Interview: Sarah Roberts of the Atlanta History Center

Holly sat down with Sarah Roberts, the Vice President of Goizueta Gardens and Living Collections at the Atlanta History Center, to talk about making history a living part of Atlanta's community culture.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry. And that silence is
because Tracy is out at the moment, So I had
a special guest on for this show. I was so

(00:23):
incredibly delighted that Sarah Roberts from the Atlanta History Center
was able to join me here in the studio for
a little chat. And the plant lovers in the crowd
are in for a big treat because Sarah is the
vice president of Goisetta Gardens and Living Collections at the
History Center, and she knows so much about historical horticulture
but also so much about running a community garden essentially

(00:44):
and a living history center. But I actually wanted to
have her on for a very specific reason, aside from
hearing all that she has to share about both the
History Center and horticulture. And it's because we often hear
from listeners about how much they love history and they
would like to perhaps do something in the history space
as a career, but maybe they feel like academia isn't

(01:06):
the career path for them. They don't necessarily want to teach,
but they're wondering if there are other things, and there
aren't always a lot of people encouraging them to find
other paths or avenues that they can engage with. History
is their jobs that do not involve standing behind a
podium or electorn and so I thought Sarah was a
perfect example of that. So we are going to jump

(01:27):
right into her interview. So, first of all, for anyone
listening who doesn't know, I think most Atlanta Natives know,
but outside of that, they may not. Even some Atlanta
Natives don't tell us about the Atlanta History Center and
what it offers. Oh goodness, the Atlanta History Center has

(01:48):
so much to offer. It has Atlanta's largest local history museum,
with multiple permanent exhibits and temporary exhibits traveling exhibits. We
have the thirty three acre Goy's Wetta Gardens, which is
surrounding the entire museum complex all the way from the

(02:09):
very entrance where you first pull into the back corners
of the property. There is the Keenan Research Center, which
also has the Cherokee Garden Library within it, and all
of Atlanta's archives are housed there. Uh yeah, I think
people don't always realize how much is going on there
and how large and expansive it is. I didn't even
then very complex. Until I started kind of working in

(02:32):
the history space, I did not have a sense of
just how expansive it is. UM. And then will you
talk a little bit about your role there and specifically
how you ended up in this job, because it's it's
a uniquely history oriented job. But that was not your
career path. That's so true. How did that happen? How
did I end up in history? Um? The boys Wetta
Gardens was something that developed first with Louise Allen, the

(02:58):
wife of Mayor I Have Allen Jr. And she recognized
the cultural landscape of the Swan House and its iconic gardens.
So she pushed, as a trustee at the time that
we needed to move the Atlanta Historical Society to this property,
and that's the origin of the Atlanta History Centers more
than fifty years and historic gardens preservation. And she pushed

(03:22):
for all of the community garden clubs and local people
that were interested in gardens to come out and participate
and have a role in preserving those gardens and maintaining them.
So it really had a grassroots origin story, which I
love it's very unusual for a public garden to have
that community drive to get it started. Lots of gardens

(03:42):
start with a big master plan from a landscape architect
and then they slowly over time build that out, whereas
the History Center's gardens started with the community saying, this
is something that we want to do. We want to
preserve this iconic landscape, and then we want to develop
and add to it. And then will you talk a
little bit about your education and how you landed there. Yes,
So I have a bachelor's degree in ornamental horticulture from

(04:04):
Barry College, and while I was there, it was important
to me to do some internships and to travel. So
one of those internships was at the end Garboretum up
at Harvard University, and that was my first taste of
public gardens. So public gardens is something that people may
not understand exactly what that means. Is a garden that's
open to the public, Yes, but it's also an institution

(04:28):
that preserves and collects plants and labels them. So it's
for the betterment of your community, it's for educational purposes,
and it could be for research. All of those things.
And when I was at the Arnold I did my
internship and curation, which is also something I think that
just blows right pie people. They don't think of gardens
as being curated, but they are so. Just like you

(04:51):
might think of an art museum or a history museum,
all of those outdoor spaces can be considered exhibits. So
the gardens that we have are also like an open
air museum or an accompaniment to the museum where you
can look at something inside, learn all about the Civil War,
and then step outside to our smith farm and immerse

(05:12):
yourself and this environment that is authentic and real and
start to really imagine what was this life like. But
that requires really researched and thought out landscape to set
that tone and also have the house and the plant
collections and everything around it be accurate. And you also
studied abroad as well. Did that contribute to your your

(05:35):
knowledge and appreciation of history and how it relates to horticulture?
Absolutely so. Um. Like I say, in my internship at
the Arnold, was that first eye opening appreciation for plants
being something beyond decorative. I had started an ornamental horticulture,
and then when I started there in curation, I got

(05:55):
to get into plant records and understanding that this plant
that's BEAUTI full like paper bark maple. Why was the one?
They're so old and how long had it been there? Well,
it was the very first one brought there by this
plan explorer from the far flong corners of Asia that
had brought this back, and it was the very first
one in this country. And I thought, well, hold on that,
how's a whole interesting story. I want to know more

(06:16):
about that. So I started looking at plan exploration and
thinking that, boy, I want to do that that looks
amazing and explore places and bring plants back and trial
and can they work here? But also looking through their records,
you find these photographs and their photographs of people and
in those landscapes of how they use those plants and

(06:38):
how they were significant, and those landscapes may no longer
exist anymore, and those records were so critical. So I
got on this path where I wanted to study plan
exploration and I wanted to study the deeper and more
nuanced and complex reasons between why we have plants in
certain places in this country. So I ended up studying

