(gentle upbeat music) – [Troy] Have you ever
been to a botanical garden and wondered just how
all of the magic happens? Well, I’m here at Cheekwood
today with Phillipe Chadwick, and Phillipe is one of the
people who’s responsible for all of the design, especially of the color
garden here at Cheekwood. Phillipe, thanks for being with us, and tell me a little bit about the process that you all go through
when you begin designing. What’s your inspiration? – Well, it starts, usually,
six to eight months before the actual implementation of it, ’cause we go through a lot
of design process of it. It usually starts very
far back with an idea, like you were saying, so we have to have a conceptual idea, kind of a theme before
we even get on paper and start drawing. – Right. – So we like to talk about
the things that we wanna use, maybe what’s cutting edge, what’s new. – Sure. – New, different plants
that are coming out. So we kinda do that before
we ever do anything on paper. So this year, we really wanted
to do bold, bright contrasts, so there’s a lot of very bold colors, not a lot of light colors, pastels, and a lot of blacks in there mixed in. – [Troy] Right. So if people
come and visit this summer but they’ve been here in previous summers, they won’t see anything this
year that’s really the same as it might have been years before. The garden will look totally different. – The garden will look totally different. It’s a totally new design this year. We change the design up ever year. A few of the plants are repeated, but they’re used in new ways and they’re used in new combinations. So they’ll– – With other plants? – Yeah. – Sure. – So they’ll look like different things. – Do you start with the plants, or do you start with the concept of how the color all lays out, and then find the plants
to kind of fit the puzzle? – [Phillipe] I start with the color without even thinking about plants at all, and I just kind of make sure
to get a nice pattern on there, get the flow of the color around the edge as you
walk through the space. I want this kind of repetition of colors. And then you go back and say, okay, I want something yellow there. What’s six feet tall that’s yellow? And then you have your options, and then we pick the best one from there. – [Troy] Gotcha. – [Phillipe] I would say be
dangerous with your colors. Be bold. Have fun. Contrast. – [Troy] Yeah. A lot of
people are afraid of color. I mean, having spent as many years, especially in retail, as I did, people are really afraid of too
much red or too much orange, or it’s so strong, or I just
don’t know if I can do that. – [Phillipe] Yeah. – [Troy] But I think
coming to a place like this is great inspiration for
what you can do at home. Okay. So after you have
this sort of conceptualized and laid out, are there any surprises that kind of come along the way if a plant is out of stock or a crop failure or something like that? How do you sorta deal with
those sorts of things? – Well, since we’re using new plants, a lot of times there is a crop failure ’cause we do grow things
from seeds and the plugs. – Right. – So we may plan for something, but then it’s not there
or we don’t have it, so we go to the next best thing. – Right. – There’s so many options
within plants that– – Always kinda have a plan B in place. – There’s always a plan B kind
of in the back of my head. And we have to bend a little. Like, one area, I wanted kind
of more of a tangerine plant, but I had to go with
more of a golden yellow, which it’s close enough. – Right. – So it works. – Sure. So you just look for
whatever the next best thing in the combination might be. – Mm-hmm. There’s always
the next best thing. – [Troy] Sure. So from
conceptualization on paper, then this sort of starts to become reality as the plants are
growing in the greenhouse in the early spring. So what happens when you actually bring them outdoors and do the change out? – Well, we have to pull everything out since it changes twice a year. – Sure. – We pull all the violas out, and then we compost those. So then, we have a whole
new pallet to work with that we’ve got here. So we lay them all out
based on the sidewalk lines. It’s kind of what we use as a scale to let us know where we are
from the paper to reality since the pattern is kind of complicated. – Right. So you have
some plants sitting here ready to go in the ground, and tell everybody at home what that is. – Yeah. These are canna tropical salmon. They’ll stay about that high. They get about three feet tall, and they have this really
nice salmon-colored flowers throughout the summer. They’ll continue to send
