(melodious ambient music) - Take down (tranquil guitar music) is what I do to my hanging baskets in the fall, escape is what a few of my beans do when I'm picking the crop, a pin is what I use to clip my squash vines to the fence, a grass clipping mat is what I use to mulch the garden, and a near fall is what happens when I trip over one of my tomato cages in the garden.

If you are wondering what all of these wrestling terms have in common with gardening, be sure to join me for today's show.

- [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard & Garden as provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years in the heart of truck country.

Hartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmer's 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 Yakel-Julene in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center and a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

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

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

(melodious ambient music) - I just love it when people call or email me Prairie Yard & Garden show ideas.

Last January, I was actually traveling to Fargo when an email arrived from a friend with a great idea, there was a wrestling coach who developed a love of gardening and had a beautiful yard.

Well, that sounded like a lovely place for us to visit.

so I contacted John Elton from St.

Cloud and he said, sure, come and see.

Welcome John.

- Thank you Mary, it's a pleasure to be here.

- Now tell me how long have you lived at this location?

- We've been here almost 30 years.

We moved here in January of '91.

- And what was your yard like when you moved here?

- Well this was all farm land, so we were like little house on the Prairie, I think this block ended at the street there and there was maybe four or five houses and not a tree, shrub on the place, yeah.

- So where did you start?

- I try to frame out the yard a little bit.

So I planted the trees to get the hardscape kind of in place, and then as things developed, I incorporated those and then gardens around it to tie in where the trees were or where the shrubs were, so you didn't have to mow around them, you know, and then you just float along and made mowing easier.

- Well, did you have a background in gardening or horticulture?

- No not really, I've been pretty much self-taught.

I had an interest, my mother enjoyed gardening, my grandmother, I lived on a farm and she enjoyed gardening as well too.

My father can't quite figure out where this gene popped out from go from wrestling coach to this, but it's something, you know fortunately I had my summers off as a wrestling coach and so gardening kind of became my stress release, and when you have the summers off, I could play out here and it just kind of kept growing.

- So how did you decide where to place the flower beds?

- Again, that had a little bit to do with the framing out of the yard, again, this was very flat and I wanted to create my space and so I put up the trellises, originally this one here was the first one to go up and then I had a smaller one on that side too and that gave me some vertical height that I could plant on and then added the gardens in front of it.

I didn't want to create a wall, so I came up with this concept of having slots through the trellis to open up, just give a feeling of openness without creating the feeling of a wall.

And it's worked out very well, I've been very happy with it.

- And then it looks like you have planted both clematis and honeysuckle to decorate.

- Yes, again they add to color.

I have a lot of clematis here, generally it's fuller but I cut it back pretty hard this spring, Jackmanii, you can do that and so that generally we would have an early, this is the early flush, it's gonna get another flush coming here later in the summer off the new wood, but then the honeysuckle, which has been very nice and then also the Virgin's Bower which I use on those trellises over there and they have, that will become a white wall when that blooms - How do you decide what colors that you wanna use in the yard?

- You're dealing with color but you're also dealing with texture, height, and so you got to take all those factors into account when you kind of plan out the gardens.

I've been one that's always, I like boldness, I like large areas of impact where rather than a scattering of different varieties of things, trying to make a more of an impact.

So like right now, this was a big bloom of peonies earlier in the spring with the Iris off to the side, now they're obviously done, but now the lilies have come through and they're just on the tail end now so we're catching the last blossoms of the lilies but now as they die back, we'll be having the daylilies come through and along with the liatris and the coreopsis and some other things that'll come through and continue to keep that color going right up until fall.

And then in the fall we have the black-eyed Susans and the coneflowers and those sorts of things.

I don't have too much for mums here.

I like to go with things that are pretty sturdy and hardy and mums, just end up having to replant a lot of times, so.

- John, do you use more annuals or more perennials in your beds?

- I like to have a blend of both.

It's easier if you have perennials because they're gonna come back every year.

There's a cost involved and also a time of planting when you do annuals, but I love how annuals transition between different plants when they're moving through the garden.

So you have color all the time, that's a real plus.

It was easier when I ran a greenhouse where I could throw a few extra seeds in and create this.

So I've spent a lot of time this spring, I recently retired, so I had more time to move things, split things and I feel things in a where typically I'd had annuals are now gonna be perennials and hopefully make my workload a little bit easier in the spring.

- Where did you have a greenhouse?

- I was the landscape manager at St. John's University, previously I was the head wrestling coach for 25 years and then they created a position of landscape manager to handle the plantings of the inner campus.

