Columns written by Greg Grant and a Smith Co. Master Gardener which appear each Sunday on the Gardening page in the Tyler Morning Telegraph, are posted here.
Keith Hanson to Lead Maple Tour
Greg Grant, Smith County Horticulturist for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
featured in Tyler Morning Telegraph, December 1, 2024
Greg Grant
The Tyler Botanical Garden boasts an outstanding collection of maples adapted to the South.
When you think of Texas trees, maples probably don’t top the list. But in East Texas, we are blessed with four native species of maple along with a number of adapted species and cultivars from Asia. If you’d like to learn more about maples in East Texas consider this week’s tour.
The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service Earth-Kind Environmental Education committee in Smith County is hosting a “walk and talk” tour of the Shade Garden at the Tyler Botanical Garden. This educational event will highlight the garden’s extensive maple collection and other shade-loving plants. The tour takes place on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. at the south end of the Tyler Rose Garden.
Participants will learn about the history of the Shade Garden, which now features nearly 100 Southern-adapted maple specimens. These include Japanese maples (Acer palmatum), Shantung maple (Acer truncatum), trident maple (Acer buergerianum), chalk maple (Acer leucoderme), red maple (Acer rubrum), swamp red maple (Acer rubrum drummondii), silver maple (Acer saccharinum), Freeman’s maple (Acer × freemanii), Mexican sugar maple (Acer skutchii), and southern sugar maple (Acer floridanum). This incredible variety showcases the diversity and adaptability of maples to the East Texas landscape.
The Shade Garden’s history is as rich as its plant collection. Over the years, it has become a living classroom for gardeners, offering shade-friendly plantings, Japanese maples, and colorful trees for year-round interest. Along the garden’s pathways, visitors will also see beautiful camellias, azaleas, and other shrubs that thrive in shaded conditions.
The walking tour will cover more than just tree identification. Attendees will also receive practical tips on maple care, pruning, and recommendations for planting trees and shrubs that provide vivid fall color. Each participant will leave with a “goodie bag” of educational materials to help incorporate what they’ve learned into their own gardens.
The tour will be led by Keith Hansen, retired Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service horticulturist emeritus, who played a pivotal role in developing the Tyler Botanical Garden and its impressive maple collection. Smith County Master Gardeners will also be on hand to share detailed information about the plants and answer questions.
This rain-or-shine event requires pre-registration, with a $20 program fee. The deadline to register is December 2, 2024, and payment must be completed by December 3, 2024. All proceeds go toward Earth-Kind educational programs in Smith County.
To register or learn more, contact the Smith County Texas A&M AgriLife Extension office at 903-590-2980. Additional information can be found on the “Greg Grant Gardens,” “Smith County Master Gardeners,” or “Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service–Smith County” Facebook pages.
Participants should check in at the pergola in the Heritage Rose Garden at the southwest entrance of the Tyler Rose Garden, located at 420 Rose Park Drive, Tyler, Texas. If you can’t do the tour, visit the Tyler Botanical Garden any time you are in town. It’s free and open seven days a week.
Greg Grant is the Smith County horticulturist for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. He is the author of Texas Fruit and Vegetable Gardening, Texas Home Landscaping, Heirloom Gardening in the South, and The Rose Rustlers. You can read his “Greg’s Ramblings” blog at arborgate.com and read his “In Greg’s Garden” in each issue of Texas Gardener magazine (texasgardener.com). More science-based lawn and gardening information from the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service can be found at aggieturf.tamu.edu and aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu.
Gardening in the Genes
Pam Sigman, Smith County Master Gardener
featured in Tyler Morning Telegraph, December 8, 2024
Pam Sigman
LUCY-CAROLINE-YARBROUGH-BLAIR-AND-FAMILY
I’ve often wondered if maybe there is a genetic influence in the love of gardening! I think maybe there might be!
My grandmother gave a presentation to her garden club here in Tyler in about 1952 about her grandmother’s garden. Her grandmother’s house (my great great grandmother) sat on the corner of Bonner and Fan St (now called Woldert St) My mother remembers it as a sprawling house with a packed dirt yard that was swept with a broom every day.
Here are some excerpts from that presentation describing gardening in 1900’s Tyler TX:
When I first remember the garden, there were no cars, no paved streets, no street lights and no stock laws in Tyler. Everybody had a fence to keep out the neighbors’ cows and chickens. This grandmother of mine knew that a garden was not made by saying “oh, how beautiful” and sitting in the shade, but that it took constant, hard work to make flowers grow and keep out the weeds. There was no particular pattern to their garden. They (my great great grandmother and her widowed sister who lived with her) had planted a row of cedar trees across the front of their place and from the front gate to the house on either side of a wide gravel walk. I remember the trees were quite tall and in between the cedars there were violets, pansies, paper-white narcissus, jonquils, candytuff, nasturtiums and sweet alyssum. Occasionally one of the huge old forest trees in the back lot would die and have to be cut down to be used as firewood in the 9 fireplaces and grandmother would save the stump to hold pots or make a seesaw for her great grandchildren.
Yes, there was a pit and through the windows in the winter, you could always find something in bloom. In the spring out came plumbago, huge banana plants, geraniums, hibiscus, ponderosa, lemons, begonias – oh, everything – and all kinds of seeds just sprouting, ready to go in the ground. The front porch was “l” shaped. On one end grew the loveliest running roses; at the other end were steps leading to the pergola also rose covered. There were trellises in front of the windows all around the house covered in morning glories, moon vines, white clematis, coral vine, honeysuckle, gourd vines and running roses. Cape jasmines, roses, lilies of all kinds, tuberoses, golden glow, poppies, vincas, peonies and on and on. At night there was a big grey-green leafed bush that bloomed out in big white flowers that always smelled so good. There were four o’clocks all over the front yard. The grandchildren’s favorite place was the scuppernong arbor housing our playhouses. She also had plenty of sunflowers planted for the chickens.
One day I went through the back lot to grandmother’s little store on the corner of Front and Bonner and there was the prettiest hollyhock plant, so thinking it had just volunteered, I dug it up and took it home and planted it. Grandmother came by and admired it. She said, “Do you know, I planted a whole row of hollyhocks in the back lot but had no luck, not one of then came up!” I didn’t say a word!
One wet spring morning as grandmother was getting flowers out of the pit, she slipped and fell in. We thought she was broken all to pieces; she wouldn’t let anybody touch her. We carried her hot water to soak her ankle and liniment for the scratches. At noon, she made us bring down a bridge table and chair. The cook made a good lunch. Grandmother ate but was still to hurt to be brought into the house. As the night time came, she finally allowed the yard man to help her out of the pit and into the house. Bright and early the next morning, she was out in the garden again, humming as she worked.
On winter days when it was too cold to work outside, grandmother and auntie poured over the dozens of seed catalogs, oohing and aahing over every plant. Seeds were much less expensive then but their orders were still about $50!
After working in the yard all day, grandmother loved to get dressed and sit on the front porch, enjoying her flowers, the birds that were there by the dozens, the butterflies, the bees, the humming birds and sometimes an old hen and her chickens scratching about. Company nearly always dropped in as she sat on her porch. Sometimes she would invite the grandchildren over for tea cakes and lemonade – she was really a good cook as well as a good gardener.
Smith County Master Gardeners are volunteer educators certified and coordinated by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
Pam Sigman, Smith County Master Gardener