(soft bright music) - One of the questions I get most often is, "How do you find the places you visit?"

Well, my answer is pretty easy.

Either I have read about it or someone has told me about it.

The place we are visiting today was both.

I was told and then read about a garden that is so pretty that people come walking and driving to visit.

In fact, it has been called one of the nicest gardens in Minnesota.

I'm Mary Holm, host of "Prairie Yard and Garden," and let's go check out this destination Garden.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of Truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira.

Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm.

A non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden," a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(soft bright music) (gentle upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) - [Mary] When we visited the Northland Arboretum in Brainerd, Dan Lee, one of the master gardeners from that area said, we really need to go visit the beautiful yard of his friend Coralee Fox.

We did not have time to stop on that trip because we were on a pretty tight filming schedule, but this year I called Coralee and she said, sure, we could come for a visit to share her yard with all of our "Prairie Yard and Garden" viewers.

Thanks so much, Coralee, for letting us come to visit.

- And thank you for being here today.

I'm really anxious to show you my garden.

- [Mary] How long have you been gardening?

- I started gardening with my mom when I was really, really young.

I will tell you, I hated it.

(Mary chuckling) So then, fast to when I had my first home, I decided I needed to be a gardener and start.

So, I started having flowers and then a few veggies, and it grew since then.

- [Mary] How long have you lived here at this location?

- [Coralee] Moved here in 2006 and I bought this four-acre property in the summer of 2006, across the road from the home where I lived.

This was a pasture.

There was not a tree on here.

All we had was metal grass.

And then, down here where I have my island and the moat, that was a little wetland, but it wasn't an official wetland.

I had to go into the county once I decided I wanted an island, and asked if this was on any of their maps, and it wasn't.

I believe the very first garden area that I prepared is where I have the dahlias this year, and very interested in growing some native plants.

And I love the blue lupin.

That was my very first one.

- So then, how did this all come to be?

- So, in 2009 I had a contractor come in because I knew I wanted to expand everything and build an island and a moat.

And then, I planted the plants that could stand to have water, have their feet in the water in the lower area of the moat.

And by maybe 2011, I started planting things.

And a lot of the native plants for the first year or two, you know how, if you have a palette, if you're a painter, you just wanna fill it up and we just kept growing and growing from the center out on every available piece of the area that we wanted to have plants.

And I say we, because my daughter Angela, whom I will refer to many times is my cohort with this.

She does even more than I do today.

- Does this area collect rainwater here?

'Cause you mentioned that it was a lower wetland.

- Yes, it does collect rainwater.

There are two culverts that open into this corner of the property.

One that comes from the wooded area across there and one from the homes are located.

Those two culverts run into what we've, it used to be like a ditch area and we kinda made it look more like a stream, and it enters here.

It's not a rain garden, but it works like a rain garden.

- [Mary] I was just gonna say you were way ahead of your time because rain gardens weren't all that popular that far back and you kind of have a rain garden here.

- [Coralee] Yeah, that's quite true.

That's what it is.

It's a rain garden.

- [Mary] How did you come up with what to plant where?

- [Coralee] Yeah, and I have to go back to what we were dealing with in the beginning.

We could plant anything that would be in the sun.

Okay, so for the most part, those are the plants that we chose.

As the years have gone by, the trees grew.

We have more shade in some areas than we had at that time.

And so, we've had to make some changes.

Our grand scheme was that we wanted to have a variety of plants.

We wanted to have something blooming all of the time, if possible, right from the early spring when the irises are blooming.

Each time as we chose a plant, we were thinking about the coloring, we were thinking about the size, the texture, what the leaves look like.

And then, because we have the four raised beds in this area, these can change from year to year because they're always annuals.

For the first time this year, I'm using the snapdragons and geranium together in this one.

The bed over there has had four o'clocks for many, many years.

The one back there, I always have to have an elephant ear.

Get that started early on.

That goes in the center.

And then, this year we have other elephant ears, and then dwarf canna.

And behind me the vinca and the calla, and then this is a new bed.

My poppy mallow had outgrown the small space I originally had allocated for it and I love it, but the deer love it also.