And I was in charge of growing the annuals and then planting and installing all the gardens that they have out at St. John's University now.

- Oh, wow.

Well, this is so beautiful, but would it be okay if we look at some of your other beds too?

(melodious ambient music) - It would be wonderful, thank you, yeah.

We're in the back corner of the garden area here.

These are the spruce trees that I planted myself when they were only about this tall and now they've become the backdrop to the playhouse that is now my garden shed.

And then what did that it's allowed to do is the bleeding heart has kind of filled this whole corner around the backside and in the spring, that'll be just a blaze of pink and white.

Very, very beautiful.

I try to get color all season long, so this is one of the first flashes I get in the spring.

Then as we move around the corner here, we've got yarrow, now this particular variety of yarrow was I found to be, I was very skeptical about using yarrow because it recedes and spreads very, very quickly.

- Hmm-mm.

- This seems to stay in place and stays vegetatively in a clump rather than receding out.

But I do tend to clip back the yarrow once it's past its color bloom.

So in a couple more weeks, I'll be cutting that back and allowing the vegetative growth to regrow as I've done with the blue salvia.

This was at one point earlier in the spring here, this was a flush of blue in front of yellow that was just, right now the color is not in the yellow anymore, but that was vibrant yellow at one point in time.

We've got some daiylily that's in bloom right now and as well as the Calla lilies, they're just kind of finishing up right now, but as we go along, the flocks will start to pop here pretty quick and then I've got some glads in the corner that will bloom.

So I'll get fall color, late summer color in the back and we've had the spring color, now we're kind of in mid-summer and then it it kind of keeps going.

This is gonna be obedient plant.

Now this is a pink variety, so that's not quite in bloom yet, it's gonna be coming here in another couple of weeks.

- I love Calla lilies.

Where did you get those bulbs?

- Those Calla lilies my grandmother's bulbs from the farm and who went to my mother and then eventually came here and a Calla lily is not hardy, it's not a perennial, you have to dig them out in the fall and store them.

And I have a special place in the basement where it doesn't get too cold and it doesn't get too warm and I'm able to hold those bulbs till spring.

- Wow, that's great.

When I see that you've got some lilacs here too.

- Yes, Dwarf Korean Lilac.

You can see the space that's vacant now because that hedge was about six feet tall and about six feet wide and I couldn't trim it very well anymore, and so what I did is I did a rejuvenation which means I cut it down to the ground, leaving them up, stumps about this high and all that has come back from this year's growth already.

And you can see I've got some more Dwarf Korean Lilacs there they've bloomed, and next year I'll probably cut those back and restart those as well too.

- When I see you have some dianthus here in the front, do those over winter for you?

- Yes, they do, I've been very fortunate, I really like him, that 'Sweet Williams' and that comes back every year for me.

And I think they still sell it as an annual but I haven't had very little trouble with it coming back year after year.

- Hmm.

- And it's again, it's on the tail end, it's it needs to be, you could see the seed heads, if I trim that again, I'll get some more blossoms from it.

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

- Good planning.

If you space your plants appropriately they don't crowd each other, but they fill the space.

Plant needs to have, it needs to have contact with the ground, the seeds do the weeds do, and they have to have light.

And so I use just grass clippings as a mat that I put down, I do preen into spring very early, again, it's like crab grass prevention, you wait too long and you missed your spot.

So I do preen it and then before the weeds get a chance to get going, I get my grass clippings from my yard.

So I don't use weed and feed in the spring, I do my weed and feed in the fall and then I can use the grass clippings all summer long to make a nice thick mulch.

- Well, here, it looks like you've got a beautiful blend of shrubs, the hydrangea, and perennials, and then even annuals in the front?

- Little bit of color to hold it over between the seasons.

We've got the Stella 'd Oro daylily that are just finishing up but we've had the hydrangea that has been blooming for some time., I got some Veronica in the corner that kind of holds that corner a little bit, and then again we've had Dwarf Korean lilacs that have bloomed earlier in the spring, and then I've got the honeysuckle that has color and then of course, I've got the Amur Maple that, I keep that under control but that give me some fall color as well too.

- So did you build this wall here at the same time you did the others?

- Well, different walls, this was the first wall that went in, that went in at the same time as about half of that wall.

Then we came in and I put this wall in and this is the most recent one, so that honeysuckle is only a year old now and it's already grown to that height.

- And blooming!

- And blooming, yes, we've got the autumn joy sedum that'll be blooming in the fall too along with the hydrangea.

So I do get color that I try to keep going (melodious ambient music) all summer long with different blooms.

