Category Archives: Bellingrath Blog

Planning is Everything

Just a couple of weeks ago, Bellingrath Gardens & Home embarked, officially, on a path toward a long, but detailed, vision for the future – our Centennial Master Plan. The vision captured and communicated by this plan sees both the restoration and reinvigoration of beloved, historic spaces, combined with an infusion of new features that will grace BGH as it grows forward toward its 100th anniversary of being open to the public. Despite our long history, being publicly accessible since 1932, this master plan represents, to the best of my knowledge, only the second treatment in viewing and envisioning the boundaries and configurations of BGH’s used property since our founding by Walter and Bessie Bellingrath when they worked with George Bigelow Rogers starting in 1927. As such, we take this process as both serious and sacred.

The quote about planning, used in my title for this column, and often attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, is apropos here for a few reasons. 1) We have laid out a grand vision that we are now embarking upon. 2) This vision is only “initial” in the sense that detailed planning work, per any defined “phase,” must be carried out after the master (holistic) plan was done. 3) Assuredly, some other great ideas will be had in the coming years as we enact this plan. The process of planning, therefore, will continue for years to come, but the Centennial Master Plan will exist as our guide, beacon, and compass.

The first project that speaks to the level of detail and quality of work that we are undertaking via the Centennial Master Plan is actually already underway – the restoration of the Summer House. In fact, this project should be completed by early 2026. Representing an investment of around $150,000 in Bellingrath Gardens & Home’s past, present, and future, the Summer House will continue to serve as a restful, shaded structure, but it will also anchor the future, reopened Camellia Arboretum a few years hence.

Through the Summer House’s success, we have pivoted to “The Historic Core,” which comprises our first major area of BGH that we are studying and looking to restore and reinvigorate. After the public reveal of the Centennial Master Plan on October 14, key BGH staff participated in a two-day design workshop for Phase 1. Initial work that was done during these two days revealed a great excitement for the Historic Core, the portion of the gardens that exists between the Fowl River and Mirror Lake, as well as honest assessments on commonly seen areas that need to be refreshed. Through this workshop, a vision was honed to bring out the best of this critical space while also realizing opportunities for new spaces to be developed. This design phase – Schematic Design, to be precise – will conclude by next summer, after which we will follow-on to “Design Development,” where engineering work and highly detailed designs, including material selection, will occur. By a year from now, we should be underway in creating construction drawings, which will allow us to fully understand implementation costs for all aspects of Phase 1 – The Historic Core – its restoration and reinvigoration.

Now, to some of you readers, this may all seem like a bunch of gibberish. Again, however, I point to Eisenhower’s wisdom via my column title. Reroofing older service buildings, repairing aged water wells and pumps, and replacing worn-out HVAC units all requires planning of some sort, right?! But, the level of detail and involvement for these types of projects pales in comparison to the concept of “restoring and reinvigorating the Historic Core of Bellingrath Gardens & Home.” As such, the hours, days, weeks, and months spent now in the planning process will only lead to orders of magnitude levels of improvements and documentation of our plans and goals to bring Bellingrath Gardens & Home forward. And this, will allow us to conduct the necessary fundraising work that it will take to see these projects to their ultimate and happy conclusion.

We ask you to join us on this exciting journey.

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Plant Royalty

I’m not a patent lawyer, but I can speak about plant patents from experience. If you find yourself awake all night wanting to know more about the plant patenting process, then I have the cure to your insomnia. The plant patent is perhaps the least understood component of ornamental horticulture—the topic seems rarely discussed, despite a large percentage of plant labels at your local plant retailer having a Plant Patent Number (PP #####) printed on it somewhere. So…what is a plant patent, what does it reveal about your plant, and is it relevant for your garden?

Proprietary Propagation

The patenting of specific plant varieties in the US was first made possible in May, 1930, by the Plant Patent Act. The patented plant is considered the intellectual property of the patent holder, granting them exclusive rights to license the propagation and sale of the clone. That basically means it is illegal for a nursery, garden center, backyard plant sale, or even a public garden to asexually propagate a patented plant without an agreement with the patent holder. There are grey areas, but the protection afforded to patented plants is pretty straightforward.

