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I'm talking to Andy Kabe who's the director of
horticulture for Riverbanks Zoo and garden.
And Andy no matter what time you come here.
This place is just a blaze with color from flowers,
but also from greenery.
Andy: You know, Amanda, there's always something
blooming here at Riverbank. So that's one thing
we pride ourselves on. And, you know, in South Carolina,
I mean, we can garden 12 months out of the year.
And we certainly do here at Riverbanks,
which is a joy, but also you never get a break.
You never get a break. And I think my staff
would tell you that it's just as soon as
something's looking good, it's time to pull it out and
plant the next thing.
Amanda: And there is a lot of that that you do.
Right now we're kind of in a transition period.
And so we've got snapdragons and larkspur and things like that.
But we've also, I guess, due to Eric Shealy,
and some of your other staff members,
he's got a lot of spring things that are that
were ready early to put out.
Andy: Yeah, you know, Eric grows a lot of our annuals
down on the greenhouse and gets things started for us.
So we normally start usually about the middle of April,
switching beds out. And we've gotten most
of the garden done that were over at the zoo,
switching things out over there. But definitely being
able to grow our own plants, that helps us
number one that helps us get exactly what we want.
We don't have to go searching around for it.
And it gives us you know, ready made plans to right
down in our greenhouse so we can just take right up
here to the garden and put straight in the ground.
Amanda: And also you've got a lot of conifers,
many of which have some color blended in with the green,
Andy: you know, the conifers are great,
especially, there's so many varieties out there
that might had hints of cream or gold on them or white.
They're just great to help brighten up things,
you know, evergreens, it just it
really brighten things up and can kind of break up
the whole monotony of just too much green.
Amanda: Well and also when you've got little things on
the ground you need some larger scale things behind them.
And so that's one of the things that happens here.
You don't have just a carpet of one thing,
although you may see a large swath of it,
but it's not going to be too Just a total bed of it.
Andy: right in doing layering things important,
based upon their height and their spread.
That's important too. And, you know, we don't want this
to be a very two dimensional garden.
We want it to be 3d We want you to see from the ground up.
Amanda: You have a lot of fool proof plants,
you've got hellebores that I think jumped into beds,
Andy: Everywhere Yep. But they're wonderful. Oh,
it's a great thing to have seed in. And dry shade. I mean,
there's not a whole lot better for dry shade.
Amanda:Yeah but also I guess, partially due to one of your
former directors of horticulture.
What a huge Krenim collection.
Andy: Yeah, when I started here, I kind of inherited
a Krenim collection, our pre previous
management here decided Krenim, were going to be a core
collection at river bank. So I inherited the Krenim
collection and had been building it ever since.
And, gosh, I think we're up probably close to 200
Different varieties right now. You know they're just so great.
I mean, they're, like you said foolproof,
depending on the variety,
our first ones might bloom in February or March or last ones,
maybe in November, December, just depending on the frost so.
Amanda: And right now you've got some regular
lilies that are starting to come in. And again,
they're just not, there's not much problem that you
don't have a lot of problems with those,
I think they'll try to find plants that aren't going
to need a lot of attention, time to be spraying,
Andy: Right and we you know we've we've grown
enough things over the years to know what works,
what doesn't work, what looks is best,
and what looks as best with the least amount of care.
So all those are important factors in in selecting
plants for a particular area. So we do a lot of that.
Amanda: And I believe that this is hard work.
And people have to work when it's hot and when it's cold.
And you really try to give your staff some decision making.
Andy: sure they have different areas in the
garden zoo that they're responsible for,
for a large part we try to let them design how how they
feel and what inspires them. I think it gives
them a sense of ownership. And I think lots of times,
you're much more apt to want to take care of
something and devote your time to something that you
have a vested interest in that you pick those plants,
Amanda: if you decide to come in the
Botanical Garden entrance. As you walk by the garden
you have wonderful pitcher plants there.
I think everybody should get down and look at how they work.
Not only you know, the tube, yes, insects,
but the fly was very complex to make sure it gets pollinated.
Andy: And you knowthe interesting thing about
pitcher plants is the actual pitchers themselves.
Lots of people think that's a flower because
it's just so pretty and but really that's actually a leaf,
it's a modified leaf, the little pitcher with the
two minutes, that's actually a leaf,
but the flowers when they come in the spring are absolutely
amazing and yeah, one kind of neat thing that I
sometimes do on garden tours is I'll pull an old
pitcher off and I'll open it up especially if
they're kids in the group, and they can see all the
bugs in there. Yeah, that worked really great.
Until one time I was on live TV doing it.
And there were fire ants in there.
I was getting stung left and right and trying to keep my
composure on live TV and act like it didn't hurt but uh,
but it was a good example. They really
do insects do go down in there.
Amanda: a good reason to tell people the public
that they're not ours. I love century plants and
you've got a lot of them out front if you came up
on the tram side. And I'm thinking, gosh,
are they going to you know and you said fortunately now,
we need to pay more attention to cultivars that are
available, right?
