- Today on Oklahoma Gardening, we share the heartwarming story of how one Tulsa Master Gardener is making a difference.

We then head out to Salt Lake City as we visit the Red View Garden and the Conservation Garden Park.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, food and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma Green and growing.

Oklahoma Gardening is also a proud partner with Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust shape your future, provides resources for Oklahomans to make the healthy choice the easy choice.

I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

We're back here at the Student Farm.

I wanna share with you a tropical plant that you might find in some Oklahoma landscapes.

It's important to know which plants we are dealing with so that we can continue to maintain them successfully for years to come.

This season, we've been highlighting the many benefits of gardening and how they can help create healthier lifestyles.

The old adage, you reap what you sow, has never been more appropriate.

As we visit the Tulsa Boys home and see how Danielle Atkins and her fellow Tulsa County Master Gardeners are using their horticulture knowledge to transform teens, many Master Gardner programs across our state are having positive influences on their community.

But this program just goes to show you the bounty of the garden can go far beyond vegetables.

- So the boys home's been around since 1918, so we're 106 years old this year.

Yes, started out as an orphanage in response to the need, you know, in the community back then.

And a lot of group homes across the country started out as orphanages back in the day because of World War I and World War II in particular, you know, a lot of these parents were killed in the wars and so the children were left, you know, to their own devices and these orphanages sprung up around the country.

So over the years, over the last 106 years, the Tulsa Boys home has evolved over time to become now what's considered to be a residential treatment facility.

And we are nationally accredited and benchmarked against 455 of what's considered to be the best practice standards in our field.

I have this rockstar staff that just are incredibly gifted in helping these guys overcome their trauma, but also the physical environment is also can be conducive to healing.

And that's where the Tulsa OSU Master gardeners come in under the capable and dynamic leadership of Daniel Atkins.

I mean, she is just a wizard.

She's a rock star.

She has got the gene.

She knows how to connect with these boys in ways that you know, and, and that's what you have to have.

We call it having the gene and the juice, you know, to connect with these boys.

And she has done that in a way that was, I, I wouldn't have believed it, have I not seen it with my own two eyes.

- So I got started at the project of the Tulsa Boys Home last summer.

I came here on a hope tour where they walk you through all the ins and outs of how the Tulsa Boys home became what it is today.

So I was asked to start a garden project with the boys and we created these garden beds for the boys to experience growing something, nurturing it, loving it, taking care of it, and hopefully eating it.

It's been interesting watching them because a lot of them are like, I'm never going to eat a vegetable, or I'm not eating that vegetable.

And now when it's growing, they come out and they take it off the vine and they start eating it and they're just walking off eating a cucumber or a radish or when we had the peas, oh my gosh, they love peas so much.

They're like, these things taste so good.

That's a win.

- We have had a posse of OSU me Master Gardeners descend upon the Tulsa Boys Home campus and just breathe new life into all of our flower beds.

And not only that, Danielle by herself has established the first ever Tulsa Boys home horticulture class, but a and a gardening club.

- The horticulture is definitely a more structured, more of a regular school type program.

We do do some hands-on like seating or gardening and things like that because there's so much that needs to be grown out here.

But the class itself, they get a little bit of math in it.

They get, you know, spacing lessons.

How should we design our garden?

How much can fit in this garden?

Drawing it out, doing the math without them realizing they're getting that.

We also do some history because like if we're talking about Kenya, how do we grow things?

Or how did they grow things in Kenya?

How, how do we grow in it?

And they get the culture of how it happened there, how it happens here.

And so they can see the difference and they can also see the similarities.

And then in addition to that, then we teach 'em how to cook with it.

Whether it's cooking it just like raw cold, cut it up, put some salt and pepper on it, or making spaghetti outta zucchini noodles and then tasting it so they can see how, from the beginning to the end, the whole process and what they can do themselves.

So gardening club is different because that is boys who truly want to be in, in the environment that we're in.

They want more of it, they wanna have more freedom in it.

They wanna have more room to experiment in it.

And so those boys on their own are like, Hey, I wanna come back.

I wanna come to this hour of gardening club.

And it's great because one, they're excited and they're the ones that come up with more ideas and they help me come up with ideas of things that we should do in class as well.

So gardening club's, more of that personal, it's a better way to connect with 'em.

They tell me, you know, stories and things that they enjoy about gardening or, or what they want in gardening.

And we take it from there.

- I help shovel dirt into the garden.

Sometimes I water it, you know, if they need help, it's pretty fun.

You know, we do a lot of fun activities and then we build, you know, pretty decent sized coop for chickens.

- So I've done both.

I started out a gardening club.

I thought I just, at first, I just needed something else to do.

So I went to Miss Daniella and asked her about it and she said it was fun.

So I took her word on it and I'm happy I did.

It is really fun.

