 And we're going to talk about gardening trends and, you know, our gardens today are not the same as grandma's garden, right? They're probably smaller and we've got more containers, lower maintenance probably than our gardens of a hundred years ago. And Barb also wrote a really nice thing about from edibles to succulents to pollinators. Let's look at what the experts say will be the hot gardening trends in 2015. And the person who monitors the trends at NDSU for gardening is Barb Leskowitz. She is our research specialist. She is in charge of the Fallon trial. So she's always looking for the new and latest, the most improved stuff to help us have a great garden. So let's welcome Barb and find out about the trends coming up. Thank you for the nice introduction, Tom. I will try to speak loudly, so if you cannot hear me in the back, raise your hand and I'll try to project better. And those of you in the front, I'm sorry if I'm too loud, but I want to make sure that, oh, Harleen's back there going in, I can't hear you. Anyway, so we're going to talk about some garden trends. I have ten and I know there's more and there's probably something I'm not going to cover that is of interest to some of you and that's fine because I'll cover that at the very last slide. Now, the first thing I want to talk about is the succulents. And you cannot look anywhere these days, it seems like, without seeing the succulents somewhere. And they've actually, this isn't that new I would say for the last couple of years. They've been popular not only in our landscapes. There are some that are hardy for our zone three, zone four area. So in POTS, especially in POTS patio plants, they're really quite popular, and even in floral design. And the nice thing about using them in floral design, especially if you're using them in like wedding work, is that if it's in a bridal bouquet or something like that, the bride can rip them out and then have this memory of her wedding whereas with regular flowers, you don't get that possibility. So there's really some fun things we can do with the succulents. So let's just take a quick look at what we mean when we're talking about succulent plants. And basically, they're plants that will store water in either their leaves or their stems. They're very easy to grow. And that's one of the keys here that most of them, it's hard to kill them unless you give them too much care, over water them, then they often will rot. They have low water needs, a wide temperature range. And one thing that they almost all have in common though is that they like bright light. They're going to do better in a brighter light situation. They're also often slower growing, so we can keep them in a smaller container for a long time without having them get out of control, which some host plants can get really big fast and then what do you do? And there's really a variety of colors and shapes and textures in this category. So you can do a lot of different things without having to worry about flowers and that sort of thing. So, and just briefly, all cacti or succulents, they store their water in their stems, but not all succulents are cacti. And I'm going to talk about non-cacti succulents because they're easier to work with. I mean, who wants to work with things like, some people do, some people love cacti and they will have them. And that's great. Some fun ones and they have really pretty flowers, but for me, we have a collection in a greenhouse and I brushed against one too many times. It's like, you know, we're going to forget about those for today. Now some succulents are already very popular as host plants and again, anybody that thinks they can't grow a house plant, they have not tried Sanzibaria, that plant is one that will survive a wide range of anything. It's called mother-in-law's tongue, I'm sure you guys are familiar with that, which mother-in-law's can be very nice, but it's just kind of funny how these common names happen. Now that's kind of the regular Sanzibaria, there's also one called a bird's nest Sanzibaria, which is smaller and will fit into a smaller spot as opposed to the regular Sanzibaria which can get quite tall, but it's kind of skinny. EpiRomia is another commonly seen house plant, not only the variegated kind here, there's ones with smaller foliage and ones with just straight green foliage. And the Christmas cactus, not really a cactus, but we call it that because it does, what we see on the Christmas cactus is the stem holding the water and then it blooms, there's a Thanksgiving cactus and an Easter cactus and the Christmas cactus, but we see those quite often as well, so already we see succulents used as house plants, but the industry right now is focusing on some different types of succulents beyond the ones that we've seen for many, many years. And one of the genera that we see are the Horworthias, which come, there's a lot of Horworthias, these were just some that we had in our plant collection that I took some quick pictures of, they typically have