Know Before You Grow
Turn to the experts for master classes in plants and grasses.
Story by Anastasia Thrift
Photos by Liz Arteaga

Ponds Magazine often talks about some non-beginner topics in water gardening — plant propagation, water chemistry and exotic flower varieties to name a few. What about gardening basics? If you don’t know a thing about plants, no need to worry. Helpful classes and teachers abound.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Garden Shop
Recently, I headed to a class of my own. Paradise Contained, located north of Los Angeles in Topanga Canyon, offers year-round classes in its stylish retail store. I chose container gardening and sidled up to a work table strewn with newspaper for a crash course in patio planting.

Keith Cates taught the class with a no-attitude stance. He never made me feel out of the loop, and I liked the fact that he was not above visiting the 99¢ Only store to stock his horticulture supply with flax and spider plant. If every teacher were like him, I’d be
thrilled. It would take the nervousness out of venturing into uncharted territory. 

Another thing that lowered my anxiety level was the fact that I could bring my friend Liz. Paradise Contained offers classes as long as you have at least two people. That means the student body can consist entirely of you and your friend. Liz had some reservations about the whole experience, but they evaporated when she sat before Keith.
 
In addition to being personable, Keith had a great eye. I thought his container garden was done when he had five plants in there. Not so. He kept filling the container until it brimmed with life in perfect, multi-hued tiers.

“The general rule is to stuff a lot of plants in there,” Keith explained. Knowing all about your plants will help you choose which kind to stuff. If plants grow at different rates, you’ll have a harder time keeping the garden in check. Keith urged us to get the most info we could before digging in — homework, I guess.

Keith moved here from Connecticut 20 years ago for the sheer pleasure of a year-round growing climate. His passion fuels him through his weekdays as gardener and weekends as instructor. He was open to even the basic questions we had – in fact, encouraged them. Each new question about plants led him into a reverie on that specimen.

“Kalanchoe,” he enthused, “is perfect.”   That example of the joy he felt for plants preceded reveries on caladium and hosta.
Paradise Contained offers classes for bee and butterfly gardens, dog-friendly gardens, pruning basics, and dealing with frost damage, which hit California hard this winter.  Find out more information on this store and the classes it offers at www.paradisecontainedinc.com.

World-Wide Classroom
The website learn2grow.com gives online browsers a chance to work out their green thumbs as they navigate the Internet. Subscribers sign up and purchase classes, which span a range of topics from water gardening to arid climate landscaping. Container gardening was on the menu, so I signed up for a little comparative learning. The site is well-constructed and easy to click through, and its teachers are just as inviting. Matching Keith’s mojo would be tough, I thought, but my online teacher, Felder Rushing, tried to give Keith a cyberspace run for his money.

The site describes Felder as a “10th generation American gardener whose garden appears in dozens of magazines and TV programs,” and adds that he works “all over the country bringing easy gardening ideas to ‘garden variety’ gardeners.”  I was the perfect audience for him.

Felder's inviting, friendly Southern accent makes him an enjoyable listen, but there was something missing — him. I wanted to ask Felder questions, but his absence deterred that. Instead I listened to his comforting, lilting twang as he enthused about how simple maintaining a garden can be.

The site did answer many of the questions that occurred to me along the way. For how a container garden could work in my neck of the woods, it offered an easy clickable map. To know if that caladium could withstand strong heat, I had a mini dossier on the plant after I completed the class.

Bright, illustrative pictures displayed a variety of container gardening options. The pages following each garden description neatly laid out sun, shade and wind requirements.  Where Keith was limited to how many plants he could haul in from friends and discount stores, Felder had an unlimited stock of any photo available online – quite an upper hand.

The only downside to this technology is the disappointment of when it doesn’t work. A nice exercise where you dragged and dropped plants into a box together to determine whether they could cohabit in containers was glitchy, and I couldn’t complete the quiz about how to solve common problems. I won’t know if I got it right until my hostas keel over, I guess.

Felder did invite me to share a photo of my container garden, which I thought was a nice touch and a good way to grow the online community. Additionally, if I really wanted to reach him, I could drop him an e-mail or send an e-mail to somebody else behind the site to clear up any mix-ups. Learn2grow does offer that unique opportunity and others. Check it out at www.learn2grow.com.

In-depth Digging
For a more thorough experience, you can always go back to school.

I’m lucky enough to live close to a school with a well-respected horticulture program, Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif. Last year, I took a series of classes on plant identification and cultivation. It is safe to say that it was way more in-depth than my 30 minutes online.

I left the retail store and online classes with optimism, but with the Saddleback courses, you can leave with actual certifications and qualifications to pursue this gardening hobby as a career. Plus, I met a lot of great plant people and made some stellar study buddies.

My teacher, Charlie Harrison, was great. His no-nonsense approach and relaxed attitude made you like him, even though he pressed you to the limits of pneumonic device creativity. Each week of my herbaceous plants class included a grueling review quiz of the previous week’s green roster. Maybe that’s why not too many weekend-warrior gardeners enroll. 

“Hobbyists take lots of our classes, but some find them too technical,” Harrison says. “We gear our full courses for vocational students.”

It works. Charlie’s students often manage nurseries and head landscaping services after leaving school. Some of his students even return to the department to teach.  I gained a good grasp of botanical names, although I don’t have all 200 plants committed to memory. I know I won’t forget a few, like the scientific name for marigold. Charlie had a good trick for that one. “Why did the fry cook go back to the restaurant?” he asked. “To get his spatula.” Now marigold (Tagetes patula) will always stay in my mind.

Get Plant Class, Get Plant Style
You can love the subject you’re studying, but teachers make a class worth attending. Even with gardening, a passion for most of us, good teaching heightens the experience. The good news is that lots of excellent teachers, in a variety of venues, are out there to help us get the most out of what we love.

Anastasia Thrift is the managing editor of Ponds Magazine.

What I Learned in School Today
So what did all of this container gardening education leave me with? Here are a few of the lessons I gleaned.
 • For terrestrials, have plenty of drainage — but not all over the ground. Pick up the mess with a tray or saucer beneath the pot.
 • Portable pots are also adaptable pots. That means you can change out any plants past their prime or, let’s face it, ones you’ve killed.
 • Containers are great for gardening, especially for apartment-dwellers like me. You can avoid pests easily, too, by relocating your entire garden whenever the mood (or errant bug) strikes. Of course, container gardening is the only way folks with limited space will score a pond, too.

For more info on container gardening, pick up the fall issue of Ponds Magazine, which will feature a full article on this great gardening option. <HOME>

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