Mary, now we're on the side gardens here, getting closer to the house and the deck.

This particular garden is a little bit more of a shade garden.

We do have, the shade in the West from house that's next to us plus some of the trees that have grown up here, so this is kind of evolved into more of a shady garden so I'll talk about some of the plants that have used to, to bring out that aspect of things.

Astilbe is a beautiful plant.

These were all cuttings that I made from one area at one point, I moved those in, these were new last year, so I've been kind of changing the garden with time and there was annuals there last year, the year before and then this year we put in the astilbe, but we've got peonies, so we're gonna get some spring color right away, the rhododendrons gives us some beautiful color right away in the spring, with a Magnolia, this is a Merrill Magnolia.

So that gets beautiful big white flowers at the same time, it's wrapped with geranium that blooms very early in the spring as well too, so this gives us a color of purple and white that wrap around here.

So there's a time, well right now it looks very green, but there was a time when this was just a blaze of color, which was very nice.

Now, as we kind of move along, we've got the flocks that will kind of be taking over the show here and the Minarda, they're starting to bloom, but they bloom at the same time as the daylilies and the liguaria, and that's has continued to, it's a very happy and has continued to fill in that whole back section here so there'll be a big blossom of yellow spikes that will bloom and they have a very long bloom time, so probably three, four weeks of nice yellow color, ties in well with the daylilies, and then we'll migrate into the flocks and then this is cimicifuga.

And I've moved some to the back there, some here, some back over here, that has a long spike that comes up that's like a white rat tail that blooms real late in the season so that will be kind of a centerpiece at one point later in the season.

- Well it's got such beautiful foliage.

- The foliage, yes.

Yeah, originally it was much darker, it's called snake rut.

It was all dark, like this purple right here but it's kind of reverted back through the years we pollinating receding and it's kind of reverted back to probably its natural form, which is the green form.

But you can see we've worked quite a bit with the different kinds of hosta's.

Hosta, you got to be a little bit careful of slugs, so I watched them,they're the first ones that tell me if I've got some slug issues.

The variety of use makes a big difference too, some slugs will go after one variety but not another, but this is Montana, this is one of my most favorite hostas.

It comes up like a vase and then cascades down and it's such an intense yellow when everything is still kind of green in the spring, this really kind of holds the show, it's very, very nice.

- And then I see you have some ferns in here too.

- Yes, this is lady fern.

I actually dug those out myself and did a planting.

They're native fern, so you can find them in the woods.

And what I like about it is the ostrich fern tends to turn yellow late in the season.

- Hmm-mm.

- In the late summer and it has a nice seed head that comes up that some people really like, this doesn't have that but it gives a nice, again I was looking for a texture change between the large leaf hostas and the ligularia and the ferny frowny leaf of the fern kind of breaks up that large bull leafs of the other plants.

So that's the reason I have it in there.

- So why did you create a bed right here?

- It creates a walkway, as you come into the yard, this creates almost like a, it wants to pull you into the yard, and as you do, whether you're leaving it or you're coming into the yard, it opens up what you see in front of you.

So there's kind of a narrow passage there, and then it flows into the yard and it wants to draw you into the yard, that was part of the design as well too.

(upbeat ambient music) - I have a question, I'm very interested in growing strawberries, what do I need to know to get a good crop?

- Okay, well, this is a new strawberry planting that we just started about three months ago in late May.

And now as we get towards the end of summer and early fall, you can see that the initial mother plants that we put down have made lots of runners like this.

And one of the things we want to do is get these runners kind of tucked down into the row, we want to form a nice narrow row about a foot to a foot and a half wide.

Now, the reason we want to do that is sort of for one reason, is that the strawberries don't compete with one another too much, a lot of the gardeners let their strawberry beds get very wide and what you tend to find is most of the fruit on a strawberry bed is produced right near the edges because in the middle, there's just too much competition.

So what we try to do is keep the rows narrow so that there's a whole lot more edge space.

The other thing that that helps with is allowing the plants to dry off after we get a rain or a heavy dew and that keeps the disease problems down like the gray mold on the fruit and the leaf spotting diseases.

Now, the other thing we need to remember with any new planning of strawberries is that weeds are probably one of your biggest foes.

And so a lot of weeding tends to be needed in that first season, we're kind of at the end of the summer weeds like this purslane here, but even right now as we get into fall, we're gonna be starting to get the winter annuals coming in, so you can't forget about your strawberries in your garden even well after they fruited in June.

- [Narrator] Ask the Arboretum Experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to enriching lives through the appreciation and knowledge of plants.

