Keeping It Green
Our landscapes have many functions; they add beauty to our surroundings, provide a place to recreate, reduce stress, and clean and cool the surrounding environment. They also provide pollen and nectar for pollinators and provide habitat for birds. Keeping It Green is a weekly podcast in which Penn State extension educators talk with ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts who add beauty and function to our landscapes. Topics will range from design, installation and maintenance, plant selection, pests, and other current horticulture topics.
Keeping It Green
Season 3 Episode 7 with Jeff Jabco, Executive Director of Scott Arboretum and Gardens
In this episode of Keeping It Green, the team sits down with Jeff Jabco, Executive Director of the Scott Arboretum and Gardens, to explore his horticulture journey and the evolution of the Swarthmore Arboretum and Gardens. Jeff shares how the Scott Arboretum began as the Scott Foundation—established in 1929 by Swarthmore College alumni Mr. and Mrs. Scott to showcase exceptional plants for Delaware Valley home gardeners—and how it transformed into a dynamic space that blends curated plant collections with thoughtfully designed garden environments. He explains why “Gardens” was added to the name and how it better reflects the Arboretum’s mission to connect with the public. Jeff also discusses his deep ties to Penn State, where he earned his horticulture degree, launched his career with Penn State Extension, and later collaborated on research involving growing degree days and green roof systems. And what exactly is “Peony Palooza”? Tune in to find out.
Episode Hosts/Speakers:
Margaret Pickoff, Penn State Extension (host)
Sandy Feather, Penn State Extension (host)
Jeff Jabco, Executive Director of Scott Arboretum and Gardens
Photo Credit: Becky Robert
Keeping It Green has an email: keepingitgreen@psu.edu
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode? Want more information on something we talked about? Send us your questions and comments, or just say hello! We would love to hear from you!
Check out Penn State Extension's Green Industry Team website!
Welcome to Keeping It Green, a podcast for ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts with hosts Margaret Pickoff and Sandy Feather.
Margaret Pickoff:Hello and welcome to Keeping It Green, a podcast from Penn State Extension for ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Pickoff. I'm a horticulture educator with Penn State Extension, and on each episode, I'm joined by my colleagues on the green industry team as co-hosts. On today's episode, my co-host is Sandy Feather. Hi, Sandy.
Sandy Feather:Hey Margaret.
Margaret Pickoff:Thanks for being here.
Sandy Feather:Oh, thanks for inviting me. I'm looking forward to this one.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah. On today's episode, we're going to be joined by Jeff Jabko from Swarthmore's Scott Arboretum. But before we get to our interview with Jeff, we like to start our uh conversations just chatting about what we are seeing and experiencing and doing in our uh in our work as Penn State Extension educators and just plant people. Um so Sandy, what are you uh you're out in Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania. What are you seeing or doing or experiencing right now?
Sandy Feather:Rain.
Margaret Pickoff:Thank God.
Sandy Feather:Yeah, we got I I hadn't checked my rain gauge today, but I had an inch and a half before yesterday. So I think we probably got about two, two and a half inches out of this this rain. And God knows we needed it. It was really stuff still looks pitiful. I think the trees can't wait to shed their leaves and be done with it for the year. How about in your area?
Margaret Pickoff:Yes. Uh same. My my sister lives in the Pittsburgh area, and she's always able to tell me what weather to expect in the next day or so. And so she's like, There's rain coming. Um so finally, I mean, we we did get a few kind of like little sprinkles or short uh little bursts. Um, and I was kind of like, oh man, we really need like a nice like soaking rain. Um, and so far we've we have gotten um a couple, I think, good rains. It's not nearly enough, like you said. Right. Um, but everything out in the garden perked up um that I've been neglecting watering for the week.
Sandy Feather:Well, it's hard and it gets expensive. I I was telling um uh Tim and and Jeff that I went to visit uh there's a historic mansion here. It's called Elmcourt and it's up in Butler, Pennsylvania. And um I worked there like 30 years ago as an estate gardener. And um, you know, fast forward to now when the the wealthy owners passed away and you know they're scraping counting their pennies and they weren't able to irrigate stuff. So it was astonishing to see how bad everything looked there.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah, I mean, it it is a lot of labor um to keep things watered. And um, I mean, I know the people who are growing crops um are feeling it too.
Sandy Feather:Right. Um, absolutely.
Margaret Pickoff:It just makes everything a lot harder. So I know folks have been really grateful um for the rain. Um, and then you know, we'll see because uh we've had a couple of pretty intense long drought periods in the last couple of years, and we've definitely been able to see this season the effect of last summer and fall being bone dry um and entire landscapes really shifting, um, like established trees, um, plants that have been there for a long time really starting to struggle. And so people are noticing not just our clients in the landscape industry, but also homeowners are their customers are noticing.
