Planting Native Plants | Garden Home (1711)

trends may come and go but natural well it never goes out of style hi I'm Allen Smith and welcome to the show today we're exploring ways to reconnect to nature going back to what's native if you will what do I mean by that well let me show you we're going to look at incorporating native plants into your garden as well as your dinner well visit a local folk center dedicated to preserving regional heritage and we'll learn about one organization's effort to empower urban locals with farming education and self-sufficiency so are you ready to get native well I am but before we go there I just want to point out one thing you know there's some plants and foods that have been with us so long in America that goes so far back that we think they're native like some of our favorite flowers daffodils for instance came from Europe Queen Anne's lace came from Europe you like honey honey bees came from Europe and take for instance of beautiful flowers or these collard greens brought over here by European settlers but there's so much a part of our culture today you just think they're native now let's get on to really going native [Music] we're 66 acre botanical garden open to the public we host a enormous amount of private events that help support us we are known for our color and our color displays we have over a hundred and eighty four beds a lot of our beds will have three to four changes here as we go through the different parts of the season here in Dallas we have trees a lot of them beautiful but we're much more than just an arboretum we're also a full botanic garden with the displays that we have in place and all the rich programming that we have for guests when they come here there's an amazing amount of things to highlight I love gentlemen Johnson color garden that's where we're at now just because you can look out to the Vista and see a ton of color the trowel gardens are of much significance and don't forget a tasteful place that's opening up [Music] [Music] a tasteful place is is indeed it's a two-acre garden with a 3600 square foot pavilion which the pavilion of course serves our notion of garden to table dinners how to cook how to prepare how to harvest how to present and this is going to be an educational tool to help guests and citizens of Dallas and supporting areas know how and when and why in those questions and to have confidence behind what you're producing at home and knowing how to do it [Music] trial garden that we have here is real important it's one of the top in the country we really are looking for different things throughout the year but especially in the summer for heat tolerance and plant varieties it's real important to us to see new plants come on the marketplace our seed companies are releasing new varieties of flowering plants we're also looking at vegetables now as well charlie is a fun thing it's a fun process the nice thing about it is there's very really no challenges it works or doesn't work so I'm just here to record that data and see if it works sure it does not work [Music] you know we're known for our display and we're all in with all the big color beds throughout the gardens and it's a series of garden rooms that connect seamlessly throughout as we've developed the different spaces here so that's what people really I think like most is come out and see seasonally what's growing what's blooming and these large beds I'm with my daughter and she loves the flowers and just to come here and spend some time in and enjoy this beautiful place it's amazing you know to have here around in Dallas I've been here before this year I've been here three times I come here as often as I can so I usually come out here and enjoy the peace the quiet looking at the flowers looking at the different events you guys have going on love the sculptures you know they're beautiful so that's why I come out here that contact with Mother Nature I think is imperative and the more that we have that contact the better we're going to be we're just a really beautiful destination for folks that want to see flowers and all the ornamental plants that do well here in the North Texas climate [Music] now since we're on this native kick I'd be remiss if I didn't point out two of my favorite natives that are edibles in this garden one is the black berry mmm so good and then over here the blueberry both North American natives that you can grow in your own backyard heifer international is best known for the work they do to help end hunger and poverty around the world one of their new projects focuses on developing sustainable food production in urban areas we wanted to create a basically a heifer urban farm something that we could have in the city something we can actually show some practices that we're doing in Arkansas and things that we're gonna be doing with our heifer USA program we wanted to actually be able to produce stuff forward to giving back to the community and we wanted to help out some of the Hunger relief programs in Arkansas I think there's a great synergy and what's going on with urban farming or local food movements that we're seeing all over the United States and I think if there is a great wait but that dovetails into the work that we do because our work all over the world where it's it's it is local farming at its you know at its core this is some sweet potatoes our gardeners and farmers picked today we're looking at about 80 to 100 pounds that will actually pick today I believe that our nation has suffered from something called an artisan gap which basically means that our society has an not doing something that it learned how to do long ago so we have forgotten how to grow food for ourselves we no longer grow food out of our homes we go to the grocery store and buy things and we're not that's not sustainable [Music] this is a food sustaining activity or a project that everybody can easily do and then that can help actually and hunger and poverty which is our main mission at heifer this is part of the urban farm setting that we put in place we actually added some goats and a couple pigs we added we have some sheep coming next week and somehow pakka's I believe it's important to have this in this urban environment so that we can actually show what you can grow in your own