(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Digging Deeper" with "Backyard Farmer".

I'm your host Kim Todd.

On "Digging Deeper" we have in-depth discussions with extension and industry experts about all those important landscape topics.

Tonight we are talking about Lincoln's Sunken Gardens with very special guests, Alice Reed and Steve Nosal.

Alice and Steve, you are as iconic as the gardens themselves.

You have been in charge of this space for, do we dare tell people how many years> - 40 years.

- 45 for me.

- For 45 for him and almost 38 for me.

- So decades and decades of- - It's been a long time.

- The brawn and the brains creating the beauty, right?

- Right.

- So let's talk about the history of it real briefly and where you've headed with it and what has changed over the years?

- Well, I guess in a nutshell, it was created in 1930 for the purposes of making the people of Lincoln feel good during the Depression.

And when we picked up on that back in the '60s and '70s and continued that idea, let's make Lincoln a better brighter, happier, colorful, artful place.

I think that's what helped push it along for both of us.

And so that's a little bit of the history.

- [Kim] Well, and we have some pictures on the screen of what it looked like.

- [Alice] What it was.

- [Kim] And so, it was actually close to like this when you.

What did it really look like when you guys- - [Steve] The original garden that you're looking at right now was basically a perennial garden.

It had over 400 and some odd trees and shrubs and roses.

- Wow!

- And it had native plants.

And of course, all of us that work in Sunken Gardens know it's a hole in the ground and it is hot and humid.

And so for the most part a lot of the plants didn't make it.

And then during the floods of, I think it was the 1950s and '60s before Holmes Dam was put in, it killed all the plant material in it.

That's when they switched over to annuals.

And we actually met the original designer of the garden a couple of times.

I interviewed him, his name was Henry Goebel, and he and his father designed it.

And I asked him, I said, "Do you mind that we have filled it full of annuals?"

And he goes, "No."

He said, "Think of the alternative."

I think he was referring to the fact that it's just a hole in the ground filling up.

And so we were given permission to do whatever we saw fit.

- So, having been given permission, go through the process of how you decide.

Because I know every year you have a theme and this year it is Ruby Slippers.

Wizard of Oz happens to be my, probably one of my absolute favorites- - It's been a good year for sure.

And every year is different.

We try to change it up to be good farmers.

We wanna change our plants and their locations, try to move them around a little bit, so they're not all sitting in the same place.

So we've always moved things.

But one year we, in particular, it was way back, we just decided to ad-lib.

And we had all the plants there and we just laid it out.

And then suddenly it showed up on the state map, on the outside.

So we thought, oh, well, we're onto something here and people like this.

And they liked the look of it.

And so every year we would try to one up it a little bit more, try to get it better and better.

And, you know, we've had some mistakes.

We've had some bad years, bad bugs, or whatever will get plants.

But we've had for the most part very successful plantings that we like to pick a theme, so it's sort of centers us and makes us think of color themes that we could show and represent.

And people really love that.

They like to pick out those special designs.

- So, the plants themselves, how many?

And I know you used to contract grow them.

Are you growing them yourselves?

- Yeah, yes, absolutely.

Our staff, Alice runs the greenhouse Kurt Welds, Zach, and Mike are in on that too.

But we have a bunch of horticulturists growing these things.

And so we're not limited to a tiny little plant like you find in the big box store.

So when Alice produces and Kurt produces it they're full size when they go in the ground.

And that is a better way to do it.

It's a lot better.

- Yeah, it's nicer to be able to control the outcome.

You know, when we want a larger plant, because we have to plant in May, which is fairly late, you wanna have an instant, you know, bang for the buck.

And so, when we can grow it in a four by four pod and have a very developed root system and they're ready to grow, ready to go.

And just is what we want.

You know, sometimes we would get things from the contractors and they for the most part did a good job, but we would want big hefty root systems, not a lot of bloom and very specific.

And so it's nice to be able to have a little control.