(06:58):
abroad at the University of Reading over in England and
working on soil science and garden history and phylogenetics and
just every different aspect of the field that I could
study to really broaden my own understanding of how all
these different things are connected. And while I was there,
I met my future husband, um. But I came back

(07:19):
to America and I got a job at the New
York Botanical Garden and I worked there for five years
as their curator of her basis Plants and outdoor Gardens.
That was a tremendous learning curve and experience of managing
plant collections. And also I got an opportunity to go
on a plant exploration trip, So I got to go
to the Republic of Georgia. I got to go in

(07:39):
a seed collecting expedition. I got to learn about creating
herbarium specimens called vouchers, How you drive them in the
field and you're carrying them around, and you're meeting the
local people and they're offering you the food they grow,
and you're you're starting to appreciate how interconnected all of
this as people and culture and plants and environment and

(07:59):
landscape and how all that works together. So actually it
ended up being tremendous training for this job that I
have now where our mission and vision is connecting people
and culture and history. So UM, that's part of our story.
And then I ended up moving back to England for
three years and working back in garden design again before

(08:21):
moving back to Atlanta and UM back to my roots here.
Nice uh, and we all get to reap the benefits
of that. UM. When you're setting up a historic garden,
you have a space and they want you to recreate
something similar to what it would have looked like during
a specific time period. How do you even start that?

(08:42):
It's so interesting. The development of a new garden has
so many facets you have to work through. So first,
we live in the city of Atlanta. We're gardening there
and there's a lot of rules. So there's rules about
what can you build and what how and if there's
a tree right there, So we work within. We all

(09:03):
we are about preserving collections and trees, so we are
always trying to save them. So any project we go
in with preventative measures, how can we save our trees?
Then we're looking at drainage and irrigation and other functional
and engineering components of whatever we're trying to do with
this landscape. UM. Then we're looking at what are well,
I guess we would really begin with what is our

(09:25):
whole scope and vision? What are we trying to achieve here?
So with a new garden, it might be that um
for example, our new entrance gardens that we're working on
right now. What I want to do is set the
stage for when people first drive in to the front
door at the History Center, they see that we are
a public garden. It is not solely a museum, which

(09:49):
is I think what most people's understanding is of the
History Center. So when you first drive in, you will
arrive and be surrounded by a cultivated, curated landscape that
draws you in. And so I have to think through
how do I draw people in? For most people that's
with flowers. They want to see something beautiful. Okay, so

(10:10):
we're gonna have some flowers and draw people in that way,
But how do I make it go beyond the decorative
and the ornamental. So I want them to park and
they come up. Maybe they'll go to Super Geni or
we'll get to Brass which are right in our front entrance,
and then head out into the gardens in the front
and this new landscape we're working on and sit down
at one of our tables, or walk through the landscape

(10:33):
and really be immersed in it, because what I want
to do there is echo the modern and progressive um
take that the History Center has with our new architecture
as well in the Cyclorama building, and everything looks beautiful
and modern. I want the landscape to look beautiful and
modern too. So one of the things that we're gonna

(10:54):
do is utilize that acreage to reflect the style called
the New Perennial movement or the Dutch Way. It goes
by a lot of different names, and this is a
forward thinking, more sustainable way of creating a new garden.
So what we're gonna do is put in plants that

(11:15):
are suited to that site, not trying to force a
plant that needs a lot of water in a space
that doesn't have much for example, but also create an
environment where people want to ask some questions, why did
they plant this like this? Why are there so many
grasses up here? Why don't they mow this down? This
is wild looking um because people's idea, especially in our neighborhood,

(11:38):
is very cultivated and clipped, and there's boxwoods, and there's
pansies and tulips and that's what a garden is. And
I want to push that envelope. I want people to
come out here and say, what is going on at
the History Center? What are they doing up here? And
then walk in there and learn how to appreciate plants
for different reasons, like creating a relaxing and be beautiful

(12:00):
and soothing atmosphere that you can walk through. And then
when you slow down to look at it, you'll see
it buzzing with pollinators. And you will see every time
that you come past that garden, instead of being a
static landscape, it'll be changing throughout the seasons. And part
of this is teaching people to appreciate the seasonality of plants.

(12:20):
The early spring to late spring to summer. The blooms
are going to cycle in and out. Plants are going
to get bigger in the summertime, and then they're going
to fade into fall color. And then we're gonna leave
those seed heads on so that birds will come out.
We'll have goldfinches on our cone flowers, all that sort
of thing. Um you'll see the crysalists, you'll have from

(12:40):
the butterflies that have visited. You'll see and appreciate all
these smaller things when you walk through an environment and
you're immersed in that landscape of a more ecological planting
and more sustainable planting, and hopefully teach people that it's
okay to have grasses that turn beige and the fall.
You don't have to cut them to the ground, leave
them up because that all so holds that soil in place,

(13:02):
and that keeps that soil from a roading away. So
there's there's all these reasons that we build landscapes way
they do, how they look, how they make people feel
when they're in that environment. To protect the soil health,
which is how any garden survives and thrives is with
its healthy soil. And then how that plants or that

(13:23):
garden sinasas and to fall in winter, and that kind
of landscape is also beautiful, and to teach people that
it doesn't have to be clipped and green and flower.
It can also have a natural beauty to it and
to learn to appreciate that. I like that because you're
kind of teaching people like natural history along the way,

(13:44):
and it's not all about the manicuring that we do,
but letting plants be the same thing they have always
been and appreciating them for that. I love that. UM.
So in an instance where maybe instead of having to
create something that is um a little more modern, when
you're asked with creating or recreating a historical garden, UM,

