Speaker 1: Broadcasting from Studio A Here at Proven Winners, Color Choice Shrubs.
It's The Gardening Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella, me Rick Weist,
and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well, happy birthday
America two hundred and fifty years and what a great
way to celebrate by maybe going to a great American garden.
I think that's a great way to celebrate.
Speaker 2: You know, I think so too, And that's why we're
ripping up the script from the normal Gardening Simplified Show
and we are going to devote two episodes to sharing
with you the various gardens around the country that have
shaped America and that are worth your time to visit,
because you know, I think that a lot of people, now,
of course not our audience, because they're gardeners, they don't
really think about visiting gardens. Now, if they go to Europe,
they're like, oh, I must go to this garden that garden.
Europe is a place for gardens. But for a lot
of people, I just don't think that visiting gardens, especially
if it's like a destination they're on vacation, I don't
think it enters the realm of possibility. For a lot
of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you you know, when you talk about that, Stacey,
you think about Europe and you have the antiquity and
the ruins and all of that type of thing. America,
United States, the colonies. It was a new world and
we had to find a new way of gardening new plants, right, Yeah,
and John Bartram was very instrumental in that with his
Bartram Boxes and sending those plants off to Europe and
really creating this this knowledge and understanding of what we
had at our disposal here in the new Colonies.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely true, And so I do want to say
we're going to go around and share some of Now.
Of course we can't do all the gardens we're going
to get Mayle imagine, but we do want to hear
from you. So if there is a garden that we skip,
it's not that it's not important. This is just a
little sampler, but please do leave us a comment on YouTube.
And we really tried to pick gardens that I think
tell a story. So of course there's so many wonderful
gardens that aren't going to make it into these episodes
because it is going to be two parts. But it's
really about the story, and so that's why we're going
to start with Bartramp's Garden. Okay, right, yes, So Bartromp's
Garden is in Philadelphia, and it is the natural place
to start for this celebration of American gardens because it
is the oldest surviving botanic garden in North America. It
was founded in seventeen twenty eight, and it is absolutely
amazing that this garden is still surviving. The original house
is there, The original greenhouse is there, of course, not
the glass that it's been replaced, and so many of
the original plants. Now you were talking a bit about
John Bartram definitely one of the founding gardeners. He was
a plant explorer and botanist in his own right. So
as you said, he sent a lot of plants back
to Europe and they sent plants to him and kind
of helped to facilitate the movement of plants between all
of these different countries. The greenhouse there dates back to
seventeen sixteen. Now I have not been here. Have you
been there?
Speaker 3: I have been there?
Speaker 2: So is it amazing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean it's really really cool.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what I did, I have to admit,
you know, it's in the Philadelphia area, right, And what
I did was after I visited, then I went to
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and of course had to
run the steps back they Balboa.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing about John Bartram is that I
view him as a plant collector, a person who was
interested in collecting, identifying new plants, and then sharing them.
So the garden isn't necessary something where you go, wow,
what unbelievable design or architecture or whatever. You have to
understand the basis, and that is he was a plant collector.
Speaker 2: And such an important plant collector too. So one of
the plants that I think for those of us in
the know who maybe know a little too much about
horticulture for our own good, is that one of the
most important specimens, probably the most important specimen that you
will see at Bartram's garden is franklinea alta maha, which
is named after Ben Franklin. It's Bartram himself named it
after Ben Franklin in honor of Ben Franklin. They were
good friends, and franklinea al to maha is a plant
that they found growing on the banks of the Alta
Maha River in Georgia. They found it in seventeen seventy three.
They said, hey, this is a pretty cool plant. It's
a big tree, it has white flowers. It's in the
Camellia family, the tea family, one of very few plants
native to North America that is in that family. They
collected seed, brought it back to Bartram's garden, sewed it.
That original tree is still in the garden today, despite
the fact that Franklinea, the species has not been recorded
in the wild since eighteen oh three. So unknowingly, John
Bartram and his son, who traveled together extensively, actually say
the only reason that we know this plant exists is
because Bartrum and his son collected it and saved it.
And every Franklinia. No, this isn't really a rare plant.
It's somewhat easy to find if you are devoted to
looking for these types of things. Every single Franklinea around
is descended from the tree that Bartram saved.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine these founding fathers sitting around and talking
about plants.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's amazing. Yeah, getting a dark tavern and yeah,
sat talk and.
Speaker 1: Plants just unbelievable. I wanted to give a quick editorial comment,
like you said, we're we're tearing up the script here.
The Danish people have a word that I think is
really cool. It's called free heads angst, and free heads
angst essentially means anxiety over being free.