In the 95 years of the Plant Patent Act, over 35,000 ornamental and agricultural cultivars have been awarded a patent. A patent lasts for 20 years from the date of filing, and is not renewable (although rarely, extensions are granted). Once the patent expires, there are no proprietary restrictions on propagating or selling the plant. For example, Rhododendron Encore® Autumn Carnation® ‘Roblec’ PP15,339 expired on March 15th, 2024. This means there is no longer any obligation to the patent holder to root cuttings and sell Azalea ‘Roblec’. Trademarks, like Encore® and Autumn Carnation®, are renewable indefinitely. These protect the trade name and series name, but not propagation. The trademark name is separate from the cultivar name, therefore a trademarked plant can be propagated and sold by its cultivar name as long as it is not also patented…you know what…this is another topic to be explained in another article. Believe me when I say you don’t want me to get started on the plant trademark issue. Since patent numbers are issued consecutively, you can generally assume that every PP# lower than PP 15,339 is also expired, because they were issued prior to the start of ‘Roblec’s patent protection.

***Yes, I referred to an Encore® Azalea as a Rhododendron, since “azalea” is a common name for several species of Rhododendron—every azalea is a Rhododendron, but not every Rhododendron is an azalea. Sorry…taxonomic stuff…back to the topic at hand…plant patents.

So…what is a patented plant? Basically, it’s a proprietary plant whose asexual reproductive rights are owned and licensed by the breeder for 20 years. After the patent expires, that clone can be chopped up, shared, and sold any which-way.

Follow the Money

A little backstory…Azalea ‘Roblec’ was first selected in 1995 as a remarkable seedling resulting from an intentional cross between Rhododendron ‘Schroeder’s Pink Perfection’ x Rhododendron oldhammii ‘Fourth of July’. How does this have anything to do with following the money? Glad you asked.

A royalty is paid as part of an agreement between the patent holder and the licensee. This royalty is charged per plant propagated, typically ranging from $0.10 to $2.00 per plant…for 20 years! So, if one million ‘Roblec’ were propagated at $0.25ea while under patent protection, the total royalty is $250,000. Wow! So, does that mean that breeding plants is the secret to becoming independently wealthy? If only! First, $250K spread out over 20 years (before taxes) is $12.5k/year—not enough to anyone a high roller in this country. The patent process itself is very technical, requiring translation from people who speak legaleeze, and costs about $3k/patent. And keep in mind the patent for ‘Roblec’ was granted 9 years after it was first selected as a clone to be patented. That means 9 years of trial agreements and building up stock. That means 9 years of not getting paid, before finally getting paid. Less than 1% of plant patents yield rock star royalties, but hundreds of people in the US make a living from plant breeding. Most of these ornamental plant breeders work for companies specializing in plant breeding, or maintain breeding programs at academic institutions, or are independent breeders that hire a company that patents and promote their work. This means that plant breeders are either being paid a 9-to-5 salary to breed plants, get a cut of the royalties, or a combination of both. In order to churn out next level plants worthy and eligible for a patenting, it takes land, time, and breeding stock—at the bare minimum. With new breeding tools like embryo rescue and genetic modification, a laboratory with all the bells and whistles may also come in handy.  All this takes money. Royalties fund these endeavors.  A handful of plant people make a living, while others get a nice check in the mail once or twice a year.

PP34,648

If you look up Plant Patent number 34,648, you’ll find an ornamental grass named Festuca arundinacea ‘Glow Sticks’. That’s my baby! I developed this plant while I lived in Raleigh, NC. It doesn’t tolerate Gulf Coast summers, so beyond my wishful thinking, ‘Glow Sticks’ is unfortunately not a candidate for Bellingrath Gardens’ display. Here’s a bulleted speed run through how this patented cultivar came to be:

  • 2015
    • I discovered a striking white stripe on a leaf of a common turfgrass, tall fescue
    • variegated sport transplanted from the lawn into my garden
    • work began to stabilize the variegation
      • I discarded offsets that went all green or all white
    • 2016
      • Clone stabilized with narrow white stripe barely visible down the center of leaf blade
        • Consistent with each offset
      • 2017
        • Disappointed with minimal impact of stabilized central variegation to overall aesthetic of grass clump
          • From distance, the grass still appeared the typical dark green of the species
          • I intended to discard entire clump once I found something to plant in its place in my garden…but wasn’t in any hurry
        • 2018
          • The grass bloomed in late May, revealing one of the most incredible inflorescences I’ve ever seen on an ornamental grass!
          • Entered trial agreement with Plant Delights Nursery, inc.
          • Named the plant ‘Glow Sticks’
        • 2020
          • Entered licensing agreement with Concept Plants®
            • They assist with patenting process and promotion of patented plants
          • Shipped rooted pieces of the Festuca ‘Glow Sticks’ to Concept Plants® affiliated trial gardens around the country, and to Europe
        • 2021
          • Concept Plants®, based in the Netherlands connects me with Biological Patent Services, LLC based in Minnesota, to begin the patent filing process
            • Took plant measurements, wrote detailed description, and filled out extensive paperwork
            • Plant Patent request filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office June 17, 2021
          • 2022
            • Plant Patent 34,648 granted October 11, 2022