(14:05):
how do you figure out what plants are going to
be appropriate for that space? Because often they have been
decimated and are no longer part of the area. How
does that even begin? We have to go back to
our records. The wonderful thing about working at a history centers,
I don't have to go very far. I have to
walk a hundred yards to get to the Keenan Research

(14:28):
Center or to get to the Cherokee Garden Library and
look up everything I can find about what would life
have been like in this particular era. So let's use
this Smith farm for example. We want it to be
accurate to the eighteen sixties. Well, how do I find
out what farmers were doing in the eighteen sixties. I
need to read what they were reading. So I can

(14:49):
go there to the library and work with Stacy Catcher
and the director there, and not only pick her enormous
brain for ideas and resources, she will pull out all
the literature that they would have read. We have those
original source documents, and it's one of them was the
Southern Cultivator, And I could read through those and read
the same thing that Robert Hiram Smith would have read

(15:13):
and decide, all right, well, this is how they were
growing this plant, not only which plants, but how they
grew it. So it's not just okay, they grew tomatoes.
Let's throw some tomatoes in the ground and grow them
the way that we grow them today. We have to think, well,
how did they grow tomatoes? And in fact, they had
only one or two tomato varieties that they would have
grown look at what we have today. So first it

(15:36):
was looking at the plants and trying to decide, all right, well,
if this is what they're listening, they go by this
name in this catalog, but what are they called today?
They might have a different name today. So we look
up those, we look up seed catalogs, we look up
resources from newspapers, like, we don't want to just grow

(15:57):
it because it was available in eighteen sixty. We want
to grow it is available in eighteen sixty in Atlanta,
so it's authentic to this local area. So we then
have to figure out how would they have grown these
and steaked them, and we learned some methods about using
natural branch material and weaving it together to create a
tomato table, which is something we've never done before, or
to grow them as a cordon to These are methods,

(16:19):
the sort of methods of growing plants that you don't
see today, and we want to keep that tradition alive
and show people what used to be done. So you
can see that if you go to the Smith Farm today,
how we're growing them in the way that they would
have been done in eighteen sixties. How they we don't
we now. We in Atlanta, we have tough soil conditions,
so we grow everything and raised beds. But if you
go to the Smith Farm, you can see that precursor

(16:42):
where you raise up the bed to get better drainage.
But you can also do that so that the soil
can warm up earlier in the season and you can
start your crop faster. So in the Smith Farm you'll
see that the the rows are held up or created
like little small plateaus. That's the precursor to the is
bad that you see today. That's the origins. You can

(17:03):
go back and see them. I think it's interesting to
trace that history. Um So yes, going back to the library,
researching those materials there and then also talking to other
gardeners and people that have Farmers aren't always, you know,
the first to move on to the new technique in
the new method and they'll remember. So there's a lot
of oral history that you can do as well and
find out who else remembers growing these with their grandparents,

(17:27):
and how did they grow them, and what did they
grow and did they pass that seed along to anybody,
did somebody save it? And can we get hold of
some of that seed. So there's a there's a great
process there that we love and then that way you
end up adding to the collection. I would imagine this salutely.
So we have an amazing urban agriculturists Emily Roberts, who
does the Smith Farm now and she is very well

(17:48):
connected with our network of local farmers, organic farmers, historic
researchers of crops, and as they've been able to bring
back crops that would have been grown here that have
been loss that researchers at universities have been able to relocate,
we discover grow on and then disseminate that seed to
places like us to show them to the public now

(18:10):
and the Smith Farm, uh is a pretty successful garden. Yes,
what do you do with all that food? Isn't that
a great question? We have cooking demonstrations, so we have
an outstanding group of interpreters that come out there even
if it's incredibly hot, and they will be doing open

(18:31):
hearth cooking. I've had pancakes man on a grittel. We
try to use crops from our farm and all of
those demonstrations and they're using their research to historical receipts
or recipes and looking for those ingredients. So we will
work with them to say what do you need to
create the food you want to create, and we'll grow

(18:52):
those crops for you. So we have to do that
way in advance in order to have those things ready
at those times, and we've had some a lot of fun.
We have a lot of public programs too, when we've
had people like Michael Twitter come out and then he'll
go out in the gardens and harvest what he wants
to grow, our harvest what he wants to cook with
and do those demonstrations as well. So we have public
programs where we do a lot of the cooking demos

(19:14):
and then we have school group tours with hundreds of
kids on a daily basis. That gets to witness us
harvesting and then preparing the food that we've grown there.
And we also have given a lot of food to
the Atlanta Food Bank when we have too many or
sometimes we have a whole field full of cabbages coming
at the same time, so we can donate some to them,

(19:34):
or we can ask super Jenny at our location if
they need anything, and so we can give them our
herbs or any bonus crops that we have so none
of it gets wasted and if there's anything left to
goes home with the staff. We have loads more from
Sarah coming up in just a moment, but first we're
going to pause for just a little sponsor break, all right.