Sandy Feather:Yeah. Yeah. It's um, you know, I think there's gonna have to be a lot of care as we're selecting new, you know, particularly trees and shrubs, those those long-term plants in the landscape. I think we're gonna have to revisit our plant pallets if this is gonna be our weather from now on.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah, well, that's something um I'm looking forward to asking Jeff his opinion on. Um so let's let's bring on our guests today. Jeff Jabco is the executive director of Scott Arboretum and Gardens um here in Southeast Pennsylvania. Uh, welcome. Jeff, thanks for being on our podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks, Margaret. I'm glad to be here.
Margaret Pickoff:Um so we always start out by just asking our guests to describe what their role is uh at their organization or workplace. Um, so uh what does your role entail as executive director?
Speaker 1:Well, I am in charge of our um whole recently unified departments. Um I've been here for 35 years and for up until this past summer, um, I was in charge of uh coordinator of horticulture and director of grounds. So I oversaw that aspect. We're at Swarthmore College, which is a private undergraduate liberal arts college founded in 1864 by the Society of Friends, the Quakers. Nice. Um and we have we're relatively small. Um we have uh a little over 400 acres of property, about 200 acres of that is uh developed as part of campus. The other 200 acres is just on the west side of campus, and it is the Crumb Creek Valley. Um, and so it's 200 acres of woodland with a creek running through it, and that's that's part of campus. It has several miles of trails within it and everything. But the other 200 acres is all of our area around academic buildings, um, all of our administrative buildings, athletic fields, and it's all the Scott Arboretum. So we don't have a separate arboretum that is separate and distinct from the campus, but the entire college campus is the arboretum. Uh so you know, we have uh all of our uh woody plants are accessioned, computer mapped, all of that kind of thing. Um, and so we have quite an extensive collection. Um, and my role as executive director is to oversee all the operations that are as part of that. So we have an associate director of grounds operations that takes care of all of our turf, our athletic fields, um, all of our paving areas, our stormwater management uh structures and programs, um, all of our faculty housing properties and snow removal, ice removal, you know, all of that kind of thing, and all of our tree care. We also have another group that is our horticulture division. And so that is all of our gardeners and uh and their various supervisors so to care for all everything that is, you know, the crumb woods, as well as all of our plant collections and our garden areas on campus. So we aren't just an arboretum with a collection of trees. Uh, we actually were working we changed our name uh a little while ago to Scott Arboretum and Gardens, because really what we're known for are collections of plants within our garden spaces. So we have some very intensive gardens like our uh our rose garden, which was started in 1957. Um we have a pollinator's garden, we have several courtyard gardens that have different landscape features associated with them. We have a new root root and newly reestablished winter garden, um, so a number of those garden spaces. And we still have our plant collections, so uh collections such as uh our collection of cherry trees, our lilac collection, viburnum collection, our famous Magnolia collection and Holly collections. Uh, there are a couple of our oldest ones, a large pineedum area. So all of those are all around campus and completely encompassing campus. Uh, and then our third group within our structure of Scott R. Breeman Gardens is our uh whole group that deals with uh learning and community engagement. So we have a volunteers program. So we have over 200 volunteers that help us either with gardening or in our horticultural library or our events. Um, we have a big education program. Um Swarthmore College is undergraduate liberal arts college, but horticulture is not taught here. Uh, so it's a kind of an ironic thing, and I'll tell you kind of our mission and background and why that is in a minute. Um, but we have educational programs. We co-host a big perennials conference, which is coming up in October, and we'll get around 500 people here for that. Woody plant conference in the summer. We have lectures, workshops, day-long trips, multi-day trips, uh, lots of other kinds of uh um learning and engagement types of things that we do. And then we also have um um kind of community and family programming. So we have different things happening here on campus as part of the Arbretum, really to teach people about nature and the outdoors and plants, uh, trying to start at a really young age to do that. And then we have a person totally devoted to uh campus engagement. So this would be things that would involve mainly students, but also would involve faculty and staff too, in somehow learning about the arboretum or our naturals areas or plants or nature in their daily lives. So that's kind of my role is to oversee all of those various aspects of what makes up Scott Arbitum in Gardens.
Sandy Feather:So sorry, long answer to a short that sounds like you have your hands full.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh all together, uh, on our staff, we have 28 people uh to do all those various things. Everyone from a um a mechanic, uh the folks who take care of our athletic fields, our gardeners, and all of those people working in uh education, community engagement, um, our uh fundraising aspect, um, publicity, um, communications, all of that kind of thing, our volunteer program. So uh all 28 of us doing that kind of thing.
Margaret Pickoff:And you had mentioned earlier um that these different departments were used to be separate and that they've made the decision to unify them into sort of one large department. Um and it seems like there are other public gardens um in the area that are kind of taking that um that strategy. I I know that Morris recently changed their name from Morris Arboretum to Morris Arboretum and Gardens, and I kind of wonder if that has something to do with it. But I wonder from your perspective, um, what's behind that kind of desire to unify everything?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let me talk about the name first. Um I think it uh at one point we were called the Scott Foundation up until the 1980s, and uh that's what the the original uh donors that started the Scott Arbridom had set it up as a Scott Foundation. And um we would constantly get letters from groups wanting us to give them money because they think of a foundation, and that's what foundations do, but that's not what it was at all. So at some point it was changed to the Scott Arboretum because that was kind of the lingo at the time for places that had plant collections, and then over time we moved more to not just you know a plant collection, not just having uh, you know, a lilac collection over there and the viburnum collection over there and the tree peony collection over there, but to move to where we are integrating all those collections into design spaces. Um and so uh that became kind of the the idea of well, we're more about gardens. And a lot of our public now, they don't know what an arboretum is. Okay, so it's kind of a you know, almost an antiquated word for a lot of folks, and they don't understand what an arboretum is, but they understand what we mean by gardens. So it's got arboretum and gardens, and so I think that's why a number of other institutions are also adding that and gardens onto their name.