- So you mentioned both the roots and the shoots.

And I think it's very, very difficult for people who purchase annuals, or even perennials for that matter, but mostly annuals, to pinch off those flowers when they bring them home.

So, talk a little bit about the soil and the management of this space, so that you really can keep those plants beautiful.

- The soil in greenhouse?

- The soil in the gardens.

- The soil in the garden is a special Betty Crocker mix that Alice and I cooked up about 25 years ago.

It has all the ingredients of what we think a plant needs.

And of course research is still developing in that field.

So we have rotted leaves.

We have old compost in it.

We have horse magic, because of the bacteria of that really makes it work.

We have grass clippings if we can get 'em in there.

And it blends and it sits for two years.

And then we put it on every fall.

So it's a two-year-old compost pile that we put on it.

So it's a mix of bacteria and fungi.

And of course, for those of us that are in the field, we know that those are the elements that actually bring the nitrogen or excuse me, the nutrients out of the atmosphere and help feed 'em to the plants.

And you can actually tell in some of the newer gardens that we put in, that have not had compost and they're just sorta sitting there, you can actually see the compost kick in.

All of a sudden the plants just take off.

- That's wonderful.

- We've had a lotta success with it.

We've played around, made a lot of mistakes, but I think we've learned a few thing here and there.

- [Kim] Come up with your formula for it.

- [Alice] Good formula.

- Yeah, well, and so you start the plants in the greenhouse, you grow them on until you're pleased with them.

You also have a lot of very large, very tropical plants that it seem to be sort of a staple in Sunken Gardens.

- Yes.

- Where are you overwintering those?

Or are you?

- Big tropicals, yes.

We overwinter, so our banana trees, the Canas, some of the big grasses, all of alocasia, colocasia, elephant ears, Thai giants, all those, that if you had to purchase those each year, a banana tree for an average would be about 15 to 30 bucks.

- [Kim] And not nearly as big as yours.

- And not nearly as big.

And so we propagate our plants.

All our guys that we've got have been to the university, they've had plant propagation.

And we pride ourselves in dividing and we'll have propagation.

We're gonna see if we can make me a hundred of these and our designs will be done at that point.

So we'll know for instance, whether we need, you know, 45 big, red, Abyssinian ensete bananas.

And so we'll make those during the winter.

Same with the elephant ears and the varieties that we have.

So that's really great, 'cause we feel like we recycle quite a bit.

It's not as hard as it looks.

The big bananas can be pretty good, you know, 20 feet tall.

And we just take a machete out, cut 'em down and basically throw 'em in a pot and let 'em sit in our greenhouse, just dormant through the winter.

In about January, February things start to, we start to check our bulbs and we'll go in and propagate, divide and start making our plans for our mist bench, what we're gonna propagate.

So, it's a lotta fun and it's a group effort for sure.

- Of course, a little camaraderie going on in the plant world.

- Yes.

- We should mention it at this point, since you talked about bananas and elephant ears and all that, that our climate, the micro climate in Sunken Gardens is very close to that of Belize.

And so, we have a friend from Belize that worked for us for awhile.

This is just like home, same color, same plants.

But the humidity, the lack of wind, and it seems to, these plants thrive in those conditions.

That's why they're so darn big.

They're like twice as big as they're supposed to be.

- Interesting.

Who'd ever think that we could say, you know, Belize is our sister place to Lincoln, Nebraska.

- And you know, it's interesting within six months, you know, we've got a full grown jungle basically, and it's just a lotta fun for people.

It gives them, you know, peace and comfort and they just love the look of it.

- Exactly.

We wanna make sure that you follow us on Facebook.

And you send us all of your great questions and all your comments.

If we are not talking about what you wanna hear about, you need to tell us what you wanna hear about so that we can dig deeper on some other subject.

And of course, get back to Sunken Gardens because there's no way that we are going to get through everything we wanna talk about tonight.