 

Over seven years elapsed between the discovery of what would become ‘Glow Sticks’ and the first royalty check (which I can assure you was quite modest). But what an adventure! It is important to point out that despite how beautiful and unique this grass was, and how much I wanted to share my cool plant with my gardening friends, and of course brag about it on social media, I had to keep it locked up. If a plant is shared outside of a trial agreement before the plant patent application is filed, it is not eligible to be patented. For me, that was the hardest part! Concept Plants® worked with me to file all the paperwork, determine the royalty per plant, and promote the plant to wholesale growers. They also paid all costs, except shipping, associated with filing for a patent. In return, Concept Plants® keeps half the royalty. Everybody wins!

The Wheel, Reinvented

Are patented plants better than unpatented plants? Sometimes yes and sometimes no! Unfortunately, garden-worthiness is not the only criteria for deciding what plants to patent or even what direction to focus a breeding program. In the past few decades, some breeding efforts began to shift towards appeasing the mass producers and mass retailers with plants that grew to saleable size more quickly, fit into smaller shipping dimensions, or was just a new variety in general, rather than making a better garden plant.  Some “heirloom” varieties are still the best garden plants in my opinion, and thousands of great new varieties are introduced each year without a patent number.  Some newly patented plants are just hot garbage, while others represent a garden breakthrough that will surely be popular long past its patent. Most plant breeders want to help you make your garden more beautiful than ever, but have to create patented plants that sell well in order to stay in business. With thousands of plants to choose from, how can we ever select which ones are right for our gardens? If only there was a really big garden that publicly displayed as many new and old plants as possible—together in the same soil, so that visitors could make an informed decision as to what will work best in their own garden…hmmmmmm. The best place to determine what plants are best for your amended soil is at a public garden—I can think of one worth visiting right here in south Mobile County! Check out plant royalty on display at Bellingrath Gardens and Home!

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Christmas in the Bellingraths’ Day — and Today.

For thirty years visitors have enjoyed seeing the Bellingrath Home dressed for the holidays as they attend Magic Christmas in Lights. It would be wonderful if we had images of what some of the rooms looked like decorated for Christmas when Walter and Bessie Bellingrath were here, but so far, none have surfaced.

Ernest Edgar, Jr., a nephew of Bessie Bellingrath, was in attendance at Christmas dinners in the Home from the first in 1936 until the early 1950’s. His recollection was of a simpler time when the rooms featured red candles in silver holders and red poinsettias.

Greenery used in those days might have consisted of boxwood, cedar, holly, pine, magnolia leaves and Southern Smilax. A cedar Christmas tree would be set up and decorated on Christmas Eve in households where there were small children – not before Halloween which seems to be the current idea.

A photograph unearthed in the History Museum of Mobile features Ernest posed with his son’s Christmas train set on the floor of the Bellingraths’ home on Ann Street in Mobile. In the distance is the Tiffany Pond Lily Lamp and a framed photograph of Walter Bellingrath.

The fireplace mantel shows a very simple strand of Southern Smilax. That evergreen vine with its glistening green elliptical-shaped leaves grows wild around Mobile and was used for decorating every event from weddings to Christmas in years gone by. And this prolific vine gets its name from the Greek word for “clasping.”

Also in use for the Bellingrath table would be a set of china by Royal Worcester in their Regency Ruby pattern. This extensive dinner set has the production date mark of 1940 and while we use the china to decorate the tables in the Home at Christmas, Mrs. Bellingrath actually purchased it do complement her dining room’s color scheme year round.

Decoration of the interior of the Bellingrath Home will begin a bit early this year, but the theme of a Bellingrath family Christmas will be our inspiration once again.

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Momentum

In football, there are those who feel that momentum is simply an illusion, but there are others who strongly feel that it is real and perceivable. I tend to fall in the latter camp, probably because I tend to get really wrapped up in the games that I follow. Likewise, at Bellingrath Gardens & Home, our forward momentum is both real and palpable. Many of the projects that I have been mentioning over the past couple of years or so are moving along very quickly now, and those of you who have visited BGH in recent weeks can attest to this progress.

1. The Summer House renovation is well underway. As of this writing, the timber frame roof has been erected and tongue-and-groove roof cladding is partially installed. Work is also underway for a plaque that will recognize our major donors to this project. When completed, this restoration will showcase the level of design, detail, and craftsmanship that we will apply to all future work done in enacting the Master Plan. With the refurbished iron lace being the next step in this construction project, that will only leave the copper roof to be installed, something that may have to wait until after the 2025 Magic Christmas in Lights season is finished.

