(gentle upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Oklahoma Gardening" is a production of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the land grant mission of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University dedicated to improving the quality of life of the citizens of Oklahoma through research-based information.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing.

Today on the best of "Oklahoma Gardening," What better way to spend a winter day than to remember the beauty of the Botanic Garden at OSU when it was in full swing.

Don't worry.

Spring will be here before you know it, but until then, here's a little inspiration as you do some winter garden planning.

(shovel scraping) - Hey, everyone, we're glad that you are here on your virtual tour of the botanic garden.

We, of course, wish you were here in person, but we're happy to have you regardless.

I wanna tell you first a little bit about this space because this is somewhat new in the last year or so.

We've started putting plants out here for sale.

So, if you happen to come visit, you might wanna check out this spot.

That is Cowboy Kitty up there that's working hard, obviously, but he's our resident fe-lion that keeps our mouse population down.

So, anyway, we wanted to share a little bit about the botanic garden.

I know some of you probably have been here, and some of you might not have ever seen this place.

We are just located west of Stillwater's main campus off of Highway 51, and you're more than welcome to come at any time.

Our hours are kind of dawn to dusk.

So as we go into the main gardens here, I wanna tell you a little bit about some of the different spaces that you'll be seeing.

So we're standing here on what's kind of touted as being the most technologically advanced lawn.

Dr. Lou Anella, who is a professor here on campus in the horticulture department, and he's also the director of the botanic gardens, really loves irrigation.

So he's kind of gotten into the technology here and has demonstrated some of that right here.

So we have in this space, typically, if you were to irrigate it, you would have spray heads around the perimeter and then some down the center.

But in this space, we only have two spray heads.

There's one right down here that will pop up.

And this one right here is able to water this whole area right here in a radius.

And what's unique about this particular spray head is when it pops up, instead of it throwing the water a set amount at 10 or 15 feet, it's going to change that radius based off of the perimeter.

And you can mark that on your iPhone.

And so it's very techie if you're into that sort of thing.

So what's neat about this is it will spray the 15 feet, and then when you've marked the perimeter as a sidewalk, it will bring in that radius, that spray, and it will not get the sidewalk wet.

And so you can see how kind of jagged our sidewalk is here and how it varies with the distance.

And it will come all the way down to what is about four feet of a spray distance here.

While this is a little bit more expensive, this particular head, you can see that you won't have to put as many spray heads in on this sort of a system.

The other thing, too, is you don't have to trench as much because you're just putting water to one spray head versus around the whole perimeter.

Now, when we do demonstrate it, depending on the winds, we do have Oklahoma winds that still will catch some of that water, and it might blow it on the sidewalk.

As we walk along here, there's another thing that's techie about this lawn.

And right now he's sleeping, but we have Frank Eaton Grass over there.

If you don't know who Frank Eaton is, that is the name of Pistol Pete.

And so Frank Eaton over here will dock himself when he needs to be charged.

If you're familiar with the Roombas, basically we have a Roomba for mowing our lawn.

A lot of people are concerned about the safety of it.

Obviously we were when we first brought him out here.

It's very safe.

You cannot pick it up.

It's too heavy.

And even if somebody tried to get their fingers under there, it would just maybe make a paper-cut sort of a cut on you.

So what it is is it's really not mowing the grass.

It's just gradually trimming the grass all the time, and it mows this whole space here.

So the reason why it knows its perimeters is basically like one of those pet wireless senses.

So we have a cord buried around the perimeter of the grass here.

So behind me here as we walked around is our Oklahoma Proven Garden.

So we have a lot of Oklahoma Proven plants.

If you're not familiar with that program, it's been going for 20-plus years now.

Every year they've picked an annual, a perennial, a woody shrub, and also a tree.

- And so if you're new to Oklahoma or as master gardeners, you might get people asking about, what plants are good for Oklahoma.

This is a really good go-to list to identify plants that do well, after 20 years and picking four to five plants each year, it's quite an extensive list now.

So we've got annuals and perennials.

We've got catmint in here, salvia greggii.

We've got some euphorbia, diamond frost euphorbia.

We don't have all of them on display here, but we try to rotate them through here.

We also have tecoma, which is in the pot behind us, and then our Arizona Cypress tree, which is one of our trees that we like to showcase here in Oklahoma.

So a lot of times people want that blue color from blue cupressus, but blue cupressus don't really handle our heat too well here in Oklahoma.

So Arizona Cypress is another good tree that works well, and will provide you with that blue color.

So, and before we go to our next garden, I wanna introduce somebody new here.

This is Lynda Carrier.

She is our new garden manager.

