Hey, it's Tinisha, Spain, host of Mid American gardener, and this week we're coming at you from the Danville public library, where the Vermillion County Master Gardeners and the Master Naturalists have planted this beautiful native plant garden.

The crews are here.

They're going to show us around, and we're going to tell you how you can take home a piece of this beautiful garden.

Let's get started.

And here we are in one of the native sections of the gardens here at the Danville Public Library.

Before we get into our big tour and the big reveal, we're going to have our friends here introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about what they do here.

So Kristin, we'll start with you.

Okay, I'm Kristin camp.

I'm a Vermillion County Master Gardener and an East Central Illinois Master Naturalist.

And there I was, one of three of us who originally designed the gardens and arranged to get them planted and cared for, and we've been doing this now for four years, and it's nothing but pure joy.

And every year it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more beautiful.

All right, introduce yourself, please.

I'm Krisy Herr Bartos, and I started into this project.

About a year afterwards, I was introduced to Kristen, and ever since then, I've been a native garden nut, spreading it all over.

But I am involved in, of course, tending the gardens and kind of trying to help make sure the maps and everything are updated and are in the entryway there.

So everything wonderful.

Thank you.

And of course, you guys know John.

We're going to check in with him in just a little bit later in the show.

Thank you so much for setting this up and inviting us into your backyard.

So you and I are going to find a little segment to talk about later.

But let's start talking here.

How did this come about?

When did this idea come up to reintroduce, because we've been hearing that a lot, reintroducing those natives.

How did this come about?

Well, the Danville Public Library, about four or five years ago, mentioned to Jenny Hanrahan, who's our Master Gardener, coordinator for vermillion County, that they wanted something different here.

It was a dilapidated problem that hadn't been tended, and they wanted to change it, to have make a statement, and they wanted to do it with native plants.

So when I became a master gardener in 2019 or 2022, excuse me, Jenny had interviewed me and learned that my husband and I have been involved with native plants for 30, over 30 years, and that we have a native garden at home.

So I had some experience with designing and taking care of tending native plants.

So she said, Well, there's a new project and that would like to start.

And she's very good at convincing people to do things.

And luckily, there were two other master gardeners willing to work on this with me.

So the three of us got together, we came up with a design, we presented it to the library, and after a long process, the library agreed to pay for the plants and provide a library personnel person to water.

And that was what we wanted, and we said, we will plant and tend, take care of it.

And that is how it got started.

And it's been growing and growing and many our team now has grown to 12 people, and we tend on the garden every second and fourth Tuesday of every month, April through October, and we basically weed, we thin, we collect seeds, we do everything you need for maintenance, and we come out.

And every time we come out, we just go, Wow, it's so cool.

Christy, what are some things that have surprised you the most as you've watched this kind of grow and develop?

Well, even the first year we started off a majority of this garden here was plants from Grand Prairie friends, and they're a 501, c3, amazing organization.

And these plants were this small.

And then even in the first year, when perennials are supposed to sleep, the first year, then creep, then leap.

Well, these plants were like, they skipped a step.

Yeah, they were such good plants.

And then the library took such good care of we have, you know, the concrete sidewalk and the road and stuff.

So they do have to water here.

And the first couple years, they definitely watered a little bit more, and that was instrumental.

Plus, we kept the weeds at bay, and the mulching is everything.

Wow.

Now you said that you have a team of about 12, yes, and you guys now, how often do you come here again and maintain this every second and fourth Tuesday of the month, from 830 till we are done?

That day we come in and from April through October, and then the garden goes to sleep, and it doesn't wake up again until April and we come in, and it usually can take us anywhere from an hour and a half to three, three and a half hours.

By working that way with like I say, we have mulch, although now we have to mulch less because the plants are bigger and they take up, you know, more of the space, but and we are and and like I said, we're a team of Master Gardeners and Master Naturalists, and that's important, because about four people out of our crew are just Master Naturalist i three of us are both master gardeners and master Now, let's talk about that.

Let's talk about the difference and kind of the roles that each of those play.

Well, the Vermillion County Master Gardeners is a group that started it, and then we wanted to expand, because the East Central Illinois Master Naturalists that live and are close to vermillion county wanted a project, and they said, this is right up our alley.

So we invited them to join, and they jumped right in.

And it's been a wonderful cooperative effort between Danville public libraries, vermillion County Master Gardeners and East Central Illinois Master Naturalists, and one of the only few in the whole area where we cooperate together.

Wonderful.

And Chris, oh, go ahead.

And a good thing about, like our master gardeners, many of them started off with, you know, these perfectly groomed landscapes with no natives.

And now, you know, these gardens are an inspiration, not only to them.