backyard which you can grow in an urban setting be able to see the animals and kind of get a feel for what we use those for in the field really trying to help educate people on gardening and what you can do on your own to become self-sustaining I think the missing connection we have right now is is today's youth and getting used to understanding where the produce comes from and where the animals are grown and what they produce from that where our nuggets come from or where our fresh produce is and to understand that that stuff can be grown in your own backyard and these are things that you can do and learn the nutritional level of those and the benefits of having those vegetables and produce available to you [Music] the root cafe knows the importance of supporting our local farmers in fact if you look at their menu you can see where all their food sourcing comes from which makes it really interesting soon and have a meal Jack and Cory have done an outstanding job of creating a community based on farmers connecting with consumers and consumers connecting with farmers all over a delicious meal [Music] we both came to this project from different backgrounds but the the original idea the the we started with the mission which is building community through local food and once we set that as an agenda we spent about three years in a startup phase and so we did this just in the community to build a network of local farmers that we'd be able to purchase from once we got the cafe opening I think that a lot of people in the food industry really want to they want to showcase good food and we want to showcase good food and we want to showcase local foods and local sourcing is really important to us it's really easy to generate interest and you know pretty passionate interest around local foods we do have a menu that is constant throughout the year we have burgers all year long I would have chicken salad all year long there are these things that we can source locally all year long we have seasonal specials like the soup always features what should what's in season there are lunch specials and breakfast specials that feature something special that's in season for us we looked first at what was available in in Central Arkansas from local farms and we've built a menu based on that and that way we can maximize the amount of local food that we use on our permanent menu local food is more delicious if you look at the variety of vegetables that you can get at a farmers market when things are in season it's so much greater so much fresher than what you'll find at the grocery store so local food is more nutritious in general because it's consumed closer to the time that it's harvested so it keeps more of its vitamin and mineral content local food is better for the environment and it's better for the local economy and and then the last is that it's more transparent so local food is a great starting point do something good [Music] are you a fan of the butternut squash well I certainly am i love them cooked in so many ways but i want to give you an idea of making a pie with one i know it's a little out there but if you love pumpkin pie and you love sweet potato pie this is a great sort of in-between [Music] to get started what you want is just an average size butternut squash you're gonna prick it with a knife about every two or three inches around it and then you're gonna just place it in an oven at 350 degrees for about an hour until the squash is soft all the way through bring it out of the oven and let it cool all right so it's nice and cool well it's a little warm ish but that's alright we're gonna go ahead and jump into this the first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna take the squash I'm gonna open it up look at that in that beautiful well we just go ahead and just take it off of the aluminum foil here and the next thing I want to do is I just take a spoon and I'm gonna scoop out the seeds like yes and then I'm gonna do the same on this side there we go and then what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna peel off the skin they want to just take your knife cut it off like this because what you really need is two cups of the flesh so I'm gonna take a cup here it's gonna be mashed squash so roughly what we're looking for is those those two two full cups there's one packed cup and so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to put this into the food processor up one and then we'll do the same so you can see that this squash medium-sized squash will produce about two cups of flesh and there's the second cup going in to the food processor that's just a matter of adding the other ingredients in the food processor and the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take 12 ounces of evaporated milk 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract 1/2 a teaspoon of apple pie spice 1/2 a teaspoon of nutmeg and just a little over a teaspoon of cinnamon okay so there we go that next we're going to add a couple of eggs [Music] to medium-sized eggs and then 3/4 cup of granulated white sugar now it's just a matter of mixing all of this together so you want to blend all this together until it's a nice consistency about 45 seconds to a minute they're pretty good in there don't you think and then it's just a matter of lifting this off and then you've got well liquid pie we're gonna add it into the pie shell now it's just a matter of popping it into the oven for about 45 minutes to an hour just check on it from time to time you can stick a toothpick in the center you will make sure it comes out clean or a fork or an eye and you're gonna bake it at 350 degrees and it is so delicious if you grew some butternut squash yourself you get extra points the next time you go through the produce department don't just walk by those butternut squash pick up a few and try this recipe it's a great fall dessert and perfect for Thanksgiving mmm really good [Music] [Applause] if you know me you know it's no secret that some of my favorite native plants come from the hills and highlands of the Ozark National Forest now you don't have to take a hike to see some of these there's no better place to view these native beauties firsthand than the Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks we sit on a total of 