The Incredible Duke Gardens - A Bucket List Garden

welcome to H tube my name is jum putam I am at a bucket list uh Garden to film this morning I got super lucky this is the sarap Duke Garden in Durham North Carolina uh is this is this part of the Duke campus uh it is we're part of Duke campus okay part of the Duke campus say and your hat your hat your hat says that wanted to film here for a long time and I got super lucky a year ago literally like a year ago this week or next week we were at we were at a party together got invited plant nerd plant nerd evening and uh I met Bobby modern who turns out lives in our neighborhood and got super lucky and you are to explain your role here at the Duke Garden so I'm a director of horticulture here at Duke Gardens uh we have a staff of 17 full-time horticulturalists that work the gardens here 55 Acres yeah and uh lot to see here uh we have a wide variety of garden spaces it's a large landscape Garden is what it is and uh we do have plant records we have um you know we maintain lots of different collections but we're really kind of a pleasure Garden so that's what we're here for yeah that and that is a thing you know where you're going to get Gardens that are going to be very much 100% invested in in in protecting maybe protecting plants outside of their native ranges conservation Gardens you're going to get you know places that are really developing new plants and that's the vast majority it's almost like a trial Garden that you're looking at and this has always just been a place to come and you can stroll and really you can really do a lot of the things you're seeing can be done in your own garden exactly that's what we want to do I mean this is a really big scale obviously 55 Acres but we have lots of spaces where people can enjoy and focus in on that they could replicate in their own yards and that's what we would like to do here is we like to display plant material that's available and accessible and uh but also just do it in a really a really kind of highend and um so uh so people can get great ideas not only plant material but hard skate Walling um uh containers uh water features just you know anything and everything we' love to be able to display different ideas what people can try to replicate in their own landscapes nice and we're going we're going to jump around and take a look at some of your favorite spaces but can we start with the scree garden we are standing here in the scree garden which is right beside The Terraces which is normally the uh the most desirable place for visitors to come see uh we're in the middle of change out right now so it's not as a FL floriferous but this is a scree garden that we built right beside The Terraces that um that we wanted to show as a low water use Garden uh example so um you know water water consumption you know is is something that you know we're more and more aware of all the time how much we're using using here uh I think anybody and everybody at home needs to be aware of how much water they're putting on their Landscapes as well this is a great example of what you can do at a very low water use kind of uh landscape or garden uh it's a scree garden so that means the the soil here is we call scree so it's a mixture of um of organic matter but also this little rocky material that you see here very free draining uh there are lots of plants that really really thrive in this type of soil a lot of plants that actually have to have this kind of soil in order to do well in this very humid environment uh things like salvia microfil or Greg eyes you know they will tolerate our clay soils but they don't thrive in it but you put them in this kind of soil and they just explode they bloom amazingly well so um so that's a great plant for this kind of uh environment and again this is a plant you can go to any of your big box stores nurseries local nurseries and find very very uh accessible plant we have euphorbias we've seed in some California poppies here uh another plant that's generally hard to grow in this area is is your French lavenders right uh they just they just really really despise our soils generally here but you put them in a very free draining scree kind of environment and the lavender is absolutely loving life here and the bees are all over it constantly long Bloom time during this um kind of early part of the or late spring early summer and um just a great great plant of course the fragrance who doesn't love yeah yeah we just have a hard time with in our clay soils exactly exactly but you put it in the right soil and it just does great we love the uh the Nella or the stipa Heather Heather Feather grass I'm sorry um great great plant no no Breeze this morning but anytime you get a breeze you get that movement immediately with this grass and it makes it it almost invite it almost has like a little bit of a fall look to it as well blend it into it does it has that kind of Tanny kind of color and uh looks great with the other colors that we have I think this is a garden people can come to um year round and get something from it so you're changing out this Garden but we're going to go to some other spots right now that are full on full bloom I mean you're going to if you come to do Gardens you're going to see color uh year round there's something always blooming here and um