Speaker 3: Freedom.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you were to walk into a
garden center and there's plants everywhere, you can get overwhelmed.
And when you get overwhelmed, then paralysis sets in, right,
And so they have that great word. And my feeling
is that if you have felt that before, that paralysis
so many plants, I don't know, I'm overwhelmed, go to
a public garden or an arboretum, because what's going to
happen is you're going to fall in love with certain
plants and it's going to.
Speaker 3: Stick with you the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: So I remember going to Longwood Gardens and just absolutely
falling in love with Verbina benariensis and how it swayed
in the world, and how great it would look with
my ornamental grasses, or going to the Pacific Northwest and
falling in love with conifers, Japanese maples, all of that
type of thing. So I tend to refer to these
founding fathers as the grounding Fathers. Now, has anybody ever
written a book or calling them the grounding fathers, because
I want to coin that phrase.
Speaker 2: Not grounding. Now there is a wonderful book called Founding
Gardeners Andrea Wolf. It talks about them all. Yes, fantastic book.
So we are going to move on to Longwood. We're
going to try to move reasonably quick, but for me
that's quite impossible. But we're saying in a geographical region.
This is not in order of importance, although I'd say
Bartram's Garden has our oldest botanical garden in North America
is very important. One last thing on Bartram's Garden, the
oldest and first ginko in North America is in Bartram's Garden.
You can still see it to this day. It was
planted in seventeen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Ginko trees showing our YouTube viewers here one of my
favorite mug.
Speaker 2: Now, I get this one at the which is coming up.
If we get to it this episode, it might not
come in until I might not come until next episode,
but definitely so. Since we're staying in the Philadelphia area,
which really is just a treasure trove of public horticulture
and I think you're going to see that as we
kind of move all over the East Coast and then
down just all of the East Coast. There was just
so much money and so much commitment to horticulture there
that remains to this day. And it's really one of
the things that I miss the most from living out
there is you were just spoiled for choice for public
gardens that you could go to. But Longwood, of course,
everyone thinks of Longwood, they think of the fountains, They
think of this as a new garden, and Longwood has
done an incredible job of keeping them themselves, their research,
the gardens that they create relevant and up to date
and contemporary. But it was actually originally founded as a
Quaker arboretum in seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so.
Speaker 2: Our Venerable Longwood Gardens goes way way back. And the
famous Pierre DuPont of the DuPont family, which has a
number of public and private gardens still through the East Coast,
transformed it into his private estate in nineteen oh six.
And that's he's the one who put in the fountains. Yeah,
so the same fountains that you see today, which you
think are something that a public garden put on in
this big, grand scale. Was actually just a really rich
guy who said, I want to fancy italianate fountain.
Speaker 1: The fountains are great, and they'll run them at night.
I really enjoyed that, and I remember, embarrassingly, so I
tried to take a short cut through the garden because
it was late for the fountain show, and I ended
up in one of the fountains he did. Yeah, they
came on and I got wet, and that was embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: Anyhow, Now, the other.
Speaker 1: Cool thing about Longwood Gardens, it's right near Kennett Square,
in Kennett Square, and Kennett Square is considered the mushroom
capital of the United States. Yes, Adriana, you need Todd
the mushrooms cultivated mushroom, and they have this huge mushroom
festival in I think it's September.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's where all almost every mushroom that you like,
regular brown mushrooms that you're getting in the US, grown
right there at Longwood. Now, of course we could continue,
we're already gonna have to take a little break, so
at this rate it's gonna be a multi part series.
But in any case, we're gonna take a break. We're
gonna catch our breath, and we're gonna continue with this
in just a moment. Beautify your home and community with
Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs. With over three hundred and
twenty five unique varieties to choose from. There's a flowering, shrubber,
evergreen for every taste and every space. Just look for
the distinctive white container your local garden center or learn
more at Proven Winners color Choice dot com. Greetings gardening friends,
and welcome back to our tour of American gardens and
their stories. If you are traveling this summer, or if
you're not and you want to make plans to, I
hope you will consider these gardens. You know, like you
said Rick, with Bartram's Garden, it's not the kind of
place that you go and go, oh my gosh, it's
just so breathtaking. You kind of have to know the
story and understand the significance of it. And that's what
we're trying to tell is there's lots of these gardens
that you could go to and say, oh my gosh,
this is gorgeous, but it's really about the story and
the people who made them. Because it's next garden, which
is one of my absolute favorite gardens in the world
and certainly in the US, is Chanticleer Garden. And Chanticlear
Garden is a private so it's open to the public,
but it's privately owned and it's an old manor house
that was built by Adolph Rosengarden, who was a chemist
and one of the founders of Merk Chemicals, so obviously
had lots of money. And I loved back in these
days in the eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds
that all of these wealthy people were putting their money
into building gardens. And then when they got too old
or they were on their way out, they didn't just say, okay,
well just you know, bulldoze my house and turn it
into a subdivision. They endowed these gardens to remain public
and you know, open to people to enjoy for in perpetuity.
