tragedy this
week where we dropped down. We had some more. We
had a cold winter, yes, then we had a few
weeks of seventies, you know, back and forth a little bit.
Every early magnolia went and cherry went into full bloom.
It was like the first day they came out, the stars,
(27:18):
the Sulangiannas, the even the Yushino cherries, definitely the subur telependulas,
the weeping higgin and we got that seventeen degree night
and it just laid waste to all of those things.
It's like, oh, I guess we'll wait for next year. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Those type of plants kind of remind us just to
slow down and really appreciate it. So really, if you're
driving around and you see one of those saucer magnolias
in bloom, yeah, take two minutes and just appreciate it,
because you can't say I'll get back to that tomorrow.
They may be there tomorrow. Well they'll be there, but
they'll look horrible. The star magnolias when they get hit
by raining cold and they drop their petals.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, it's just a mess, it is. Yeah, there's still
worth They're still worth using because you know, I think
you get lucky two out of three years and then
you have the bad year. It's still worth it. Yeah.
Those are such spectacular and those.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Trees are also giving us great structure and form. So
some of those if you prone them properly, they look
like sculptural art pieces.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, i'll tell you what. We're going to take a
break and when we come back, Bill, doctor Bill Fountain
will actually be here this time. I announced him a
little bit too early before, but he is an absolute
genius tree scientists. Plant biologist, professor of horticulture, and he
(28:45):
will be talking about salt damage, which we've had a
lot of salt on the roads this year. We'll see
how that turns out and what he has to say
about what we can do mitigate things, make things better.
So we'll take a break. You're listening to Let's Garden
with Scott Berline. Will be back in just a moment.
Let's Garden with Scott Berline eight three eighty two fifty five.
(29:10):
We have on the line doctor Bill Fountain. When I
think of tree health experts plant health experts, Bill is
the man. He is an instructor with the International Society
of Our Borer Culture. So he's teaching the best arborists
in the world. How to you know, learn aircraft and
(29:31):
learn trees. And Bill, how are you today?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
I'm doing well, and particularly since we're officially, according to
the calendar anyway in spring, uh huh. And so I
know that you're you're rejoice, rejoicing as I am with
a little bit of warm weather after the cold weather
that we've had in warm weather cycles off and on
through the what was the end of winter.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Sure is nice to get out like yesterday was so
beautiful to walk around with short sleeves on, and it's
a whole different way of life from what we've been experiencing.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
It is, yea, And it looks like the next couple
of days are going to be equally as enjoyable. So
I'm glad to see the warm weather, but I'm afraid
that we're going to see some repercussions from all of
the cold weather that we had.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, I'm right there with you. That's I saw. I've
already seen a lot of damage on conifers along the
roads where salt has gotten on the foliage and caused damage.
So what should we expect? A lot of salt went
down this year.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Well, the salt does help us out. I know that
many times I wondered, as you probably did, where is
that salt truck? I can't get out of my street,
my subdivision that I'm in. But salt is sort of
a double edged sword. It does help us in our
driving to melt the snow when the temperature is in
(31:01):
the warmer temperatures but is still freezing. So salt works
until the temperature gets down to about nineteen degrees and
that's a positive nineteen degrees and temperatures below that, the
salt is still put down, but sometimes it acts just
as a grit to help the tires in the bottom
(31:24):
of the shoes to grab a little bit of a
traction and dig into that ice.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
How does it harm plants?
Speaker 3 (31:33):
Well, salt is sodium chloride. That's what the chemist would
call it, and salt that they put down on the
roads is essentially the same type of chemical that we
have on our dining room table. In the salt shaker.
The sodium does a number of different things. As the
sodium and the chlorine go into solution, the sodium will
(31:56):
actually raise the pH or make it a lot more alkaline,
a lot sweeter the term this sometimes use. And so
it does raise the pH and sometimes we see the
pH even going up above ten, which is way too
alkaline for most plants to be able to tolerate. When
(32:18):
we see this happen, it makes elements like iron and
manganese unavailable to the plant. So those high phs anytime
that the pH gets above about seven, iron and manganese
start to become limiting. This can result. This can result
(32:41):
in the oaks and the maples and sweet gums, white
pine spruce birch, rhododendron, a lot of other plants turning yellow.
Iron and manganese are important in the chlorophyll molecule.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Now, how long does this last where the pH is
so high.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Oh, it can, and it's just about forever, or at
least in our human life span. So it's a real
problem when you start to raise the pH because sodium
binds really tightly to that clay particle and that's what
causes the pH to be high.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
You know. So, is there anything a homeowner can do
to protect their trees and their plants from salt damage?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yes, there is. There are a number of things that
we can do. In addition to raising the pH, it
also kills all some of the microorganisms. Now, plants are
not living in the soil just because just by themselves.
So the microorganisms help to build soil structure. And we
talked about everything from the worms all the way down
(33:50):
to the bacteria and the fungi, and the soil structure
is just like it sounds, it's the way the soil
is put together. The graining is that the way it
breaks apart, and that really helps with uh uh, you know,
with the drainage of water. You know, through the summer
and through the fall and for many years after that. UH.
(34:12):
Some of the things that we can do is if
you can get out and shovel as much of that
snow off as possible, uh, and that'll reduce the amount
of salt that you have to put down if you
have if the snow and ice have already been salted,
try and keep that salty snow, salty slush off of
(34:34):
the soil. UH put it out into the street, which
is not good because that does go down into the
uh the streams and the rivers and can affect people
down downstream from us.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
UH.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
But keeping that snow, salty snow and ice off of
the soil will help. I like to use a little
bit of sand or kitty liver, kitty livers uh out there.
I've seen a lot of people put hot water out
there on the walkways. We had to do that this
(35:09):
past winter during one of our freezes when we had
a thick layer of ice down on the concrete and
it just wasn't possible to chip it, and it was
cold and state cold. That can cause a lot of
problems by cracking the concrete with that sudden change in temperature.
One of the things that does help and is not
(35:32):
quite as harmful as salt as calcium chloride.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yes, I've heard, and so this is yeah, this is
one of the yeah, go ahead though, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
Okay, this is one of the things that does help
the plant a little bit more so. The calcium does
not change the pH as much as the sodium would be.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, Bill, I'm sorry. We're going to have to go
to a break. I should have left you more time.
I'd like to have you back to talk more about
this and several other things. If you're if you're a game, oh.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I'm certainly willing to look forward to it, and uh
wish you good.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Thank you much. You're listening to Let's Garden with Scott Burline.
We'll be back in just a couple of minutes.
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