2. The Magnolia Room Phase 1 improvements project is also underway, to the point that work should be completed within another week or so. The two major changes that Phase 1 brings to this conference room are that a) a corridor now exists for Café staff to walk from the Kitchen to the Pantry without having to interrupt guests in the Magnolia Room, and b) a connecting doorway now opens the Magnolia Room up to the Dining Hall, providing us with flexibility for renting each room separately, or together. Phase 2 will see floor and ceiling treatments for the Magnolia Room, but no timetable is yet set for this phase. We extend our sincere gratitude to The Dr. Monte L. Moorer Foundation Charitable Trust, The A.S. Mitchell Foundation, and The Julien E. Marx Foundation Trust for their generous support in making this project possible.

3. The Admissions Building is enjoying exciting changes to its interiors via the completion of Phase 1 upgrades: new flooring (carpet and tile treatments) and an always helpful fresh coat of paint. (We even have haint blue ceilings, now, ya’ll!) The bathroom corridor for this building also has new carpet and will soon have beautiful new wallpaper, which we can’t wait for you to see. As this building is the literal “front door” of BGH, we have long wanted to update the décor, which was showing its age. Thanks to our recent successes in bringing in more visitors to BGH, we are happy to be able to present to you these newly refreshed building interiors that are furnished by the very dollars we collect at Admissions.

4. Over the last few years, we have been systematically replacing old, worn-out roofs on our many buildings scattered around the BGH campus.  The latest project, completed just last month, saw the replacement of a decades’-old asphalt shingle roof on the Horticulture / Development Office building.  In the grand scheme of things, this was not a major project, but it still represents a $13,000+ investment going against a backlog of over $10-15 million in deferred maintenance work needed at BGH.  And, for our Horticulture leadership team and our Director of Development, this is a welcome improvement to the building where they are based.

5. A project that I have probably not yet mentioned is one that will see BGH begin to flex its science muscles, allowing us to communicate with the Fowl River in real time.  What such project could this be?  Is it something of science fiction?  Is this like the Russians training dolphins to detect sea mines? Well, no!  Working with our colleagues at both the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) and Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL), we have purchased equipment that will allow us to measure and share data revealing how the Fowl River is a living and breathing ecosystem.  This specialized equipment will continuously measure the Fowl River’s water temperature, flow, dissolved oxygen content, and salinity, and these data will be logged and communicated for visitors to observe directly.  Imagine being be able to show students in our STEM Education Program and visitors, via a computer monitor station located on the river pavilion, exactly what is happening with the Fowl River after a heavy rainfall, or with a strong southeasterly wind, or during a period of drought?!  We think that the possibilities are endless, and our partners at MBNEP and DISL are just as excited as we are.

Recently, I communicated to the Garden’s Board of Directors that over the past five years BGH has invested over $3.4 million back into the organization, much needed funds that are helping drive our palpable growth and momentum.  These investments are only possible because of your continuing patronage and support, but, truthfully, … the best is yet to come.  For the five projects I described above, I could list five more that are underway or in the planning stages.

As always, stay tuned for continuing excitement and inspiration from “The Charmed Spot of the South,” and make sure to visit often to see these positive changes taking place.

Sincerely,

Todd

Great Bellingrath Pumpkins

Fall.
Sometimes just one perfectly placed word is enough to set our minds ablaze with memories, nostalgia, feelings, expectations, ruminations. It’s as if a portion of our lives—often recurrent—can be crammed into the space of just a syllable or two, lying dormant until the magic word is uttered. Let’s try another one…

Pumpkins.

There’s something so distinctive about the about the way pumpkins look, taste, feel, smell—even the sound they make when thumped. Most of us can identify a pumpkin with four of our five senses tied behind our back! Also, the presence of pumpkins indicates when we are…October and November most likely. Plants, flowers and fruits are synonymous with majority of our holidays and traditional events, but is there any one single plant that joins together consecutive holidays over an entire season like pumpkins?

One Hundred Seventy-Nine.

The Great Bellingrath Harvest is a celebration of fall, along with its traditional holidays and events. And everywhere, there are pumpkins. Once again this year, we unloaded and stacked 30,000 lbs of pumpkins, each placed carefully…one at a time. A huge pumpkin fountain, obelisks, a pumpkin tree, and piles of pumpkins everywhere—Bellingrath’s Display Designer, Barbara Smith designed and orchestrated the installation. The display is very different than last year, with every major display concentration being new and unique. My favorite pumpkin decoration hovers over the square fountain on the plaza near the Bellingrath Home—the color and texture coordination is spot on. But that’s just my opinion…tell us what pile of pumpkins is your favorite! Nineteen people pitched in over the course of 14 consecutive days. How long did it take for us to unload and stack 15 tons of pumpkins? Glad you asked. 179 hours. Again…19 people…what a great team effort!