So Jane Carter, who's been here for 10 years, recently, retired this spring.

And so we're happy to welcome Lynda Carrier, who has been with OSU for a couple of days.

- 21 years.

- 21 years.

So she's been here quite a while.

She's been on the research side of things, doing a lot of research down at Perkins with Dr. Lynn Brandon Burger in vegetables and things like that.

And, but is a gardener at heart.

- Thank you.

- Good to see you Lynda.

As we move along here, this is what we call our, Tri B Garden.

Tri B, standing for birds and butterflies and bees.

So this is sort of our pollinator garden.

You can see we've got a good mix of flowering perennials and annuals in here.

This is one of the cat's whiskers plants.

And then we also have cestrum up there, which is the nice kind of pale orange.

We've got some Turks Caps mixed in here, and then the bat-face cuphea down here, which is a nice purple red.

It gets its name because it looks like a little bat face on there.

So as we go through this garden, I always like to tell people, it looks a little bit different than maybe some of the other botanic gardens that you've gone to.

This originally started as the Studio Gardens for Oklahoma Gardening.

Over the last 30 plus years, it has sort of morphed into its own Botanic Garden, which is great.

We enjoy all the different people that come in, but now we still use this as a studio gardens.

And so what you see here is basically different sets, or vignettes for us to shoot our show.

And so while at a regular botanic garden, you might see larger spaces that kind of transition a little bit better.

We have a Japanese Garden right next to a Patio Garden, right next to an Annual kind of theme garden.

And so each one of these are different sets, if you will.

The Japanese Garden is a beautiful design that's been here for again a decade or so at least if not longer.

The Patio Garden is a nice mix of Mediterranean and succulent plants.

A very arid look, so something that can really take a hot dry climate.

And then of course our Color Garden is just a beautiful garden that really displays all the tropical colors.

And it's just a nice showcase.

So some of these gardens will rotate out over the years, but some of them will tend to stay the same as well.

But this allows us the flexibility to do different segments on the show.

So as we come out of those three kind of set gardens, we come into another space that we call the concept's garden.

This particular space is kind of my little playground.

And in order to be able to do different things for the show, sometimes we have to do things in advance of when they actually would be done in the garden so that it has that lead time in order to air at an inappropriate time for the viewer to be able to do it in their own garden.

So this is kind of that space for us to tear things up and do different projects and stuff.

And so anything that you've seen on the show, a lot of times you'll find in this space.

It might not look like a lot of projects, but it actually represents probably 40 different segments, anywhere from putting instill edging to creating a DG, crushed granite, patio space, to keyhole gardens over there.

This is our spiral herb garden, two different types of raised beds, container projects.

We've got a lot of different types of projects in here.

So we're working on doing some signage that links QR codes to these actual videos so that when people will be able to come, you'll just be able to scan that and actually pull up the video while you're looking at the project out here.

So as we come across here, this is constantly changing.

So, it might be here one year and it's not gonna be here next year.

So that's something to check out.

There's always gonna be something new here.

- As we come across here, one thing you'll see here is our, one of our smaller All-America Selection trial gardens.

This was a quilt garden last year, with everything going on, and we just kind of put some AAS plants in here, and so these are some annuals, so this bed will again change.

All-America Selection is a program that we're a part of, where we display different plants that they have proven throughout the country work really well.

So if you see those signs, that's a good example of another plant that does well in our region, so you might check that out also.

As we go down here, we'll take a look at the sun perennial garden, which gets a lot of full, early morning sun, and high noon sun, it gets a little bit of shade in the afternoon, but it's got a nice display of Asclepias and other sun perennials.

As we walk around from our sun perennial garden, you'll walk past our vegetable garden, and also our new orchard, and fruit garden, which is surrounding the fenced in vegetable garden.

So that's down here, it's really nice way to get kind of different ideas on how to garden, and make a vegetable garden, and what's in season in what time.

And again, all of this serves as our studio, so when I'm doing vegetable gardening, that's when I'm down there.

Here next to us is our rock garden, and this particular garden actually, one of our previous hosts, Steve Owens put in when he was hosting, and it's still a nice example of a rock garden.

Then as we come over here to our left side, there's a lot of, kind of hidden areas back here under our Cedar trees.

We've got a nice playhouse for kids, we've got a water pump feature, and we've got it planted with lots of color 'cause kids love color.

They kind of like these weeping things, and spaces to hide, and so kids can really enjoy getting in here and playing, there's some swings underneath those cedar trees and things like that, so if you have children, this is definitely a place to check out, I know my little girl always enjoys coming here.

So as we come in here, next to us is the herb garden.