something always really exciting to see for [Music] [Music] so we're at the entryway into your Native Garden here and like you we were saying off camera you talked about how this is kind of designed where it makes the native plants useful you can show the usefulness of them we go in we Steph and I have visited some gardens in the past with their Native Garden area kind of has a I'm not knocking it but a little bit of a weediness to it and and and and they're not they're not showing off how they can be used as great ornamentals right right so native plant guards traditionally um with the exception of a few the Mount Cuba across Northeast is amazing landscape native plant garden but a lot of native plant Gardens do have that kind of kind of wild kind of um you know feeling about them and uh and that's not really appreciated by many people including HOAs exactly so uh but native plants uh are super important obviously you know all of our insects you know and and Wildlife evolved with these plants they need these plants to to survive and and we need these these this Wildlife to survive you know for us so um so we wanted to design part of our native plant garden here the blumquist garden uh to show off how you can actually do a nice landscaped version with all native plant material so um so we'll walk into this space over here and uh and check this out but this guard space is about 9 acres and we have about 12200 species of native plants 1200 native to uh the Southeastern us all the way to Texas all the way to kind of Mid-Atlantic all the way to mountains so uh so a lot of species are represented here and um and and parts of this Garden does have that kind of uh kind of wild feeling to it right but uh again and a lot of people back up onto the edges of Wild Spaces and they can create these kind of where your ornamental Garden kind of Fades into the exactly backdrop which is what you have kind of here exactly where you still have a a big collection of native plants that the pollinators can take advantage of but it rewis that's exactly right and um and again we want to create that kind of legibility or reability for people because again when people get into the wild they they really don't uh everything kind of Blends together but we want to create a garden space where people could walk into it and feel like oh wow I could have this in my backyard and do this with all needed plants the B meaning horiculture exactly so that's what we have over here it's called the uh the backyard Wildlife Garden this is a garden we renovated uh a couple years ago it was kind of an overgrown weedy mess um we redesigned this space so you have a wonderful hardcap seating area um a water feature with the millstone over here um some nice bench or chairs that we actually built inhouse out of recycled Lumber um some Boulders for effect uh some containers but again a very residential feel to this space um and all designed with native plant material around the entire space here so we've got uh a lot of things that have been blooming the irises have already finished blooming baptisia done the pinin are kind of wrapping up right now the um the um onas are blooming right now we've got some copsis blooming [Music] um got some yeah you got some sasia you got you got some water bog bog plants mixed in yeah exactly so uh so a lot going on and again this Garden blooms all the way from April all the way through October so you can have this kind of succession of blooming plants using all native plant material from Spring all the way through the fall and uh the thickness of it which it's planted is probably somewhat self-maintaining uh it is I mean there's some weathing to do with any Garden obviously but um but again if you plant thicker it's going to your plants are going to out compete you know the light uh for the for the weeds and uh and do really really well the other cool thing about these plants is that we didn't have to go to some obscure plant nursery uh you know and located in the in the mountains of North Carolina to find a lot of these plants these are things and these are cultivars of plants that we go to nurseries locally here uh we shop at the big box stores just like everybody else does too uh but we' also you know shop at our local nurseries we go down to Big Bloomers in Sanford um and and these are all plants that you can get locally within uh less about an hour's drive from Durham so in cultivars we we're not using again obscure species these a lot of these are cultivars of common species that we Navar we call those and um so again readily accessible plant material that's that's what we like to do here I've always considered this to be like the grand entry into into this Garden uh coming down coming down the steps here can you tell us about this space it is so we're standing in the uh the Rose Garden here of Duke Gardens and um a lot of people come in this garden and say well where are the roses and uh and we have to let people know will roses in the Southeast generally look great for about 5 weeks and the rest of the year they don't look that good so we redesigned this space this used to be a monoculture of all roses that we had to spray constantly to keep them looking good and we decided that just was not a smart smart thing to do I don't like keeping plants on life support systems so we redesigned