Sandy Feather:I know the the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden has definitely taken that approach. They're not gonna have the lilacs here and the viburnums here and whatever, they're gonna be incorporated into garden spaces throughout the property.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the the college started in 1864, as I said, but um the arboretum did not start at that time. So as I said, it's an undergraduate liberal arts college. Uh in 1929, um, two graduates of Swarthmore College who graduated in the 1890s, Mr. and Mrs. Scott, hence we get the Scott Arboretum, um, set up the endowment, which started the Scott Arboretum in 1929. And the mission of the Scott Arboretum, as they outlined it, and in this is kind of me distilling it down into kind of today's lingo, was to grow and display the best plants uh that did well here in the Delaware Valley area to inspire home gardeners. So it wasn't about a botanical collection for the biology department, it wasn't a uh a repository for botanical study or anything like that. Uh, it really was a collection of plants to inspire home gardeners. So at that point, um, you know, people could come out and they could look on campus and were open every day of the year from sunup to sundown, no admission fee, no gates, no fencing, you know, just come on campus whenever you want to during daylight hours. And you can walk around campus, you can uh take a look at our plant collections, all of that. But when they originally set it up, it was these different groups of plants kind of planted in different areas around campus. So if someone wanted to see really nice magnolias, they could come out, you know, in March and April and kind of see, and it's like, oh, I really like that one better than that one. Oh, yeah, let me get let me get that uh uh that one called Pinky. I really like that one, uh I guess compared to some of the other ones. Well, that was good for picking a plant, but that's kind of as far as it would go. And then um the Arbedum decided we really need to teach people more, but how to use these plants in their garden, also. So then it was the idea of okay, let's combine some of the best plants we have into more garden spaces. And so kind of spaces in between campus buildings became more intimate garden spaces. Because in reality, there aren't that many suburban gardeners that have 200 acres to landscape, but they might have this small space that it like existed between gardens or gardens that or buildings that would kind of form a kind of a courtyard space that could be designed. It's like, oh, I could translate that into my front garden, or that look, I could do that off of my patio and do something like that. So around the 1980s, it started being more of, oh, let's take those courtyards and let's incorporate many different plants in there. So they're really more designed garden spaces representing all different types of conditions and structures around them and different sizes and spaces and everything. So that's kind of how all of that happened from the very beginning to what we are today.
Margaret Pickoff:It's interesting. Before we started recording, um, we were talking about how you um you used to be an extension um agent for Penn State, like us. Um, and and that you when you started, it was around the time that the Master Gardener program was starting up and there was kind of a shift. Um, this was before I was born. But a shift from what I understand, a little bit kids towards, I know, um, towards uh consumer horticulture. Um and so recognizing, okay, people have properties, they have questions, they're getting interested in gardens. So and the horticulture agent can't spend all day answering questions from the public. So we need to train these volunteers to do this. And it's interesting, like around the 80s, when um when the Scott Arboretum also kind of had that awareness that, okay, um, like the average person is not gonna have like a magnolia grove. Um, they're gonna have like and and all these other things in a smaller space. Um, so I think that's a cool example of kind of how the the use of the grounds kind of shifted in in relation to what the public needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So yeah, so I was an undergraduate at Penn State in horticulture from 1978 to 82. And that was like a big peak for enrollment in horticulture departments all around the country. Um, it was kind of like the the green revolution time. And, you know, at that point, like people were rediscovering house plants and tractor trailer loads of foliage plants would come up from Florida to various places. And you know, you couldn't go to a new restaurant or cocktail lounge and there weren't ferns hanging from the ceiling. Uh, so it was like a really big time for people kind of discovering plants, whether they be indoor house plants or outdoor gardening, that kind of thing, uh, vegetable gardening, all of that stuff. So lots of people getting into horticulture. And then uh I graduated from Penn State degree in horticulture. Uh, my emphasis was actually in plant breeding. Uh, so I had a history of that, uh, working in the hort department at Penn State and doing research uh on plant breeding. And um then I went on to graduate school at North Carolina State, and I was breeding small fruit crops, uh mainly focusing on grapes, but I also worked on brambles and I also worked on peaches too. Um, so doing that in graduate school. And it was a summer between my junior and senior year. No, yeah, actually between my junior and senior year at Penn State, um, I did an internship with Penn State Cooperative Extension, and I was doing horticultural work in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. So I was there for the whole summer. Uh, and I was doing basically a lot of home horticulture stuff, but I would go out with the one of the other agents if they would do commercial calls and all of that kind of thing. Um, I was in graduate school and I was finishing up, and I was actually planning on going on for a PhD at that time, but my car died and I had no money. And uh a one of the extension educators from Penn State called me up at North Carolina and said, We know you're gonna be graduating soon. And we have this position that is open. We're just seeing if you might be interested. As I said, my car died and I had no money. And uh it's like, okay, yeah, I'll take that job. And I think I would do that for just a bit and go on for a PhD. Um, but uh it ended up being the role of a essentially a multi-county horticultural agent working with commercial growers here in southeastern Pennsylvania, uh, and I was headquartered in Delaware County. And uh at that time, horticultural agents in each of the counties around here, we kind of had our specialties. So I became the specialist for small fruit production. Uh, also I worked with greenhouse growers and I worked with the arborist industry. So those were kind of the three big things I was working with. And then a fellow agent was working on turf, and another one was working on tree fruits, and another one was working on mushrooms, and another one was working with uh nursery producers. Um, so we all kind of had our specialties that we would share back and forth and help to do programming for that. And it was while during that time I got to know the folks at the Scott R. Reedom, they had a job open. It's like, okay, I'll try that. And uh I've been here 35 years since then.