Speaker 3: It's a great point, Stacey.
Speaker 1: You look at people like Wrigley or the Morton family, right, Yeah,
and that's what.
Speaker 2: Happened, Yes, exactly. So that's why there's so many of these,
I think on the East Coast. But Chanticleer is what
makes Chanticleer really special to me and very unique as
an American garden is their tagline is Chanticlear a pleasure garden,
And one might easily say that all gardens are pleasure gardens.
There are certainly pleasant places to be, but what makes
Chanticleer so unique is that unlike a botanical garden, which
is about the collections and having, you know, a representation
of a specific genus or a plant family or something
like that, Chanticleer has incredible collections, but they instead simply
put the focus on enjoying the beauty of their gardens.
So as you're walking through these incredible gardens, there's not
labels everywhere tags blowing in the wind and clanking around.
Each garden area has a little guide to it that
you can look and as we had Lisa Roper, who's
one of the horticulturists at Chanticleer on the show last
summer on Our Folly's Show, she was amazing and she
talked about how the gardener for each garden designs their
own box to house these kind of guides that are
very sort of blended in with the scenery. Chanticleer is
a garden that I think really flies under the radar
for people who are in the Philadelphia area because they
think Longwood, and Longwood is absolutely worth a visit, but
for me, I will take Chanta Clear any day. It's
truly unique, it's truly special. The people the gardeners are
I am in awe of their talent and vision, and
it's definitely one of my top picks for all of
the gardens in the US. But even though there are many,
many more public gardens in Philadelphia, we could continue with
We're going to move up to New York City, where
I think a lot of people might be surprised to
find that there are also incredible public gardens.
Speaker 3: They're great gardens all.
Speaker 2: Around the city, out on Long Island, all through Westchester County,
which is the county just above New York City, and
so definitely one of my second favorite, close second to Chanticleer.
Of my favorite gardens in the eastern half of North
America is Wave Hill. You've never been to Wave Hill?
Right A Wave have been up.
Speaker 1: I've been to Wave Hill, and if you're into layering
and terracing, I think it's a great garden to visit.
I went to Yankee Stadium and then it's just north
of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to visit. Yeah, I
strongly encourage you.
Speaker 2: Yes, So you can't really get to it on the subway.
You can take the train, you can take a cab.
So Wavehill is as as Rick said in Riverdale in
the Bronx. And I will never ever forget the first
time that I went to Wave Hill and we I
was just talking to a friend, just chit chatting, and
we walked out of the parking lot and we walked
into the gard and as soon as you get into
the garden, this incredible view of the palisades of the
Hudson River opens up and it is simply breathtaking. Now, Wavehill,
the property has been owned by a number of different people,
but really the person who transformed it sort of into
what it is today is Henry Appleton. He bought the
property in eighteen sixty six. He was the American publisher
for Charles Darwin's works Wow. He was, yeah, a literary figurehead,
and he hosted a number of literary giants. Mark Twain
is known to have visited the house there. At Wave
Hill it became a public garden under the direction of
George Perkins, who was a vice president at JP Morgan.
So again, really we got these rich guys who are
using their money for horticulture. We could use a lot
more of that these days, if any rich guys are listening.
And so then it opened as a public garden in
nineteen sixty seven, and it's just it is, i'd say,
sort of a hybrid between a botanic garden that's really
about the collections and this genus, the genera that they have,
as well as just the visual impact of being there,
and there's so many rare and unique plants and just
it's a lovely place to spend the afternoon. And you
know what I really love about it too, it's digestible. Yes,
Longwood is not totally digestible. It's so massive, uh, you know,
sort of by the end of the day, Longwood, you're
just like, you know.
Speaker 1: There are many rests, Yeah, many botanic gardens that you
have to go to. Two important elements comfortable shoes and sunscreen.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, definitely.
Speaker 1: And also I agree with water and water and I
agree with you Stacy that for a number of people
who have not visited, New York is a great place
for botanical gardens.
Speaker 3: I mean you mentioned Wave Hill.
Speaker 1: The New York Botanical gardens are in close proximity too.
Speaker 2: Very close, yep.