The Front Porch.

Finally, while we think you’ll be amazed at some of the larger than life pumpkin displays, we hope you’ll find the dozens of smaller groupings tucked away in the many nooks and crannies around the garden to be something that you might repeatable on your own front porch.

We are excited for you to join us for Great Bellingrath Harvest. The calendar can be found on our website here:

The Great Bellingrath Harvest


A Twenty Year Milestone

Mobile Bay Magazine is a popular local publication. This summer I was asked to stop by their Government Street offices for an interview to reflect on my twenty years of my column, Ask McGehee. I was shown into a conference room and it was suddenly filled with the entire staff of the magazine including publisher, T. J. (Jocko) Potts, and Executive Editor, Maggie Lacy.

I was surprised with a framed thank you for my contributions to the magazine with an image of my first column which included a photograph of the Murray Forbes Smith home on Government Street. How appropriate, since the brick from the demolition of that house was used to construct the Bellingrath Home.

In the process I was asked how the column came about. When I was originally approached to be a contributor I had to be honest and say that I really did not like the content of the magazine and had canceled my subscription. I was assured that the publication was going in a totally new direction and they wanted this area’s history to be a big part of the new format.

We patterned Ask McGehee after a popular column in Memphis Magazine which focused on all sorts of local history. So I started my column with a piece about the Vanderbilt connection to Mobile, hence the photo of the house where Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont had been born.

It has been fun researching some familiar topics, such as long gone restaurants, department stores and buildings. Those bring back a lot of fond memories for our readers. But it is the details I uncover which often result in a “Wow, I have lived her my whole life but never knew that before.” That has been a pleasure for me in writing the column over the years.

And just as our tours of the Bellingrath Home include many wonderful stories I have collected from relatives and former employees of Bessie and Walter Bellingrath, my columns are often infused with tales I have collected from Mobilians now sadly long deceased. And the majority of these stories were never sought by previous historians, so I am glad I captured so many over the years.

Twenty years of a monthly column equates to 240 columns. I was asked if I thought I would run out of topics. My answer was “In Mobile? Never.”

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The Great Bellingrath Harvest, Round 2

Last year, we proudly announced the inaugural year of The Great Bellingrath Harvest, a new multi-week event that would run from the Summer Solstice, through October, and into early November. Because of this new event, and the p.r. that we were able to get from it, October 2024 became our best year, in terms of visitor attendance, in nine years. We had almost 6,000 folks come through our gates, and everyone seemed to really enjoy this new festival. We felt that The Great Bellingrath Harvest had legs and that it could continue on into the future.

This year, we are back for more fun with “Round 2” of The Great Bellingrath Harvest! We’ll start by kicking off the 2025 GBH season on September 19-21 with our Fall Plant Market and our brand new NatureNauts STEM Day, followed closely by our popular Scarecrows in the Garden competition and exhibit. And yes, in case you’re wondering, we will have another 5,000(!!) pumpkins arriving and gracing the gardens, even more beautifully than they did last year! Armed with photographs to prove that we did actually have 5,000 pumpkins last year, we think that our pumpkin display won’t remain a “best kept secret” any longer. Actually, it is my hope that we’ll blow past our 6,000-guest total from last October by setting a new attendance record! And just to let you in on the numbers, here goes. If we have over 7,600 visitors in October, we’ll break that 2016 number. But if we have over 8,100 visitors, we’ll break our October visitor count number all the way back to 2002! As Townie himself would say, “You Can Do It!”

However, we have no intentions of letting GBH’s first act – the NatureNauts STEM Day and the Fall Plant Market – steal the show completely. Following on the heels of those two events will be Jack-o-Lantern Jubilee on October 25 and then our 62nd annual Cascading Chrysanthemum exhibit. As our beautiful new logo for the Great Bellingrath Harvest shows, this fall festival is a celebration of everything from pumpkins to chrysanthemums, with so much more packed in-between. And, as all of us along the Gulf Coast know, fall is such a welcome relief after the brutal heat and humidity of summer. Yes, there’s this little distracting thing called “college football,” but we all know that the real action occurs at Bellingrath Gardens & Home! Come on out and see the magic, and we’ll keep surprising and delighting you with the beauty and elegance you’ve come to expect at Bellingrath, while also showcasing the creative spirits and energies of the talented and dynamic staff team that we have here.

With tremendous thanks for the continuing support you give us, Team Bellingrath is happy to welcome you to this second round of The Great Bellingrath Harvest!