Speaker 2:So yeah. Um definitely found your place.
Speaker 1:Big changes uh yeah in the industry, you know, during that time and kind of the the emphasis of what what people were doing. So it's interesting to kind of see how things have changed uh over that time.
Sandy Feather:And it's interesting that you remember like the beginning of the Master Gardener program here in Pennsylvania because it has really grown into a huge, huge, very successful program.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So when I started in Delaware County, I mean I was doing that regional work, but then you know, I was still the horticulture agent for Delaware County. And we would have you know so many calls during the growing season that actually we had enough of money that we would hire a part-time person who would come in. I think at that point it was like three days a week. So anyone who had calls, it's like, okay, call back on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday between you know nine and three in the afternoon, and you'll be able to talk to someone because I couldn't sit at the desk all the time and I couldn't answer all of those calls. Um, and so we had the person doing that. And yeah, then just towards that the that time in the uh the kind of the mid to late 80s, there started being some programs of this this master gardening program, and I know it was happening in some other state, I can't remember exactly where.
Sandy Feather:Uh I want to say we kind of got it like start in Washington state or Oregon.
Speaker 1:I I really don't, I really don't remember.
Sandy Feather:Yeah, yeah. David Gibby is the educator who who started it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and at the same time, we were working with urban gardening. Okay. So the uh the Philadelphia group of cooperative extension was way into urban gardening, and I was able to get a really large grant that we were starting an urban gardening program in the city of Chester, which is in Delaware County. Uh, and so we were able to hire two people to kind of run that program, the urban gardening program in Chester, also. So all those things were like, you know, really, really coming on at that time. Master gardening program, urban gardening initiatives and programs, uh, as well as this big emphasis on commercial horticulture.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah, um I do want to ask, um, well, I have a lot of questions about how the um the arboretum functions and how it has changed in terms of visitors and and responding to what visitors like, but I do want to start out by just asking about the plants. And obviously there's lots and lots of species represented there um on all those acres. And um I guess I I wonder just to like narrow it down a little bit, if there is a particular plant collection um that has sort of stood the test of time as being either really um really popular or really resilient. Um, you know, you had mentioned roses and and roses are getting harder to grow for a number of reasons, as are a lot of plants actually, that probably used to be sort of the mainstays of public gardens and and arborita. Um, but I wonder, is there in your time at Scott, is there a plant collection that has kind of just continued to thrive through that time and sort of maintain its uh its shine and its draw?
Speaker 1:Um yeah, I would say there's a couple. We have a really noted collection of magnolias. Um they've been we've had your magnolia collection for a long, long time. Um and when you say something like that, it can be really, really diverse. Uh you kind of a collection. So, and it's just interesting over time, some of the things we were starting with. So um Magnolia Virginiana, you know, one of our native magnolias. It's really not native to this area, but just not far south from here it is. So you'll find it in Delaware, you'll find it in southern New Jersey, uh likes really, really moist conditions and everything. And we had a uh cultivar here probably since the 1940s called Magnolia Virginiana Variety Australis cultivar Henry Hicks. And actually, that was named here at the Scott Arboretum, and it was named from Henry Hicks from the Hicks nursery on Long Island, uh, an old, old nursery that was there, been around for generations. Um, and that was a selection because it was hardier and it would hold on to the majority of its leaves through the winter. Uh, where if you could possibly grow Magnolia virginina in this area before, but they would be deciduous, they would just drop all of their leaves. Uh so that that was you know like the one. And since then, there are a number of other cultivars, and I think now you can grow Magnolia Virginia quite a bit farther north uh and west than what it was previously. So some things about you know how the climate has changed during that time. We did be we didn't used to be able to grow Lagostromia, crepe myrtles.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:You know, we we had maybe one or two on campus. Um if we had one, we could never think of planting it in the fall. If we had planted in the spring, we would know probably for the first three years it would die back to the ground. And these were some of the hardiest ones we were trying to grow. And then if we got it past year three, then it might have wood that would be mature, root system that's mature enough to withstand having some up above-ground stems that would last through the winter. Now we can pretty much grow any of them.