that rosette formation, the one on the far left is called a Zebra Horworthia, and I forget the others, but they're again just to show you the wide variety of colorations that we get just within one genus with the plant. Now they are slow growing, but some of these as they mature do get kind of large, not only these but some others, and the more optimum conditions we give them the faster they will grow, so sometimes we like to not give them optimum conditions so we can keep them smaller and more contained in a container. The Echeveria is another common category that we see, again we get that rosette formation. We actually, I should have taken a picture, we have an Echeveria at the greenhouse that's actually like four feet tall, so that's one that does get quite big, so you have to be kind of particular if you're trying to do a smaller garden with some of these, they can get big although hopefully they'll stay a little smaller. And the Cinesios, again a very wide and diverse group of plants, on the left is one called the Blue Chalk Sticks, which has that nice pretty blue coloration, and on the right is the plant called the String of Pearls, which is nice in pots because you can get it to kind of spill out of the pot, so you know they always talk about as you designing pots, you have a filler and a filler and a thriller and all those, so this would be your spiller coming out of your pot, and again a smaller plant that grows a little more slowly, the Blue Chalk Sticks might be your filler that fills things up a little bit more. And then just some others, and if you Google succulents you're going to get a ton of different pictures and they're very photogenic, so again this is just a small, small grouping of them. On the far left is Calico Kitten Crassula, that has pink and gray and kind of light green coloration, the Crassula is the same as our Jade plants, but just to show the difference, I'm sorry can you guys not see, just to show you the different again range of things we can get within each gender, and that's another one that kind of spills out and stays a little more sprawling. The Graptopedalum, the Ghost Plant, is an interesting one, looks like some Escheverias, but this, again we have this one in the greenhouse and it was blooming, I was almost going to call it an Escheveria, but it had a flower on it, and that's really the best way to identify anything, so I could tell by the flower that it was the Graptopedalum or the Ghost Plant, and that's a really interesting one too because those, the foliage pieces will fall off and you can root another plant really quite easily from that petal, but that's also a problem with that plant is that it's really easy for the foliage pieces to fall off. And then on the far right is the Burl's Tail, and again this one in our plant collection for people that come through at the greenhouse, that's one that always catches people's eyes because the one that we have is like three feet trailing and it's just really interesting, but it's another one that the little foliage will fall off quite easily, but then you can get them to root so you can get more plants. And then, so all those are not hardy here, if you wanted to have them outside you'd have to have them in a patio container, bring them in in the winter or live in Arizona or Texas or someplace warm, but we do have some nice succulents that are hardy to Zone 3 or 4, which is typically what we like to have around here in North Dakota. On the far left is Sedum Camp Shattacum, that's more of a ground cover Sedum. Autumn Joy Sedums are more upright and the Autumn Joy especially are nice because the foliage is very nice and then in the fall they'll get the nice pretty pink blooms on them. In the middle we have the Henenshix plant, Sempervivum, which can almost be weedy if it goes unchecked, but that's another kind of old fashioned heirloom type plant. And then the Yucca Glaucas are very hardy, we have some on campus. They're a little harder to work with though because they're kind of pokey and so you have to be careful where you plant them, but definitely the Sedums, a very large genus that you could probably do a really nice bed just with all the different growths of the different species there. Okay, that brings us to trend number two, which again, I think it's a continuing trend with a lot of people and that's low maintenance, gardening, gyroscaping, native plantings, whatever you want to call it. So this is when we're trying to plant landscapes that don't need basically a lot of water or a lot of care. That's me, I'm a lazy gardener, if I can put a flower garden in and not worry about it, that's what I want to do. Oftentimes we like to go with the native plants on something like this because they've grown up around here and they can grow here, but there's a lot of non-native plants too that will grow very well, so don't feel like you're limited to just using the prairie plants we have around here. So some growing tips when you are trying to do something like this. One