(20:00):
Coming up next, Sarah and I talked about one of
the Atlanta History Centers very important recreation gardens. You also
have a really really very cool enslaved People's garden there, Um,
Will you tell us about that and how it differs
from some of the other recreation gardens that you have

(20:20):
on site. Sure? So, yes, that is a very important garden,
and we worked on restoring that about maybe seven or
six years ago. Where what we want to do is
demonstrate that these people that were brought here in bondage
and enslaved on these farms um they occasionally by some

(20:44):
of their owners, were given a plot of land and
either they as a group of people at the farm
would have their own spot, or they would work with
a whole bunch of other peoples in a larger group.
And what we're interpreting at the Smith farm is that
the people that perhaps lived in this one cabin here,
we're given this small plot of land and we want

(21:05):
we want to make sure that people understand is this
was not an act of generosity by their owners of
oh you could have your own plot of land and
aren't I nice? It was very uh sly. It was
a way of saying, here's your plot of land, and
you can you can grow your crops on your own

(21:25):
time when I don't need it, which meant at night
or you know, a few minutes here and there. And
the crops that they would grow, they understood that if
you have a harvest about to come in, you are
less likely to leave because that has value. And that
was their place where they might be able to grow
a few plants for medicine because they didn't have access

(21:47):
to western medicine um, and nobody was going to spend
their money on that, and so they would have to
grow their own and figure out what what can I use,
what can I grow here? Learned from other people in
exchange seeds and grow those in our own small plots
and apply that to themselves. We also have we've done
some oral history research on these things and have knowledge

(22:08):
of some seeds that were tucked into folds of clothes
and that's how those seeds made it over to the
United States. Plants like eggplant are from Africa, so the
other people don't think about So we like to tell
those stories um by also immersing you in that landscape
and showing you not only that there is a difference
in the plant material that may have been grown, but
also in how it was grown. So instead of having

(22:30):
neat and tidy, orderly rows of crops like the kitchen
garden that the Smith family had, it is a jumble
of all different plants mixed together and fit into sort
of a curved shape of a garden with slightly raised beds.
And what it is is if they had an opportunity
to utilize that plant, they'd harvest that one and plant
something else in that spot, and so everything grew together

(22:52):
in um like a luxuriant chaos in that garden. But actually,
what we have found and learned from our history of
our time is that is a healthier way to grow crops,
the orderly rows of crops. If you get one pest,
they just move on through that whole crop. But if
you have it mixed and scattered throughout your garden, they
might only get that one plant. So there's a lot
to learn. It's a nuanced and deep and complex story,

(23:16):
and I'm glad that that is something that we talk
about there. One thing that that we've talked about in
all of this is that these are public gardens, and
that you are. Of course, we're working in the modern
era when soil has changed and climate has changed a
little bit, and I'm wondering how you strike that balance
between historical accuracy and also maintaining a functioning public garden

(23:38):
that needs to thrive on its own with what we
have today. Such a great question, and it's something that
applies to so many public gardens there. That's a dance
that we do every day. So when you have modern
day pressures, let's say pests, for example, or disease on
historic crops that never faced that pressure before. You do

(23:59):
have to make it decision. Do we throw every effort
and resource into preserving this historic plant or do we
replace it with something that is more sustainable. That's a
question that every single situation requires its own team to
research and decide on. One example for us is the
boxwood in front of the Swan House iconic boxwood. We

(24:22):
have the historic ones that are that are still there
right at the base of the house, and then opposite
those closer to a big cascade fountain. War a box
would that got box would blight and so that had
to be treated rapidly and they had to be removed.
That is the only thing to do when you have
an infestation that was as bad as the one that

(24:42):
we had. So they're gone and we had to think,
do we want to replace it at some point, knowing
that those tiny little spore are going to still be
in that someone They're still going to infect the next plant,
or do we put on something else? And so we
decided there's a team of us that worked on this,
so we decided to replace it with a little leaf
holly that will provid I had the same impact that
the boxwood dead, the same design intent from Philip trammel

(25:06):
Shut see the architects and landscape architect of the Swan
House and Gardens. So we did that. We bought them
at a big size, We've pruned them, we've watered them
by hand for years. They're thriving, and they cannot be
affected by box would blight, so we know that long
term those are there, they don't require a constant and
heavy investment of fungicides or special treatment to that felt

(25:28):
like a smart choice for that situation. But where we
have hundred year old boxwood in front of this one
else that are not infected or might have a tiny bit,
we will. We want to preserve those and preserve that
iconic look. So those do get more care and more treatment,
but on a much smaller scale that's more affordable and sustainable.
UM I want to shift gears a little bit to

(25:49):
talk about something that people might not think of as
part of your job. Animals. The History Center has an
animal collection, is not insignificant inside it's so true, Well
you talk about some of your heritage breeds and also
just how you work that into your probably not ever
a thing you thought when you were getting your horticulture degree.

(26:11):
That's so true that there was a big learning curve there. Um. Unfortunately,
when I was at Barry College, the horticulture program was
housed in the same building as animal Sciences, so I
do have the smallest amount of training, and I didn't
ever think I would use it though. But yes, we
do have heritage breed animals at the Smith Farm, and
it is also something people are so surprised to find

(26:32):
when they think they're coming to a history museum and
they step out the door and they find this gigantic
garden and a farm with animals. So are animals that
we have were just brought in when we were able
to hire someone to do their day to day care.
So we didn't have animals for a while, and then
we hired our manager of Animal Collections, Prop Banner, and
he does all of our daily work, and then we

(26:55):
have other people filling in went on his off days.
But we have golf coast sheep, which our heritage breed
that can survive our heat and humidity. And we have
Angora goats which also thrive here in Atlanta. They're not
as commonly seen. They weren't as common as sheep. And
then we have several different breeds of poultry, so we

(27:18):
have Rhode Island red chickens and Plymouth rocks, and a
couple of turkeys that are called standard bronze, which is
like one step beyond a wild turkey. So all of those.
We have a historic chicken coop that we research nineteenth
century poultry architecture. That was really something I didn't think
i'd ever study. Um once I designed a coop, figure

(27:39):
out what materials would be appropriate, square cut nails, dimensional
lumber two inch by four inch, not today's two by
four So all those little bitty details go into all
the work that we do. Uh So, yes, all of
those breeds are there. And it is not a petting zoo,
make that real clear. It is a place where we
preserve the a sort breeds and can educate the public