- John this is a beautiful area here, tell me about it.

- Thank you Mary, yeah, it is my favorite spot in the yard.

Everything else around here is to surround this and the sound of running water, the koi fish, the flowers, it's my retreat, it's the place at the end of the day, I can sit down and relax and just hear that sound of running water and then to see the gardens around it.

It's my favorite spot.

- Well, when we were walking here, I noticed that there were some strings over the pond.

What's that for?

- That is my protection from blue heron.

I have lost some fish, I've had blue heron come down and empty my pond, a $1000 worth of fish gone.

The wire, and it's 30 pound test line.

And I just string it like a spider web over the top, it's really not abusive.

As far as looking at it, you don't really see it that much but the blue herons can't walk through the pond and they stalk fish walking through the pond and as they do that, they trip on these wires, it startles them and they fly off.

And I haven't had any problems since I've done, an fact, I moved the fish in here, and (chuckles) by that afternoon I had a blue heron sitting on my roof looking at my fish, and (chuckles) and then he flew down and he landed on the pond, and of course I run out of the house and I chased him away because I hadn't put my strings up yet and he was already, I don't know how they can spot those fish from that far away but they must be flying by see them and boom, he was here.

He came back three times until I got my strings up, and of course I didn't get a chance to get into the pond, but that's how quickly they can find your fish and eat them.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- But that's a great idea to use string.

- Yep.

- Do you, you have so many beautiful flowers.

- Hmm.

- Do you pick them and take them inside for them?

- I do, my wife really likes to have flowers but she likes them in a vase.

and so like peonies, we had, I had four large vases of peonies because when they're in bloom, you might as well pick them and bring them in the house.

But Calla lilies, that's one of the reasons I have so many flowers is I like to be able to bring vases in and we give them to friends, we have them in the house, So right now I would have lilies in the house 'cause that was kind of their time.

And, but I wanted to save him for the show, so I didn't pick too many.

(chuckles) - How do you keep up with the watering here?

- I use an irrigation system for grass and I still use a walking tractor, you know, like when it was Nelson rain trains, and just basically a sprinkler, oscillating sprinkler.

And I just kind of keep an eye on things because the sprinkler system does not hit all the gardens, so you have to know where dry areas are, I can look at a garden and I can say it needs some water, you know?

And it's based off of how much rain we've had, that sort of thing.

- Did you use any books or anything to figure out where or what to plant?

- Yeah, I'm, like I say, I'm self-taught and I did a lot of research when I plant a garden, I have a vision of what I want but that vision is all based off of knowledge that I've gotten from books, you need to know when things bloom, how tall they're gonna be, what conditions are they, you know, what sort of light, what sort of acidic soil?

those sort of things, planting the right plant in the right place is, that's the key to the story.

And given, how big is it gonna get, if you plant something that gets this big around and far apart, they're gonna be competing and killing each other.

You know, if you give them the right amount of space, they eventually, again, shade the ground and weed seeds can't grow.

I don't have to spend a lot of time weeding and it's not like it's a chore, like, oh, I've got to go through that bed, it's gonna take me four days, you know, it's so full that there's no space and it's got that base of grass that separates the ground from the weed seed.

So it can't sprout and it works, it works for me anyways.

- So did your family, your children end up growing up to enjoy gardening?

(laughing) - They enjoyed it, but they enjoyed it from the house.

(laughing) In fact, it was kind of funny when I designed gardens for both of my children and their yards, two for my daughter, she just recently moved to a new place in North Dakota and I redid all the landscaping there, again it was like a farm field, so it was a blank slate to work with.

But I remember she goes, dad, would it be okay if I came home and just kind of helped in the gardens for a while to learn all this stuff that you know?

I said honey, I've been waiting 25 years for you (laughing) to ask that question But no, (guitar ambient music) she has a very much appreciation for it now.

And she, I installed the gardens, but they've done a wonderful job of maintaining them and in fact, we just put a pondless water feature in their garden this spring, so it's a cascading waterfall that cascades into rocks and then disappears because they've got kids and they wanted that, but they didn't want to worry about the kids drowning, and so pondless water feature is the way to get the sound without the problems of algae.

- John, it's so great that you've been able to pass on some knowledge and love of gardening to your family, but thank you so much for letting us come and see your beautiful yard.

- Thank you Mary for coming, I really enjoy this.

- [Narrator] Funding for Prairie Yard & 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.

Farmer's mutual telephone company and federated telephone cooperative, proud to be powering a Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yakel-Julene in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center and a beautiful Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

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

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

(melodious ambien music)