this space in 2019 to become a garden that was a Rose Garden because that's what it always has been but now it's this kind of eclectic hybrid of a garden with kinds of unusual plantings with roses too yeah with roses but up from the top of the steps it almost look like a Spanish Garden it does it has that effect I mean we uh we we brought in the fountain back in 2019 so people really had a this wonderful kind of reward uh they would reach as the very first kind of entry point in the garden yeah uh we wanted to this is also a very sunny hot location in the garden so when we decided to add a lot of containers we knew we had to add things that were going to be really resilient and tough in this full sun location so we started thinking well let's do Tropicals and zerich type plants and because the textures look great and uh they can withstand the conditions in the space in the containers and by using plants like that it also allows you to use smaller containers which would normally dry out immediately you know after watering but now we can put things like Agaves and Cactus in them and they just they look great so it opened up our um our window and our uh you know our possibilities for all kinds of different container Styles and plants to be used in containers right and it just say there's no rules here cuz this is this is a combination of almost like a scree garden and and again like a Spanish Mediteranean Garden combined with native plants and they're still roses in the Rose Garden I've had friends do uh shoot video of themselves here and put it on Instagram or something and and people respond are you in California where are you yeah right yeah nice so uh but that's that's what we love about this place it's about this Garden it's just got this kind of really really interesting vibe to it and uh and you know you've got these wild textured plants agave and yucka rras and the The Palms blended with a lot of typical perennials that everybody would have in their own yard so so that's the beauty of it again this Garden blooms all the way from uh March all the way through the end of November so and then you've got all these Evergreen plants in here that carry that interest all through the winter time uh which is what we needed we needed to have a space that was really interesting and dynamic not just for during Rose fling you you got some place to store these containers we do have a greenhouse a lot of these plants do go in the greenhouse during the winter time so um but a lot of containers also stay out the yuck estratas they'll stay out a lot of the conifers obviously they'll stay out and uh and we'll do some other things during the winter time as far as containers but we do have some um protected space to do this stuff so with this much acreage it's actually a pretty good place to just come and relax and walk and I see that this morning there's a lot of people just taking advantage of the trails early before when it's cool exactly we've got uh over two miles of trails uh throughout Duke Gardens here in 55 Acres so uh we see a lot of people coming in every day for their morning walks we see a lot of hospital staff because we're right here beside Duke Health a lot of the them coming in during various parts of the day for for walks I see a lot of professors teaching classes and things so it's it's a lot of University use obviously uh but a lot of community use and that's what we're really here for is to uh to kind of be that um that goet between the university and the community as well right you got several projects going on in the garden and this is one that's yeah we do we we're we're constantly kind of uh uh trying to think what's the newest and most interesting thing and uh we're adding New Garden space is so this is a new one right here this is our what we call our interpretive moss garden so Moss is another one of those plants again people just really underappreciate the value of it I think a lot of people have moss in their yards they try to figure out how to get rid of it try to grow grass and always tell them you've got Moss you should be thankful it's a beautiful plant um it's very easy to maintain if you just blow the leaves off of it and do a little weeding that's essentially all it and some shade right that's really about all it takes Moss thrives in low um nutrition soil so U where if it's driving that means turf grass generally is not going to thrive so uh so it's a great plant there's a lot of species of moss in the Southeast that we a lot of people don't know about and uh in this particular New Garden we're going to highlight some of these species in these containers you see here we've got three different species of mosses and we'll be able to tell people and teach people about how this moss grows not only in containers like this but also uh in this little landscape section over here Moss when you're walking in the woods around here or anywhere you now almost always come across m mosses growing on trees on the ground on Boulders um and that's kind of what we have here and this is a beautiful landscape plant uh I love how it fills in those voids where I just can't imagine trying to grow any other kind of plant in these cracks of these Boulders I'm just not really sure what would do what would do well there but Moss thrives a little bit of moisture and shade