So, that is the only perennial in this area of the raised beds.

It's fun.

(laughs) That's all I can say is to just decide, well, what are we gonna put where this year and what are we going to change?

- [Mary] How do you keep up with all of the weeding?

- [Coralee] I get out here at 7:00 in the morning usually because that's cool.

I need my nap in the afternoon so I can work for about five hours.

Last year I started having a fellow master gardener be my helper here, and then I have that daughter that is here every single weekend and is such a major part of anything that goes on here.

So, right from the very beginning, we felt that it was a good idea to use mulch.

I can always move the mulch aside and be sure to get the plant in there.

Its roots are going to stay cooler.

I've got plenty of water and I've got mulch keeping their roots cool, if you will.

- [Mary] Well, this is beautiful for the flowers, but do you do vegetables too?

- Absolutely.

Let's go look at that.

(gentle string music) - [Mary] While people tend to think of California as the wine mecca of the US, we have many delicious wines and wineries right here in Minnesota.

Many of the wineries in Minnesota provide on-farm experiences where you can learn more about wine-making and taste a lot of delicious wines.

Today I'm at Carlos Creek Winery, near Alexandria, touring their beautiful 200-acre farm where they make 20 internationally awarded grape and apple wines.

Carlos Creek also offers wine tasting, appetizers, and friendly tours of their wine-making facility.

It's a delightful way to spend an afternoon.

Minnesota is home to nine grape varieties.

Our climate and soil present unique growing conditions for grapes.

Tammy Bredeson, owner of Carlos Creek Winery thinks our Minnesota grapes provide a special wine experience.

- Minnesota grapes are special because they survive 20 degrees below zero, and they're grown on their own roots.

So even if they do die to the ground in a really cold winter, they will come back as the same form.

So, we don't have to replant.

My favorite part of producing local wine is giving tours in the vineyard and the production facility to our customers, and showing them that we can grow wonderful grapes and make beautiful wine here in Minnesota.

- While a glass of wine is nice to enjoy anywhere, it's especially fun to sip a glass among the winding vineyards.

- Best part of wine-making is after the fall harvest when we get to blend the wines, so we get to sit there and taste wines for a living.

It's a terrible job.

- If you want to know more about Minnesota wine and wineries, go to minnesotagrown.com.

(soft string music) - Mary, now you can see this is our vegetable garden.

We actually have three other families that garden with us besides myself and my daughter.

The flowers are the paths between one type of garden and another type of garden.

So, where you see the flowers and we're going from, this is Jake's, and then over there are the Harstads and over there are the Lees and over there are the Foxes.

- [Mary] How did this all get started?

- After the barn was built in 2021, we had decided that we needed more gardening space.

And I had some friends who live in a very shady area.

Not a shady neighborhood, but a shade, their garden, their whole yard was shaded and they couldn't garden in.

And so, I had first invited them to join us.

So, as we were building the wood structures, we decided, all right, these are going to be for Dan and Jen.

This was going to be an orchard.

This was gonna be a wide open area so we could plant fruit trees here.

As the time went by and I wanted more space, and we had other people who wished to garden with us, we moved through here.

And the third section of the garden going up the hill was because this wasn't even enough.

We wanted more beds, and so we made it.

Went up the hill and made even more beds.

We're trying a variety of things.

We're always experimenting.

I find that the root crops do better in the soil rather than in a raised bed.

The raised beds do better for lettuce, radishes.

The peas are doing fine up there.

And you'll see in the third tier we've used galvanized raised bed.

They look like a stock tank, but they are actually a raised bed for gardeners.

We found that doesn't work as well.

It keeps the temperature too warm for the plants to really thrive the way they need to.

But we will keep experimenting.

I'm learning even at this age, it's all a part of the experiments that we go through.

- [Mary] What do you do with all of the produce?

- For the most part, the produce that I raise goes to Salvation Army, the local food shelf, or Garrison Food Shelf.

We have a lot of need in Crow Wing County for fresh vegetables in the summertime for the families that just are not getting enough food to eat.

