Outdoor Spaces In Iowa With A Purpose

[Charity Nebbe] Tucked away on the western edge of downtown Des Moines, is one of the most influential gardens in America.

[Oma Blaise Ford] It's kind of like a hidden secret.

I think.

I'm not sure everybody knows what an amazing little spot of serenity we have right here in the middle of Des Moines.

[Nebbe] This is the better Homes and Gardens test garden.

Plants grown here are seen by millions of people in the pages of the beloved magazine.

The Test Garden was established in 1998 to evaluate new plant varieties and gardening techniques, before recommending them to readers.

The half acre lot was previously home to a car detailing business and a dry cleaner.

Today, the garden is filled with hundreds of different kinds of plants.

[Ford] It is this incredible living, growing lab for us.

We are testing plants in the test garden.

We have beautifully designed vignettes in the test garden that we can use directly for stories, or we can try out new products.

Our test garden manager, Sandra, is truly the expert on this.

She's been there since the beginning.

[Sandra Gerdes] Before it gets any hotter, I want to make sure that everybody gets a drink.

[Nebbe] Sandra Gerdes grew up on a farm in North Iowa.

After spending several years working at Walt Disney World in the hydroponic greenhouse at Epcot, she was lured back to her home state to establish and manage the garden.

[Gerdes] I thought it would be a Peace Corps worker or a working extension somewhere because, I mean, I did want to help people.

I've always wanted to help people and agriculture is my background.

So here we've got lemon balm, and I'm actually just cutting off some of the flowers so that it will keep producing because most herbs need to deadhead before they go to flower.

My goal and our goal, my team's goal is to find good plants.

It's as simple as our name.

Better homes and gardens.

We want you to have a better garden.

Our role is to evaluate plants or garden techniques.

Maybe it's a pruning technique.

Maybe it's a fertilizing technique.

What's the best plant?

What's the best way to to grow a plant?

You know, should this plant go in the front of the board in the middle of the border?

In the back of the border?

How tall does it get?

[Nebbe] Sandra collaborates with editors to determine what kinds of plants to grow for stories in the upcoming year.

While not every plant featured in the magazine is grown in the test garden, its proximity to the Better Homes and Gardens headquarters makes it an ideal location for curating articles.

[voice] And how beautiful that is.

[Ford] We might have a story on shade gardening, and we have this beautiful part of the garden that's under a tree canopy, filled with hostas and other things that do well in the shade, and we can use that space for photography to illustrate those ideas.

We also work very closely with Sandra to design container gardening ideas, which are not things that are planted in the ground long term, but things that we do on a seasonal basis so that we can give our readers new ideas for combinations and how to do it right.

[Nebbe} From there, Sandra works with seed companies, plant breeders, or nurseries to order and test new varieties of plants, be it hydrangeas, tomatoes or coleus, some of which aren't yet available at garden centers.

If they perform well, the plants eventually make it into the magazine for readers to consider growing, or at least use as inspiration.

The test garden has more than 20 distinct areas, including a space for prairie perennials, a deck area, and a pond.

The garden is always evolving, and each season brings new growth and blooms.

Gardeners, nature lovers or those who are simply looking for a change in scenery for their lunch break, can enjoy the garden every summer.

The test garden is open to the public from noon to two every Friday from May through September.

[Charity Nebbe] Every seed has a They connect us to the past and help guide us into the future.

They are the reason we get to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables.

Walk through a field of sunflowers and grow gigantic pumpkins.

Perhaps most importantly, they provide a living link to our food history, which is where the story of a humble nonprofit with a worldwide reach begins.

This is the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm, a 900 acre plot of land in northeast Iowa that's home to thousands of seeds.

Two herds of ancient White Park cattle, historic apple orchards, a trout stream, and lush display gardens.

The organization operates with a simple mission to grow, preserve, and share heirloom seeds in order to help protect America's diverse garden heritage.

Seed Savers Exchange is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the country.

It safeguards more than 20,000 varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers.

But it all started with the simple idea of saving just two seeds.

More than 50 years ago.

[Diane Ott Whealy] I grew up on farm about ten miles from here, and part of my childhood memory was sitting on the porch visiting my grandparents after touring their garden.

And he had morning glories trained along side of the porch.

So I just sat in this little cozy morning glory room.

Not really knowing anything about where the morning glories came from, but I just knew it felt really wonderful.

[Nebbe] When Diane and her former husband, Kent, started their first garden, she asked her grandfather for the seeds.

He also gave Diane a small envelope of German pink tomato seeds, and said they were both brought to Iowa when his parents immigrated to the state from Germany in the late 1800s.

[Ott Whealy] You know, all of a sudden I realized that I was connected to a family that I really didnt think about or knew about but I had a living connection to them.

So after my grandfather passed away and we realized that we were losing a lot of these seeds, and unless there was some systematic way of collecting them, they would be lost forever.

So we thought, well, let's see if there are other people out there interested in saving these older varieties.

We put a small ad in the Mother Earth News.

Hey, is anybody else out there saving heirloom seeds?

So we got this response from.

Yes.

Yes, we save heirloom seeds.