(28:01):
about them. And I'm excited to say that we are
going to attempt to carry on that heritage breed by
bringing one of our sheep to another farm and see
if she can get impregnated, and then we'll bring her
back and if we're lucky, she will be pregnant to
have a lamb for us in the spring. Or too,
that'll be exciting, very exciting. So fingers crossed. It is

(28:22):
really hard to not want to go in and put
all the it's so hard. Most important, you can probably
put them. The busters very friendly and if you just
call him but sir, he'll probably walk up to you
like scratching between the years. But most importantly, don't feed them.
Please don't feed them. They're on a healthy diet already
and they don't want any people food. That's one of

(28:44):
my personal crusades is to always tell my friends not
to be giving particularly birds that they see in places.
Please stop giving them bread. Right, it's not good for
It's not good for them. It means well, but don't
do it. It makes them very sack. Um. You mentioned
building this unique um chicken coop that is historically accurate.
One of the things that I have heard you mentioned

(29:05):
before is that you guys also mill your own lumber there,
which may or may not have been involved in the coop,
but I know in the fences it shows up. Will
you talk a little bit about that. We actually we
use um a contractor to do it, but we save
our trees whenever we can, so if there is a
tree that needs to come down because it's structurally hazard us.

(29:26):
We will look at that and decide is there a
way that we could use this lumber on site? UM, so, well,
how we can have it milled locally and brought back
here and we will store it and are we stored
our last um a lot of wood. It took about
eighteen months for it to dry, and once it got
to that critical moisture point, we decided what we're gonna

(29:47):
do with that. And I had eyebawled one tree in
particular and thought it was a white oak and had
lots of good lumber and it had to come down anyway.
So I thought, well, let's see what we can do.
And we are in the process now of creating an
absolutely enormous table I call it the Tree Table, and

(30:08):
it's gonna go up in this new landscape the entrance gardens,
under some towering pines and oaks, and it's about it's
gonna be about sixty ft long, be huge, and it's
all made from this tree just on our property. All
of it is going to be utilized for us for
the and the tabletop is more than halfway through, so

(30:29):
we're still working out all of its final um structural
components and exactly how it's going to sit in the landscape.
But it will be very cool, and I wanted to
really represent bringing the community together in Atlanta. This is
You're welcome to come here and eat your launch and
enjoy these gardens and sit in the shade of this
little remnant of forest and buckhead and join us and

(30:53):
have conversations and talk to your neighbor and have a
coffee and sit in this landscape and think about all
these differ front things that we've brought up today, or um,
you know, just enjoy being outside and appreciating that we
have that opportunity. That's so cool. Oh, I can't wait
to see it. It's gonna be really cool. Um. Will
you also talk a little bit about all of your

(31:14):
building collection. Oh, there's so many buildings. So you mean
the historic homes, Yes, we had so the smith form
we've talked about, and there's a number of buildings there
between our old barn, the blacksmith shop, a corn crib,
dairy which is a small room, a kitchen, smokehouse, the coope,
and the enslaved people's cabin, and then we have the

(31:35):
Swan house from Philip Trimmell shut seas classical masterpiece. Then
there's also a cabin out in swan Woods. Swan Woods
is about a tent achere section of our property that
is Piedmont Forest, and we have this very cool cabin
that's out there and it's actually being utilized in a
new school group tour that we're putting on where because

(31:58):
this cabin has logs from multiple different eras it's been
put together, has its own unique in long history. But
there's no one date that we can put on that cabin,
so we can use it to interpret different periods. And
right now we're looking at what happened when the Creek
Indians were pushed out on the Trail of Tears, and

(32:20):
then who would have moved in? So this could have
been their home and then they would have been pushed
out and a settler during the land lottery could have
moved in and acquired that home. So we were able
to tell those stories with these historic homes and many
many more stories. And I think that's one of the
things that History Center is so good at, is telling
stories that aren't often told. And I think that we

(32:41):
can do that both within the museum, within our historic
houses and in our gardens. Uh, there was one thing
when I saw you speak before, you mentioned something that
just struck my fancy, which is another call back to
how you can't always recreate a garden the way it
was holyander. Yeah, story, Yes, so that's a great point.

(33:05):
It's just one of many little things that that we've
worked out over the years. The Swan House is beautiful
cascade fountain in the front. Mrs n Men used to
put terra cotta pots on each of the little pedestals
alongside that fountain, and we recreated that with terracotta pots,
and what she had in it that we know from
photographs and scrutinizing old photos was oleander, pink, oleander, pink

(33:29):
and white were her favorite colors. So we eventually recreated that,
and we found out, uh, that wasn't exactly what brides
always want to have in their weddings. And we used
that space in front of the cascade found as a
as a rental space where we have lots of weddings
every year. So it meant our staff would have to
pull all those pots down every time they wanted to
do their own arrangements of flowers there. So yes, well,

(33:52):
well to be strictly true to historic accuracy, those pots
with those oleanders would be there. But on the downside,
oleander is toxic feet and so we don't want anyone
to pick at an eat it. So I thought, maybe
that's not the best thing to have out there. But
also the idea of having to move those plants all
the time in order to accommodate the weddings. So another
example is we have a big gravel path very carefully

(34:15):
designed in front of this one house that's not original.
That was me. Sorry, But in order to accommodate opening
to the public, you have to make some changes. You
have to make it where people can get in and
out and not have to walk through what might be
wet and muddy ground after a heavy rain. So how

(34:35):
do you do that, Well, you just you look at
the original design intent, you try to be true to that,
and you try not to put in something that couldn't
be removed. So I put in a gravel path. So
if one day we decided let's go back to strictly
exactly what it was, that wouldn't be hard to remove.
If we put in a solid concrete or stone path,
that would be a lot more work and a lot