important thing I know that Steve mentioned, match the plants to the site. There's nothing more frustrating than taking something that loves the shade and putting it into a hot garden, a prairie garden or something that likes the prairie and then you try to grow it in a woodland situation. You have to be aware of what the plants want. It's very important. And even though our goal is to have a garden that's low water usage, until they're established we're going to have to put water on them so that they do get their roots out and that they will be able to survive without the water. So initially they're going to use water. One thing that's recommended is to use mulch to help conserve the moisture, help keep the weeds down. Personally, I don't use a lot of mulch. I have mulch as its good times and bad times. And for me I just, I can deal with everything without the mulch. So I'm not a big recommender of mulch. But for some of these beds it's very useful. And also weeds. People think if they're putting in a native prairie garden, they're just going to be able to plant it. Most plants are going to thrive and grow and we're not going to have to do any maintenance on it at all. But trust me, the dandelions will come in, the aggressive, some of the asters can be very aggressive, some of the golden rods. You're going to have to go in on a yearly basis and take out things that are too aggressive or coming in. So it's not going to be a no maintenance garden by any means. But hopefully low maintenance. And I just want to mention on our heart gardens on the west side of campus I have started a metal garden. And that's kind of ties in with a few of these trends here. But a metal garden is getting a bed of native grasses established and then putting in forbs or the flowering plants. And it's, the one I've done, as you can see, has a very wild look to it. You can do more non-wild looks to it. And if you're a gardener that likes everything in a row and very organized, you're not going to like this metal look because it is very natural. But I was kind of excited this year and I know people across the state can't see. It's been about three years since I put these in and I see some volunteers coming up within the plants that I already put in. And I kind of like to see that except the heliopsis here that's volunteering one little plant last fall. There might be a whole patch of it this summer so I'm going to have to keep my eye on it. But I want to see more things come up that I haven't put in. And I'm hoping that this spring I can burn it down because that's the best management for something like a metal garden every few years to try to burn it down like a grass prairie fire would do. But since this is on campus and in the middle of town, I'm not sure I can do that but I'm going to try. If I can't burn it, I'm just going to go in with a weed with a DR trimmer and cut everything back because I have not done that for a couple years and it needs to probably get cleaned out a little bit. So if you want to come and see a metal garden, come to the bed this summer and it's going to change. The nice thing about these two is they change over the seasons. There's any good perennial garden shit. So just some specific plants for this kind of garden and this is by no means inclusive. There are so many plants. But the echinaceas, which is on the left or the right, Russian sages. Again, you get that nice gray, blueish, green foliage. Although they are a little bit larger. So you have to be prepared to manage that. The sedums again are great. Leatrous, Heliopsis, Salvia, Purple Prairie Clover. I really like that one too down in the corner. And what I did last year too, I've been collecting seeds so that I can try to start some more stuff in the greenhouse or spread it out of the ones I really like to make sure that they continue growing and that some of the other ones don't choke them out. And then some of the grasses. And again, these are all native to the prairies of North Dakota, Minnesota. Little Bluestem, which is Schizekirium. I've got the genus behind them here. Big Bluestem. So Little Bluestem is about three to four feet high. The big Bluestem is the stuff that was on the prairies. That's like five to six feet tall. That can get quite large. Jewel grass, prairie drop seed, which is more of a delicate, little shorter grass. The switch grass, Panicum, Blue Gramma, and then Psydoge's Gramma. The Blue Gramma is also called Eyelash Grass. It's a smaller one and the seed heads look like little eyelashes. So it gives an interest with the seed head that way. So these are all really good grasses once they're established. You just have to check the heights if you don't want anything really tall. Stay away from the Bluestem if you want something shorter. I would go with the June grasses and the Grammas. Okay, that kind of leads us into the third one, which I have some issues with, and that's going, making our lawn smaller and maybe totally going without a lot. And the reason for that, granted, it's