It's my greatest joy besides the flowers, is to be able to take a load of 5 or 10 or 15 pounds into Salvation Army a couple times a week.

- [Mary] Who helps you do all the harvesting?

- [Coralee] I harvest mostly on my own, just picking tomatoes or digging up a hill of potatoes, or picking the green beans.

If my daughter is here, she does some of the harvesting.

My granddaughter has a few times.

For the most part, I'm the one that does the harvesting to take to the food shelf.

- [Mary] Now, I noticed that you have some flowers planted in here and around the edges too.

What is the purpose of that?

- Probably the largest purpose is so that we've got something for the pollinators.

That they're going to be happy to be here.

We have a friend who has her beehives on the edge of the property.

And of course, we see the honeybees around.

I'm a monarch lover.

Want to have something where the monarchs are going to be flying in.

And besides the fact that they're separating one garden from another and they look beautiful, they're also doing a job for the pollinators.

- [Mary] Well, I think when we walked over here, I thought I saw even another garden area too.

Is there another one?

- [Coralee] There is another garden area.

The original, which we call the Green Garden.

It's only called the Green Garden because we painted all of the post green as we started out with that.

And we still have the same strawberries except of course, they've grown and I've started out with new ones or the runners and so on.

So, we've got strawberries right from the very beginning.

We have onions, lots of onions and tomatoes in that garden.

And then, flowers all around the outside edge, inside as well as outside.

The flowers on the inside are the lilies that we used to have in the large flower garden that the deer ate.

As soon as they were ready to bloom, the deer would eat the butt off.

So, we decided that they needed to be safe, so we moved them all into the Green Garden.

- [Mary] Well, this is absolutely fabulous.

I think you had mentioned you also have some theme gardens and you have a shed or a barn.

Can we see all of those?

- [Coralee] You certainly can.

(soft bright music) - I have a question.

Are there flowers that I can incorporate into my cooking?

- So, there are lots of edible flowers and we're standing here at the food scape, at the Farm at the Arb, the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, where we have planted an edible landscape.

But better than that, it actually combines the beauty of plants with their edibility.

And edible flowers are one of those kinds of plants that we try to really incorporate into these landscapes for the beauty as well as being able to eat them.

So, some of the flowers that you can eat and easily grow in your Minnesota garden are certainly herbs.

So herbs, flower, if we allow them to flower.

Things like mint, sweet basil, lemon basil.

They're all great options.

Even lavender flowers can be eaten.

You can use them to make teas or you can eat them fresh in salads.

Other plants that are great for tea in particular are things like anise hyssop, which is a wonderful plant, a beautiful pollinator plant.

Lots of bee activity, and it grows well into the fall season.

Other options are nasturtiums.

Nasturtiums can be all sorts of bright colors from a lovely pink or a lovely creamy color all the way to bright yellows, golds, reds and oranges.

They have a peppery flavor and their leaves are also edible as well.

So, a great addition, really a fun surprise to put into your salads as you have friends over for dinner.

Another plant that you may not be familiar with is called calendula or pot marigold.

This is a bright gold flower.

Again, similar to the nasturtiums, they come in colors of creamy color all the way up to a really dark, bright, brilliant orange.

And you can take the petals off of that plant and go ahead and sprinkle them into a salad.

They have a little bit of a citrusy bite to them, but they're really a beautiful addition to a lot of our flowers and plants.

- [Narrator] "Ask The Arboretum Experts" has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to welcoming, informing, and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research, and education.

(soft rhythmic music) - [Mary] This is such a beautiful building.

What do you use it for?

- [Coralee] Oh, Mary, here where you see the windows in the front, we start the seedlings there.

We have five shelf mechanisms that we bring in, set them up in front of the windows in the winter, start our little plants there.

In the barn part, there are no windows, so it's complete darkness in there.

It has its own heater, and so I can set the thermostat a little bit lower in there where the other one is higher for the seedlings.

And I store my calla bulbs, my canna bulbs, my gladiolus bulbs.

Almost everything in the garden has been started either from a seed, from a tuber, from a corn, whatever.

We do most of that.

- [Mary] How many plants do you start?