Sandy Feather:Yeah, not that they can still be dieback shrubs for us out here in the hinterlands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for us, they they don't die back at all. And so we can pretty much grow any. But so you know, a magnolia collection is really important. We have a really uh extensive collection of hollies, uh, both deciduous and evergreen hollies and all different species. Uh, we have a really old pineedum collection, probably one of our most unique collections, one of the things we're really known for is our tree peony collection. And we do know that some of those original plants we have in a collection date from around 1930, 1931. Uh, we have correspondence from Dr. Wister, who is our first director and our director for many, many years, um about those plants. Uh, and so we know that we have that. And we have a very good collection of Saunders hybrids, Dr. A.P. Saunders, who was a, I think it was a chemistry professor at Hamilton College in upstate New York, and he bred peonies, tree peonies. Uh, he also bred herbaceous too, but we have a really nice uh collection of his saunder tree peonies, and they are kind of going through this big revival right now. Um, so since then I've started uh co co-founded the Mid-Atlantic Peony Society. We have a big peony Palooza every year. Uh we're actually hosting the American Peony Society to this area next May, first weekend of May, uh here in uh in Delaware and Chester counties. And um yeah, so that that's kind of a unique plant collection that we have. Uh, but you know, we have uh you know a plant that's probably kind of out of favor and fashion, the lilacs I'd mentioned, but also, you know, viburnums and in a huge number of different things, other things that we had. Once perennials started getting really popular, and that was uh in the 1980s, actually, is when I was in Extension. The first perennials conference was held during that time. So this perennials conference that I said is coming up in October that we host here at the Scott Arbedom has always been here. It involves uh at one point um Cooperative Extension was a co-sponsor of it in the very beginning years. Now it is run and managed by the Scott Arbor Breedham, Longwood Gardens, Chanticleer, uh, Hardy Plant Society, Mid-Atlantic Chapter, and the Pennsylvania Hort Society. So those are the groups that kind of organize and run that. And we will get 500 people in person and maybe 100 people uh virtual uh for that one-day conference in October. But at that point, perennials were just getting started. So it was you know Cedum Autumn Joy, and um oh, what were a couple of the other ones? Uh Penicetum, Alleopecyroides, Hamilin, uh uh Goldsturm Rubecia. Goldsturm Rebecca, those were like the three biggies. Uh and uh yeah, so uh it's come a long way since then. So that was you know a really popular thing at the very beginning. But now, you know, uh you mentioned about the rose garden. So we've had the rose garden since 1957. Um, and it was to honor one of uh the dean of students for the college, and it was right in the middle of college, and it was a relatively formal rose garden, not that it was rectilinear, but formal beds of roses where there would be solid blocks of each different cultivar of rose. So it's mainly made up of the hybrid T's, the florabundas, the grandi floras, had some post and chain around the outside for the climbers and ramblers, and then there was one other bed that had some of the species and shrub roses in it. All of the roses were planted about two feet apart from each other, solid cultivar. So you'd have a solid bed of you know, 30 Mr. Lincoln roses, which were gorgeous when they would flower, you know, in late May, early June. And then within a couple of weeks, they would have no leaves left on them from black spot and all of that kind of thing. At that point, the roses were sprayed every 10 days to two weeks, fungicide, uh, insecticide, and that's what the program was. Well, even when I started here in 1990, we early on, we started experimenting with well, what other things could we use? Um, we had a big uh, and this was through cooperative extension, we had a big research uh project. This was along with Dave Shoshanik, who actually followed in my footsteps in in Delaware County. Um, and Rick Johnson at our IPM research program. And we were working with Greg Hoover, who was a professor in entomology at Penn State. And we did a lot of research on growing degree days, plant phonology, all of that kind of thing was some of the big work that we had done. And we had, you know, oh, 12 or 12 to 20 different institutions, depending on the year, collecting data to add into that program. Um, but at that point with the roses, we were trying things such as baking soda on. Uh so all these different things to try to control some of the diseases like black spot and anthrachnose and all of that kind of stuff. Um, and then we started using some beneficial insects. And all with limited success, I would say, for roses. And then it was probably a little more 10 years ago, probably at least, maybe a little more, maybe 12 years ago, I finally said, okay, this has got to change. This is an endowed garden on campus. You know, it's meant to be a rose garden. What can we do to make it more applicable to now here and now? Okay. We still need to have roses in it. So we started looking to see where we could get the best, most disease-resistant roses that we had. So you all probably remember knockout rose, which is pretty disease resistant. So everything we were finding at that point were shrub roses, okay? And we didn't want a full garden just full of knockout roses. You know, there's knockout and not much more at that point. So uh we started finding other breeders, rose breeders who were doing work with roses to really look for disease resistance, especially is what they were working for, disease resistance. We kind of figured out different ways of managing the insect part. If we spread the roses apart, gave more air movement