(34:57):
more expense. So this way we've put in a way
where we can have wonderful rentals and weddings and people
can walk on it and utilize the space, and everyday
visitors come in and out without causing damaged landscape because
they're on a regular path, whereas before when it was
just lawn, when you put that much foot traffic on it,
it's gonna die off. Well, it's the even though you

(35:18):
apologize for it. It's the difference between keeping a historic
space usable and something that people can interact with and appreciate,
versus no, I swear it's beautiful inside, you may not
be able to get there exactly. We want people to
come and enjoy these beautiful historic homes. Who want everybody
to be able to get there and walk around and

(35:38):
take pictures and enjoy it and not put it behind
a rope. I could let you walk through. And in
many cases we have the opportunity to play hands on.
So if you go to the little children's room, uh
Sam and Mimi's playroom, then then children you can go
play and so in the rocking horse and some in
their beds and play with the toys. And that's just
something you don't get to do it a lot of museum,

(36:00):
and we're working on a new children's trail in the
gardens as well, where any spot that you go to
you'll see that there's a very obvious hands on play area.
So as a caregiver or an adult, you can maybe
read some of the panels or look around at the
gardens or that particular location, but your children might be
playing in the playhouse or uh, you know, investigating some

(36:22):
little children's feature that we've added to the gardens. There
is more coming up, including how the Atlanta History Center
solved a problem of trying to recreate a meadow in
a space where even weeds would not grow. But first
we're gonna hear from one of the sponsors that keep
stuff you missed in history class going all right, Now,

(36:48):
we're about to get some great science in this discussion,
including how the History Center is helping with breeding programs
for chestnuts. There was another element of the land escape
there that I love, which is that you have like
a reclamation meadow going on. Well you talk about that
a little bit. I love that you remember all these stories. Um, yeah,

(37:08):
I was taking note. We have several reclamation meadows so
at the end of every construction project, we have to
take what is left and figure out the mechanics of
how to make that soil healthy again um as well

(37:28):
as breathe life back into it. When you drive heavy
machinery over soil, it is inevitable that it becomes compacted.
So we always do preventative strategies first. And then there's
the area where they have to drive the vehicles and
so we have to come in and fix it. Well,
when we built the wood cabin out and out in
Swan Woods, there was quite a bit of compacted soil
and I thought, what am I going to do here?

(37:50):
But it was the first time also that I had
any full sun out in that woodland. And the missing
component to that woodland was a wild flower meadow. When
in any forest, and in that that forest is a
secondary succession forest, meaning it's been cut once and it's regrown.
Uh So everybody left to go fight in the Civil War,
the cotton fields were abandoned and upspring these woods and

(38:12):
they have since been preserved since that time. So now
I have this one opening where we build the cabin,
and there was some sun in that spot, and I thought,
now I can finally create the understory the perennial meadow
that would have lived here. So just like if you
had a natural disaster, if you had a tornado ripped through,
it would clear out an opening. We're trying to recreate

(38:33):
an authentic regrowth. What would that look like. So we
use strictly Piedmont native plants and swan woods, which is
this band across where Atlanta sits across Georgia between mountains
and coastal plain. So we're only using those species. We
use a flora. We use Alan Weekly's Flora of the
Southeastern Region to identify which plants are really native here,

(38:55):
so checking all of our accuracy, and then what kind
of conditions do they want to grow? And these are
not plants that you can just go to the store
and buy and a one gallon pot. You have to
grow these plants from seed, so then we have to
source that. Well, you can't just throw seed on a
compacted clay piece of earth, nothing will grow there. We
knew when we didn't even have weeds in that spot
that we had some serious soil issues. So the first

(39:19):
step was trying to rent a tiller. It has very
small acts as you can't get a tractor out there
or anything. So he rented a tiller and it just
went tingting ting tingtinging across the ground because it was
so hard. So we tried another larger tiller and we
worked in one inch of composts. We didn't want to
make rich garden soil. I wanted to recreate a natural process,
so basically speeding up a couple of thousand years of

(39:40):
evolution within a couple of years. So we did that.
They're um worked in a little bit of soil and
in order to it's put our first round of seeds
out and we use seeds like partridge p which is
a legume, and it creates its own nitrogen, so we
can feed itself. And then when you um let that
crop die down and you see something else. It adds
that little bit of layer of organic matter to the

(40:01):
soil and it's a little bit richer and a little
bit nicer soil, so then a higher species can be grown.
And you keep doing this for a couple of passes,
three or four passes in with our seed mixes, we
started to see real vitality and that something was working.
We also wanted to take the opportunity to grow another
species in our living collections that we had not been
able to do much, which was was American chestnuts. We

(40:23):
know that the American chestnut was here. You can see
them on platts. They were often used as the corner
post of a property line because they were big. And
when the chestnut pipe blew through and killed awful lot
of the chestnuts, they would spring up from root suckers,
but they were pretty much as a functioning species wiped out.
So what we want to do is also tell that

(40:46):
story of species that were once here that we no
longer see today. So on the lower half of that meadow,
we wanted to plant American chestnuts, but not just any chestnut.
We wanted the ones that have The American Chestnut Foundation
has been breeding for caids. So I worked with Dr
Martin Sippollini at Barry College, who was my old bomby professor,
to say, I know you're studying these. I remember researching

(41:08):
them at school. Can't we grows some of your hybrids?
And so that worked out to a great partnership with them,
and we have forty American chestnuts and are orchard now.
But in order to plant those, we had to use
a big gas powered auger to break through that ground
because it was hard, so that requires drilling through and
we finally found tops well about twenty eight inches down

