Acrobat, Chef, or Horticulturist?

Our horticulturists wear a lot of hats. Plant whisperer, exterior designer, and irrigation technician only scratch the surface. The day-to-day variety is the part of what makes this line of work so exciting, and constantly keeps us on our toes! After spending a morning with Allie and her containers at the Welcome Center Plaza, I discovered a few more hats our staff wear: acrobat and chef! I know, bear with me, I’m on to something here.

Our Welcome Center Plaza is the first thing many of our garden guests see upon their arrival to Brookgreen, and we like for that first impression to be one that whets their appetites for more botanical delights to come! The large pots at the Welcome Center, like our garden display plantings, are changed twice a year. The tropical plants that adorn the pots in the summer aren’t suitable for our cooler weather and are swapped for plants that can take the cold.

Before the pots can be replanted, the current inhabitants need to be removed. While some plants come out with relative ease, others take a bit more… finessing. As Allie demonstrates below, the pots can quickly turn into tightropes, and shovels become balancing poles!

The objective of this not-so-high-wire act is the removal of plants that will no longer create a visually appealing display. Once this task is accomplished, it’s time to dig a large hole to accommodate the next plant in line for some prime container real estate!

The showpiece of the container, in our case a lovely Oakland™ holly (Ilex ‘Magland’), was placed in the center. Since the holly came out of a large 15-gallon pot, it took a little work to get it in just right. Additional digging and some maneuvering were needed to get it to sit at a proper height in the pot.

Once the holly was in, it was time to add the rest of the ingredients to our pot. That’s right, here is where the chef parallel comes in! When designing pots, I like to use the idea of a recipe as a metaphor. Our “recipe” calls for a few key steps and ingredients. As tempting as it may be to drop in a long backstory about how my favorite memory of autumn leaves ties into the most perfect peach pie you’ll ever have (with the recipe found so far down the page, you’ll likely have scrolled past it), I won’t be one of those internet cooks. To keep it brief, a design for a container typically consists of three easy things: spiller, filler, thriller!

Spiller is simply the portions of your pot that spill over the side. Things like vines and trailing plants are great for this! Allie used variegated climbing fig and trailing rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus ‘Huntington Carpet’). Filler is exactly what it sounds like – plants that aren’t particularly “wowing” that you are using to fill up space and still keep things interesting. Lettuces and violas fit the bill! Finally, the thriller of the pot is the plant that steals the show. As you may have already surmised, our thriller was the Oakland™ holly. Once you combine all the ingredients, you have one mouthwatering container!

Now, like any recipe comments section worth its salt (yes, the food puns will only get worse), we’re going to talk about substituting ingredients. While many may think the recipe is perfect as is, there’s always someone who can make it better with some substitutions. While it can be an eye-rolling sort of moment, subbing in the case of pots is absolutely a great and necessary idea! If we all used the same plants all the time, our pots would be pretty bland. As you may have guessed, Allie spiced things up and has a few different container styles at the Welcome Center. I daresay, I’m on a roll with these cheesy puns!

While it may look like Allie is getting ready to start a large fire, she is actually creating a structure for her thriller substitution to grow on. Even though we advised vines as a great spiller plant, in this instance, we are using them as our thriller! ‘Oregon Giant’ garden pea (Pisum sativum ‘Oregon Giant’) is a high-yielding snow pea that is not only good to eat but also makes an attractive plant.

By attaching twine along different heights of the tripod, the pea will have more places to grow and spread, over time creating a thick, full form. Flowers will give way to pea pods that will dangle and create even more points of interest throughout this unique display. For now, our fillers of carnation and lettuces, and our ivy spiller will be our main décor until the peas grow a bit larger and into their thrilling presence.

While our staff may not exactly be acrobats or chefs, there are plenty of metaphors to play with when it comes to describing a day in the life of a public garden horticulturist! The variety from day to day is part of what makes our jobs so entertaining and keeps us coming up with new and exciting ideas!

See you in the Gardens!

Put a fork in me, I’m done!