Notes from Chanticleer

by Heather Prince

one of the country’s premier public gardens. Located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, it is the 50-acre former home of the Rosengarten family, of which 35 acres are devoted to beautiful garden spaces. According to Chanticleer, it is “a garden of pleasure and learning, relaxing yet filled with ideas to take home.” Widely considered to be one of the most romantic and innovative gardens in the United States, it frequently sets the trends for landscape design. We were forrtunate to have Executive Director and Head Gardener, Bill Thomas as one of the speakers at the 2022 iLandscape. Thomas has been involved with Chanticleer for the past 19 years. We had a wonderful conversation about gardens and landscapes and have developed a three-part series around a few of the design ideas employed by Chanticleer that are at the forefront of landscaping today. Leaning into vegetables

Vegetable gardens have perhaps always been a priority for gardeners — a space to grow your own food and feed yourself and your family. They come in many shapes and forms from a pot of herbs on a balcony to a small communal plot to a massive Victory-style garden and everything in between. In many cases, vegetables and herbs are a gateway to falling in love with gardens and gardening. With the massive uncertainties of these pandemic years, more people than ever have turned to growing a bit of food and found a passion for plants. One trend that has bubbled to the surface is incorporating edible plants into ornamental landscapes instead of fencing them off in their own little corner.

Although Chanticleer has incorporated edible plants into their designs for nearly 20 years, “We expanded it during the pandemic,” reported Thomas. “During 2020, we made almost

all of our ornamental beds over into edible crops because we were closed until mid-June.” In the early days of the pandemic, shifting and evolving restrictions on work and which businesses were considered essential affected even public gardens like Chanticleer. “It was unclear if staff could be working or not,” commented Thomas. “If you were growing vegetables, you could definitely work. So we cancelled our ornamental plant orders. We already had vegetable seeds on hand, and we bought more seeds immediately. We decided we would plant the terraces by the Chanticleer House and the entrance where we normally do some edible crops mixed in with others. We went almost 100% edible.” The staff jumped on the chance to stay working and create interesting and appealing vegetable and herb displays. Plus the gardens were extraordinarily productive. Thomas reported, “That year we had lots and lots of food, more food than we’d ever had. We developed a relationship with Wayne Food Pantry, our local food pantry. They were overwhelmed with the number of people wanting food in 2020. When we had more food than they could handle, there is a larger food pantry in a nearby county and they took anything else we had.”

The vegetable aesthetic

How do you create interesting and aesthetically pleasing designs with vegetables? Once you start to look at the foliage and flowers, you may be surprised at how beautiful edible plants can be. “We use them in our designs as we would use other foliage plants,” observed Thomas. “So we might do a chartreuse lettuce in wedges in circular beds alternating with other plants like Iceland poppies, and some bulbs, as well as some mustards and purpleleaved lettuces or purple-leaved beets. Carrots or dill have a really fine foliage and give a delicate effect. We use many of the sages. A lot of the herbs are very cold tolerant, and the beautiful sages have a bluish-gray leaf or a yellowish-gray leaf.”

Wayne, Pennsylvania is between USDA Zone 6 and 7; it flirts with late-season frosts in early spring. Cole crops like lettuce, kale, and cabbage shrug off a frost unlike tender tropical foliage plants and many herbs and cole crops are beautiful not only in the spring, but keep looking good well into fall. “In the spring, we can get frosts into mid-May, just like the Chicago area,” observed Thomas. “It doesn’t happen often, but it can. So we need plants that can tolerate frost and so many early vegetables do that well. All of these crops handle it including cabbages, kales, Chinese cabbages, Bok chois, lettuces, radishes, beets, and definitely Swiss chard. One of the things I’m amazed at with Swiss chard is that we can plant that in the spring and it’s still looking good at Thanksgiving.” With colorful petioles and broad, dramatic leaves, Swiss chard can substitute for less-durable foliage plants in bed designs and containers. “There aren’t too many plants that can be that long in their effectiveness,” said Thomas. (continued on page 20)

(continued from page 19) Although we usually pick our lettuces, mustards, and spinach before warm weather arrives and they begin to bolt, in an ornamental design, the flowers can be quite charming. “One thing about mustards is that when it gets warmer, they’ll start blooming and the flower buds are tasty as well as being pretty,” reported Thomas. “The flowers are a real attractive yellow. And that’s true with a lot of the cole crops too. If we have kale overwinter, we’ll usually get it to bloom in the spring. It tastes a lot like broccoli and has beautiful flowers.”