And this actually just went through a renovation about six years ago now, I think right before I came on as host, and it tripled in size, and so it's really nice example of how to really set off those herbs, make them like a kitchen garden.

We have the focal point of the lemon grass, and then behind us here, we all love mint, but if you've ever grown mint, you know you need to keep it in a container, and so what's neat about this is to see if you can guess which mint it is you're smelling, so every year we buy these in, so we know that they haven't changed or anything like that, 'cause sometimes mints can change as they evolve if you let them just spread, but these are the true mints, so we've got Cotton Candy, Spearmint, Apple Mint, and this is also a way of protecting them so that, protecting the rest of the garden I should say, so it doesn't get too aggressive.

We have some different other herbs in here, we've got some silvery ones like the Curry, the Cardoon, and the Fishbone Lavender, and then there's one I want to show you over here, I've been meaning to do a segment on it, but I just haven't, and it's really not looking its best right now, so forgive me, but this is actually called Cardinal Basil, and I just love it because look at this flower that you get on it, I know a lot of times we grow Basil obviously for the foliage to add into different culinary things, or into your water, but look at that flower, it's just beautiful on here.

So one you might want to try if you're into herbs is Cardinal Basil, and it does have a very Basil fragrance to it.

And then as we come around, you can head on into the water garden area where we've got some goldfish darting about.

So as we walk between the water garden and the Japanese garden, you get this lovely shade garden, and this is one of the favorite places for visitors to come find, especially in August, because it's just amazing how a shade garden can just lower the temperature.

It's also quieter, you hear more insects kind of making noises in here.

And then we have a few water features around that are just a soft bubbler to kind of create this relaxing atmosphere.

So I know one of the big questions that master gardeners often get is what to do under those trees that are sucking all that moisture up and stuff, so here is a good example of what plants work well under tree roots, so we've got a couple of different trees, we've got some Ginkgos, we've got a Birch, we've got some Ash trees, different things like that, but you can see we've got a mix of both annuals, perennials, and woody, shrubby plants underneath these trees.

And there's still a lot of color under here, while you might not get the flowers all the time with a shade garden, you get a lot of color in the vegetative foliage, so that's something that's important to pay attention to when you're shade gardening, and this is a great place to get those ideas.

(bells ringing) (bell rings) - So one thing you'll notice that's new about the west side of the garden here is if you normally come in on that north entrance to our gravel parking lot, you will notice this new, nice pavers sidewalk.

And so a lot of times when we've had visitors out here, they have a hard time walking on the gravel.

And so this is a really nice addition and what's even more exciting about this is it wasn't just done by some contractor, this actually was a class project.

And that's another interesting feature about the Botanic Gardens here at OSU is that so many of the projects and gardens that you see are part of student projects and class projects.

This is a teaching garden.

And Cowboy always finds us when we're on camera never fails, but at the teaching garden.

And so it's really nice that you see the work of the students and they're getting something out of it as well.

So we have a new chicken coop that I wanna mention.

Going forward we're gonna kind of talk about some of the newer things that are happening here at the gardens.

And that's one of 'em.

If you have come previously, you might remember the old chicken moat that was down on the east side, but this is something that's new.

That chicken moat was 20 years old, it was time to refresh it and give those chickens an upgrade.

This is a new addition too it's about two years old and if you're a fan of the gardens and Oklahoma gardening, you may remember back probably 20 years ago, we had a train garden and it was just so popular.

And so we decided to bring back at the train garden.

This has two different train loops and just it's quite popular, especially amongst the kids and obviously Harry Potter fans as well.

And so you'll see this running on our open houses on Saturdays.

We usually have it running during game days also, and then any special events that we have going on.

So this is a fun little feature to the garden.

Now as we walk along our path a little bit more, there's a couple of other features I wanna mention, and one of them is with all of our events that we've been having out here, there's been a lot more public coming, which is a great thing, we enjoy the public we are a public garden after all, but we like to have different events to host for them.

And one of those things is our concert series.

So we always have concerts in the spring and the fall, but the people will line up well not line up, but bring their picnics, bring their blankets, bring their chairs and kind of set up underneath those sycamore trees and the band will be here under Laura's the band stand.

And the band stand is named for our very own field producer, Laura Paine, who has been working for 20 plus years in that capacity, as well as being the volunteer and education coordinator here at the Botanic Gardens.

When it's not being used by the concerts, a lot of people bring their lunch and enjoy the shade here.

And then behind us here, you might remember is the sensory garden.

So this sensory garden has five different rooms.

Each room represents one of the senses that we have.

And so as you walk through there, there's going to be different plants that kind of speak to those senses.