because lawns can be very high maintenance. They can take a lot of fertilizer, a lot of pesticides of some sort, weed killers, that sort of thing. If managed correctly though, that shouldn't be a big problem with the runoff. And I think that's, people are seeing these chemicals applied running off into our waters. And that is a valid problem. But it's, again, they're applied correctly if people don't spread the fertilizer all over everything, like their driveway and their sidewalks. Because that's really where the runoff is coming from is that chemical that gets not on the grass, but on other spots. So there's a management issue there with the homeowners. And I just think there's nothing more relaxing than a spot of turf under a tree where you can, you know, walk in your bare feet in. So I think turf has its purpose. That being said, there is a trend for trying to get away from that higher maintenance thing. But then sometimes, like, I don't think that this particular situation is going to be any lower maintenance than a lawn. Sometimes perennials can also be very high maintenance. But what things that we can do if we're trying to be less of a lawn is people are putting in more patios and pavers. But then again, with the runoff, turf really fokes up a lot of water. And if you're putting in more hardscaping, you know more water is going to run off. We have to turn it down that way. There are some nice ground covers that we can walk on and that will look turf-like without the high maintenance. Again, using more mulches, putting English gardens in your front yard. Again, maybe a little higher maintenance. But there's some nice gardens in town that have that cottage garden look. I'm going with some meadows and even vegetable gardens. Although, if you're in a newer development, there's a lot of rules that sometimes have to follow. So vegetable garden in the front yard might not be allowed. So you really have to make sure. That's why I like the old part of our goal, because you can do anything and get away with it. So that's my stance on that. It is a trend good or bad. And that ties into trend number four, which is organic or sustainable gardening. I myself have a problem with the term organic because for me, organic always meant chemistry and chemicals. And that's really the opposite of what it means now is going without the chemicals. So that's why I have organic in quotes there. But these are all things that I think gardeners do a lot of already. And it's just now becoming trendy to kind of garden this way. So all these things tie in. Low maintenance and lawn free. Reducing our use of chemicals. And that I think is very important. I think that ties in with the correct plant selection. If you have a healthy plant, you're not going to attract insects. It's going to grow good. You're not going to need to apply a lot of chemicals to it. Conserving water and controlling runoffs. So with the rain barrels, that could be a whole another trend. You know, catching the water under your gutter. Controlling the water that does runoff of the land. Again, a nice lawn will soak up a lot of water. Reducing the use of the fossil fuels. So instead of firing up the gas powered trimmer and the gas powered leaf mower and the gas powered mower, let's go out with a hand clipper. It depends on how many acres you have to trim. It's pretty relaxing to go out there with a grass trimmer and just go ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. You know? Or, you know, rake your leaves. We have to be blowing them everywhere. And we used to use one of those real mowers. That, again, that noise is very relaxing and it's actually better for the grass to cut it with that scissor type action. So these are all things that can be done depending on how active you are about doing it. Composting is another way we can be more sustainable in our garden. We think that could, again, be a separate trend. You know, even just taking your kitchen scraps and composting them. And the city of Fargo has composting bins that you can purchase. So the city is trying, at least in Fargo here, the city is trying to make it very easy for people to do that and reduce the load into the landfill. And of course, there's lots of spots you can take your yard waste as well for the city to compost. And then, again, a bear is repeating. Smart plant selection is just going to avoid a whole lot of problems so you don't have to use a lot of the chemicals and that sort of thing. Okay, a bigger topic, cover a little bit more here, is the pollinator garden. Topic number five. And I know Todd talked about bees and whatnot last night. It is a big trend, especially with the bees dying. And it's not just bees though. Pollinators are anything that comes to your garden that will move the pollen around. So it is the bees, it's also the hummingbirds, it's bats, it's what all do I have up there. Bats and mobs, beetles. So anything that will get into those flowers and move the pollen around. Couple sites that I ran into that just have really simple information if you want to go. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a really nice little brochure on the web. And then there's a society called the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Has anybody in Fargo here ever heard of that society? A few of you have. They have the largest pollinator conservation program in the world. They're located in Portland, Oregon. And if you go to Xerces.com, you'll see all the work they're doing. The invertebrates cover the beetles and the bees and the dragonflies and other things like mollusks and crustaceans, anything without a vertebrate basically. So it was an interesting site for me to come across. And the sign here, I believe, is from their society that's their pollinator garden marking. So pollinator friendly practices that as a I was going through, I didn't even realize some of these. One is that you want to have a variety of plants. You want to have plants blooming from the spring all the way to the fall. So there's always some pollen there for them. That makes sense. So pollen is accessible. And a lot of the hybrid flowers have double blooms or triple blooms. So it's hard to get into the pollen. So it's better to go with a species. Plants where the pollen is more accessible. Native plants are often recommended because they'll attract the native bees that are used to those plants. Colors are important. Again, this is not something I knew. Bees will prefer yellow, blue, and purple while butterflies like the reds, the oranges, and the yellows. Shape of the flower is also important. I think we know the hummingbirds with more of the tubular flower whereas bees will land on the flowers. So that's important. And it's also important for your plants to be in groupings. So that they're big enough so that the pollinators can see the plants. You know, one plant here, one plant there might not attract them as much as a huge grouping of the echinacea or the le actress or something like that. And we have to be willing to grow some weeds, especially with the butterflies and the larvae. So the milk weeds are important and the mandolins have a tap for nesting, limiting these to pesticides. Again, that goes back to sustainable gardening. And providing a water source. It's not something I thought about either. And then the industry is catering to this. If you look in some magazines they have special gardens, so you can just buy the package deal. And you're good to go. Another good site from the NRCS-USDA. These are like These are like 86 plants that are conservation plantings and they're usefulness as pollinators. So it's another one you can go visit. Some specific plants here, hisseps, a lot of the herbs. See, I said I wasn't going to talk long. Number six is terrariums, something from the 70s coming back. And again, thanks to things like Pinterest where if you're on Pinterest, there's lots of fun things to do. They can either be enclosed or open. If they're enclosed, you have to watch out to make sure they're not in bright sunlight or they'll heat up. You want to group like plants together. And again, just a wide variety of containers can be used for the terrariums. This is just an interesting story. I found the internet so it must be true. This gentleman in England started this terrarium in 1960. And in 1972 he put a cork in it and didn't do anything with it. And this is what it looks like today. Go to that website if you want to know more. Miniature and fairy gardens. A whole industry devoted to little plants and little things to put in your plants both inside and outdoors. This is, you can see, hostas and whatnot. Edible gardening. Anywhere Esther is going to talk about edible gardening next week, but we're talking edibles in your house, in your perennial beds, in your front yard, in your backyard, anywhere that you can put a tomato or kale. Do it. Garden art. Again, Pinterest. And I'm not employed by Pinterest at all, but that's a website that has wonderful ideas for recycling things for your garden. These are terracotta pots that have been painted and made to look like mushrooms. I've seen a lot of these at the craft shows, old cups and saucers made into flowers. And also garden lighting. This one was some old light fixtures that somebody found at the second hand store and they shoved a bunch of old Christmas lights inside them. Put them in their yard and voila, something fun and interesting. But garden lighting using our outdoors as much as possible is another fun thing to do on their solar lights. There's lights you can make just to make that outdoors more appealing. So, at the very end, don't worry if you don't fall into any of the trends. There's also, you know, square foot gardening and somebody was telling you today about straw bale gardening. There's lots of fun things to do. Just do what you like. If you want it to become a trend, put it on Pinterest and pin it and then everybody will see. There. I'm sorry. And here I thought I was going to be short. I'm worried for a