Amy Cate has always been #gardengoals for me. I have watched from afar (okay, from Instagram), and marveled at everything she has been growing for years. She has turned a portion of her backyard into a lush, thriving garden for herbs, vegetables, and flowers.
So, once I started this blog, I knew I needed to visit Amy pronto to see the magic in action and to pick her brain on all things gardening. I hope this interview gives you some insight into gardening and inspiration to get your own garden started.
Shelly Wilkinson: When did you get started gardening?
Amy Cate: For my own garden, probably my fourth or fifth year of teaching. I lived in Green Hills and I planted a bunch of iris bulbs that had been my great grandmother’s. Then I was like, “I love every year that this comes up” because I got the white irises from Tutu (that’s what we called her). Then I started planting more herbs, and then when I moved here, I was like I can actually do this the right way. The first summer I just had a little stuff, so probably six years ago.
But, I have learned while I have been doing this that my whole life, my mom grows flowers, she’s not like a major vegetable person, but my great grandmother and her were both major garden people, and so like I’ve never not known what an iris is, and I’ve never not known what a sunflower is. So, that’s one of those things where I had a lot of knowledge that I didn’t know I really had just by hanging out with them. I really wasn’t very interested in it until I got into it, and now I’m like I could make a career out of this.
Shelly: So, was your intention at first to start vegetable gardening or what did you want to start with?
Amy: I always just wanted to plant, I just wanted to plant stuff. I really have always been pretty much half and half. I get a lot of pleasure out of eating the food that I grow, but I also get just as much pleasure from having flowers in my house all year long and being able to go out and give people beautiful arrangements and have flowers inside my house. So, my intention was just always: let’s just do this and it’s grown every year and it’s become a lot, but in a good way.
Shelly: How do know how to make the flower arrangements?
Amy: Basically, I’ll cut all my flowers and see what I’m working with, and I usually do that on Sundays; it’s like my Sunday chore – picking. I’ll cut and pick the veggies and the flowers on Sunday. And then, I start with the bigger stuff, like the hydrangeas take up a bunch of room; the gladiolas take up a lot of room. Then I work from big to small. And I put the small in where I can fit it. I also think about where I’m going to put it. I usually have flowers in my bedroom, my living room, and my kitchen, and then I give one to my Nana to have at work. So, I can’t go super huge for my bedroom and I can’t go super huge for Nana, but I can go super huge for the kitchen, which is where I use the glads and the hydrangeas.
Shelly: So what kind of stuff do you plant every year that you like, and what are you like, “Not doing that again”?
Amy: So last year, major mistake: I planted Japanese okra because I thought it was actual okra, but it’s loofah. I planted loofah, so downstairs I have these dried…, I swear to God there was one as long as my leg. And it was HUGE. When I tell you that thing vined, and I mean it went the expanse of my garden, and it was neat to watch it grow because every year I try to pick one thing that’s new, that I’ve never planted before; sometimes I study up on it but most times I’m just like we’ll throw this in here and see what happens. This is one of those times where I was like: yo, I should have studied up on it because this is crazy.
But every year I’m always going to plant zinnias, I’m always going to plant tomatoes, I’m always going to plant cucumbers. I mean, the vegetables that I have are the same vegetables, minus eggplant and okra, that I started with in the very beginning. I’ve scaled back on peppers because I just don’t like them that much and I just use them as a complement instead of like a thing. I grew cotton one year and I loved that. That was really cool to grow cotton, and I learned as it flowered that it’s the same family as okra. It looks exactly like okra when it flowers, which is why in the deep south what do you see planted everywhere? – okra and cotton and its cause they do well in that climate—
Shelly: Did you use it in flower arrangements?
Amy: Yeah just arrangements, and I also have a bowl of it dried in my house. I was going to plant it again this year but I was like, I would rather use the space for something else because it is a slow grower; it took all summer long.
So yeah, I think that I love peonies and when they come in, it’s like, I don’t know, I feel that way about a lot of flowers, like: I’m so excited when the peonies come in, I’m so excited when the irises come in, I’m so excited when the lilies come in. Each different season I’m excited for.
Shelly: Where did you get the peonies? Did you get them bareroot or were they already mature?
Amy: The ones over there were a gift from a guy that I dated, actually, which was really sweet. And then these… I think the others maybe from my nana . . . yeah, I’m sure it was from her. They have done just okay. I really think the comfrey is interfering with them. I have three peonies this year and about ten blooms and you saw the blooms never set, so that made me sad. So, I’ve gotta do something because I do not care enough about the comfrey to let it kill my peonies.
Shelly: Are there any this year that you want to do again next year that you’ve liked so far?
Amy: I am hoping. I spent a lot of money on perennials this year. That was my — I didn’t plant a new vegetable this year. I planted new flowers, so I am hoping that that investment will stick and the daisies will come back and the black eyed Susans will come back.