Speaker 1: Or you can go on the island all the way
to the southern tip in Manhattan and the battery.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Beautiful, yes, and historically very important exactly. And of course,
even though it is a park, one of the most
important American landscapes of all Central Park.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Now, I am fortunate enough to have spent three years
working in Central Park at Tavern on the Green restaurant,
the former Tavern on the Green restaurant, and it is
an extraordinary place. And I think what's really significant about
Central Park is easily lost on people because you go
there now and it's a beautiful, mature landscape with you know,
huge trees and everything's established and wonderful. But it really
was so revolutionary at the time because Central Park was
founded in the eighteen seventies and Frederick law Olmsted famously
was commissioned to lay it out. So up until that time,
if someone was commissioned to build a park or a garden,
it was like bring in the heavy machinery such that
it was in the eighteen seventies and level it. You know,
let's get a flat surface and then we're going to
make a garden. Central Park is really one of the
very first landscapes in America that they said, Hey, let's
work with what we have here. Let's work with the
low spots, let's work with the rock out croppings and
make a naturalistic landscape. And that seems so obvious to
us now, but at the time it was truly revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know that from personal experience, stacy, because
I've done a lot of running in that park.
Speaker 2: Oh and it's a great place. Yeah. I mean, it's
the other cool thing about Central Park that a lot
of people don't realize. It was also very revolutionary about
its designs. Is Frederick law Olmstad sunk the roadways, so
he knew that carriages and eventually cars would have to
pass through the park. But rather than have roads cutting
through the park and interrupting your ability to run or
walk or enjoy it, the roads actually go underneath the park,
not as tunnels per se. There are some tunnels, so
you never have that disruption of being in the park
or having to cross the street. Well they're actually now
you do sometimes, but they close it on the weekends
at least, so that makes it really special. And it
does have some formal gardens. The Conservatory Garden in Central
Park is way way up in the upper east side
in the one hundreds, so a lot of people don't
go up there, but it is a lovely formal garden. And then,
of course there's a Shakespeare Garden, which I think is
famous to the point of notorious for being the introduction
point of the European starling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so my word, yeah, I'll just leave it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know we could go on about that, but.
Speaker 3: We're great stories about that.
Speaker 2: There are one. Eugene Chieflin introduced sixty birds in eighteen nineties.
Mistake in sixty starlings he introduced. I guess he didn't
think he did a good enough job, because the next
year he introduced forty more and from those one hundred starlings,
we now have starlings everywhere.
Speaker 1: So and farmers nationwide thank him exactly.
Speaker 2: So so much interesting history there in Central Park that
I think again is very easy to forget when you're
strolling those beautiful lays and pathways, and there's just so
much to see and explore in Central So if you
are going to Central Park, New York City this year,
don't limit yourself to the big, splashy things that everybody
does make sure you spend some time to explore the
whole park now briefly before we take yet another break.
These times are going so fast, like the fastest ten
minutes ever. I want to talk quickly about Utermeyer Gardens
because this is a very interesting sort of American rebirth
success story. So these gardens were started back in the
late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds by Samuel earned Untermeyer,
who was a lawyer. He was actually the first attorney
to win a million dollar case, the first time to
ever have a million dollars involved in a lawsuit. So
he obviously was a very wealthy man.
Speaker 3: Did he have a billboard? Forget it? Keep going?
Speaker 2: So the great thing about him, in addition to being
a wonderful, obviously successful lawyer, he was extremely passionate about
horticulture and he built a garden for himself and his
family beautiful, which was absolutely beautiful, and he was just
complete his goal. His stated goal when he started building
the garden was that it would be the finest in America,
and it probably was and over time. This is in Yonkers,
New York, so just kind of north of Wave Hill.
You probably need a car if you're coming from the city.
But you can probably take an uber. It fell into
complete disrepair. I mean, the whole park despite all of
these amazing structures, and everything that remained got overgrown, got
covered in graffiti, and it could have been left to
rod and to really be plowed under and developed into
something else. But some really visionary horticulturists got together. They
have restored it according to Unjamayer's original vision, preserving a
lot of what has happened on the way. And it
is just a really interesting story of again rebirth and
success after a period of hardship. And you know that's
a pretty American concept.
Speaker 1: And the beauty of this, Stacey is that many of
these are in close proximity to each other. Yes, like
I mentioned Yankee Stadium, then going to Wave Hill, this Garden,
New York Botanic Garden.
Speaker 3: So now you can get your film.
Speaker 2: You can make quite a day of it. Yeah, exactly,
all right, we're gonna take a little break when we
come back. We've got a whole lot more about American
gardens to stayteen at proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs. We
know that a better landscape starts with a better shrub.