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A Bellingrath Recovery

On September 12, 1979 Mobile was hit by Hurricane Frederic. That horrendous storm visited Bellingrath Gardens and Home on that memorable night, accompanied by at least two destructive tornadoes. Within 24 hours, just over 2,000 trees were downed and nearly 23,000 shrubs were smashed beneath them. Nine greenhouses were torn to bits and the entire irrigation system was left in a shambles.

Perhaps the most striking memory was that of long time horticulturist Pat Ryan who said that the Bellingrath Home was visible from the front parking lot when he was able to reach the Gardens. And that, he added, was a sight even the Bellingraths themselves had never seen.

Mirror Lake had been filled with debris, its rustic bridge damaged. The riverfront was brutally scared from floodwaters and the corpse of a dog was found in the base pool of the Grotto.

George Downing, chairman of the Bellingrath-Morse Foundation stated “one-third of the photos in our souvenir book are not applicable now.” Indeed, the scarred and missing trees he now saw looked nothing like the lush tree canopy found in the book’s images.

The Home

Local decorator Wade Lott had overseen the redecoration of the Home a year earlier and was proud to have it featured within the pages of the magazine Southern Accents. In December of 1979, a local reporter writing about Bellingrath’s recovery stated: “Replacements for furniture damaged when the tide waters washed into the home’s main floor are on order.”

No tide waters touched the Bellingrath Home, but the wind and rain did. The most damage occurred to the second floor sleeping porch which lost its roof. It was lifted and dropped onto the East Terrace. The force of the storm destroyed much of the furniture formerly in this space.

A storm shutter on one of the east facing windows in the Purple Guest Room fell off and some sort of projectile hit a pane of glass, leaving a very small hole. When the room was entered the next day, the furnishings were all wet and there were shredded leaves everywhere. All that water and leaves had entered through a hole barely large enough for a pencil to fit through.

The original Ludowici tile roof on the home had damage and George Downing stated that “replacement tiles are on order from the manufacturer.” Sadly that was not the case and the house was shingled with a standard asphalt product.

Tulip Time

The Gardens reopened on March 1, 1980 and visitors were amazed to see the memorable sight of 40,000 tulips in bloom in the Rotary Rose Garden. A rain later that day was accompanied by gales of 35 to 40 miles per hour. The temperature that night dropped to 18 degrees with a wind chill of -13 degrees. Every tulip froze and turned black.

Thankfully the Gardens and the Home rebounded. The formerly shaded garden was replanted for sun loving flowers. Since that time trees have been planted and the Gardens now have a balance of sun and shade, nearly 50 years after an unwelcome visitor named Frederic.

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Success Upon Success

I am excited to write and report to you that, thanks to amazingly generous support, Bellingrath Gardens & Home has completed its fundraising campaign to raise $15,000 for the Summer House restoration! Building off of the tremendous support from The Hearin-Chandler Foundation, we embarked in earnest nearly two years ago on an effort that would see this historic, 1930s structure, brought back to life – a project that will speak to the level of quality and attention-to-detail that we will be applying to all future work done to bring our new master plan to life. With further crucial support from the Steven G. Crawford Estate, the A.S. Mitchell Foundation, and Mrs. Lulu Crawford, we then appealed for support from you, our members and the broader public. And boy, did you answer! With $15,000 needed, we were able to reach, and even exceed, our goal. From gifts of $10 to ones of $1,000 or more, we are excited to thank over 100 donors who helped us push past our goal.

As of this writing, we are rapidly making progress on the Summer House restoration. Despite being challenged due to some price escalations in recent months, our work to restore this historic, 1930s, original garden structure is underway. There are three major components of this project that are underway.

A.      The cast iron – An architectural and engineering review of the Summer House determined that the cast iron columns should no longer solely support the roof due to their age and strength. As such, new steel structural support columns will be installed, and they will bear the entire load of the roof. As we all know that the cast iron components of the Summer House are the pièce de résistance, these new columns will be placed as unobstructively as possible. The cast iron pieces are now relocated to the restoration company where work is underway.

B.      The timber frame and roof boards — Assembly of the timber frame roof, which has been received by BGH from the manufacturer, is about to commence. It will co-occur with installation of the structural steel columns. Roof boards, both interior and exterior, and the cupola will be constructed after the timber frame is secured to the columns.

C.      The copper roof – Although copper prices have increased significantly over the last few months, we will be adhering to bringing this important detail forward for this structure. This will be the final portion of construction to be performed.

