Eric comments that many of our viewers don't have an acre to plant plants. What if they only have a brick courtyard or a patio? Small spaces are very common nowadays. We don't have large estates. And a couple of things he noticed here that he thinks are great solutions for those kinds of spaces are, of course, growing in containers. Containers are so good for things well beyond annuals, perennials. And then also raised beds. Eric started building raised beds years and years ago and realized this is a wonderful solution because in his neck of the woods it’s all red clay. So even if you do have a patch of ground to grow in it doesn’t mean that conditions will be ideal. And a raised bed is basically a way to go in any kind of space regardless of the environment. Here Vaughan has 6 X 6’s that he has built 3 or 4 layers up, more than enough depth for the roots of a camellia, which is a medium sized tree or large shrub and they’re thriving in this environment. We could vegetable garden there, put tomatoes there, grow pretty much anything there. Eric thinks of these as a semi-mobile type of gardening.
Vaughan’s dad really was one of the first ones, learning from Mr. Rubel, who did container gardening. Particularly container growing of camellias. And the way they did that was by utilizing a specific kind of soil. Vaughan recalls it was three parts pine bark, one part peat, one part sand. And, of course, a little lime as necessary and 8-8-8 is necessary. And that is the constituency of his container gardening and the raised beds.
By Dan Heims, President, Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Photographs courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
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