The Great Bellingrath Harvest: Garden Transformations and Celebrations

Warm-season flora has been at full throttle since May; after five months of hot days, warm soil, and sudden rains, south Alabama’s long 2024 growing season has played its hand. So much has happened this past summer in Bellingrath’s gardens—I thought I’d share a little of what’s been going on.

Getting Ready for the Great Bellingrath Harvest

We are getting excited for the Great Bellingrath Harvest event (Sept 21-Oct 31)—maybe too excited! In advance of this event, we just couldn’t wait to have pumpkins, so we planted several varieties along the Fowl River.

The plants were so close to the river’s edge that the vines grew into (and were pruned back by) the brackish water.

Please join us for the Great Harvest event! To supplement the 10 or so pumpkins we produced in-house, we are hauling in an entire semi-trailer full of pumpkins for display and play alike.

New Additions to Our Garden Tools

As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, Bellingrath acquired a critical piece of machinery to replace one whose time had finally come.

We’ve already made great use of the new machine, turning (literally) a 50-year-old overgrown garden debris dump site into an active composting campaign. We’ve already placed around 200 cubic yards of nutritious compost around the property. You will definitely begin to notice the revitalization of Bellingrath’s many flower beds going forward!

New raised beds going in on the riverfront.

Preserving a Centenarian Oak

We’ve been busy harvesting pumpkins and compost, but in the case of a century-old sand live oak (Quercus geminata), we delayed the harvest for as long as possible. In order to remove the possibility that half of this handsome tree could fall on the café during a storm—without also removing the oak—we had the tree professionally bolted together. This involved drilling through the trunk and inserting rods.
Introducing: “Franken-tree.”

Surprisingly, this preventative action is not detrimental to the long-term health of the tree—especially considering the alternative. In a few years, the oak will grow to conceal much of the support structure.

Reflecting on a Season of Growth

In the garden, late summer affords a time for mindful deliberation—an opportunity to review what’s grown, what hasn’t grown, and what’s grown way too much.

Although summer isn’t over yet, a great harvest is approaching!

Horticulturally,
Jeremy Schmidt,
Director of Horticulture