(41:29):
through that clay hard pam. So we broke it up
with an augur because that was the only way to that.
You couldn't get a shovel in. Broke that all up
in a big area, amented a little bit and planted
our new hybrid chestnuts, which are fifteen sixteenth American chestnut
and one sixteenth Chinese chestnut, and that gives them that
little bit of light resistance that and then allows you

(41:50):
to still have what looks like an American chestnuts tall,
tall and straight and grows the kind of chestnuts that
you want to roast with just a little bit of
that disease resistance. So we have the lower meadow that's
the chestnut orchard and also surrounded by wildflowers. It's also
where we started our apiary, and so we have our
own honey bees down there. And then on the upper
meadow um that's just purely grasses and wildflowers. So that

(42:14):
we can show people what would have regenerated and a
Piedmont forest had there been a force clearing um and
that those hybrid chestnuts. Is there like reciprocal benefit. Does
your former professor come and get to look at them
and see how they're doing and examine what's going on
when they have kind of all of the benefits of
ideal growth. Yes, so what we will do, Yes, so

(42:36):
he's been back here again, and we can send an
annual report to say what's happening, what's doing well? Um.
But also ideally this is an educational orchard. This is
an opportunity to show people we have a few purely American,
a few purely Chinese, and then here's what the hybrids
look like. So we have it as an educational orchard,
but also to contribute towards this science that we will
grow these trees on. We will let them become teenagers

(42:58):
or so when they're about twenty feet tall, that's when
you would come through and inoculate the chestnuts and you
would put cry an extray a parasiteica straight into the
trunk of that tree and jacks it like a shot
and see if it heals. So that is the chestnut blight.
It's either going to grow a big, horrible weeping wound,
and you'll know this tree has no disease resistance. Just
cut it down or it's going to heal over and

(43:20):
it'll be one of those that you think, this is
one that we need to breed from to carry on
this research for the next generation. So ideally that's what
would happen. Will grow these trees on for another decade
and then do the injections, and then call all the
trees that aren't any good, and then utilize this last
couple towards the breeding program and plant the next generation
of chestnuts. I love it. Um you're kind of keeping

(43:42):
the history of that plant alive. Is the modern era
in like the most fabulous ways. So if somebody at
home wants to add a little bit of history to
their own garden, where do you recommend these start interesting? Well,
all his story goes back to agricultural history, so I

(44:04):
think if you want to be a part of this
larger story, you should grow something that you're going to eat.
Everything that we do in this world requires plants at
the very root of it. We need oxygen to breathe,
so we need plants to produce that oxygen. We need

(44:26):
food to eat, so we have to grow it. So
it all comes back to that very basic necessity. Um,
so growing something, and I would say teaching a child
or someone who is real, Um, you know, city dweller
that has never spent much time in nature, has never
grown anything on their own, sharing that story or that

(44:46):
amazing sense of pride of having grown something from seed
that actually grew and became like a little tree seedling,
and then go plant it somewhere and water it in
and keep it on it and watch it grow. Because
there's really it's hard to even explain how much that
gives back to you. And it's like I have two
children that we collect seas and will plant them around

(45:08):
and watch them grow, and they're astonished that it worked.
It does work. Um, So I love that. And then
I think, also there's a lot of plants with an
interesting ornamental history to like. Um. Lilium regale is this
beautiful trumpet lily, fragrant white, blooms in the summer when

(45:29):
things are maybe a little bit flatter in your garden.
But know that that lily came from a plant explorer
that went all the way over to Asia and was
looking and found a valley full of these lilies growing,
and an avalanche hit him and crushed his leg and
for the rest of his life. Ernest Henry Wilson or

(45:51):
Chinese Wilson walked with what he called his lily limp.
And I have sixty of these bulbs flowering in Olgita's garden,
which is the new garden that we belt last year
and opened in the fall in honor of Oke took Osta.
And there's sixties these Lilium or gali bulbs. And they're
very fragrant and beautiful, and they're white, so they show
up really well at night as well. And I think

(46:12):
of that history instead of just going, oh, here's this
plant I bought from a bulb company and stuck in
the ground. I love to know some of that background
and some of those stories behind the plants and how
do they end up here. I love it. Even Azalea's
are most every day hum drum. Everyone's seen azalia They're
all over Atlanta. But why are they here? They're not
from here, They're from Asia. Someone decided let's let's try

(46:35):
these as a florist crop a rhythm and pots, and
like you know, now we see him at the grocery store.
But someone decided to plant it outside and someone else
in Atlanta, Frank Smith decided this will do really well here,
and we should be promoting these and these the nursery
men and started promoting to all of his customers to
plant these azaleas and dogwoods. And what do you see

(46:56):
now all over Atlanta you see that legacy from this
nursery man who was promoting this plant that these explorers
brought back. So this is long chain of events to
make Atlanta have the spring landscape that it does. And
that's one of our other gardens is the Frankie Smith, right,
a dentry garden that's fantastic. Didn't Magnolia has also start
out as coastal plants, and now people think of them

(47:17):
are so sort of Atlanta classic, but they weren't. Here
does southern magnolia with the leathery leaves and the huge
fragrop flowers. Those our coastal plain species. And again this
is these are the complex stories that we can tell.
As we get warmer up here, those plants are finding

(47:38):
their homes moving they can move further north, so now
they'll recede and regenerate up here in the Piedmont when
they used to live down by the coast. And that
is that story of global warming. Climate change, and as
that climate changes, we're seeing these species move north. And
so what we consider a native plant is that it shifts.