between them, that if we planted other companion plants, other flowering plants to attract beneficial insects in, we actually have very few insect problems in our rose garden. Yeah, if it's a bad year for Japanese beetles, we'll still get that. They're here for a couple of weeks, then they're gone. We just kind of accept that's what it is. Uh, but diseases were still a problem. So we've uh actually what we decided was we're not going to have those solid beds of roses anymore. We're going to give each of the roses more space. We'll still have blocks of cultivars, but a lot of space in between them, where we have all kinds of other plants, everything from lavender and clematis and salvias and alliums and all kinds of other things uh growing in between them. Um, so that really has interest all through the gardening year, uh, not just you know that time in May and June when roses flower and then maybe some repeat flowering in the fall, but it's all through the year. And then also realizing we're not going to keep those same cultivars of roses all the time. Just because Mr. Lincoln's been there from 1957. Sorry, Mr. Lincoln, you know, you're you're you've got every kind of disease, we're not going to spray you. Um, so it is actually um uh a group in Germany uh that is doing a lot of the research. Uh and there are a number of other ones now, they aren't the only ones, but uh they have been very prolific in what they've been introducing uh for disease-resistant roses. And those are available in the US now. So we participated a number of years with the American Rose Trial for Sustainability, ARTS arts program. And we had a whole separate, we have a whole separate nursery area, and we would do trials, blind trials of roses to see how they did in this area. Uh, and then we'd feed that information back, and then I would go into a trial, then that information would get published to the public. So we have a good set of roses now. As we get newer and better things, then that's you know, five years ago, there's a fabulous rose we were growing, Julia Child, uh beautiful color, nice, uh more of a short floribunda. Sorry, Julia, you're just not cutting it anymore. You get you get black spot more easily than some of these other ones. So I don't think we're gonna have Julia Child in our rose garden a whole lot longer, but we have many other ones that are doing really well. So that's one of the ways it's like just that one garden space, how it's changed. Uh and we don't use we actually in that rose garden, uh, we were saying that it it actually, since we did that change, it was organic. So we weren't doing any spray, it was all totally organic. Starting last year, we had the modifying that saying it is now sustainable because we're having a problem with rose rosette disease.
Sandy Feather:I was just gonna ask about rose rosette.
Speaker 1:We have rose rosette disease, and we're trying to break the cycle of the area fyed mite. So we are using a mitocide, but that is the only chemical that we are using in the rose garden. Everything else about it is organic. So we're not organic, we're saying it's sustainable now because we're using that mitocide.
Sandy Feather:How are you scouting for those mites?
Speaker 1:Every week, we're actually we have some volunteers that we've trained uh actually looking for the rose rosette. Uh it's almost impossible to scout for them because they're tiny, they're minuscule, yeah. Yeah, they're very tiny and and they want to be in those buds, yeah. So yeah, so you really can't see them. So we look for the symptoms, trying to eliminate the symptoms uh, you know, as soon as we find them. So basically looking at every plant uh all of that time like that. And if we see something that we suspect, we rogue it out. So we've lost lots of plants over the past, you know, six, eight years because of rose rosette. Um, hopefully at some point we'll have better choices of roses that are more resistant to rose rosette disease. And I think you know, Texas AM especially is working on that in some other places.
Sandy Feather:So University of Tennessee was pretty involved. Yep.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. So that's that's you know, one garden space and how it's changed over the years.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah, I mean, I that is such a an a fascinating example because I kind of misspoke a little bit earlier when I said it's gotten harder to grow roses. And I think I was thinking rose rosette disease because we hear about that a lot. Um but in this case and and in a lot of landscapes, um we do have really uh species that have been really important parts of landscapes for a long time in our region that are starting to suffer from various kind of climate stressors and drought and just the changing growing season. Um in this case though, it's kind of it's it's kind of like our tolerance for doing weekly fungicide applications has also changed. And and I think that's true among the public, and I'm sure you know the college students if you ask them, and and so it's such an interesting strategy that kind of um aligns with the greater theme of of sort of diversifying, like rather than having it used to be very fashionable to have you know a lot of the same plant in one area, and look how beautiful this looks, and it's very uniform, and and it just seems like the theme is adding in more diversity, and within that, that kind of creates a more resilient, um uh maybe disease pest resistant uh collection of plants. And so you haven't had to completely get rid of the rose garden, and I'm not sure you're able to because the endowment, but it's an endowment. But I think that's a really interesting example of kind of um the the spirit of this garden is still the same, and we're still you know enjoying this plant uh and and um you know allowing visitors to experience it, but it's just in a slightly different configuration um so that we don't have to be constantly spraying and um yeah, so I think that's a really cool example.