Our team of experts tests and evaluates all of our
flowering shrubs in Evergreens for eight to ten years to
ensure they outperform what's already on the market. For easycare, reliable,
beautiful shrubs to accentuate your home and express your personal style,
look for Proven Winners shrubs in the distinctive white container
at your local garden center or learn more at Proven
Winners color choice dot com. Greetings gardening friends, and welcome
back to our tour of American gardens that we hope
you will visit. Many of these We've been to a
couple of them. I haven't been to yet, but you know,
I think you and I always prioritize visiting gardens when we.
Speaker 1: Travel, absolutely and when you're on the East Coast. Unbelievable
the gardens that are available. And as I mentioned in
segment one, my grounding fathers just have this image in
my mind of you know, Thomas Jefferson and how much
he loved gardening, George Washington at Mount Vernon, and you
have James Monroe many people say he was the first
environmentalist in our country. And then John Adams, kind of cranky,
short guy, and I picture him working out in the garden,
taking it out on his garden. You know, did he
have a Oh yeah, John Adams loved gardening and he yeah.
I think he took out some of his frustrations on
his garden.
Speaker 3: That's my opinion.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that I think, you know, we talk about
Bartram's Garden, how Bartram's Garden, being the first botanical garden
in the US, has managed to exist all this time.
There was a lot of these gardens, of course, Monticello
and mont Vernon and all of those biggest states. They've
stuck around because they were massive, and of course those
are massive men with you know, massive legends with them.
But a lot of this, you know, I don't I
don't know that John Adams of Garden is still available
to visit that it were. It's just my mind. So
if you go to Boston, of course, I think the cemeteries,
the Boston Common so many wonderful things to see.
Speaker 3: In Boston cees.
Speaker 2: I love the cemeteries in Boston.
Speaker 3: Love it.
Speaker 2: Not as full of plants as like some of the
garden cemeteries like of course Greenwood in Brooklyn and all
of the other wonderful garden cemeteries which you'll find throughout
the East coast. But our centerpiece in the Boston area
is the one, the only Arnold Arboretum. Yes, and I
think a lot of people don't know that the Arnold
Arboretum is the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. I think
a lot of people don't realize that it is Harvard's
actual arboretum associated with the university. So some very fine
pedigree there. Established eighteen seventy two, So of course Harvard
was established far before that. But one of the reasons
that it was established was because Frederick law Olmsted. So
going back to Central Park, and Frederick Law Olmsted just
had this massive, massive impact on American gardens. And this
is not even the second or the last of the
Frederick Law Olmsted gardens you're going to be hearing about
in this series of North American gardens. This guy, once
he made his fortune on Central Park, everybody wanted a
piece of Frederick Law Olmsteed, and so he designed what
is known as the Emerald Necklace network of parks around Boston.
So the idea was that you could kind of go
all around Boston without leaving parks. So that's the Emerald
Necklace that it was this kind of arc of base
Jamaica plane, yes, Jamaica plane, technically not Boston. And so
he laid it out. And when I was looking at
the Arnold Arboretam website putting together my notes for this,
they say at the bottom of their website their quote,
we are committed to the old, steady and principle that
everyone is entitled to open space. And I think that's
just so powerful that there was this time, you know,
and certainly in Europe and here in the early days,
where this notion of having an open space, a green
space that you could go to was really for the elite,
if you had the money to have enough space to
do that. And so what Olmstead did with Central Park
and with the Emerald Necklace and a lot of the
other gardens that we're talking about was democratize the outdoors
and create a place where you could just go just
to be. And that's again, that's such a familiar concept
to us now, but at the time it was really revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you go now, I'll repeat it again
because I'm glad that I did comfortable shoes because just
like Central Park, you're going to be walking, but you're
going to want to walk because the number of incredible
trees that are there, and many of them have like
a copper type tag affixed to them with a lot
of great information on it. Stacey at Arnold Arboretum the
Meta squoias. But the tree that really caught my eye
and I think they have the oldest ones in the
US there paper bark maple.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, they're huge, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I love darn It is truly an extraordinary place, and
so they have on the website. We'll put a link
on the YouTube version here, the Explorer's Garden Tour. You
can kind of do a really cool virtual tour at
that link. It tells you how to read the what's
known as the accession labels, which is the copper labels
Rick was just talking about. And what's so cool about
that is you can look at the year that things
were planted and really start to understand, you know, how
old and venerable some of these specimens are. As you said, Rick,
it is the place where Meta Sequoia, also known as
don redwood, when it was finally read discovered in China
in the nineteen forties. The Arnold Arboretum was the first
place to get that and was really instrumental in, you know,
disseminating this beautiful deciduous conifer that was only known through
the fossil records until the nineteen forties and is now
like a relatively common garden plant. They're massive, They're beautiful
tea and.