and it will grow in these extremely difficult locations uh on these rocks like this and it's just a beautiful way how it softens uh Hardscape sofin Boulders and then you pair it with a few other plants like ferns some rendin uh Japanese maple here in the distance and and then you've got this beautiful green garden that um that is very very easy to maintain and um so you're Pine you're in a pine a high Pine Forest here so you just blow it off yeah I mean we we pull a few weeds uh when in the fall when the leaves come down we'll blow those leaves off gently but that's really about all it takes to maintain uh this moss and um and again it's a plant that's undervalued I you know would love for people to appreciate Moss a little bit more and even knowing there's other species sorry to cut you off but even knowing there's multiple species and and in places like this this is a little example you've probably got multiple species intertwining and growing together and that's what mosses do but um but it's a great plant and uh should be should be valued a little bit more you have a combination of full-time staff volunteers and now you got interns for the summer from various universities right uh that how what kind of how many people is this is it Tak so we have four interns we have about uh 50 to 60 volunteers to help us out throughout the year and um but you know I get the question well how many people does it take to run the garden and I'm always like well I don't know because I don't have them so uh so as many people as I can get I think we keep them busy but but yeah the volunteer help is fantastic the interns are great every summer and we do we we also hire Duke students um a dozen or so during the school year to help us out you know in the gardens too so uh so I think we do a really really good job of trying to maintain all the the focus points throughout the gardens uh throughout the year so well tell us about this Garden so this is the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden this is an all organic vegetable garden or food Garden I would say because we have an herb garden we have a little Orchard down here um and this is the vegetable section that we're standing in right now and uh we have a few volunteers helping us out this morning but um but this is a place where we bring uh the second grade all second graders of Durham County come on field trips here and they all come to this Garden to understand how food is grown um unfortunately a lot of kids they think food is grown at the grocery stores and um and uh or the fast food places and so this is where we teach them that this is where food comes from it comes from a garden and they can see things actually growing right here in front of us we've got corn right here got squash watermelons um cucumbers uh Peppers uh I mean really anything and everything you can imagine we've got it going on um this season seon and we try to change the themes in here uh every year so this year it's really going to be about um what the Native Americans would have been growing hundreds of years ago so we knew they grew uh corn squash and beans three sisters and uh so you'll see varieties of all the different plants growing and we'll have some thematic signage uh to to talk talk about those things but um but there's lots of other vegetables will be growing here in here as well so um we've got some animals we've got a chicken coou over here we've got beehives down at the lower end so again it's all about kids learning about how food is produced right and there's a lot of butterfly plants coming along the walk in there too a lot of things to lure some exactly a lot of pollinators so a lot of activity going on this Garden beautiful tell us about all the stone work here so we have lots of examples of different stonework here uh that you can see kind of in this space so we have the stonemason Brooks burlson works with us uh he does masonry work he built this bridge mhm right down here he does walls both out of masery and dry stack he built the wall over there on the Overlook um he does Boulder setting he does steps for us he does flat work as far as flagstone type work right and he's kind of a renaissance man he does a lot of this work just by moving Boulders by himself using leverage and rollers and moving these things into place Boulders that weigh thousands of pounds yeah wow and he's just amazing a very artistic guy as well we had an idea that we wanted to do uh a little Landing kind of a a mosaic type Landing replicated some plant material in the landing you know made out of stone and he came up with this idea to do this little Landing here that you can see it's a galanthus or a snow drop with the fern Blended in here uh out of stone so this is really his creation we had kind of the big idea but he came up with the details of how it would look it's unbelievable the small Stone you see there filling between it is all slate shingle that was left over from a job so it's turned on edge uh recycled and the granite out of the flowers there is again just a some remnant pieces of granite we had left over from a job that he carved so he just does fabulous work very very fortunate to have him close by to do a lot of this stuff for us yeah I mean this is I mean if you only came here to see this I mean you literally you would come I mean