up new stalks and spread. And they can potentially be
perennials as well, the tubers. – Right. And then, in with that, you’ve got a new zinnia. – Uh-huh. Profusion red
knee high is a new zinnia in the profusion series. It’s a little taller than
the original profusions. – [Troy] So hopefully, the
same disease resistance and all of that is the profusion. – [Phillipe] Exactly. – [Troy] It’s lots of blooms,
but a little taller plant. – [Phillipe] Drought tolerant as well. A lot of the plants in
here are drought tolerant. We really don’t spray
any of these annuals. That’s one thing that we
take into consideration from the beginning. – [Troy] When you’re choosing varieties? – [Phillipe] When we’re choosing plants is how tough they are, how much disease resistance they have, and how long they’re gonna last. We want them to last all the
way through into the frost, so we can’t have something
that’s gonna burn out midsummer. – [Troy] So this really only
changes out twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. – Yes. And we do kinda have a transition in the fall as well. Some of these front areas
that are smaller like this with the plants that stay low, we transition them into a mum. – So the mums have already been grown– – Yes, they have already been grown. – and basically they’re
coming in to bloom, and you just will pop
out some of the color that’s toward the front and be able to pop in
a mum right behind it? – Yes, yes. Because in the summer,
a lot of the plants, especially in the late fall, they kinda get tired and they look dull. – Sure. – And it’s just nice
to bring in that burst of fall color with the mums. – Little burst of color, yeah, sure. Obviously you’re doing things
on a very large scale here. How might somebody be
able to repeat this same sort of look in their home garden? – [Phillipe] Well, if someone
comes here to Cheekwood and sees things that they like or, you know, a pretty combination, you don’t have to have 50 or 100 of them. Take one of the things that you like and then put those together and get that same
combination maybe in a pot or a little corner at home. – Sure. – So you kinda have that same feel of that combination of
plants on a small scale. – Or if your beds are a little larger, you could even do groups
of threes or fives. One of the things that I notice as I’m standing here looking is this black pearl pepper that’s planted at the front of this bed and how it plays off of the barberries that are obviously permanent. So it might be important
for people at home to kinda look at what
they already have existing in their landscaping. – [Phillipe] Sure. And that
can include your front door, the color of that, the brick wall. Remember the things that
are there and existing, like you were saying, and play off that color
and go for contrast. Make it fun. – Right. And it’s not just
about the plant combinations in the garden, but the way that they relate to the house. So if your front door is bright red or your shutters are a
certain color or whatever, you can pull all of that together and let the plants sort of play with that. – Sure. – [Troy] For gardeners
at home, what are some of the advantages of annuals, and maybe some of the tradeoffs, that you might experience using
annuals versus perennials? – [Phillipe] Well, the
advantages are, you know, you really have such a huge selection, and since it’s an annual, you
have it for that one season. You get to change it up
every year if you want to, and that’s fun. And it also, since you’re changing it up, you get to kinda play with
design and see things, you know, try new things,
like I was sayin’ earlier. – [Troy] Right. – [Phillipe] Try some
colors that you wouldn’t necessarily pick, but if you pick a tree that’s got that, you’re stuck with it. – [Troy] Sure. – [Phillipe] With annuals,
you’re stuck with it for a summer. – A season or a summer. And a lot of people say,
oh, I don’t plant annuals because of the cost or whatever, but sort of my perspective, and this is just my personal perspective, but I can go out and
spend four to six dollars on something that’s going
to give me six months’ worth of pleasure in the garden, from May until November. So in one way, that’s
actually a good investment because at the end of the season, I can change it out and
do something different. Phillipe, I wanna take this
opportunity to thank you for giving us a little
behind-the-scenes tour here at Cheekwood today. (gentle upbeat music) – [Announcer] For inspiring
garden tours, growing tips, and garden projects, visit our website at volunteergardener.org, or on YouTube at the
Volunteer Gardener channel and Like us on Facebook.