- [Coralee] Okay, this year, the seeds between my daughter and I, we started about 2,500 little seedlings.

This would be the veggies or the annual flowers.

I'm thinking my last count on the callas was in the neighborhood of 50.

The dahlias probably about 20.

Cannas probably over a hundred of those.

And about 60 of the glads.

So, and it's just ideal temperature.

I have rolling carts with drawers.

And so, once I've harvested the tubers and the bulbs and so on in the fall, they go into those drawers.

I leave the canna bulbs on the rolling shelves just to dry out first.

And then I just, I put a piece of burlap in the drawer, and then just lay the canna bulbs in there.

The calla put in like a sawdust, or shavings.

I have shavings in the drawers and I put them in the shavings.

My dahlia bulbs, I wrap in a plastic wrap, which is the new way to do them, I guess.

So, I've had really good luck with that.

- [Mary] Well, I see that you have some beds around the side of your barn too.

Tell me a little about those.

- Okay, so in the front of the windows we decided we would have little 2 by 2 wooden boxes for herbs.

So we've got rosemary, lavender, some mint.

And then as you go around the barn towards the back, I have my White Garden.

And it's called the White Garden because everything that's in it is white.

I have white milkweed plant, I have white flocks.

Of course, I have to have beautiful little white petunias or large white petunias.

And then, I have another raised bed to the back of the barn where I have moss roses.

It stands about this tall, so that it's just at deer height, of course.

So, I have to cover it every night.

- [Mary] Your place is so stunning and so beautiful.

Do you get a lot of visitors?

- I do.

We have visitors maybe two weeks before Memorial Weekend because we've already, the irises are blooming and we've got some color all through the summer.

People stop and come.

And probably one of the more fun encounters I've had was I looked towards the swing over there.

And in front of the swing was a blanket, and a mom and a dad and grandparents and about three youngsters.

Just settled in there, looking over the garden.

Oh, that's so fun.

And then I've had people have important photos taken in the gazebo.

But we have people stopping in all the time.

It's fun.

I love it.

(giggles) - [Mary] I can understand why this would be such a destination garden.

Are there some that the children like the most?

- Oh yes!

In the beginning, my granddaughter was six years old and she loved fairies.

And so we started out calling the entire thing the Fairy Garden.

Over the years, I purchased or received as gifts, fairies.

I believe I have four dozen fairies ranging in size from 2 inches to 14, 16 inches tall.

They are throughout all of the garden beds.

And under the large tree there is a fairy village with homes and bridges, and little, tiny fairies all around the trunk of the tree.

And so, the children that come here love it.

They love going to look for their fairy because they've chosen one.

- [Mary] Do you use your beautiful gardens for educational purposes too?

- [Coralee] I'm a Crow Wing County master gardener.

I've been a master gardener for 13 years.

So, it's always fun to share experience with others and help them learn.

Certainly because of the problem with the monarch butterfly, I always like to talk about the importance of the milkweed plants.

We have a lot of, it looks like a wild area, but there are swamp milkweed, regular milkweed.

And again, one more thing for the kids because they love to find those caterpillars.

It just comes with the territory, it would be to have a novice gardener gardening with us and being able to answer questions.

Even for education of myself and some of us who know more about gardening, we did a tomato experiment with planting five varieties, five each of each variety in five different areas.

So, I like to water my tomatoes with gallon jugs where you fill the water jug up and the water comes out.

We used silver foil under one group of them.

We used nothing under one group.

Red foil under another one.

All of which supposedly were going to do one thing or another for those tomatoes.

The tomatoes with the highest production, and I did not cheat were my tomatoes with the gallon water jugs just in the raw dirt.

So, that was an educational piece for myself and for Dan and Jen because they were in on the experiment.

- [Mary] Well, this has been so beautiful.

Thank you so much for letting us come and see your beautiful flowers and barn and gardens.

- [Coralee] You are so welcome.

I'm happy to have hosted you here today.

(gentle rhythmic music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden," is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of Truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative, proud to be powering Acira.

Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm.

A nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden."

A community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(soft bright music)