So you'll notice between each room as you enter into the next room, the threshold, the texture of the threshold changes, and also you'll feel that temperature change as you enter in again, highlighting that something is changing about my environment and I'm going into a different space.

So that's a neat garden to kind of check out.

In the sound garden, we have plants that kind of rustle and make different sounds.

Obviously in the site garden, we have a lot of color in there.

The touch garden has a lot of different plants that have texture to 'em.

And so it's just a fun place to discover and explore plants in a different way than you might have thought about them previously.

So one of the newest features here at the Botanic Garden, because of all the events that are happening and the public that's been coming in is we've had a lot of people say your gravel road is not the best way to get in here depending on whether, it's kind of a tough situation.

So now you don't have to worry about the weather when you come here, as far as the roads go because we've got this new, beautiful, paved parking lot just off of Highway 51, that's our south entrance.

As we come into the gardens and again, this is all south of what is the main gardens that you might be familiar with.

We've established a new collection of plans here, and this is called the Carl Whitcomb collection or the Whitcomb collection.

Dr. Carl Whitcomb was a former professor here at OSU and really got into plant breeding and research and ended up going out on his own starting the Lacebark Incorporated Company and now sells a lot of different plants that he has personally bred and he's right here in Stillwater too.

And so we know that these do well here in Oklahoma, of course one of our popular plants and that he's known for are the crepe myrtles, but there's some other plants that he's breeding as well, including rose of Sharon and then this outlay of his city slicker river birches that do well in our heat.

Next to the Whitcomb collection.

We also have a garden labyrinth.

Now, a lot of times when we say labyrinth, we might mistakenly interchange the word labyrinth for a maze, but a garden labyrinth is different than a garden maze.

A maze is meant to confuse you.

There's a lot of different options.

Do I go left?

Do I go right?

There's a dead end and that sort of thing, I labyrinth, there's actually only one pathway for you to follow and it's a set path.

You have to follow that and the intention is not for you to think about which way to go.

- But to think about and relax, and to reflect on a situation that you might be thinking about.

So it's more of a meditative experience as you follow that path to the center of the labyrinth.

We did a segment on this actually that you might be familiar with with the psychology department.

So it's interesting how even something that seems completely removed from horticulture is connected to plants itself.

So this is one labyrinth it's just made out of mow Bermuda grass.

And so it's a nice little feature and of course, kids love running through it, whether it's amaze or labyrinth.

Now next to the labyrinth across the path here, we have our Prairie restoration project.

We are after all in Oklahoma, we're in the middle of the Prairie.

And so we wanna showcase those Prairie plants.

So we go from the shore of grass Prairie.

That's near our vegetable and orchard all the way up to a tall grass Prairie.

So we've got several different grasses and Forbes mixed in here.

And we work with the Natural Resource Ecology and Management department to actually manage this garden space to make sure there's no noxious weeds that are getting in and that it's only appropriate plants.

This is also a lot of student volunteer that kind of helped manage this as well.

Here we are in another one of our newest features, and this is known as the Tree Walk Village, which actually just got installed back last winter.

So a lot of people are just now discovering this and this was funded through a grant.

And what's neat about this is it is three different platforms, but only this first platform is actually got pillars.

The other two are anchored to the tree, properly of course, we are a botanical garden.

So they're anchored to the tree so that you really get that feeling of being up in the tree.

And this is just a neat way.

Again, a different way to observe a garden.

A lot of times we don't actually get up into the canopy of the tree and get to experience it.

And what's even more exciting is there are funds in place now to expand this.

So we'll be looking forward to that in the future.

This is again, just off of our south entrance from highway 51.

(upbeat music) So that about covers our garden tour for today.

We've gone from the back door to our new front door entrance here off of highway 51.

And we enjoy touring with you guys, and we hope that someday soon we can do it in person.

And again, you're always welcome here, whether it's off of our highway 51 entrance or our north entrance, come visit us at the Botanic Garden at OSU.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Next week, we focus on the versatility of trees, large and small, there's a location for them all.

To find out more information about show topics, as well as recipes, videos, articles, back sheets, and other resources, including a directory of local extension offices.

Be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

And we always have great information, answers to questions, photos, and gardening discussion on your favorite social media as well.

Join in on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You can find this entire show and other recent shows as well as individual segments on our Oklahoma gardening YouTube channel.

Tune in to our okgardening classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous posts.

Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our studio gardens, and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful still water gem.

we would like to thank our generous underwriter, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

Additional support is also provided by Pond Pro Shops, Greenleaf Nursery, and the Garden Debut Plants, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, and Tulsa Garden Club.

(upbeat music)