I did a little bit of gardening before I came in here.

Just helped my mom with hers.

It was fun when I was outta here, so I was like, might as well go do it now.

And I've not regretted it ever since.

It's been really fun.

- I just like the sunlight.

I like the, I like how peaceful it is.

It's very peaceful.

I like that we get to plant stuff.

'cause my teacher told me that when you play stuff, it helps the world.

So I - Came a master gardener for the knowledge.

You get so much knowledge being a master gardener.

I mean, we all know to put something in the ground and help and it's grown or not grown, but the science behind all of it is absolutely amazing.

But after you learn that, you take that information and you go to different places in the community and you educate, you help someone else who doesn't have the time or necessarily want to go through the program, you, you share that information that you have gotten from them with those people and or groups or just whatever it is.

And you share it with them and you give them the knowledge that they need and they come back to you and they're like, Hey, you know, this is now working, but now, hey, this is a problem.

Can you help me with this?

And so it's always a challenge, but it's very rewarding growing food and giving it to food pantries or helping a, a community or an organization make their own garden that they can give away to other food pantries or people who need it or for their own use if they need it.

And it's absolutely rewarding.

This place is absolutely amazing.

It's peaceful, it's serene, it's, it helps you be centered of yourself, whether you're here for yourself or you're here for one of the boys.

It's fabulous here.

- So we've got the gardening club going where they're, we're growing our own vegetables and fruits and, and then we have the enhancement of the flower gardens as well.

And, and again, the boys were working side by side with the master gardeners as well to get all the new flowers and plants planted.

And so, you know, people help support what they help create.

And so the boys having been involved directly in creating these enhanced beautiful flower beds now are much more likely to help take care of them than if somebody else did it.

And then they don't really care about them.

So these are our - New plants right here.

This is where we kind of, we have to get, like, add some more area to it.

So this is our TBH logo right here.

We filled everything in.

So there should be nice bushes around it instead of just soil.

It'll make it look a nice, not fuller, a lot nicer, a lot more vibrant.

We want it to stand out.

We want, when someone walks down here, we want them to think like this is a peaceful, nice place.

This place where we change the lives.

So we did like almost like a arrow shape right here, where it's gonna be a comb of red coming up to a tip of yellow and then back to red.

And then these purple bushes are gonna be right in the middle.

So it's gonna create, I, what we're hoping to be is like a nice flush arrow of beautiful flowers.

That's amazing.

So at first, before I did gardening club and the horticulture, I was really stressed, a lot of anxiety.

You gotta be next to all these boys 24 7 to be able to go out in the garden.

It teaches you one patience, plants and flowers, and anything that goes from the ground takes patience, doesn't grow in a day.

So you really learn to just tend to it and be careful.

And it kind of teaches you in your own life.

You just gotta slow down.

The world is too fast sometimes.

So sometimes you gotta slow down, take a shovel and plant, calm down, breathe and relax.

It really helps me just get my anxiety out.

- My greatest hope is that the OSU Master gardeners that have descended upon this campus to help us out with our gardening and the flowers and the vegetables and all of it will stay connected with us at the Tulsa Boys home for the long term.

That this is not just a, you know, one shot kind of a deal.

I'm pretty sure that Daniel Atkins is in it for the long haul.

So I'm hoping that she can wrangle Resta for OSU Master Gardner Posse to do the same.

- These boys, they want, they want someone in their life that shows they care.

They want someone who's here for them.

They want someone who doesn't have to be here, who wants to be here because they, that's what they want.

They want to be here and they want someone to listen to them.

And the best place to listen to someone is when you're sitting next to when you're pulling weeds or you know, planting seeds.

I mean, that's the perfect time to have a conversation with someone, whether it's like super personal or just something funny or about a funny story, or they love those silly dad jokes, but they're funny at the same time.

But it's so genuine, and I don't wanna use the word real world, but I come here and I mean, just look, I mean, you can't, it, it's like not optional.

You're just automatically happy being here.

So yeah, - We are here at Red Butte Garden and Arboretum just inside of Salt Lake City.

And joining me today is Guy Banner, who's a horticulturist here guy, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of your time.

- My pleasure.

- It is a beautiful garden ride on the hillside here.

Tell us a little bit about how this garden got started.

- It began as a state arboretum where people could come to experience local native plants and trees.

30.

In 1985, the garden opened and started small and it's grown since then.

It's now 29 acres of manicured landscape and managed landscape.

And then we have about, about the rest of a hundred up in the natural area, which is a forest, used to be forest land, but it's managed as a natural area up above us.

So we're nestled right up against the, the foothills into the mountains here and ha live in this urban wildland interface.

- You're really bridging the gap here.

Yeah.

And you get to experience both of 'em while you visit here.

Let's talk a little bit, because it is, you kind of have the visitor center down low at base camp, and then you gotta hike up.

