(music) Hey, it's Tinisha Spain, host of Mid-American Gardener, and this week, we are at Allerton Park in Monticello.

Now there's no way we could show you this whole place in one show, so we're going to take a look at a couple of the gardens here, with the help of our friends Luke and Olivia, we'll also meet up with one of our panelists, Kay Carnes, who spends a lot of time here in the herb garden.

So let's jump in and get started.

(music) And we found Kay in, of course, the herb garden, of all places, that is Kay's specialty after all.

Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the herb garden.

Thank you.

Now this is--you spend a lot of time here, right?

This is where you--this is your playground.

Yes, it is.

So show us around a little bit.

Okay, we are starting with hops, which we have some that on that wall, and we have another bunch on that wall, and we're hoping someday to get this whole wall covered with hops and start making some beer.

So we'll see.

Keep us posted when that process begins.

And this is our mascot.

It's the only green foo dog in the garden--in the park.

So, he's pretty special.

He's pretty special.

Green for the herbs!

It makes sense sense.

And beehive is, is here.

The original garden, before it was an herb garden, consisted of peonies, day lilies...

So it wasn't an herb garden at all.

No, it was not.

It did not become a herb garden until probably the late 80s, early 90s.

Gotcha, okay?

And there's a lot of stuff out here.

There is.

What we've tried to do, is the International Herb Association selects an herb of the year every year, and so that's what we've got.

We've tried to get every herb that they selected in very nice we pretty well did.

Now, for those who don't grow herbs, you may not know that they're literally just tucked in everywhere.

You know it's because it looks like it's part of the landscape.

So why don't you show us some things?

Well, this actually is a rosebush, and there's one over here ...that's been one of the herb of the year, surprisingly enough, there's a lot of different varieties of thyme.

And, this is this is parsley.

And these are used in the cafe and a lot of the dishes here?

Yes, we've always encouraged people, but the gal that runs the cafe now is the first one that actually comes down and uses the herbs.

And then this big bush is elderberry.

Elderberry--some people think of it as a weed, but it's a very useful herb.

There's medicinal uses for it, and they they're quite hardy, as you can see.

Yes.

And the funny part is, Lucas was telling us he chopped this all the way to the ground in the fall...and here we are.

Yeah, it just, it's grew back.

He thought he killed it, but...

I thought he killed it!

He did not, in fact, kill it.

I love these--the berries, you were talking about those.

I make syrups and things out of them... Elderberry syrup, and it's a good medicinal.

It is!

Anytime there's a little cough at our house, I'm reaching for the elderberry syrup.

This is an herb also?

Yes.

Interesting.

Now, would you do you cook with this?

No, not the menarda so much, but it's, as you can see, it's a bee--good bee attractor.

Yes, it is.

Can you talk a little bit about the benefits of having flowers interspersed with herbs inter--you know, what's the what's the benefit of mixing that?

Well, they're just--they can be companion plants, but herbs on their own are very decorative.

And as you can see, they're very hardy.

Now, how long have you worked in this particular garden?

Oh, gosh, I think since the late 80s, maybe early 90s.

Oh, wow.

Does it take a lot to get an herb garden established.

Is this hard to maintain?

It depends on the herb.

Most of these herbs, we don't really do much with.

We try to keep them weeded, but and if you cut them back, then they'll get bushier.

But once it's established--once you've got an herb?

Yeah, they're pretty hardy, nice, and they really don't take a lot of care.

So I think that's a plus.

Now, other than the folks that use them here on the grounds, are people welcome to come here?

Oh, yes!

We encourage people to come.They're welcome to come in.

They're welcome to pull leaves off and smell them and taste them.

Excellent.

We love that.

Yeah.

So anything to help them learn about herbs, excellent.

Okay, let's go check out some more things, though.

This is lemon balm.

It's got a really nice lemon Mmmm, that smells so good.

And then this is lavender, which I think people are pretty much...

I have the hardest time getting lavender to take off.

It's kind of touchy.

I think I over water.

Yes, you could.

I think I do.

You know, they come from rocky areas, so they really, you know, if they're sitting in moisture, they don't like it.

I think that's it.

I need to neglect them more.

Yes, and that's hard to do.

We have some Purple coneflower back there.

That's oregano.

Looks a lot different than it does on the store shelf.

It probably smells and tastes different too.

So for these, if we were going to enjoy some oregano, you would take the leaves, yes, I would cut it down to about here, and cut the flower off.

And then, if you want to dry them, I would strip it all off and put it like in a pie pan or something a sheet, and put it in a warm place for a while.

You don't want to overheat it, but just keep it warm until it really dries out.

It can take quite a bit of time.

And once those leaves are crunchy, that's when you know it's ready?

If they can crumble in your hand, then they're ready to go.

And does that?

Does that apply pretty much across the board, like, if we were going to take some sage, would you do the same with that, just lay it flat?

Yes, sage would take longer because it's a thicker, denser herb.

You know, you can just leave them It smells like Thanksgiving.

Sage always reminds me of Thanksgiving, always.

Sage is pretty hardy, and it grows well here.