- There's a lotta plants.

- People have to do what?

Come visit.

- Yes, come and visit.

- So, ballpark, how many plants go in the ground in a given spring?

- The annuals, we put about 30,000 in.

And what's amazing is we will do, on Wake Up the Beds, the volunteer event, we'll put in probably at least a third of those.

So we'll lay 'em out from 6:00 to 7:30 in the morning.

And between 9:30 and 10:00 they're installed.

I've never seen anything so fast in my entire life.

I think one of the film clips you had showed them putting it in.

It's just like, boom it's in.

And then they come back all summer long and go, "I did this."

- I did that.

It's that great sense of satisfaction that people have- - [Alice] People look forward to it and take a little ownership in their section.

- [Kim] Right.

- [Alice] And they come back throughout the year and bring their family and look around, say, "Oh, I planted this section."

It's a form of pride.

And we think that's great.

- Yeah.

- We just love that.

- [Kim] Well, and then you put them to sleep in the fall and that typically happens, do you wait for first frost, cross your fingers and hope it's a late frost instead of an earlier one?

- [Alice] Yeah, pretty much we've already let things, will let things frost.

Sign of frost we'll start to remove centerpiece plants and things that we really need for sure.

We don't want 'em to go by the wayside.

And so we'll start to dig those early, to try to slip 'em out before anybody notices.

But then we'll bring in our group.

And generally our plants are cleaned up because we have to get ready for tulips to go in.

- [Kim] Right.

- [Alice] And so the volunteers come in and we get about a hundred people spading and dancing on shovels and having a good old time.

And we play lots of music and shovel to the blues and have some fun with it.

And then they add the compost on.

- [Kim] Oh, perfect.

- [Alice] And that's been great because then they can see, and we've put the beds to bed.

- Exactly.

- Nice little coating.

- Well, you know, and I don't think people also realize when they're in the space that a part of what makes it work is yes, it is in a bowl, but you also have a backdrop and a canopy that is some trees, shrubs, a perennial component, the grasses that you allow I think to stand for most of the winter, seeding the ponds, which of course fascinate everyone who sees all those fish that want to eat whatever they're not supposed to.

- Yes, the magic fish.

- The magic fish.

- Yes, it's quite draw down there for sure.

It's a lovely garden.

- A lotta species, different species of trees.

And we have some very rare species that had been given to us by different growers.

They go, "Here, try it, see if you can grow it in Lincoln."

And then of course we have the rose gardens and the new bicentennial fountain, so it's surrounded by gardens.

And then of course, there's the children's zoo close by.

- And of course, I take my students at least two classes every single year and here we come, and learn those kinds of things.

You have a lot of events scheduled for Sunken Gardens.

Art in the Garden.

You have, I don't know how many weddings.

What has happened over the years as your space has become more popular?

- What's happened that we talk about a lot is that the garden is a little bit too small for what happens there.

And we're only hoping that we someday get a bigger expanse for people to use.

Of course, we're hoping for a botanical garden in Lincoln.

Which I believe- - Conservatory botanical.

- [Kim] Someday.

- So, our community's becoming a garden mecca.

I mean, it's everywhere.

And of course, what you guys do at "Backyard Farmer," think of the response you get, you have so many people wanting to know.

- Right, or just to be in, as you mentioned.

You know, they're certainly not going to do 30,000 annuals at home.

And then to know that it changes every single year.

And to be able to say, "Gosh, I want that."

Or, "Could I do that?"

- Oh, yeah, we have- - So you brought a bucket.

- I brought a bucket.

- Could you talk about some of them?

- Well, I just brought a little potpourri, so to speak, of different things that we've used this year.

So, some of the most asked about plants are in this bunch here.

The dahlias, we featured a lot of dahlias this year, which were really beautiful.

- [Kim] I saw some dinner plates.

- [Alice] We had some dinner plate ones even.

And those are fun for us to try new things.