Speaker 1:We have a uh one late afternoon evening in late May. We have our rose celebration. So we'll have food and drink and talks and tours about the rose garden, and we'll have a bunch of giveaways, and that's a couple of food trucks here, but we give everyone who comes who wants a rose plant that is one of the newer disease-resistant roses. So it's like, yes, you can grow this in the garden and you don't have to spray it for diseases. Uh so it's one of our way of trying to get some of these better plants out to people. And you were mentioning about uh how the students' appreciation of things. Uh, we have several acres of organic lawns on campus, and it's the main lawns that students are using, okay? Where they where they play frisbee, where they want to, you know, lay out in the sun with a book on a nice sunny day and that kind of thing, uh, where they just want to gather with their friends and chat, that kind of stuff. And we have a new um dining center and community commons, and all around that building are meadows. So now in their third and fourth year, uh, around some of them, and they are looking really spectacular right now. I mean, even with the dry weather, yeah, some of the things came and went a little faster, but you know, and it's on a slope too. Uh but a number of those plants, it's like, okay, they can handle that and they can still flower, you know, the asters or actually not asters, they're now symphiatricums are in flower now, and uh, you know, a number of other things. So that is like a real change in how campus looks uh from 30 years ago.
Sandy Feather:And it's interesting, my office just moved uh from uh a non-Penn State building uh to one of the Commonwealth campuses. That's the Greater Allegheny campus. And the man the grounds managers there are kind of interested in turn they they mow a lot. I honestly don't know how many acres we have on campus, but um they mow a lot and they would like to mow less. So they're looking to us to to help them maybe come up with some meadows, which would be wonderful.
Speaker 1:I mean, meadows are a whole different thing. And actually, it is something I really need to learn about more. Uh, and I keep encouraging my staff. It's like, okay, I need a couple of you to get really excited about meadows because I need help with them. Um, I kind of did that with green roofs. Okay. We have a number of green roofs on campus, and much of that came from my association with uh Dave Beattie and Barbara Age from Penn State, Penn State professors in the Hort department who are doing research on green roofs. And I was co-teaching a class here at the college in engineering, and I'm not an engineer at all, but it was on water, water management and stormwater. And that's something I had to be responsible for here on a campus. Um, and so the class during that semester was really looking about stormwater management, and green roofs were just a really brand new thing at that time. So I brought Dave Beattie down from Penn State. He gave a lecture to them, and then we started studying it more. And there was one row house in fell in Philadelphia where the owner had put a green roof on. So we went and took a look at that and talked to the owner. Um, and then we started talking to other people. Lo and behold, two years later, we put a green roof on a student residence hall, the first one in the United States. Uh, and that happened here, and now we have green roofs on many of our buildings. Yeah. Nice. But if the building doesn't have solar panels on it, it has green roofs on it. Nice. Yeah.
Margaret Pickoff:Um, I did want to ask, and you have you had mentioned um the perennial plant conference and um, I think the Woody Plant Conference is another one that happens at Scott.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, so the uh the perennial plant conference is Friday, October 17th this year. Uh, and you can go online uh actually to any of those sponsoring organizations or just uh Google Perennial Plant Conference and you'll get to it. Registration's still open for that. And then the Woody Plant Conference typically is in mid-July, and that's a one-day event, and that's also on a Friday in mid-July.
Margaret Pickoff:So and and obviously this is a pleasure. Um sorry, Sandy. Um I was gonna say that obviously this is a long-standing collaboration between you'd mentioned Chanticleer, Longwood, Hardy Plant Society, and um PHS. Um and I just kind of wonder because here in Southeast PA, we are totally spoiled by the number of horticultural offerings. And I just wonder, um, you know, like uh what um what do you gain from a collaboration like that? Um obviously, I mean, I I assume that it it helps in in all sorts of ways, but can we kind of talk about what that is like to be part of that?
Speaker 1:Well, it's just great to have such a division of labor because there are a lot of things to do. I mean, if you think about, okay, who are we gonna have for speakers? Okay, the more people that are you know represented in a meeting room, then the more ideas you have for speakers. Then you have to contact the speaker and you have to kind of figure out what they're gonna talk about and then do the write-up. So someone has to do the brochure, which they do at PHS, someone has to do the publicity, which Santa Claire handles much of that. Someone has to take care of the registration, Longwood takes care of that. Here at the Scot Arbre Breedham, we we have the facilities, we host it. We always we have it at that time of year in October because that's fall break. And so all the students are on break that week. Therefore, we can use you know the big facilities of the auditorium and all of that. Um, so just having that kind of synergy with all of those different groups represented, and it's a great way to talk to the neighbors too. Sometimes you can get so isolated, even though we have a bunch of horticultural institutions around the area, if you're all doing your own thing, you're not talking to each other. But I I think it here in southeastern Pennsylvania, we really have a close horticultural community. I mean, we have a couple of other programs too, um, at Gardens Collaborative, um, the the Philadelphia, the Greater Philadelphia Gardens Group. So where everyone's kind of trying to cooperate. And even you know, the statewide organization uh of Pennsylvania of uh public gardens uh has a a group for promotion of gardens, uh public gardens and what they mean for the residents of Pennsylvania and visitors. Um so there are all those types of collaborative things that are going on. Um so really you can get some really good energy about all of that. You know, then the Philadelphia Flower Show. Most of us in the public garden world, you know, we volunteer for a day or more helping to put on that big show. Uh and you know, PHS couldn't do it all themselves just for that thing. Yeah.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah, I'm sure that it it helps to be able to, when you're experiencing some sort of challenge to horticulturally or the way that the uh the organization's being run, or you know, uh things are changing, which is kind of a theme throughout this whole conversation.