while but you just wrapped it up beautifully. Now we're going to have a brief question and answer session now. Let's get rocking and rolling here. Barb, where is a good source for native plants or seeds? I do have two sources out of Minnesota. One is prairie moon nursery. The other one is prairie restoration. They both have, well, for the people in Fargo, I have a couple of their catalogs if you want to see them during the break. Excuse me, they also have good websites. So that would be two, and again, local sources that are nice. You talked about the string of pearls. How do you propagate that? Can you? Propagating string of pearls is easy. You just cut off one of the things and put it in water or some soil. Most of the succulents are very easy to start. That's encouraging. Here's a sad story. We had a Christmas cactus for 65 years, but now it's wilted horribly. It tried repotting, watering, fertilizing, but nothing seems to help. Any magic here? No. It's so funny because I have a Christmas cactus that my grandmother had, and this Christmas cactus is probably that same age. And I had a similar problem with it where it was wilting. Don't think it likes the Fargo water. I did repot it, and it did perk up. If they tried that, if they have just a little slig of a plant that still looks good, they might want to just start a whole new plant if some of it is still healthy. It's cutting it up, putting it into a lightweight soil, perlite, or even water. That might be the best thing to do. The rescue mission. Here you go. Do you ever give tours of the famous NDSU greenhouse? Yes. But now I don't know if they're talking about the brand-news thinking of wonderful greenhouses. I'm not involved with that. I'm in the old character greenhouse. Which, yes, I give tours of that better in the spring because we have more plants. If you want to see the high-tech, barking, clean greenhouse, you have to talk to somebody else. So Barb, you give tours of your flower trials and like the metal you talked about. So you can just contact Barb directly and set up a time, and she'll be happy to share that with you. And that really helps to have someone like her lead you through those gardens to really show, to let you know all that you're seeing. Why can I not carry German roses over to the next year? I don't know. Okay. Me either. How about a wild prairie crocus be grown in the garden? I don't know. I know. If it's one that's hardy to our zone. Are they grown from seeds, you know? Wow. Little bulb crocus. Well, yeah, but everything can also form seeds, you know. If you're patient, just want to... You want to tell me? You covered Barb. Are the outside plants or inside or both or what? The bulk of them are going to have to be treated as health plans. That very last slide that showed the seed and camp shattacum, the yucca glauca, and I don't need the hen and chicks. Those are all zone hardy. But if you're not sure, ask your whoever you're buying it from or Google it. Google it on the interwebs. Okay. We have a typo. It was not German roses, breaking news. It was German irises. With the problem. That's wrong. She mulches them. Kevin, what are your challenges? I know. We have a huge German iris collection at NDSU, and we've lost a lot. It seems like if we have a really wet April, I lose a lot. And I don't mulch. I don't have the manpower to mulch them all. So it's hard to say without knowing their growing conditions and what they're doing. They're hardy. They are hardy. They're hardy. They need well-drained soil, evidently. Yeah. Okay. Did you say Elizabeth, okay, she wants to know, are we in zone three or zone four? Well, it depends where you are, Elizabeth. I'd say at least 80% of North Dakota is in zone four. Just the top third of the state, top fourth of the state now is zone three. So it depends where you are, Elizabeth. Probably zone four. But you never know. In exposed areas of zone four, you could have some many sad stories of marginally hardy plants. So microclimates do exist. Zone five plants that survive because nobody told them they were supposed to die. Okay. Okay, we got a question here in Fargo. Are the fungus-resistant inpatients available locally? Must be those downy mildew ones. I'm not sure, but I do know that the All-America selections has two 2015 inpatients that are supposed to be resistant to the downy inpatients, downy mildew. I'm not sure that local nurseries, I'm not sure what they're carrying. But I should be getting that inpatients in. It's going to be, all America's selections usually sends me seeds, but this inpatients is vegetatively propagated, so they're going to be sending me plants. So I'm not sure locally what they're going to carry. The New Genes are supposed to be resistant, but they're not, you don't get the same show as you do with the malaria. So check with your local garden centers. And last comment, we have some iris information again. This person recommends stop mulching them. She lost some when they were mulched. So maybe you've got a really...