In years past I have been guilty of not remembering where I put stuff even though I have a map. At some point I’m paranoid, I had poppies and now they don’t come up. And, I’m like did I weed those? Same thing with the dahlias. I’m like, surely, I would recognize the dahlias coming up. Hold on, let me go get my stuff… [speaks while walking into house] January is my time to plan; I will sit there — during the snow days — I will sit there and map out my garden. [sits back down] So I have a map, so really, I shouldn’t mess up like that, but I do. [takes out map] This is my garden plan for this year. So, I will make this basically on a snow day in January. I will fill in what my plan is in pencil and then what I actually end up doing in pen. You can see like, here, I planted all these different zinnias and then some of them came up, and some didn’t come up, or they got eaten. And so, I don’t even remember now what the actual zinnias are, but I know they’re all zinnias. I also put in all my perennials. I sort of keep track of what it is that I’ve done everywhere.
My mom does not do this, she does not plan like this, but for me having such a small space I’m like, I really have to plan. And then I’ll make my list of what I need. I’ll order some flashy seeds for the marigolds or for the zinnias sometimes because I think it’s fun to try different ones out—
Shelly: Where do you get them from?
Amy: I get them from Baker Creek and then there’s also Swallowtail, I think, is where I got some really awesome zinnia seeds, they’re like salmon pink, and it’s off the beaten path. But, this year I didn’t order from them because several people gave me seeds as gifts, so I was like let me just use these this year.
Sometimes I order, when I was real big into seed starting, ordering really neat kinds of tomatoes, but then I really learned there’s a reason people in Tennessee don’t grow blank because they don’t work here. So, then I just started going back to greenhouses that I knew would give me things that would grow here. Bates is my favorite in town. Have you ever been to All Seasons down on eighth? Oh my gosh, Shelly go. It’s a garden store so they don’t have like — their plant area is probably as big as my garden— but they have weird stuff. That’s where I got the green eggplant; they have like interesting herbs, so that’s pretty fun. Sometimes I buy from the farmer’s market but this year I didn’t. If I do, I buy from the small operations they have some like all female run farms and stuff. I’ll buy from them because I think that’s cool. And then my mom’s greenhouse, there’s an Amish greenhouse in Kentucky that is the best and that’s where I buy all my vegetables because they have raised them and they are so strong, hearty, healthy, and cheap. It’s amazing.
Shelly: So, you said it started off to the end of the patio—
Amy: Really the first year it was just along the wall. It was coreopsis, irises, there was a peony there, and then those glads, and that was it. Then I expanded out to there [end of patio], and then I expanded out to there [current place], But, it has been this big [a couple feet past the patio] for about four years now.
Shelly: Do you have any goals with this, or anything you want to do in the future?
Amy: This year, my goal— so I’ve had a really hard time since I became dean— because I lost my summer— of controlling the weeds and figuring out something sustainable for what I can do. So, my goal for this year’s garden was to get things in a really good place to be able to coast when school starts back. So, I started it last year— two years ago, I was like, I’m just going to do grass pathways in my garden instead of mulching. I’m going to do grass. TERRIBLE idea. Oh my gosh. So then, last year in the spring, I really went hard at clearing that out, first of all, and then laying down landscape fabric for what I knew would always be the same.
So, the pathways that I could commit to, and then it still got sort of out of control because there were several areas where I didn’t plant, I traveled a lot right when I first had a summer last year, and I just didn’t have time. So, this year, with being home, I’ve gotten it 100 percent planted, and I’ve gotten it 100 percent mulched where I want it. And so, on the places where there is not landscape fabric, I lay down newspaper, and then do mulch and that controls it for the year. That pretty much— I’ll have to go through and manage a couple times, but as far as majorly, that’s enough. So, my goal this year was to create something that was sustainable for me.
So, yeah, like I said, I would love to have fruit trees, I would love to have an olive tree, I would love to have more blackberries and blueberries— my mom has blueberries and I think that’s the coolest. But that’s not sustainable, and probably not gonna happen here. [both laughing] That’s more like if I marry a farmer, and we live somewhere else. And we have land and he can help me. Like, that’s not a solo gig.
This is the first installment of our interview. Stay tuned for the second half! Yeah…we talked for quite a while, and I have a newfound respect for people who transcribe interviews. A twenty minute interview took me hours to transcribe and get right. Conversation is so much more fluid than written word – lots of stopping and starting, interrupting (in a good way), incomplete sentences, and what would be considered run-on sentences when writing. I hope I have captured Amy Cate’s essence and shown some of both of the organization and whimsy used in creating her garden. More on that whimsy in the second half!
What are your gardening goals? What are some mainstays in your gardens, and what are some things that have not worked for you?