Speaker 1: The bald cypress massive. The gang CooA trees. Wow, I
don't know, just gives me goosebumps.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: You were talking about good shoes for the Arnold Arboretam.
I will give you another good reason why you need
good shoes. I was there on a photo shoot in
my previous job in the spring, okay, and I have
never seen so many snakes in my entire life. Yeah,
there were low pond, so many snakes. So if you're
going off the path and bushwacking at the Arnold Arboretum,
you have been forewarned. So speaking of arboreta, because arboreta
is the plural of arboretum. Arboretum is just one the
National Arboretum. Yes, I've never been.
Speaker 1: Have you been there?
Speaker 2: Okay? What's what's cool?
Speaker 1: I think what's really cool are the columns there that
they removed from the capital. They they put the dome
on the Capitol and discovered architecturally that the dome was
too large, and so they had to remove them. I
don't know when that was, in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was relatively I mean relatively relatively way back
in the day.
Speaker 1: And they took the columns from the old Capital and
put them there in the Arboretum.
Speaker 2: And that is kind of the iconic shot, Like if
you google the National ear if you search for the
National Arboretum, that is the shot that you're going to
see is is the old columns. Well, it was founded
in nineteen twenty seven. It was the first museum in
the world dedicated to Bone sie That blew me.
Speaker 3: Away when I went there.
Speaker 1: The Bones Eye collection unreal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't really think that the US
National Arboretum would be devoted to a Japanese art, but
it is. So if you are a fan of bone Sye,
that is reason enough to go to the National Arboretum
and see their incredible collection. But the National Arboretum, you know,
a lot of times when we're talking about these things,
it's kind of easy maybe to fall into the belief
that these places aren't necessarily relevant to your life as
a gardener. Now but the US National Arboretum has introduced
a number of important plants that have become standards in
the garden. Nico Dutsia munchkin and ruby slippers oak leaf
Hydrangea definitely two standards. This one's just for you, Urick
morning light miss Canthus.
Speaker 3: There you go, ding dinging green.
Speaker 2: Giant arborvidy certainly one of the most ubiquitous plants. And
speaking of ubiquity, National Arboretum did introduce Bradford pair, but
we will try not to hold that against them.
Speaker 1: Wow, Now when they collect it's amazing. When they collect
seeds and like cuttings off plants and that type of thing,
they call that an herbarium, right, is that what erbarium is?
Speaker 2: Yes, So for dried.
Speaker 1: Dried specimens, I guess they've gotten amazing.
Speaker 2: Yes, And you know an urbarium is. We don't talk
a lot about herbaria. We probably should have. We should
have a herbarium show or at least have a guest
from a herbarium curator, because they are super important and
understanding how plants have changed, you know, due to climate
and other factors. So, while we're still in Washington, d C.
I did want to mention a private garden that is
open to the public, and that is Dumbarton Oaks. You've
never been that. I've never been there either. I have
spent very little time in the DC area, but it
seems very interesting. So this is a garden of Mildred
and Robert woods Bliss. So he was a diplomat, traveled
all over the world, and when it came time for
him to make his home, of course, he settled in
DC in the Georgetown area. But what makes Dumbarton Oaks
so important is it is designed by Beatrix Farrand, who
was the first female landscape architect in North America. And
by giving Beatrix Rand the chance designed this garden, and
it is a beautiful, iconic garden. If you look at
pictures of it, you will definitely recognize it from various
photos and things that you've seen over the year. Her
Wisteria Terrace is probably the most famous area of the garden.
But by giving this opportunity to be a Trix for
Rand to design this garden and invite people over and
help her name to get out there in Washington, d C. Society,
she actually committed to only hiring female landscape architects herself
because those same female aspiring landscape architects could not get
work in male owned landscape architecture first. So she really
established this opportunity for women to enter the field of
landscape architecture and landscape designed. And she designed a number
of beautiful gardens throughout the US the East Coast, especially
over in Boston in that area. But Dunbarton Oaks is
by far her most famous garden. And if you are
able to visit when the mysteria's in bloom and you
can see her gorgeous wisteria terrace at peak, while you
would consider yourself lucky.
Speaker 1: Indeed, can I put a foot note on this segment
of course, Arnold derba Ridam. If you go there, just
up the road, there's a cemetery. I think it's called
Forest Hills. Yeah, take a walk through there too.