(47:58):
Is that at a certain line in the sand, a
certain era, a certain time or do we have to
evolve as gardens with the plants as they move themselves
around the country and around the world. So, yes, our
southern magnolia is moving its way north and it is
seating around it everywhere. Will you tell us a little
bit about Ogita's garden and perhaps even her Camellia. Oh yes,

(48:21):
sois Wetta as it was a trustee at the Atlanta
History Center and an amazing leader and philanthropic person. And
when she passed away, in her family said we would
love to honor her legacy with a new garden space
at the History Center at the gois Wedda Gardens, which

(48:42):
makes a lot of sense. And so we learned a
little bit about what she loved about gardens and that
she loved English gardens and French gardens and formal gardens
and that was very exciting. That is something we didn't have.
We have all these different styles of gardens at the
History Center, but not in England garden And given my background,
having lived there for many years, I couldn't wait to

(49:06):
create an English garden at the History Center. So the
gardens itself, they also greatly expand our living collections by
letting us grow all these ornamental perennials and full sun.
And it's right behind the museum. When you got the
back doors, you are ensconced within Algitas Garden right left
and center to the right hand side is the more

(49:28):
formal side of it, where there is a walled garden
space with a double border, very English look, and billowing
perennials coming over a gravel path leading to a focal
point of a fountain with neil read columns flanking four
sides of the fountain, and that water feature is full
of water lilies and papyrus. So this whole space was

(49:52):
created with the idea of creating a garden that was
beautiful all year, always had something in bloom, and had
a special emphasis on fragrance. So we have all kinds
of plants like the lilies that I mentioned earlier that
are fragrant, or they might be hyacinths or roses or
other traditional English garden plants that are talked within those
double borders. Also very special was the History Center's first

(50:17):
plant introduction. So when we went to plant around that fountain,
those very tall columns, we needed some really big plants
to immediately seat that garden in and have it look
full and lush and form one and to scale. So
we did a lot of research and we ended up
going to Alabama, where Bobby Green's nursery is, and we found,

(50:42):
through a lot of discussion, the largest chameleas for sale
in the United States, which was a huge find. Our
director of horticulture, Tiffany Jones, managed that with all of
her connections in the nursery world, and we went down
there in November when they were in full bloom and
just it just blew my mind to walking this field
where these communities are growing in one hundred gallon pots,

(51:04):
so I mean, just imagine hugging the biggest tree possible.
They're about that big around the size of those pots,
very heavy. But we managed to select a variety of
his hybrid seedlings, and he was willing to share this
with us, and so we we purchased those and one
of them was unlike any chamelia I've ever seen before.

(51:24):
It was absolutely covered in flowers and they're white, and
they have streaks of this raspberry pink through the petals
and a central boss of golden stamens. But just it's
floriferous in nature, and it's beautiful small leaves, and its
form was very elegant. So we asked him, would it
be possible for us to perhaps name this plant and

(51:45):
honor this family. He's done so much for Atlanta and
especially as Wetta, and he said he loved that idea.
He loves that people are making public gardens happen, and
he wanted to honor that too, So he gave us
the naming rights and we named it Camelia o Quita
And that isn't one of a kind camelia. And it
is growing right alongside the little limestone terrorists of that

(52:08):
garden where everybody can see it right up close and
see this gorgeous flowers. That such a beautiful story. Ah, Sarah,
You're such a delight. Thank you so much for having
me on the show. I can talk about plants all
the time. I love it. But thank you so much
for spending so much of your morning with me. I
feel so lucky and spoiled. It was a pleasure to
be here. Thank you. For having Where can people find

(52:30):
you or the History Center on our website Atlanta History
Center dot com. You'll also find us on our blog,
and we have Facebook and Twitter, so we're all over
the place. Perfect. Thank you so much, many many thanks
to Sarah and to the Atlanta History Center. You can
check out everything that they've got going on at Atlanta

(52:51):
History Center dot com. They do a lot of great programs.
We are in the autumn season and they are doing
some fun Halloween activities and if you're in Atlanta, highly
recommend visiting. It is an absolutely beautiful space. You can
see all of the amazing things that Sarah described, which
you might have been surprised to learn exist there, so
I hope you all go and check it out. I
also have a little bit of listener mail. I'll keep

(53:12):
it short since this was kind of a longish episode.
I believe this is from our listener Sharon. It is
a postcard, and I know I always tell you, but
it really is true. Things often get a little bit
blurred or distorted because they put stamps on the postcards
at the post office. So she writes, Dear Tracy and Holly,
I love the show. On a recent trip to Tillamook
and the Oregon Coast. I thought about how there are

(53:34):
very few lighthouse episodes. Oregon has some great and spooky ones.
She recommends some specific ones, and she says, just a thought,
thanks for making my long commute better. I love learning
from you and sharing with my students. Uh. And she
just writes, ps, I thought the cow was just cute,
which is it is on a cow postcard one. I
just wanted to take this opportunity since she is an educator,
to thank her for being an educator and all of

(53:55):
the educators out there who listened to the show. Uh,
you're doing such important work and we're so grateful that
you're out there. Uh. And also just to say I
will always talk about a lighthouse. Those are fun, So
I'll I'll hunt for some of those stories. I can't
ever promise we have a long list, and it kind
of just depends when things shuffle into rotation. But uh no,
take in. If you would like to write to us,

(54:17):
you can do so at History Podcast at how stuffworks
dot com. You can also find us everywhere on social
media as Missed in History and at our website missed
in History dot com. If you would like to subscribe
to the podcast and you haven't yet, now it is
a perfect time and you can do that on the
I heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it
is that you listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class

(54:42):
is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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