We've talked about bay leaves before on the show, because I--I've always wanted a bay, but it takes a really long time for them.

You can kill them really easy.

And you can kill them.

Yes, there's that.

But, if you can get--this one's probably an older one, and they keep this in the greenhouse over the winter.

Ah, it overwinters inside.

Gotcha.

And you want to be careful not to over water them.

So what I do when I have a plant that, you know, I have to be careful, I'll stick my finger in the dirt, you know, at least down to the knuckle, and if it's dry all the way, I'll water it.

If it's a little bit damp, I'll let it go for a while, because the worst thing you can do is over water plants.

I can't remember if it was you or John, but someone made a simple syrup with Bay.

It was probably John, but it was really good.

It was very sweet.

Totally different from what you would use like if you were making a pasta sauce.

Sometimes herbs will do that.

They kind of have multiple personalities Bay is definitely one of those.

Got some more thyme here.

And I love that this kind of doubles as a ground cover, like you were saying, it's not just for cooking and things like that.

These have a lovely ornamental value, and the buzzing, the pollinators that are in and out of here is really remarkable.

Well, thank you, Kay for letting us come and hang out at your secret herb garden spot, And you're welcome to come anytime.

It's always open.

The gate is just to keep deer out, and not people.

So if you want to come and visit, feel free to just to walk in.

Make sure you close the gate when you leave, Excellent, come in and pick some herbs and check out the garden.

And we're here every other Wednesday, working.

So if -- If you'd like to talk to someone, you can speak to someone then.

Okay, well, thank you so much.

I'm going to mosey around here and see if I can find some herbs to take home with me.

(music) and now we are joined by Lucas Rund, the park supervisor here at Allerton.

We are in the herb garden, and this is the first time I've seen one of these gardens ever.

So we're going to have him explain what this is.

And kind of how you build it, and a little bit of history about it.

So tell us about...this is kind of like mound gardening.

Yeah.

So technical term is "Hügelkultur," which, I think in German, means "mound culture."

It's a more sustainable type of gardening.

It's basically...I wouldn't call it self watering, but it retains water.

It's a lot of organic matter in there.

So it's, it feeds the plants as they grow.

It's also easy on your back, which is a big deal when you're talking about herb gardening.

And...

There's a...I can see a lot of stuff happening in here.

Yeah, we've got everything from basil, cilantro, tomatoes, there's a little arugula back there, some bok choy.

That's what these yellow flowers are here, tomato all across the top.

Like I said.

Then we put some ornamentals in here too.

Just to add some color, we've got some ornamental sweet potato vine, a few blue salvia popping through.

Very nice.

We've got a little lavender patch over there on the end, and then a chive patch here on the end, and on the back side, we've got zucchini, squash, cucumber, and I think a couple pumpkins Okay, and we'll make our way around there as well.

So walk us through sort of the, you know the I'm just, I'm blown away by this, like, what is inside?

Do you start at ground level?

Do you dig?

How do you even get started?

So there are a few different types of ways you can do it.

You can go underground, where you dig out a nice trench in the ground.

Fill it with sticks, mostly huge, big logs.

Is your first layer.

Okay, then you come back through with sticks, leaves, things that aren't composted yet, but really good in organic matter.

Then you come back with a half composted material, organic material.

Then you overlay it with a nice fresh bed of fully composted material.

And that's what you can see here on the top.

And then we covered it with some straw, just to help keep it all together until the plants got a little bit bigger.

And then as far as the order and the organization of how you guys laid it out, is there a rhyme or reason there?

No, we just kind of wanted to make a space that was easily accessible to people.

We had a kitchen here, a full kitchen, and caterers use the herb garden to collect herbs for their dishes.

Eventually, I'm hoping we can mold this into our Folk School, which we're we have here at Allerton, kind of a community based learning thing, which Olivia will talk about a little bit later.

And I don't know, I could be wrong, but this feels like it's a huge space saver.

Yeah.

Oh, for sure, yeah.

So if you look around the garden, we have a cutting garden on the end.

Then we go to some sweet corn, little tomato patch for some extra tomatoes we had.

Then we have some wasabi radish here.

But we couldn't have fit all of these plants in unless we had this.

I think it about doubles our square foot into this area definitely.

Let's check out some of the plants on the backside here that you mentioned because this is really neat.

So yeah, like I said, we've got some pumpkin, zucchini, a few squash.

They're starting to bloom right now.

And then over here, we even have a little cucumber on the very end.

Now this makes sense, putting these on the backside here, so that they can kind of run wild and do their own thing.

That's right.

And, it's also kind of giving support here... For sure.

On the um...Is that tomato?

Yeah tomatoes, yep.

All along the top, we've got tomatoes.

It feels like it's all sort of working together, either support or shade or structure of some kind.

That's kind of the idea.

It's almost like a three sisters garden kind of quality.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's, it's exciting.

And, you know, the nice thing is, you don't have to bend over too far to get in there.

You can just pull out and pick.

We've got some tomatoes, nice tomatoes growing.

I mean, these tomatoes really blew up.

We started everything, all the herbs and vegetables from seed in our greenhouse here at the park, and then we transplanted everything out here.