Thank you for recognizing that they're important.

Soon, our house was full of letters and seeds, and we thought, well, now what do we do with this people who entrusted us with their family heirlooms?

So then we started thinking about having a place like we have today.

[worker] Can you guys do two extra rows?

[Mike Bollinger] Seeds are where everything starts.

The uniqueness of the Seed Savers Exchange collection is that these are varieties that have come from home gardeners, mostly.

From all over the country.

They are being grown for a meal in mind and for their family and mind, and for their community in mind.

[Nebbe ] Of course, for any seed to remain viable and healthy, they need to be grown out.

But from a practicality perspective, Seed S avers can't plant each seed in its collection every year.

[Bollinger] We can't grow 20,000 varieties out every year.

We have to have curated crop plans to really be able to say, here's how much we can can regrow this year.

So, you know, this year, for us, that's about 560 different varieties that we're going to be growing here on site in Decorah.

[Nebbe] Plants grown for seed at Heritage Farm fall into three categories distribution, evaluation or to simply maintain viability.

[Corbin Scholz] So we are getting our tomatoes and squash planted for lot checks, evaluations just kind of trialing the plants.

When people pull into Seed Savers Exchange, they want to see like a prime example of a beautiful garden.

And so we try to give them that experience.

And also, maybe there's a catalog variety they're interested in getting, but they want to see it being grown.

And so we grow out some of the varieties that are offered in our catalog already, so that people can kind of see what they look like, how big they get, what the fruit looks like.

[Nebbe] There are eight gardens spread throughout the property in order to maintain proper isolation distances to avoid cross pollination.

Unlike other gardens, most vegetables at the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm aren't actually grown for consumption.

Their purpose is to provide for more seeds so others can enjoy them.

In the fall, the fruits are harvested and the process of collecting the seeds begins.

After being threshed, winnowed and sorted, they'll dry out before being put back into storage, where they'll sit for months or years waiting to be grown out again.

It's a simple life cycle that Seed Savers Exchange has stewarded for more than 50 years, and one that gardeners have been doing since the beginning of time.

Saving and planting seeds is an act of hope and optimism and guides us into the future, while maintaining ties to our history.

[Scholz] Being a farmer or someone who grows food you can like, everything is a tangible thing.

You know.

You can see all the progress you're making throughout the day.

You can watch the plants grow.

It like really grounds you and it makes you feel like a part of nature.

[Bollinger] For me, it just feels like a breath of fresh air when you come here.

And I feel like that is something that Kent and Diane really envisioned when they started.

It was a place for people to come and experience and kind of, you know, understand what biodiversity looks like and feels like and tastes like.

[Ott Whealy] We are a seed bank, but we're more than a seed bank because we we are living linked to so many histories and so many families and so much food that we bring it all to life here at Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm.

It's like a living museum.

[music]

The Walnut Creek Bike Trail in Des Moines is a popular avenue for cyclists and pedestrians year round, and for a few weeks every August, trail users are treated to a dazzling display of hearty amaryllis flowers.

The one acre plot of land belongs to the Shoemaker family.

William Shoemaker started planting the bulbs in the mid 1980s before the bike trail even existed.

Year after year, he added more to the mix, multiplying the field into hundreds of thousands of blooms.

William died in 2021 at the age of 93, but his legacy continues to live on through his son Bill Jr, who maintains the fields for passers by to enjoy.

New bulbs are sowed in the fall and the foliage is mowed down in June for a few months.

The field looks like a typical grassy lawn until the flowers come up in August.

The blooms first appear sparsely in shaded areas, but within a week the otherwise green field is carpeted in pink.

The flowers scientific name is “Lycoris Squamigera”, but they have many nicknames ghost lilies, resurrection lilies, naked ladies, or surprise lilies, to name a few.

The nicknames are fitting because they seem to rise out of nowhere like magic, reaching full height in as little as 2 or 3 days.

As part of the Amaryllis family, the flower structure is much like its siblings.

Each stalk is about two feet tall, with 5 to 7 pale pink, trumpet shaped blooms at the top of the stem.

The stamens extend far past the petals, attracting a variety of pollinators.

The flowers give an extra boost of color and fragrance at the end of the summer, when many other flowers have long since faded.

Thanks to the Shoemakers decades of dedication and growing and maintaining the fields.

The patch of hardy amaryllis flowers is a delight that anyone can enjoy.

♪♪ ♪♪ [Kim Anderson] The Iowa Arboretum and Gardens is a gem in Boone County.

It feels like it's in the middle of nowhere and it kind of is.

But that's part of its charm.

And I really like that about it because you kind of feel like you're traveling to this place and when you get here it really is a magical place.

And to see the smiles and the aha moments on people's faces, especially children, is really satisfying to me.

♪♪ [Kim Anderson] We offer exceptional experiences for people of all ages and abilities outdoors in nature.

And we take that very seriously as one of our goals.

We have gardens, we have tree groves, we have a wetland, we have a children's garden, we have butterfly gardens.

We have a treehouse village, which has just been erected and just opened recently.

That offers woodland trails and prairie trails, accessible playground area and some other opportunities in the forest to be out in nature and be creative and just be one with nature.