Speaker 2: Oh you never have to twist my armc cempuary. Wow,
so much to see. We're gonna take a little break
when we come back. We're gonna have to wind up
this episode, but I think we're gunning in for a
part three of American Gardens. We'll see where we end up.
Thanks for listening to the Gardening Simplified podcast brought to
you by Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning
flowering shrubs and evergreens are trialed and tested by experts
with your success in mind. Learn more at Proven Winners
color Choice dot Com.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show.
Speaker 1: And this is obviously a topic that we could talk
about before days.
Speaker 2: Yes, many many episodes.
Speaker 3: How about Monticello.
Speaker 1: I loved my time at Monticello and Stacy the thing
that I walked away with. First of all, again going
back to comments I've made during this program, the founding fathers,
or as I call them, the grounding Fathers, they were
really interested in developing in agrarian type society, people who
had their hands in the dirt, people who were interested
in plants, and of course Thomas Jefferson had a huge
fascination with plants. I've mentioned oftentimes on the show, the
hyacinth bean. Thomas Jefferson loved the hyacinth bean. That's where
I developed my interest in it. And in the time
that I spent at Monticello Garden, it really caused me
to fall in love again with a vegetable garden and
that terraced garden at Monticello and how they lay that
thing out, and how it has a little folly right
in the center of it where you know, a viewing point,
and I can picture Jefferson's stand there.
Speaker 3: Boy. That really did it for me.
Speaker 1: And then if you think about the fact that Jefferson's
the one who many people thought it was foolish at
the time made the Louisiana purchase more land, more land
for plants, more land to garden. Amazing And for our
YouTube viewers, one of my favorite coffee mugs is this
one right here Thomas Jefferson. It says devoted to the garden.
It was inspiration on me.
Speaker 2: Now I have never been, I would truly love to go,
because the vegetable garden at Monticello does seem like my
dream vegetable garden. Yeah, one thousand feet long and divided
into twenty four sections, grouped by which part of the
plant you harvest, which makes perfect sense if you have
the luxury of that space, because that way, if you
need to dig your garlic and your potatoes and so forth,
then you're not you know, disrupting your nearby beans and tomatoes,
which if you have a little time, I any vegetable
gardens you can't divide into twenty four sections can sometimes
be a problem. So it really I think shows you know,
the vision that he had for you know, once he
had an opportunity to lay this out. And Jefferson inherited
the land from Monticello in seventeen fifty seven. He moved
in in seventeen seventy. The first documentation of ornamental planning
was eighteen oh seven. His vegetable garden was begun in
seventeen seventy, so his vegetable garden is older than the
country itself.
Speaker 1: And as it relates to the vegetable garden, it's interesting
that Jefferson and his neighbors there had an annual competition
in spring who could bring the first.
Speaker 3: Pee to the table.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that.
Speaker 1: It was a big competition. Fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, not surprisingly, you know, when we talk
about gardens going back this far in American history, they
were still really heavily influenced by Europe. And I think,
you know, if you look at a picture of Jefferson's
vegetable garden and you look at, for example, the famous
vegetable garden at Viandre in France, you'll see a lot
of those familiarities. You'll see a lot of similarities between
them where there's that that formality, and you know, of
course they had to take those ideas and apply them
here before we really could start to kind of develop
our own unique American perspective on gardening because we were
really had those roots still in Europe. He developed a
elaborate water cistern system. Do you see that at the
too where I want to sell.
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was constructed in eighteen oh eight. So
I say here, even Thomas Jefferson struggled with watering, So
I know that's something that Rick and I can certainly
relate to. And speaking of American history, in Monticello, the gardens,
the grounds there contained plants that were sent to him
by his European friends and seeds that were brought back
by Lewis and Clark.
Speaker 1: A visionary and a character and Lewis and Clark exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just you know, it's just really amazing to
kind of see and understand how all of these different
things fit together. I'm going to be watching Ken Burns's
American Revolution. I hear it's free to stream on PBS,
and I am excited to watch that.
Speaker 3: I've watched the whole thing. Love it.
Speaker 2: How long is it?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I just keep going back episode
after episode. I love that.
Speaker 2: I'm very eager to watch that and to learn more
about all of this. Now, since we are over here
in the central Southeast Coast, I thought we ought to
move to Colonial Williamsburg. Yeah, so not a garden per se,
but Colonial Williamsburg is It's a fascinat Have you been
to Colonial.