And some of the Master Gardeners have come on to this project, and are, I mean, are putting it all in their yards?

But it's also the public.

They love it.

Tell me some things that people perhaps are skittish or reserved about putting natives in their landscape.

What are some things that people you think keep people away?

Is it education?

Are they worried about the vibrancy the colors?

What do you think?

I think part of it is every people look at like a pollinator field, yeah, and they think, oh my gosh, that looks messy.

Well, to me that it's beautiful, but it also is too messy for people.

So this gives them a demonstration of what they can do in their yard if they want to still have that neat and tidy look, but help the wildlife, the insects, but the education is huge now, as far as maintenance goes, I know you guys meet and do this as a group, but if I'm at home, is the maintenance for native beds and native flowers?

Is it any more intense or less intense than putting in the annuals that you can find at a nursery?

These are all all, but one of these in this garden is a perennial, so you don't have to replant, but actually, once you get it established, it really is less intense than it is with other perennials.

Even the main thing is like, I say, keeping those aggressive ones in check, and then over time, by by natural cycles, some of these perennials will only actually do about three, maybe four years, and then you have to put in fresh ones, because that's their life cycle.

One other thing that I do is like before we meet for our Tuesday maintenance, I go around the day before and I spot check for those weeds that are getting ready to go to seed or and those are the ones you want to tackle first.

And if you tackle those, we've found that over the years, those weeds become less and less, and maintenance becomes even easier.

That's what we love to hear.

Well, let's jump in here and have you guys point out some of the flowers some of the plants, help us identify them, and let's see what you guys planted right now.

The one that's growing the most and is very showy is right here, and this is a rough blazing star.

It's liatris, and it's doing its thing right now.

And in back of it, you can see we've got some Goldenrod back here is a beautiful Aster called New England aster which will bloom shortly.

This is aromatic Aster which are getting the first few blooms.

Just imagine, in about two weeks or so, the whole thing will be covered in these little who says natives don't have color.

Oh, my word.

This whole thing will be yellows and blue purple in about two to three weeks, the cut plant is in the silphium family, and that, she'll show you, the leaves come up around the stem, and they actually form a cup, a cup.

And the wildlife can then drink water if we get rain, which we got a little rain yesterday.

Back here's a drop of water there.

It's holding water right now.

So the insects, the birds, they can all go to.

The cup plant and find that when they need it, it's like a natural water source.

And the cup plant's unique in that it's one of those plants that have a square stem.

It's a huge stem, and it's a square stem, and the leaves are rough to help with water retention and all kinds of stuff.

Can you talk a little bit about planting height and how this is designed.

We put the tall prairie dock.

This is prairie doc up here.

That's reaching to, I would say, about 1012, feet right now we put that's the tallest.

So we put prairie dock in the center, and then we surrounded it with cup plant.

We surrounded it the compass plant over there.

So we have the tallest plants in the center.

And then we've got, you can see the asters and the goldenrod.

They're the medium high.

Then we have the lower plants, like I love side oats, grama here.

It's a short grass.

This side is a fall garden.

So if you would come here in two weeks, you would see all this color in here.

Okay, the other side is the spring, summer side, on the street side.

And so it does the same thing, the tall, the medium and the short, and that's the center garden.

Then we have two side gardens, two that have different plants, but they're the same kind of thing, the tall in the middle, and then it's a mirror image.

All the plants from here are the same over here.

Wow.

And as we're learning, we all get more familiar with what plant looks like, what you know, even when they're babies, and then that way, the next year, we're even better at maintaining it.

And one thing we have done this year, and we'll be doing a lot more next year, is in the spring, Vermillion County Master Gardeners has a huge plant sale, usually the first weekend of May.

So we took some of those babies that we knew were way aggressive, and we dug them up, potted them and put them in the plant sale, and we'll be doing that again this spring of lots more babies, wonderful.

Okay, let's go check out another section of the garden.

Okay.

Now we've moved locations.

We are in the native plants, native trees and shrubs area of the garden here, and we've got a new friend.

This is Ted Commons.

Now you are just like Kristen.

You are a master Master Naturalist and a master gardener.

What's the difference between the two?

Master Gardeners are more strictly related to just gardening per se.

Master Naturalists are all about the outdoors.

So native plants, prairies, doing things with like frogs, amphibians, foraging component to it as well.

There's a foraging component.

There's a lot of work with invasives, trying to make sure that the honeysuckle and autumn olive are removed from various areas, anything that deals basically with the outdoors.

Okay, okay, so in this particular space, we've been talking about natives.

We're talking about the flowers earlier, but let's talk about some of these trees and trees, and shrubs that are incorporated in this area, and then let's talk about their needs, their their light needs, and all kinds of things.

So I'll let you take it away.

Let's start here.