it's it's unbelievable you look at how much detail that is in that it is [Music] for for so we have some Volunteers in the in the pond at the white Garden we do so we have volunteers who help us out in on all corners of the gardens and they these volunteers are helping out with our aquatic display we just recently went purchased some new tropical water llies which they are getting installed this morning in the garden so so this is our aquatic team fond this morning nice okay so tell me your history in the garden and how you end up at how do you end up at Duke Garden so I started at Horticulture at Clemson University gotta and uh my very first job was working at Brook green Gardens in paully Island South Carolina yes feel very familiar with it love that entry it's a dramatic entry to a garden right it is a pretty it's one of the best yes so uh so that's where I got my start worked there for about 10 years director of horticulture uh went back to school at Georgia got a landscape architecture degree and uh came to Raleigh worked for a small firm realized I missed public Horticulture dearly right and uh after a few years doing that I decided uh I saw this opportunity come open I like it's time to time to make the move back so just amazing how it all fell into place for me so very blessed so I've been here for 15 years now and uh we've been doing a lot of garden renovation we've seen some of the projects this morning that uh we've been working on and um and and more to come so it's it's a really really fun place to work yeah yeah that it's not a bad place to D you know to uh to to to to show up in the mornings and it changes every day your job gets to change every day right every day every day it's not just seasonal it's every day there's something's new to be seen soor so when we come in you know we always you know come through this white Garden or you on the way in it's one of the more impressive uh pieces can you tell us something what the def findes a white Garden outside of flowers I think people would just take flowers as so yeah so it's a monochromatic Garden all based on the color of white so all the flowers we have here white flowers but but this Gard space supports our our our wedding uh activity so we are in the wedding business here at du Gardens and um so we have weddings here uh every single weekend from about the end of March through end of June or so it slows down in the summer then picks back up in the fall so it's it's a really big business for us and uh this this space supports all that activity so um nice but uh but yeah we uh we renovated this white Garden back in 2011 and we were able to take a little trip to England to go see the the white Garden of all white Gardens at sissinghurst Castle and in England and to get our inspiration and get our ideas flowing so we did that so that's what this Garden is based on just it's kind of a cottagey garden uh with small little uh kind of small little parters to it uh all filled with uh perennials shrubs and annuals that all Bloom white yeah and we we do that weirdly we do that Penta angelonia combination that you have up there but we never done it in all white I really like the two the white ones together really looks great and Steph has given a thumbs up over there uh for for but Green's important component in a white Garden right you need that backdrop absolutely I mean that's you really don't see the color white unless you have something dark to to for it to reflect off of or bounce off of so you got to have some dark green structure you got to have some we had to have plant an entire wall of Evergreen Magnolias and and Juniper back there to get that dark green color but uh yeah it's really about the color white and the color green and how they play off of each other yeah but I think the beauty in the garden you know this is one of those Gardens that's kind of got those Long Shadows in it and then white just is like you know once you see white in a shady kind of part Shady space you go okay that's the color that's supposed to be yep and with Long Shadows and why so many plants like our native hydrangeas are white growing in the understory you know just stands out they love it yeah early morning is also a great time to see that color white bouncing off the early morning light uh late afternoon sunsets also just a great time to see that that color kind of reflecting in those light conditions yeah well thank you so much Bobby it was great to meet you a year ago and then you know to be able to get over here to one of our you know we've filmed it the other various gardens around the city and we're so lucky around the triangle area which is Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill to have these you know the North Count botanic gardens right up the road Duke Gardens the Roston uh T Juniper level yeah and we got quite the collection of them and this one you know checks off one of the crowns it's a garden Rich area and we're all fortunate to be in this in this area so yeah visit for sure thank you so much y bye

Channel: HortTube with Jim Putnam

Views: 26,594

Keywords: gardening inspiration, garden design, landscape ideas, garden tour, sarah p duke garden, durham nc, horttube with jim putnam, gardening

Id: qBJ2Vavm_wk

Length: 26min 5sec (1565 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024