Yeah.

But let's talk about some of the different gardens that you have overall here.

- All right.

Yeah.

Some of our earliest gardens are the, the entrance gardens, the Four Seasons garden.

We have an Aran Iranie, which, which an event center for weddings and things like that.

Then we have our terrace gardens, which we call the heart of the garden these days.

But that includes an herb garden, a medicinal garden, and a fragrance garden.

And we do weddings and things like that in the fragrance garden down lower.

We have a rose garden, we have a water pavilion because we have red view creek running through the garden.

And we have multiple ponds where we have the native Bonneville cutthroat trout stocked, but we see lots of birds and have some beautiful, calm spaces with lots of water for people to hang out by.

We've got the Wasatch range behind us here, the ochers across the valley, and you can see the great Salt Lake and Antelope Island over there.

It's one of the best places to view the, the valley and see sunsets in, in the valley.

- It's absolutely breathtaking.

And we're here at the top of your area, the water conservation garden.

- That's right.

- Can we work our way down and take a look at it - More?

Absolutely love to.

It gives this larger sense of garden space and it's something inspiring for people that maybe they can't do at home, but here it's something that they can experience.

- Yeah.

And - On a bigger scale, - All of this that we're seeing right now is the water conservation garden.

- Yep, that's right.

So we're in the center of the water conservation garden.

This area is called the water saver terrace, and we have it broken up into hydro zones.

So each of these plantings, all the plants are rated for a similar use of water, which is a really important concept in water conservation, gardening.

Absolutely.

So hydro zoning, you, you match your plants by what water they need.

That way you're not overwatering something or under watering something.

And so - The vegetation sort of changes then, right?

- Absolutely.

So we have a, this is one of our once a month areas.

- Okay.

- And then we have a zero water, nothing after establishment.

- Okay.

- Then we have once every other week, once a week, and then twice a week.

Okay.

At the, the luscious and greenest.

And we try to work hard to make sure that this area looks as good as those areas later in the season when it gets really hot and things are dried out a lot.

- I think that's a critical point always in botanical education.

Right?

Yeah.

Is that drought tolerant doesn't mean cactus and rocks, right?

- That's right.

Yeah.

We try to show a lot of lushness, it capture a lot of our native vegetation, but we borrow it from all around the world.

The Mediterranean, some of our sister climates, like we, our sister city I believe is in Turkey.

Okay.

Just climatically.

We're a zone six.

Six is our safe number, but seven is what we are now rated as.

So depending on where you go in the valley, seven or a, - Which is so funny because Oklahoma is in that six, seven range.

Yeah.

Also, but drastically different because of just temperatures.

And you guys get a lot more colder and, and consistently colder in the wintertime with snowfall.

- Right.

Yeah.

We do tend to have consistent snow pack for chunks of time during the winter.

It's not always throughout the entire winter, but Okay.

Yeah.

So we probably share quite a few different plants.

Our annual rainfall is about 17 inches and I think you guys get - Quite - A bit more than - That.

Yeah, a little more.

A little more than that.

- Yeah.

But you know, you still have very like hot short grass prairies there.

Right.

Understand your humid humidity's a lot higher than us.

- Yeah.

But it's a dry heat - Today.

Yeah, it's a dry heat.

Yeah.

But - I'll say I do recognize some of the plants, obviously the yaro and the yuccas, you know, and I, I've seen buffalo grass here, but some unique plants that I'm not familiar with.

Right.

Like this, this, what is this - Plume Apache plume or Canyon?

Canyon plume.

Okay.

Fallujah paradoxa.

This is a super drought hearty plant that stays evergreen on its leaves and it gets these beautiful little white rose family flowers.

Kind of like a little simple apple blossom followed by these, these are the, the fruiting, the seed heads that are fruiting.

So it's just these plumes.

So it's a great plan for just a continued season of interest.

You get those plumes early on and it sets these beautiful plumes up and then they just stay.

- And we got a nice massive yellow behind that.

- Right.

This is sulfur buckwheat and we, or ganum.

So there's the wild, the wild buckwheat's in the United States and the western United States has a huge number of species.

So this is a cultivar of one of our native species, but they're a great low water plant that has big blooms and it's a great pollinator plant.

Okay.

That's something we try to do with this garden a lot as well, creating habitat for pollinators and various other beneficial creatures.

- Absolutely.

Well, I have to ask a little bit about the soil too.

We're here on the rock, the mountain side.

Yes.

And I know you have Salt Lake down below.

- Right.

- What is your soil like here?

- It's quite variable.

So we have a pretty variable geology here.

And so the parent material of these different rock formations breaks down and creates different types of soils.

On average, our soil tends to be neutral to alkaline pH.

- Okay.

- As you get closer to the, the lake and down in the basin, it gets saltier.