Andy: There's so many different cultivars of
century plant out right now. They're variegated cultivars,
they're green cultivars are gray cultivars,
blue cultivars, I mean there are a whole bunch
of different ones out there. But you can
just about find one for any setting in the garden,
it doesn't have you don't have to have a six foot by
six foot space to put in Century plant necessarily,
there are some compacts that fit well in the garden.
Amanda: And one of the things that happens
here is things aren't going to stay as static as
they might, at home, you've got some really,
really big crape myrtles and crape myrtles are
going to be susceptible to crape myrtle scale.
And some of them have kind of gotten bigger than their
space requires. So you don't change things.
Okay, you know, this
Andy: garden opened in 1995. And I think the
first things were probably planted in 94,
we're getting close to 30 years on some of these plants
that had been in the garden since day one.
And what we're seeing now is after close to 30 years,
we're experiencing the growing pains of a
maturing garden And a lot of these things are
planted in confined spaces. And after you know,
20 or 30 years sometimes it's time to do something new.
And whereas I would cringe getting rid
of some of these things in my own home because
they're such beautiful trees. Our purpose here is
a little different than the home landscape.
We want you to see new and different things each time and,
you know after a plant's been out for 25 or
30 years in the trade, you know, maybe we need to
showcase something new and different.
So that's what we do.
Amanda: And you've installed some ginkgo.
And I'm, I'm thinking, Gosh, this place is nice,
has a lot of sun plants and but you said again,
staying up on the cultivars, you've got some
that aren't going to need to
Andy: Yeah and especially especially in our walled garden,
a lot of spaces over the zoo that are confined.
You kind of have to pick and choose and we
don't have room for a ton of trees as well.
Especially in the botanical garden trees that will get big
and mature and that's why you were scratching your
head when I saw I planted the you sweat saw I
planted the ginkgo. And when I told you this is a,
an upright columnar cultivars, that's not going
to cast a lot of shade. It made sense.
But that's the thing now is people are
breeding so much and discovering new plants that,
you know, they're taking your plant that you know,
and making it work breeding it so
it will work in a different space.
Amanda: Of course when I got here had to walk up
into the Children's Garden and all that, you know,
people say, Oh, little children's feet, they're
not gonna make a difference because you've
got a great big green space there and they can
go barefooted but I think about school yards,
little children's feet can be very compacting.
And so y'all have to give that turf area there.
A lot of special care.
Andy: Yeah, that turf gets well it gets special care,
no care at all at the same time. That area has
probably been mowed about twice and six years old
and keep it down. The children keep it mowed down.
If we keep it well aerated, weeded, fertilized,
it can keep up with the kids.
Amanda: And then it's hot. And mothers come and sit
with babies and strollers and their children are playing.
And you've got so many opportunities for shade.
And instead of just a boring canopy umbrella canopy,
you put stuff on it looks kind of like palm fronds
Andy: We gotsomething to look kind of thatched like and,
and that's that's the thing that we have to
really take into consideration. And just both of
our horticulture and overall layout of our
zoo and garden is number one we attract a lot of kids.
So you need shade, you need shade for the kids,
you need shade for the moms and dads who are
out there watching them. So we factor in shade quite a bit.
Whether it's through plants,
or umbrellas or something like that,
we definitely factor in shade a lot or teradactyl wings or
teradactyl wings like in our in our dino dig our
giant sandbox, theTeradactyl that goes
create shade,
Amanda: and I saw kids sitting up there and then
there was actually a small shoe that I guess one of
your staff had found that they put out in case
somebody came back on the span the shoe that came
Andy:After a busy day or a busy weekend you find some
shoes and water bottles and stuff like that.
But kids are having such a good time they forget
about their shoes.
Amanda: Then oh water, what do you got a wonderful water.
I mean, everywhere you go, you can hear water,
which I think is very soothing.
But you've got water, children can play in Safely,
Andy: we've got play water too. And that's great.
In our children's garden waterfall junction
that opened in 2016, we made sure there were water
elements included. So kids could have a safe place
that their parents can watch them to splash and play.
And so that's going to be opening up here soon
again for the summer. It just really is nice.
You know, in another month, we won't be able to
sit here and have this conversation because
you'll hear all the kids out there playing.
Amanda:I can't wait. Well, I think it's just wonderful.
You're right here, it's so easy to come in,
you got the you can have the botanical garden
then the regular zoo, both of which are beautiful,
and your staff takes care of both.
The containers are so lovely. I remember the
last time we were here we found that y'all even pick
pansies and feed them to the turtles.
Andy: Absolutely. We try to make sure nothing goes to waste,
Amanda: including bamboo and every tree limb that falls.
Andy: We find a reason way to use it, repurpose it, for sure.
Amanda: we had such a good time today and if other
people want to find out about your hours and when
you're open what's the best way to do that?
Andy: The best way is to go to our website or
Facebook page, all the information about our
hours of operation, everything you need to
know can be found there.
Amanda: Alright. And um, perhaps you should bring
your sunscreen with you.
Andy: Absolutely.
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