Because Lincoln is, we need to grow.

Steve and I travel a lot.

We go around all over to different gardens to see what people are featuring all over.

Of course, we've been out to Seattle too.

And of course, dahlias are really big there.

But we had two different varieties of dahlias that are making a great show.

The gomphrena, Strawberry Fields, everybody said, "What are those things down there."

The people wanna know what the stuff is.

- [Kim] Right.

- The cosmos, the castor beans, and all of these fun foliage, caladiums.

People, they love that stuff.

- [Kim] And then you've got coleus.

- [Alice] Coleus, so this year, this is one is called, a variety called Apple Brandy.

But we featured a lot of these varieties called Wicked Witch.

And they were hot, hot wicked.

Everything was sort of, it seemed like it came together for the- - So you needed a Glinda.

- We have Glindas, Stars, and her wand in the garden.

So, it's fun for us to look at theses beautiful plants and put combinations together and see what looks good together.

A lot of our trial and error when we'll put things in a pot and see how they look together.

And if we go, "Whoa, that really is striking."

Well, why not utilize that out in the garden?

- Well, and you also have the big containers that are sort of the don't drive on the sidewalk.

But they also are sort of the entry point for anybody that works in the- - The bollards.

- The bollards.

Really functional.

- Yes, but people are really getting into planters, I think.

Just because the ease of putting 'em, and changing 'em out, making 'em seasonal.

I think that's fun for people.

Downtown you see a lotta new planters and I think that that makes the city look really great.

We were out in Fort Collins not long ago, and they have up to 20 or 30 planters per intersection.

- Oh my goodness.

- Just in each intersection, because it's easy to put it into a planter, or soil conditions aren't as troublesome.

- Exactly, and then you just have to hope you, somebody will water them.

- And move 'em around and change 'em out.

- Full crew of people watering and et cetera.

- Yeah, but it's fun to have variety, I think, and see new plants.

It's exciting for people.

- So, our viewers, of course you won't be able to read this but this is the plant list for this year, with a little history on the back and this sits in the beautiful little pavilion that has a great roof.

And the restrooms for anybody who needs to do that.

And most of these are labeled somewhere, if you can find the label and if, like our garden, if the label actually matches the plant.

- Luckily yeah, we have interns from the university and they follow maps, but also they they're required to learn their plants.

And so if you can ask anybody down in the garden, they'll tell you a name of a plant.

- [Kim] Which is perfect.

- We switch things out a lot and so it's new for everybody.

But there's definitely, we'll get certain plants that they'll ask over and over again.

What is that, you know, and they get it memorized then.

- Which is again, I mean, what better way to learn, than you hear the same question over and over again.

And then you know you've done a fabulous job of picking your theme, picking your plants.

So, we only have a few seconds.

Are you gonna give us a little hint on when you're gonna start picking your theme for 2022?

- Oh, we've already been, we've changed it twice already.

- Well, it goes through a metamorphosis of some sort.

But yeah, we're getting closer and closer.

We have to have our plants ordered, our seeds and plants need to go into our broker basically that we order and get in our liner stock.

And that has to be done by September.

- [Kim] That would be a week from now.

- That's in a couple weeks.

So, we're sort of on a fast track, but we've sort of been looking, you know, going through the looking glass.

- Hmm.

- And you know, experiencing tea parties.

- What a fun- - And fun events down in the garden.

- So perhaps the Mad Hatter pepper is going to show?

- Yes, it could be a real Alice in Wonderland thing.

- So to speak.

- So to speak.

- All right, well that is all the time we have for "Digging Deeper" with "Backyard Farmer".

We do wanna say thanks so much to Steve and Alice for coming in and talking to us today.

We will be back next time with another in-depth discussion, do be sure to watch "Backyard Farmer" live every Thursday at 7:00 p.m. central on Nebraska public media.

Thanks for "Digging Deeper" with "Backyard Farmer."

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