44 acres here in the north east corner of Fayetteville right on the Springdale line and the original garden is about six six and a half acres of cultivated gardens they're set up like backyard gardens that a person could do in their own backyard we have other features as well as our butterfly house and things that are really a wonderfully attraction to all of our guests when we first start we didn't have any gardens and and so they created this necklace where our gardens are placed around right now we have 12 distinctive gardens that are around this circle everything from a Japanese garden to a sensory garden to a vegetable garden to children's garden so we have a little bit of everything that somebody can find here and then we have other features behind the circle that we have a butterfly house and other things like that [Music] we are in the Ozark Natives garden and the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks this is one of my favorite Gardens this garden in particular is representative of a small backyard garden every plant in this garden is a Ozark native plant so we hope to educate the public on what they can be using in their yards most of us live in manicured landscapes and I think the interest is in trying to figure out how to make a balance between the native plants and the beautiful imported plants that we all love but we do need to create a balance in our even in our own backyards [Music] the fact that we have so many different features somebody can find something here even if even if you're not in a gardening you'll love our art and our whimsy it's definitely a place that people love to come to we're a small garden we're not a huge garden we're not an old garden I would just encourage homeowners to educate themselves as much as they can about native plants there are some beautiful choices out there more and more garden centers or carrying native plants if a yard has no native plants in it as far as the pollinators are concerned it's a ecological desert so if you want to have more than a desert in your yard front or back you need to have a better balance of native plants and imported plants [Music] [Music] you love chocolate I too have a little place I keep it it's so good you know it comes from the cacao tree and a lot of people don't really know how it's made comes from Mesoamerica and it's been used for a variety of reasons for thousands of years the process of making chocolate is fascinating so why don't we go to my friends at Chaya chocolate and let them show you how it's made [Music] about four and a half years ago we were working at an orphanage in Uganda Central Africa we have four adopted daughters so orphan care and anything with orphans and is important to us and so we were working in one of the slums and I just broke down one day and I decided that we needed to do something so this is a cacao pod this is where the beans grow in they grow on a tree it takes about four to five months from a flower bud to a finished pod and in this particular pod there's about twenty beans once these are ready they'll crack these open with the machete and what they're looking for is is these these are cacao beans each beam weighs like I said about a gram and so it takes about 450 to create a pound of chocolate we take a portion of our of our profits and we pour back into the places that we source chocolate from around the world at this point we've sourced chocolate from about 12 countries that direct sourcing so relationships and trips we've done four of those and the goal is to do a couple per year takes a lot of energy a lot of time out of the shop though to go and build relationships with with cacao farmers and so we try to get three of those a year so we're gonna sort through here make sure we don't have anything that could hurt our machines there's a piece of plastic and there that needs to come out so we're we're kind of doing a manual inspection this is from North and northern Uganda well way out of 20 pound batch and then this is gonna once we've weighed it we'll move over and we'll start to roast roasting again is what helps us bring out the flavors that kind of think about it it kind of elevates all the flavors so we get the best flavor we can possibly get from the beam there is a ton of diversity in chocolate so chocolate grows from three different plants each one has a little unique flavor depending on where its origins from and you can pick up 85 distinct flavors in cacao depending on where you sourcing chocolate from this hub is actually made of a granite base about four inches thick the two granite rollers basically grind and shear that the the cocoa nib turns into chocolate we do that for about 24 hours to get it really refined where your tongue can't detect that there's any solids left and then we'll add our sugars and our other ingredients to make the finished chocolate on an average batch of chocolate these wheels travel 84 miles so this is a pretty long slow process but it's one of the reasons why topper tastes really good we've got a mission that's very different than most people so kind of back to the beginning of the story we were working in an orphanage in the middle of Central Africa it's near and dear to my heart and so you know we don't want to just make money we want to like make a difference with what we do and so while the chocolates important it's even more important for us to give back and to pay it forward [Music] well that's all the time we have for today's show I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have it's only fun for me to learn new things about the plants that are around us and how we can incorporate them into our lives particularly when they're natives until next time I'm allen Smith [Music] you

Channel: P. Allen Smith

Views: 5,518

Keywords: Garden Home, P. Allen Smith, organic gardening, how to garden, garden home decor, Growing Canna Lilies, Dallas Arboretum, botanical gardens, The Root Cafe, Heifer International, Urban Gardens, Squash Pie, Butternut Squash with Browned Butter and Thyme, Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, Native Ozark Plants, Kyya Chocolate, community gardening, gardening tips, native plants, native perennials, annuals, local farming

Id: Xl28M2rhB_Q

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2023