Very nice.

Now, was this hard to build?

You know, can the at home gardener, if someone is interested in making maybe not quite to scale...but one of these, are they hard to construct?

I don't think so.

I mean, granted, we do have a lot of equipment here, but really all we did was pull a truck up and unload everything, and we just used wheelbarrows so it wasn't all that complicated, especially if you're doing it on the surface.

If you're going to dig down deep and bury it, it might be a little more challenging, but on the surface, very nice.

It's fairly easy, especially for a home gardener, to do.

You can also do this in a raised bed, so it doesn't actually have to be in a mound like this.

If you have a raised bed at home and you want to empty out what's in there, put some logs down, some sticks, twigs, leaves, that kind of thing.

It's the same kinda concept.

You can still do the same layering.

Yep.

Very nice.

Yeah.

And you mentioned the wasabi... Yeah.

Wasabi radish?

Wasabi radish.

Wasabi radish.

I don't think I've ever seen these in an actual garden as well.

This is our first time.

So we buy, we buy a boatload of seed, obviously, to grow everything here, and they give us a free bag of seed.

And this is our free bag.

This was the random happenstance.

Very nice.

So, we can pull one out.

Okay, I was gonna ask, How do you know when they're ready?

I don't, I don't know.

Okay, well, we're learners.

This is my first time with the wasabi radish.

I think you picked a good one.

It's a pretty big one.

I think the free seeds are a success.

Yeah, well, it's kind of exciting, because you never know what you're gonna get.

Yeah, for sure.

And that's a unique one.

That's not something that you see every day.

It just smells like a radish.

It must not be ready yet.

Oh, it would have the-- ...because I feel like it would smell a little hot.

Yes, in true wasabi form.

That's the inside, nice and green.

We have carrots down here too.

We have a beehive here from a local beekeeper, and so we try to have pollinator patch out here.

Like I said, we have a cutting garden.

So the mansion can use that for different events.

They can come down here and cut our own flowers grown here at the park.

So as a supervisor, this is probably the best, slash busiest time of the year for you here.

Do you have a lot of folks come out to just enjoy these gardens and just walk through.

Absolutely yeah, it's it's great.

We get questions about the gardens.

What's this plant?

What's that plant?

We try to put labels on everything.

You can see around the garden that there are a few labels out but we don't have everything out there.

And for someone who has maybe not been here before, what's your elevator speech about Allerton?

Oh, boy, I'd say it's kind of an oasis in the prairie.

It's, you know, between the formal garden grounds the natural areas, we have a lot of trails and a historical residence here.

I mean, you can kind of mark a lot off your list by coming here.

It's, I've been coming here since I was a kid, so it's, it's a real pleasure to work out here and for people to come and enjoy it.

I think the sunken garden is probably the biggest draw for people.

It's just such a unique space, but we have so many unique spaces Other than that, so I think to get people here and get them to see it, then they just want to keep coming back.

(music) And now Olivia Bunting joins us.

You are the Senior Programming Director here at Allerton.

So this isn't a place where you just come and casually observe there are things to do here.

Yeah!

Let's talk about that.

There are plenty of things to do out here.

So yes, you can always just come out and walk through the gardens.

We have third Saturday garden tours, where you can just go through each of our formal gardens and get a little bit of history as well as like what we're growing out here.

We also have hikes scheduled throughout the spring, summer and fall.

And then we also have our programming opportunities with our Folk School, and Kay is actually teaching one of our upcoming classes cooking with herbs.

So she'll be walking through the herb garden on August 3 and talking about what we're growing out here and how you could use it in your cooking.

And then it kind of rounds out with a nice little lunch after, yeah, with those featured herbs, are you seeing people start to, not start to, because this has long been a draw, but are more people coming out and kind of finding this place and taking advantage?

Yeah, I've seen a lot of returning visitors, as well as new visitors come out for the Folk School, we've got art classes.

We've got some other gardening classes that we've started.

We did a seed starting class in March.

So if you're looking to start a garden, that's a good spot or a good class to take trying to work with Luke and his busy schedule, to get some other gardening classes out here, and then we are looking into starting our homesteading section of the Folk School, so we'll be utilizing other spaces of the park, like the music barn over on the south side, and kind of creating A garden over there, the hives might be moving over there, just kind of making a little hub for... self sustainable sort of area?

Yeah, I'm excited for that.

Really cool, absolutely, and I feel like a lot of people are starting to move in that direction.

Gardening really took off big during the pandemic, and so now it's like people are transitioning into that next step.

Well, I've got this produce, or I've got whatever, now, what can I do with it?

So how can folks get involved out here?

How do you keep abreast of the activities?

Where do they go?

Yeah, if you just go to our website, allerton.illinois.edu, (music) we have an event page, and all of our programs, our hikes, our tours, are all listed there.

And that is the show for this week.

Thank you so much for watching and another thank you to Olivia, Lucas, and Kay for showing us around the gardens today at Allerton.

And check out that event schedule on their website if you'd like to learn more.

You can also send in your garden questions to us at yourgarden@gmail.com Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.

Good night.

(music & credits)