Speaker 1:And um You know, and we have we have great bigger groups too. You know, I've been a member of the Perennial Plan Association for a long time. They have a great yearly meeting and regional meetings now that are very good. Um American Public Gardens Association, which is kind of the professional organization for public gardens. Uh, they have regional meetings, and actually I think there's going to be one out in Pittsburgh soon. Um, and uh there are uh other organizations. So I always tell people if you're really passionate in plants, join a plant society. You'll meet a bunch of weird people. But uh, you know, I said about the Mid-Alantic Peony Society, so I'm active in that, and we have a program coming up uh at the end of October, October for our we call it our dig and divide, where we teach people about fall is the time for digging your peonies and dividing them, and we show them how to do that. And so we'll show them for herbaceous peonies and the intersectional hybrids, the etopes and tree peonies. The other night we were had uh over subscribe for tree peony grafting, because that's how tree peonies are propagated. So we're teaching people how to graft tree peonies, and it's a really, really weird grafting thing. So, how because you're taking a just a one or two bud piece of your cyan and grafting it onto an herbaceous rootstock, so it's the weirdest looking thing when you're finished because you keep it buried under the soil for a year and it'll sprout next spring, and you'll have a new tree peony that's using that herbaceous peony as a rootstock. Grafting are also I'm involved in the International Clemidist Society, so very involved in that group. But I really enjoy the plant society things.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah, that seems like a great way to get information and um share uh valuable, you know, uh insights and experiences.
Speaker 4:Um and you just meet a bunch of other plant geeks, it's a wonderful thing.
Sandy Feather:Yeah, that's what we like.
Margaret Pickoff:Um well, um, Jeff, thank you so much for uh for the conversation today. It's been um I think that we could probably keep you here for a whole nother hour and ask you more questions. Um but it's just great to to speak to someone who's obviously, you know, really enthusiastic about this work. Um and so we we always wrap up our conversations by asking our guests what they like to do when they're not working. Um so what um do you find yourself doing when you're not at the arboretum?
Speaker 1:Um I'm really interested in art architecture and food. So I like to travel a bit. So usually every year I'll do uh a nice trip somewhere. Um and much of my time really that I spend uh during decent weather months, so basically from March through early November, um, I have property with some cabins on it up in the Pocanoos, and they are 90-year-old buildings, and I'm trying to rescue them from collapsing on themselves. And so we're learning how to do everything ourselves. So I learned to be an electrician. So I've really two of the cabins so far, and I can do the masonry work, we do the carpentry work, putting in windows, and all of that kind of thing. So, and it's on a beautiful mountain stream. Um, in a in a very beautiful north slope that is a threatened woods because there are hemlocks on it, which are not well, and that's what shades the mountain stream. So sad. Uh, we do have some beaches there, but we're a north slope, so not too many, but our beaches do have the beech leaf disease. That's something we're really worried about here at the Arboretum too in our woodland. We have some big stands of beech trees.
Sandy Feather:Are you doing some some planting to uh try to, you know, some of the uh alternatives to hemlocks or even some of the the hybrids with suga genensis, you know, anything like that?
Speaker 1:At the mountain property, no. I mean it's 50 acres, so it'd be a lot to try to take on to do that. And also a north slope, very rocky. It it's a plant is growing there because somehow it found a bit of soil in between the rocks.
unknown:Okay.
Speaker 1:And so if you just think of going out and planting, uh we still have a great understory of rhododendron maximum. Nice, but those are such thickets you could never plant into the thing to grow. So it's like we're just kind of waiting to see what happens. So there's a good stand of um uh and I think what will probably take over are uh yellow birch and uh and black birch um kind of take over. Um, because you know we have a lot of those around, and that that seems to be like the first successional thing that will come in, uh, even before red maple will come in. Okay. So I think that's what it'll be for a while, and then who knows what will be the next thing. Yeah. But so that's what I do. That's what and fly fishing when I get a chance to do that.
Sandy Feather:Yeah. That was one of our passions.
Speaker 1:That's what I grew up in Belfont, so that's what I kind of miss from that area. Uh being able to go out and do some fly fishing close by.
Margaret Pickoff:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Margaret Pickoff:Wow, that all sounds really dreamy. I hope you get a lot of.
Speaker 1:I wish I had more time to do all that. Of course. Some things to talk about.
Margaret Pickoff:Um, well, hopefully this this fall we'll get some some good time outside and some good cabin time as well. Um, and um, yeah, again, we'd appreciate your time and and coming to to share uh about the work that you do. And um hopefully we'll be able to follow up with you and uh and you know hear how those uh those yellow birches and all those chooses. All right.
Speaker 4:Okay, thanks so much, Jeff.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Come and visit the Scott Arboretum.
Speaker 4:We definitely will. Yep. All right, all right, take care.
Speaker 1:Take care. Thanks.