Today, significant progress on the Summer House is being had. During this phase of the project, the Summer House appears to have disappeared from BGH. But, rest assured in knowing that this complicated, but critical, project is proceeding, and BGH will see it through to its appropriate conclusion. When finished, expect to see a newly refreshed and welcoming historic structure that shelters visitors from the sun and rain. An ensemble of comfortable garden furniture will be added, and the space will be both new and old, as when it was first built.

Two other major projects that we have started include the Bayou Boardwalk and the Magnolia Café serving line.

1.       Ever since I arrived at Bellingrath nearly five years ago, the appearance of the serving line for the Magnolia Café has been one that I have wanted to address. Its décor felt like a callback to the 1970s, and not in a good way! This year, we have started work to refresh this area, complementing the hard work that our Café team, now being led by our new Café Manager, Gale Moore, has done in making stellar improvements to our food offerings and quality. When you next come to visit the Café, you will quickly notice the sleek glass-and-metal frame “sneeze guard,” which allows you to observe the food without having to duck or stand on your toes to speak with the Café staff! Over the next several weeks, Harold’s maintenance team will be working to restyle the wooden serving counters through new decorative treatments and paint. We think you’ll really like the new look, certainly enough that you won’t be thinking that you’ve entered a 1970s Stuckey’s roadside café while ordering food from BGH!

2.       Lastly, over the past three years, the Dwight Harrigan Exxon/Mobil Bayou Boardwalk has increasingly shown its age. Despite being built only 30 years ago, side-rail boards were warping or rotting, a few of the pilings had settled considerably, and many of the deck boards were loose. Working with a local contractor, Bellingrath invested over $18,500 to address all of these issues earlier this year, rehabilitating 75% of the Boardwalk’s 1/4-mile length. We will be handling the remaining 25% in the upcoming fiscal year.

In addition to these above major projects, Bellingrath Gardens & Home continues to invest in critical upgrades to facilities, infrastructure, and equipment. Over the past year’s worth of e-newsletter columns, I’ve written about projects ranging from cleaning up our boneyard/junkyard to converting our greenhouse heating system from a 60+ year-old boiler to modern forced-air heaters to replacing worn out tractors and utility carts. Lots of things on that list are ones that you will likely never see or don’t come to Bellingrath to see. When you next visit, please observe the work that the BGH Maintenance Department, led by Harold Fischer, our new Maintenance Manager, is doing in beginning to catch up on long-deferred painting needs. We hope you’ll notice our colorful new entrance and also several of the railings, fences, and cast iron pieces that have been painted with our new neutral color at BGH – Urbane Bronze, the Sherwin-Williams 2021 Color of the Year. (That’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about an individual paint color, eh?! LOL)

Coming soon, we’ll be telling you about exciting updates to the BGH visitor center and also to the Magnolia Room! Come out and see the progress. We thank you for your membership and support!

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Compost: The Secret Ingredient in your Southern Garden

Compost, like butter in our favorite recipes, is not to be used sparingly! Nearly every plant we grow in the garden benefits from decomposed organic matter—and often for reasons that we may not think about right away. Bellingrath Gardens is building and processing thousands of cubic yards of rich black gold for use in our seasonal and permanent planting beds.

Eureka! Black Gold!

 

There are three basic categories of soil: clay (teeny tiny soil particles), loam (medium soil particles), and sand (beach ball-sized particles in comparison to clay and loam). In south Mobile County, our soil is almost entirely made of beach balls (sand). There’s brown sand, white sand, red sand—every color of sand.  Even local “topsoil” is sand. I’m amazed at all the iconic plants that are native right here in our native soil. Massive live oaks, towering longleaf pines, palms, grasses, carnivorous plants, and more wildflowers than I can count are all standard botanical fixtures of south Alabama. Some growing in our cultivated acreage, and others in the periphery, hundreds of sand-loving species are currently rooted into Bellingrath’s 900 acres. However, in Bellingrath’s cultivated beds, we are proud to carry on Walter and Bessie’s excitement to showcase for you an even broader representation of the plant kingdom—as well as impossibly concentrated combinations of seasonal color and texture. And that’s where compost enters the picture.

Sometime in the past, an immense amount of compost-rich soil was hauled onsite to create Bellingrath Gardens’ extensive seasonal planting beds; and everywhere you see bedding plants, the soil is primarily made up of composted organic matter. Why go to all the trouble to add so much compost? Let’s get philosophical for a moment. Compost means to plants what the reading of a wealthy uncle’s last will and testament means to a very fortunate nephew. Compost is the posthumous result of plants that found success in their lives—and it is this inheritance that gives future generations of plants a head start and a promising future. I guess that’s why we gardeners get so excited to cultivate plants in our compost “rich” soil.