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, right, I know, I gotta go. I like,
I totally expect like the guy to sit here and
talk to us about Colonial Williamsburg. So Colonial Williamsburg is
a fascinating place. And you know, I think a lot
of people, if you're from Michigan we are here, you
might think of it as like a Greenfield Village type
of thing, like we have the Henry Ford Museum in
Greenfield Village over in the Detroit area. But it's really
it's quite different because, of course Greenfield Village has historic
homes and businesses from all over the country, and Colonial
Williamsburg is the original colonial settlement. The Rockefeller family actually
purchased it slowly from the people who were living it
and slowly transformed it back to what it was and
funded all sorts of archaeological studies to kind of bring
it back. Some houses were still standing, they just had to,
you know, take off all the updating that had been done,
but the brick homes were still beneath there. But as
far as gardens go, you will see I think Colonial
Williamsburg is a really interesting look and they take their
gardening very seriously there. They have a whole horticulture team
that isn't simply maintaining the grounds and making sure the
grass is mode when you you know, walk over the
parade grounds and so forth. They're really working on res
storing and telling the story of what gardens were to
the early colonists in the US. So there is the
old Palace and that has a very formal garden full
of boxwood. Now they did have to contend with boxwood blight,
boxwood and Colonial Williamsburg. They are like this, you can't
have one without the other. So they have been really
freaking out about boxwood Blite, which is across the southeast,
but beautiful, very spare but luxurious gardens around the palaces
mostly of boxwood. These parterres these hedges that you kind
of just walk by and are surrounded by boxwood. Now
when you want to get into the flowers and all
the cool stuff, that's when you're going to the individual
homes and shops around Colonial Williamsburg. And what you're seeing
is that this notion of a garden was very utilitarian.
It was vegetables, it was medicine, it was dye plants.
And they can still be very beautiful gardens. And it's
not to say they didn't have their own little follies
of you know, growing something that was just fun and beautiful.
But these yard gardens around the houses, and I've talked
about this a little bit here and there. One of
the things that I found most fascinating that you'll see
in practice at Colonial Williamsburg is using vitex or chaste tree,
and they used to prune them, polard them so that
they would put out long, straight stocks, woody stocks, and
that was how they may grew their own garden sticks.
Speaker 3: I love that because I love vitek.
Speaker 2: I know, so you should try this and have your
own garden stakes. You'll see this when you go there. Okay,
and interpreters at Colonial Williamsburg in those areas are passionate
gardeners themselves, so they're not just some guy in a
costume playing the part. They will tell you they love
to share their knowledge and tell you all about the
gardening back then. So if you love history and you
love gardening, it is a wonderful place to be. Now
we have one last garden for this episode. I think
again we are gonna have to probably go to three
because we don't want to give short shrift and I
know we already are probably forgetting amazing gardens. Please do
leave those on our YouTube channel. If you're listening to
this on podcast or radio, can I please just encourage
you to check out the YouTube version because Adriana is
going to be putting all sorts of pictures and b
roll so it's really going to help bring these stories
to life and get you excited about incorporating these amazing
places in your travel plans. So one last one over
here on the East Coast before we move on to
Florida in the next episode. That's how we'll kick off
episode two. Middleton Place Gardens in Charlestown and now it
was founded in seventeen seventeen, which is Prickty arn Old
and It is known as America's oldest landscape garden. Now,
when people talk about a landscape garden, what they basically
mean is that kind of going back to what we
were saying about Frederick lah Olmsted, they had people come
in and just completely reshape the earth and it's these
series of terraces and waterways that they use. They did
this elaborate engineering to take the bayous and rivers of
South Carolina and incorporate them into water features around this
amazing old manor house from seventeen seventeen. Very formal. You know,
a lot of these early gardens, they weren't about flowers.
You know, nowadays when people think about a garden, they're
thinking flowers, right, color and flowers. These were really about
structure and kind of that old belief of dominating over
the land and really putting your mark on it. And
of course they were grand houses, so they couldn't have
these you know, itsy bitsy flower gardens. They needed these
grand alleys.
Speaker 3: And grand houses and grand oaks.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh yes, And so Middleton Place is one of those,
as one of the earliest landscape gardens in the country,
one of those ones to truly make use of our
incredible live oaks Quercus Virginiana. Just an iconic feature of
the American South and truly exceptional, extraordinary plants. If you've
ever been to the South, you just can't not appreciate them.
They actually even have really gorgeous live oaks in Colonial Williamsburg.
It's one of the more northern areas where quirkers Virginiana,
so it makes sense sense it's in Virginiana, can it
be found? So that was our little East coast look
at there is of North American American guard we are.
So we're going to go Part two next week for
fourth of July. We will kick it off in Miami,
Florida with Fairchild Botanic Garden. You are not going to
want to miss because I have so much to say
about this place. So thank you, Rick, thank you, thanks Adriana,
and thanks to all of you for listening and watching.
We will see you next week for Part two.