Keeping them in line

Incorporating vegetables and herbs is not without its challenges. As mentioned, many will bolt and become leggy and bitter once the hot temperatures of summer arrive. “Going into the summer months, some of those spring vegetables are more heat-tolerant than others, which allows us to gradually change over our summer displays so we don’t have big beds of soil for guests to look at,” commented Thomas. “We’ll usually use the plant as long as we can, so lettuce often won’t be really great eating by the time we take it out.” One of the staff members originally from Taiwan, has taught the rest the joys of eating lettuce stalks as they are traditionally chopped up for salads or sautéed in Asia. “We’ve started doing that now and it’s delicious. So now when I buy lettuce and there’s the stalk at the bottom, I chop that up and throw it in the salad. My friends were initially surprised, but have become used to it by now. It tastes like lettuce, just a little more crunchy.”

Keepin’ the critters at bay There’s also pest pressure and, of course, critters. Chanticleer uses deer fencing at the perimeter of the entire property, so deer are not an issue. However, rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks run freely through the site. Although they are controlled by predators to a certain degree, the staff incorporates dried blood into their edible plantings to discourage them. Cabbage looper caterpillars are also a continual challenge. “Anything that’s going to be eaten or potentially eaten, we grow it organically,” stated Thomas. For cabbage looper moths, weekly applications of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) are used to control them and the staff have developed some maintenance strategies. “Loose-leaf lettuces you can go in (continued on page 22)

(continued from page 20) and pick some leaves or pick a plant or two and keep the display looking good. For those that form heads, if you plant them close enough together you can thin them as they start producing heads. If you’ve got other plants coming on as you pick, you can add those plants to fill in. That’s where dill and fennel can be really useful as fillers.”

Turn over a new leaf

This year, consider adding a little edible something to client designs or your home garden. After all, “I have always felt as a home gardener that you want to have something you can eat almost any day that you’re out gardening,” chuckled Thomas. “It’s really nice to pop something in your mouth when you’re gardening. It gives you an extra bonus for being out there weeding. It keeps your spirits up.”

Container gardening has continued to be a hot trend in gardening and a lucrative addition to the bottom line. As urban and suburban gardeners seek outdoor spaces for relaxation and gardening, containers are spilling out onto balconies, windowsills, and rooftops. Many of our vegetables and herbs from ferny dill to the corrugated leaves of cabbages add interesting or elegant textures to container designs.

One design element Chanticleer employed in their 2020 pandemic gardens were a series of trellis arches anchored in large containers. They trained tomatoes up and over the arches, creating a leafy bower filled with tasty snacks. It also allowed you to run your hands through the fragrant foliage and appreciate the cheerful yellow flowers of the plants. “Those tomato arches were wonderful, so I’m sure they will be repeated but just in a different situation — a different interpretation,” reported Thomas. “I’m not sure what the cultivar was, but they were a little larger than a cherry tomato and very sweet. Every day as I walked around, somehow, I’d get a couple in my mouth and they were a real pleasure.”

Some of the leafy crops are incredibly durable from spring into fall, among them Swiss chard with its thick broad leaves and colorful stems. “We had a container of one of the colored petioled Swiss chards,” remembered Thomas. “And boy, it was beautiful in the spring. It looked

good all summer and I picked it for Thanksgiving dinner.” Not only is Swiss chard a lovely plant, but many of the cabbages also offer fascinating textures. Plus being in a container allows you and your clients to stop and notice the beauty of the plants every day. “We had some Savoy cabbages whose leaves are wrinkly or like corduroy,” commented Thomas. “The leaves were quite beautiful even before it formed heads. And then as it headed up, it was just exquisite. Some of those containers we had up on balustrades at waist level. You could touch them. You could get an easy photograph of them. We planted them in the spring and finally harvested them in autumn. They looked great all summer long.”

Herbs in a container are not only beautiful and delicious for cooking, but fragrant as well. Planted in a pot, they are accessible and easy to run your fingers through to release their scent. “One container we did was a shallow bowl of basil,” reported Thomas. “It was probably two feet off the ground. Every time I walked by, I could wave my hands through the leaves and get the fragrance of basil. And it was thickly planted so it was easy to pick regularly and not ruin the display.”

Try adding some herbs and veggies to container displays this year for gorgeous foliage, but also a tasty treat and rich fragrance.