♪♪ [Kim Anderson] We have a program here, a philosophy really, that the Arboretum should be for all.

And so, we call it the Arboretum for All and we have spent a lot of time, gotten grants and donations to make all aspects of the Arboretum as accessible as possible.

♪♪ [Kim Anderson] Woodward Academy is a special needs school in the Woodward-Granger School District.

And they reached out and wanted to come to the Treehouse Village and they have a lot of children that have cognitive and behavioral disabilities.

[Kelle Miller] The opportunity that it provides our students, they don't necessarily get a whole lot of opportunity at enjoying these types of places because of their abilities or their disabilities.

So, this allows all of our students to get to come and enjoy it and have fun.

Are you having fun?

Yeah.

What's your favorite thing you've done so far?

Doing that.

Walking across the web?

That was tough, wasn't it?

Should we start calling you spider Danny?

Spiderman.

Spiderman?

Yeah.

All right, man.

You've got lots of nicknames.

[Kelle Miller] They should have the opportunity like everybody.

If you were to have a conversation with most of those children, they would tell you and express that they want to be like everybody else.

And this gives them that opportunity, which is phenomenal.

[Kim Anderson] The Treehouse Village being as an accessible area allows them to walk up ramps instead of having to climb if they are afraid of doing that or if they are not ready to do that.

There's a lot of options for kids of all abilities to choose from to get up to the top, go down the slides.

[Kelle Miller] There's nothing they can't do.

They can be wheelchair bound and still go in the swing in their wheelchair and it's safe, it's secure.

And they can get that kind of funny feeling in their tummy from swinging.

Whoa!

Woo hoo!

[Kelle Miller] And the zipline, it's a seat that they're sitting in that they are seat belted in so they can experience life like they probably haven't before.

♪♪ [Kelle Miller] Just feeling that connection with Mother Nature is so important.

Getting the sun shining on you and the wind blowing in your face and the smells that you get, but then also the sounds and being connected with the birds and whatever animals you might be crossing paths with.

[Eric Pagel] We actually do a lot in nature because a lot of our kids honestly perform a lot of screen time.

So, any time we can get out in nature and just realize the benefits that nature offers such as massage therapy from the wind, aroma therapy from all of the plants around, all of the different therapeutic elements that nature provides that our kids honestly don't get an opportunity to be out here very much.

I love the difference that we make as a school.

♪♪ [Kim Anderson] I think connecting to nature is just a very important aspect of people's health and mental health and really being out in nature is so important in helping them develop new skills, ask new questions, learn new things, interact with different people in different settings and can really pull kids out of their shells a little bit.

♪♪ [Kelle Miller] There is really a lot for individuals with disabilities to do in this state.

And this is probably the coolest thing that we've done.

The mobility issues aren't really a big issue here because of how adaptable this playground is.

♪♪

♪♪ [Thomas Dambo] The little humans called the giant trolls the Ferryman.

It carried them across the ocean to the prairieland.

At home, they had their differences, but now they cherished them because they were in the boat together to the very end.

♪♪ (nature sounds) [Thomas Dambo] The troll I am making here is called a Fjord Ferryman.

That is actually a word that origins from the Vikings and from Nordic culture.

[Charity Nebbe] Since 2014, from forest to desert, mountain to prairie, artist Thomas Dambo has traveled the globe building nearly 200 giant troll sculptures.

Now, one of his creations calls Elk Horn home.

♪♪ [Amelia Juhl] The Danish Villages of Iowa, Elk Horn and Kimballton, are home to the largest rural population of Danes in the United States.

The Danish culture just thrived here.

We're just continuing to grow and build on our Danish culture and our heritage.

[Thomas Dambo] I just thought that it would be nice to tie it into the Danish settler history here because Elk Horn is a city that comes from Danish settlement.

[Amelia Juhl] It has been such a wonderful experience to witness these people coming together to volunteer and spend their time working on this installation.

We've had over 80 volunteers.

People just stop by and they'll come in and say, may I place a screw in this troll?

May I nail this clap board on?

And it's just this wonderful way to engage and re-engage with our audience and invite them to help continue telling this story of immigration and of our heritage.

[Thomas Dambo] The local community has been great of helping us.

They have helped us collect all different types of leftover and recycled materials and fallen trees and everything we have used for the material to build the actual sculpture.

I make recycled art because our world is drowning in trash, while it is running out of resources, so we need to see the solution is that our trash is a resource.

♪♪ [Thomas Dambo] It just came natural to me that I should build big wooden trolls and hide them in nature and then write stories about them protecting the world.

♪♪ [Amelia Juhl] Thomas Dambo's trolls are playful and whimsical.

They represent guardians of nature.

♪♪ [Thomas Dambo] Fjord Ferryman is ferrying the Danish settlers that sailed across the big sea and came over here.

♪♪ [Amelia Juhl] I see this as the next Danish immigrant in our town.

The opportunity to express one's heritage and to tell one's stories of immigration is so important.

We all come from these different places and have these different experiences and backgrounds and that is what makes America beautiful.

♪♪