Ok. Fine. But what does compost actually do as a soil amendment? So glad you asked. Sand, like every type of soil, has its pro’s and con’s. While sand is well drained and not prone to compaction, it can dry out too quickly, lacks certain nutrients, and is prone to leaching out what few nutrients it does offer. There are so many reasons compost is absolutely critical to success in the garden, but since Bellingrath Gardens’ plants are rooted into sandy soil, let’s focus on three ways compost atones specifically for sand’s limitations: through moisture retention, nutrient retention, and cation exchange capacity.

Cation exchange capacity, or CEC, is a measure of the soil’s ability to feed plants through the exchange of positively charged particles—called cations (pronounced cat-ions)—some of the most crucial and frequent exchanges involve the cations calcium, magnesium, potassium, and ammonium. In a nutshell, the higher a soil’s CEC, the more chairs there are at the dinner table where soil is feeding plants. More chairs means more feeding! Mobile County’s sand has a very low CEC (1-5) compared to fine-textured soil like clay and loam (15-30). Get this… compost has a CEC of over 100!!! Jackpot! Many aesthetically supercharged garden plants, especially bedding plants, are very hungry indeed (with a small handful of notable exceptions); and in order to grow them and display them to the highest standards, a whole bunch of cations need to be exchanged along they way.

Most granted wishes come with some sort of an unforeseen catch, hence the phrase “Be careful what you wish for.” In 2023, I remember discovering the annual precipitation in Mobile—67 inches—are you kidding me!? Nothing will ever need irrigation! My wish was granted! The catch? No matter how much rain we get, the sandy soil dries out less than a week! As someone who now gardens on south Alabama sand, I have tempered my initial exuberance. Guess what? Compost is the answer! Actually, compost is possibly the answer to all of life’s problems. Organic matter increases the field capacity of sand… basically, that means sand with compost holds on to more water than just sand. Field capacity was explained to me like this: Think of a sponge that is totally soaked, but no longer dripping. If one drop of water goes in, one drop of water falls out—this sponge is at field capacity. Increased field capacity means more drops of water can stay in that sponge… and maybe we can make it to the next rain before we have to irrigate again. As an aside, when soil dries out, the uptake of nutrients slows down even before the plant begins to wilt—another reason that most well-watered garden plants grow better. Compost-rich soil is a wish-come-true.

We often think of compost as being a form of plant food, but if that’s all organic matter is good for, couldn’t we just throw a bag of 10-10-10 on our plants instead? Ha! Funny. In addition to containing most of the 17 essential nutrients for plant growth (waaay more than just the three numbers on a bag of salt-based fertilizer), compost also helps sandy soil hold on to certain nutrients, like nitrogen, that are typically prone to leaching out of the rootzone. Actually, salt-based fertilizers can make the leaching problem worse over time, but that’s a good topic for another day. Compost’s benefit to the stability of soil fertility is interconnected with its positive impact on CEC and moisture retention.

But nothing good lasts forever—and compost—compost doesn’t last forever. Plants and microbes consume it over time, and eventually it mostly “evaporates” into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other gasses. And that brings us back to my opening analogy—butter as an ingredient in our favorite recipes: we need a lot of it, we probably can’t add too much, and it will never be enough.

In order to recharge our seasonal planting beds, and in pursuit of our goal to vastly expand our cultivated areas and living collections, we are piling up, turning, and processing over 10,000 cubic yards of compost onsite to add to the garden (it’s actually closer to 25,000 yards, but I kept the number low to make it sound believable).

Two of dozens of piles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I quickly learned that commercial sources for bulk compost are scarce in lower Alabama, as large-scale composting programs are not as prevalent as in other parts of the country. Well, I can’t complain, because we weren’t actively composting our organic matter either. All our nursery and garden debris was just being dumped and forgotten in the back of Bellingrath Gardens…for decades! Let’s just say we are now making full use of this immensely backlogged resource. Because it’s already aged, we will only need to turn it a couple times to incorporate enough oxygen for the final stages of aerobic decomposition. But we’ll have to turn those piles a couple more times again to kill weed seed and rhizomes—turns out weeds like growing in compost just as much as other plants! Oh well! Compost happens. Better late than never.

Utilizing our in-house compost blend, our bed rejuvenation and expansion campaign has already begun. Watch for these efforts to really ramp up in the next couple years as we finish more and more compost.

Our diesel-powered pitchfork moving finished compost into the garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And as you feast your eyes on Bellingrath Gardens’ beautiful vistas, remember that all of our favorite southern garden recipes go heavy on the compost.  We could cook up something without all that rich black gold, but it just wouldn’t be as delicious.

Tune in next time for another Bellingrath Gardens episode of “As the Compost Turns.”

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