So we planted this to demonstrate how native trees and shrubs can fill in your landscape with beauty and provide food for animals, birds, etc.

So most people are familiar with red buds.

So we have a couple of red buds in this area that anchor the area.

And of course, we all know how beautiful red buds are in the spring, and then they turn this beautiful red color on the leaves in the fall.

So this is a common one, but one that's kind of under use, so we put that out here.

Now, when you say anchor, does that mean that this was sort of chosen to go in first, and then everything else sort of built around it?

We put this one in the other red button first, because they're going to get the biggest and the tallest, and then everything else was planted with like you'll see, there's not a lot right around it, because this is going to fill that in.

Gotcha.

So that kind of pulls everything together, gotcha.

And then right here, we have a wonderful shrub called shrubby St John's wort.

It was full earlier this year of bright yellow flowers and bees, like just bees, love that.

The bees love it.

And that's a great one.

It never gets any taller than that.

And we trim ours so they look shrubbier.

We trim them in the fall, but they never get taller than that.

So they are a great plant to use instead of some of your staples, like boxwood.

Is there ever a time to cut these back?

Really harsh, or do you just leave them?

Oh, no, we.

We will come in.

In October and do a big haircut on a lot of these.

And the first time a couple years ago, when I had our group out and I was trimming, and they were afraid to trim, I said, No, go back and get more and more.

And then this spring, I'll never get with a lead plant.

They're like, but there's nothing left.

I said, it'll be fine.

And here's here it is.

So you really have to get aggressive with these.

When you get aggressive with these, time frame for this one, when would you cut it back?

You can cut it back when it's dormant, at the end of October, during in November, I like to wait and trim lead plant in April.

There's different schools of thought that we trimmed all of these back in April, and you can see what ended up.

But the main thing is, you trim them while they're still dormant, whether they go into dormancy or coming out, but you just give them a good haircut.

That's my biggest thing about shrubs, is give them a good haircut.

And then with some of the bigger shrubs, once they're established, and these are about established enough, you will take out 1/3 of the old growth every year, so that they encourage more new growth.

And that goes for almost any shrub, not just natives.

Another thing I wanted to point out is all of these plants here that are around us are either full sun or part sun, part shade, but we do have a lot of areas around people's homes that are mostly shade.

So these plants over here, this one is a Spice Bush, and it likes full shade.

And then right next to another over here are smooth hydrangeas, and those are the parents of all the fancy hydrangeas we have now.

They're the parents of all those.

Every one of them was cultivated from the smooth the native wild smooth hydrangea.

So those plants do great in full shape.

So we've got a couple of those examples as well.

Wonderful.

When people talk to you about putting in native shrubs, what are some of the concerns or questions that they have?

Is it the same as with the flowers?

Are they going to be a showy are they going to that?

That's one thing with any any native plant, is they want to make sure it's not going to look weedy.

You know?

They want it to look just like their regular Gardens, which is part of what we've done here is try to make it use native plants in a more garden type setting, in place of what you might see in a prairie where they're all mixed together and there's virtually no space in between.

A lot of folks think it ends up looking like a weed patch.

Yes, yes.

And that's, you know, we're trying to get the idea of you can use native plants where you would have maybe used a non native plant.

This is a great opportunity for that Master Naturalist and Master Gardener training to come in, right?

Because you can kind of talk about both of those, and join the beauty of the flowers while also bringing in that sustainable sort of, right?

And the thing about natives is different, I think, than than regular garden plants, is, you know, they develop root systems that that go way down that ideally lessen the amount of time you have to spend.

Yes, on the maintenance end, we love a low maintenance garden.

In my garden, I have all of these in my garden at home, but I never water them because I'm not right by asphalt.

So the same thing goes for perennials and grasses and the shrubs.

If you don't have a sidewalk or asphalt that soaks in that heat and dries them out, I never water them, and they look just about like this.

So, very nice, very nice.

Yeah.

Now I love that.

There's a way for folks who come to this.

You can come here and marvel at all the plants, but you can also take a piece of it home.

Yes, I took advantage of this.

So on our last stop in this tour, we're gonna go check out how you can take a piece of all of this home and start it in your own yard.

So our final stop of our tour of the game of library Gardens is this, and you've got to be a certain age to even recognize what this is, because it's all done online now, right?

So tell us a little bit about this card catalog that you guys have transformed and how this is helping folks in the community.

Well, what we do is starting in July, when the first plants are ready, we start collecting seeds, and we are out there in the garden.

You probably saw some of that earlier in the show.

We collect the seeds and we let them dry out until about December, and then we get together and we clean seeds and package them into little envelopes that will fit in each one of these card catalog drawers.

And we last year, we packaged one.