And so the pH goes up and the salt goes up - Right - Here on the foothills where it used to be, it's been grassland and oak scrub for a long time.

We have a little bit better soil, but there is a lot of clay.

There's a lot of rock.

This garden, we utilized the soil that was onsite during construction and mixed in organic material and some drainage.

And then we brought in a little extra soil as well.

It's more of a silty texture, but it tends to be, there's a lot of clay in our soil.

- Well, it's - Definitely red clay.

We know that - Red clay.

Yeah.

It's definitely coming into its own and it's a beautiful garden.

Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

- My absolute pleasure.

- We are here in West Jordan, just south of Salt Lake City at the Conservation Garden Park.

And joining me is Courtney Brown and Courtney, I think this, it's really a demonstration garden.

Right?

Can you tell us a little bit about the history here?

- Yeah, the Conservation Garden Park is what it's called.

It was started in about the year 2000 is when the first phase was built.

And it's been built in phases ever since then.

Mostly through donated funds, although it's owned by the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District for the purpose of water conservation to help people learn about waterwise landscapes and, and how to make changes in their own yards.

- And you've done that in a lot of different ways.

Tell us a little bit about some of the things that visitors might see throughout the gardens.

- Well, there's dozens of exhibits designed to help people understand landscaping principles and ways to make changes.

Irrigation design principles, maintenance principles, just plants.

A lot of people need ideas for what kind of plants will grow in their yards.

- True.

And - Something that will inspire people and, and give people ideas and, and knowledge about and confidence how to make changes in their yards.

- And I, and I think you've done a fantastic job.

There's a lot of fun interpretation and signage for people to explore.

This particular area we're standing in though kind of spoke to me, and I think Oklahoma residents can really relate to some of this stuff.

It's your local scape exhibit.

Can you tell me a little bit about that - Space?

Yeah.

So local scapes is a design principle for how to do a sustainable landscape.

It's a simplified design principle that a homeowner can easily understand and, and not feel overwhelmed by what it takes to remove lawn and replace it with something that's gonna use less water and make irrigation changes.

So where we're standing is a local scapes exhibit, and it's a quarter acre lot fenced in, which is a typical lot size for this area.

And it incorporates five design principles.

What this concept does is it takes what people are used to and just flips it right around.

- Okay.

- So, so you've got, most of northern Utah historically is lawn dominant landscapes.

You know, it's not uncommon to find lawn going from someone's foundation all the way to the fence line.

And then they'll come in and, and if they alter that, they'll put in a, a planter, kidney bean shaped planter in their yard or something around the house.

Local scapes takes that order or that process and changes it completely around.

And we start designing with the lawn and a central open shape.

It doesn't have to be lawn, but that's the first principle is a central open shape, something that's ground level, and it can be functional as a lawn or, or a, just a, a gravel space where people can gather or something like that.

The second principle is gathering areas, so places where people can gather and talk like, like this area the next to a area, the relaxing - Area.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- And those are designed, you know, strategically as needed.

- Right.

- Then there's activity zones, activity zones, as the name implies.

Anything where some activity happens, a vegetable garden, a playground like the one behind me or a trampoline or, you know, anything like that.

- Right.

- Is an even something like a, a shed, necessary parts of the landscape, - But maybe something that you don't wanna have a lot of maintenance around.

Right.

- Yeah.

- You don't wanna kill your grass.

- Right.

- If you've got a trampoline on it.

So how do you design with that?

- The, the advantage to us is in water conservation, is that those areas don't require any water.

There's no, there's, it's part of the landscape.

It's providing function and value to the landscape, but no water use.

Okay.

- It's hardscape.

Absolutely.

- And then we take all those areas and we connect 'em together with paths and, you know, those can be secondary paths made out of gravel or something like that.

So that connects some, provides more function to the landscape.

And then the last thing becomes the planter areas and all the, the other space is filled in with plants.

- Okay.

- And of course there's a lot of design elements associated with that and how to do that.

A lot of options as well.

- And when you say planter space, you might mean whether it's a inground bed near a house or by the front entrance or containers as well?

- Yeah, yeah.

It could it all of that.

- Okay.

- And the advantage to doing that last is the, the shapes of those planter beds are gonna be irregular and, and so it's easy to fill that in with plants and water it efficiently with drip irrigation rather than spray irrigation, which, you know, doesn't bend around curves very easy.

So, - Absolutely.

Well, while some of our plants are same and some are different than what you have here in Utah, I know a lot of those same design principles will be applicable to Oklahomans.

So thank you so much for sharing this with us.

- Thank you.

- Oklahoma.

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Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

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We would like to thank our generous underwriters, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, food and Forestry, and Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

Additional support is also provided by Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants, the Oklahoma Horticulture Society, the Tulsa Garden Club, and the Tulsa Garden Center.