1000 different packages, and all of them were gone, and people were asking for more seeds.

So this year, as long as we have the seeds, we will package as many seeds as we can, and so we'll package them and label them and then fill the seed catalogs.

And that will happen.

We'll have it all done by about January 10 or so in time for people to come in and start picking up seeds which are free, which is a big boon to people, to the community.

That's this is way our way of giving back to the community with free seeds.

Yes.

And so people can come in look at pictures, and we'll have more pictures, and you can they will also look at this is a germination information on all the different seeds we have, so people can choose their seeds, read the germination information, and then pick the seed packets up.

This is such a great resource.

I came here and picked up some seeds for winter sowing, and I just was completely thrilled with how they're organized, and again, they're free, and we talk a lot about not wanting gardening to be cost prohibitive.

And so this is a great opportunity to remove those barriers, so that you can come and at least give it a shot.

And you can do winter sowing in an old milk jug with soil.

All the directions are over there.

And you can start your seeds by the end of January, beginning of February, and you've got plants, most of them are prolific.

You just follow the directions.

And what we encourage people to do is come out, visit the garden in spring, summer, fall, see what they like, and then start planning.

Get some maps, start planning their spot.

Come in, pick up seeds, germinate them, and put the little plants in, and you've got a jewel growing in your garden.

Well, this has been just the best visit.

Thank you so much for opening your doors and letting us come and visit with you guys today, and showing us all around and teaching us all about how you guys put these gardens in around the library.

And when can folks expect these?

You think January, by mid January.

January.

Yeah.

Well, it has been a blast.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

We caught back up with John BODENSTEINER here, and now we're doing some seed saving.

Now, what plant is this?

This is the partridge pea.

Partridge pea, and it's very neat.

It's got a beautiful yellow flower when it's in full bloom.

Some of these are past their blooming stage and in the seed saving stage.

And so what you do they're little pea pods.

And what I really like about this Partridge pea, it's got a different type of color to it.

It's also got one of those that this is one leaf, and it's got leaflets.

There's 24 little leaflets on it.

Just a very interesting so the whole thing is the leaf, the whole that, the whole that is one leaf got it, and then the little parts on the side are leaflets.

And so I just find that interesting.

But the partridge pea is just a beautiful little during it's blooming time.

It's got beautiful yellow flowers.

But these seeds, if you looked at the if you could look at the sidewalk, they just these little pea pods.

You can see, I'm going to open this one up.

Just explode.

Yeah, that's full of seeds.

So these right here.

Are they ready to go in the ground just like this?

Okay, what we need to do on something like this is being these are native plants that Mother Nature has what we call stratified these during the wintertime, which means they have to go through a cold period, otherwise they won't germinate, or they will have very poor germinate.

So what you need is about four weeks in the refrigerator before you package them up, you can put them all in one pack and then break them up and and, or you can do it the other way, if you want to package them up, but they need about four to six weeks, and that kind of simulates in Illinois winter, right?

And information on our seed packets of what the stratification needs to be because it varies from one plant to another, like this is a cone flower, yes.

And you know, you could see the birds already started to to to pick on these.

So don't, don't cut those all off just because they that you think they look ugly, because it benefits our birds.

That's why these gardens are so important.

All the native insects, the birds, you know, you say, Well, I don't want insects.

Well, then you don't want birds, because the birds need the insects to feed their young.

They may meet, may be seed eating adult birds, but they, the little ones, can't eat the seed, so they need the insects that these plants produce.

You know, there's some sub plants, like a caliper pair will have one one insect that will call it a native an oak tree.

Or some of these will have to, will have up to four to 500 different insects that call this their host plant.

So don't feel like you have to harvest every seed, because they are doing other things they do.

Right?

And throughout the winter, like this is, this is quinine.

Well, quinine.

And you can see a lot of the seeds have already been blown out, or the birds have gotten them.

Like this has got hardly any seeds in it anymore.

But if you, if you find one here that's just done blooming, this little seed pod is probably going to have a dozen little seeds in it, so, so take some, but not all of them.

Don't take them all, because, and if you don't need them, leave them.

Leave them for mother nature, the birds will love them and and you may need to reseed.

Okay, all right.

Thank you so much, John.

I want to say thanks to the master gardeners, Master Naturalist.

I miss anyone.

No, this was, this was a library, yes.

Thank you so much for letting us come out today.

We really appreciate it.

Learned a lot.

This was a wonderful day.

It was, and we got perfect weather today too.

So it may be fall ish, but with there's still work to be done in the garden, lots of work.

Yes.

So if you've got questions for us, you can send them in to your garden@gmail.com or search for us on socials.

Just look for Mid American gardener, and we will see you next week.

Thanks for watching.

Thank you.