CHANTICLEER The Garden That Feels Like a Dream

Often referred to as a pleasure garden, Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA, delights the senses with color, texture, and artistry. Now in collaboration with our sister channel, Flock Finger Lakes, we take a tour of the house garden with horticulturalist Timothy Erdmann. From bold container plantings to unlikely pairing of tropicals and native landscapes, you'll see why this garden is not only one of my favorite gardens of all time, but why it's considered one of the most inspiring in America. We're actually at Chanticleer Gardens and we've done tours here but never with another person, which is great. We've always done like little visual audio tours of just like beautiful music with a beautiful place and this is quite possibly one of my favorite gardens. So it's very nice to have you to take us through some of the work that you're doing here at Chanticleer. So tell me a little bit about who you are and how long you've been working at Chanticleer and what your role is here. Sure, so my name is Tim Erdmann. I've been on staff here for about six years. I've been in horticulture for about 15 all together working at a few different gardens in and around Philadelphia, some abroad as well. So my responsibilities here, I mean take care of the 800 houses we call it, or Chanticleer house, and as well as the cutting garden down below. And then in the wintertime, I split taking care of the greenhouses with another horticulturist here where really it's just taking care of the specimens that we have on display the rest of the season. Well that's great because you get to play in a lot of different places then. Do you manage also the hardscaping and the landscaping in this area or how does this work? I help out with decisions about the hardscaping. We have contractors that come in to do anything like masonry or that's not in my wheelhouse. So I leave that to the professionals. What about the raking? The raking, yeah, that we do each day sometimes, several times a day depending on how active the children are. Oh yeah, I was gonna say, I'm like, I even have this desire to like run through it, so I don't know what you do with a four-year-old. But that's its nature, I mean it's kind of like a mandala, you know, it's ephemeral, it's just kind of meant to really disappear and change with time. So I see that you have a number of hydrangeas around here. Are these like permanent kind of borders or how do you change things up here? This area doesn't change a ton. This is one of the more static sections of the Chanticleer house. The rest of it changes all the time. I mean it's really one of the most dynamic spaces in the whole garden, I think. Interesting. This area is kind of supposed to be an introduction just to kind of find a little calm before you begin the rest of the experience around the house. So hence the nod to the, yeah, hence the nod to kind of like the Japanese zen gardens and all of that. And so we keep the plant palette pretty restricted as well. We have the hydrangeas here and then in the springtime all the cherries overhead, Prunus accolade, they just drop. So beautiful. Yeah, a shower of pink blossoms into the gravel design. And I like it because it's pared back but it doesn't detract away from the house which is obviously really exquisite, you know. So it's the backdrop for the rest of the garden and kind of the core of what we do here. Now does this change often because it's a lot of things are in containers eventually or like in around the house? Yeah, so just by the nature of maintaining the plants that we do and the climate that we do, we have to be moving things all the time. But also I mean just kind of, again, playing off the house. I mean trying to have it be kind of a formal garden in some ways, kind of a collector's garden. I mean all of the kind of pastiches that go along with manor gardening. And a little clematis. Which one is that, do you know? Rikuchi. Oh nice. It's got a beautiful bell shape. Should we walk through this way? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm constantly thinking about how our guests move through the garden and just trying to think is this a cohesive experience? Do the transitions make sense? How does this garden connect to all of the other sections? Chanticleer. It's almost like you're working with all the other gardeners here and you have a whole book chapter and you have to write each pair. Everyone's writing a paragraph and you have to kind of finish each other's sentences to a certain extent. Exactly, yeah. And just to say a bit about how Chanticleer is structured. So I have my sections, other gardeners have theirs. It's really, they're kind of like seven head gardeners in a way. Of course all reporting to our actual head gardener, Bill Thomas. So we have conversations with each other about how to make our spaces connect. Because really it's Chanticleer Garden, not Chanticleer Gardens. And we're very intentional about that. There are themes kind of dictating or governing some of the essential rules of the different gardens, but for the most part it's supposed to feel like one experience. And how much of it is like a little bit of your je ne sais quoi, your point in here in the garden versus like the Chanticleer experience or the Chanticleer, like how much does Chanticleer come into play and how much do you come into play as a gardener with your personal choice? With respect to design? Yeah. It's a lot of me. I mean I know the history of what has happened here in the past. There's some things like the gravel circle where like that's very little me. That's just what it's been for decades. But certainly the display beds here, I mean this will be almost entirely different next year as it was from the season prior. And this has really changed up from the last time that I've seen it. And I can't remember what season that I was in, but you have like these big sunflowers, you have bromeliads, you know, you just don't, you don't think you'd have any of those pairings together, you know. Here, even though we're next to the house and it's kind of the first display garden, I don't really want to jump right into kind of formal exotic gardening just yet because if you look out the vista, I mean you can see. Let me get a step ladder. Right. No. You can see a lot of kind of the borrowed landscape. Absolutely. In this garden and most of that is kind of more landscape, a little more wild. So I do try to keep a native element in here. We have euthymia, we have bonsai, sunflowers. I mean trying to keep that kind of native vocabulary, but also having the bromeliads, the sugarcane. And I really like pairing those two similar things together. I mean, I think the native elements make the exotics feel more native and vice versa. Well, especially that you're planting some of them directly into the ground or maybe they're still in pots in the ground, but you don't see the pots anymore. They're just kind of in with the bedding plants. Yeah. And they're all just right in the ground. I don't have really anything in pots. When do you start taking things in? Um, so we close end of October, beginning of November, depending on how the dates fall. Right. So we try to keep things out all season. We don't want to make it too obvious to the visitors that we're winding down, you know. I mean, try to keep it the same caliber from when we open to when we close. Look at that Lonicera kinsley's ghost. Good. Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful. It looks so good against the patina copper as well. Yeah. You'd almost not even see it because it's just in with the landscape. Yeah. That's definitely one of our most asked about plants here at Chanticleer. It's unusual, you know what I mean? And it is a U.S. native, I think, right? I believe so. Yeah. But yeah, so that's kind of another example of the house just really kind of setting the framework, going back to your original question about what is tin, what is Chanticleer. Yes, exactly. The purple slate, the copper, the kind of like French ornaments on the house. I mean, there's a lot. I pay a lot of attention to those colors and those styles, those nods. Yeah. Just to try and keep everything consistent and also keep things digestible. Now, I had just seen this in another garden as well, kind of like our Tradescantia. Is it in the same family? Related, yeah. So this is Tenantia, Tenantia pringlei. Yeah, it's a nice plant. I mean, it seeds around rather aggressively. So, I mean, we have it. I'm embracing it. It's not something that I would encourage someone to plant. It's really hard to get rid of once you have it. Okay, got it. Good to know. It's a good advice because people might see it and they say, I want that plant. And then they unknowingly put it in. And then I have a lot of thugs in my landscape now. It's happened to the best of us too. So I made a comment about just trying to keep things digestible up here. A word that I'm using a lot when I talk to students, guest gardeners, is just legibility. One thing about Chanticleer, particularly this vista that we have now, is you can see a lot. And, yeah, like it'd be easy to just overstuff the space and then kind of overwhelm the viewer. And so, I mean, really, I just have to be careful about making a lot of repetitions, staying within similar color families. The view right now is pretty foliage heavy. I think if every pot on here was loaded with flowers, I mean, it'd be fantastical. It'd be amazing. But, I mean, you wouldn't really understand what you're looking at. It'd be Thailand. Yeah. No, but I see what you're saying because this is a straight planar view all the way down. So it's like you can't hide anything. It's all like kind of on the sides for you to look. It's not like you're working around a bend or something of that nature. Yeah, very cool. So can you show us some of the stuff that you've planted in the pots here? Sure, yeah. This is Alcantara odorata. Again, kind of a nod to our copper ornaments and everything around the house. Yes, very good. The verdigris color and I just love it. It looks like it's naturally patina. Even this, what is this one? I've never seen anything like this and I want to touch it. That's an acacia. It's acacia podolierifolia. Oh, it's so nice. It's so soft. It's like a little kitty. And these are the flower buds coming on. Unfortunately, they bloom a little bit after we close, so it's just kind of a gift for us gardeners. It's just like brilliant acid yellow. A lot of acacias are winter bloomers. Yeah. But you need gifts too, you know. Exactly. But no, the color is just a perfect fit. Is this like some type of croton of sorts? It's like a ginormous tree. How long have you had this in the collection? This we've only had for two, three years, but it's definitely much older. They're actually leftovers from one of the Philadelphia flower shows. Oh, I see. Okay. So we drove a dew hall down to the convention center and then rehomed a bunch of them. Yeah. I also want things to be kind of interactive on the terrace. I like kind of forcing people to have to brush up and like shoulder against the plant a little bit. I always love that. You're inviting the gardener to touch plants. Yeah. I've been to many botanical gardens and we filmed them where they're like, get your hands off the plant. And I'm like, no, but it's like reaching out to touch me. These are some fun containers that were made in-house many moons ago. I should point out a lot of the furniture that we have all around the property. Chairs as well were made in-house and for the most part from trees that were felt here. It's such a nice experience because you're going to a garden that doesn't feel like cut from the same cloth of every other garden. It has its own unique experience. And this one, is this some type of staghorn fern? Which one is this? You got it. Yeah. My goodness, just don't walk under it. Yeah. Yeah. Again, borrowing a lot from the color family that's already here. And the slate is slightly tinted purple. Indeed. Really playful. And you have some of the ficus, but like with that burgundy color. And again, a lot of these plants that people are seeing are houseplants that people would normally bring inside. Although it's nice when you have some of the outdoor space because then they probably really grow and then you could bring them in. Look how much my plant has grown. Microton, look how huge it is. Exactly. Yeah. And there's a big praying mantis right there. I didn't mean to talk to you about it. I didn't see you at all. But yeah, that's something we try to do here. I mean, we're not trying to be exclusive. Like, oh, we only have the most collector worthy plants. Right. Like, yeah, this is just a rubber plant, but we have it in probably one of the biggest hanging baskets that I've ever built. And so. Oh, this is a plectranthus. It smells so good. So, yeah, we like to just kind of recontextualize familiar plants, familiar favorites. This is a fun one. The peregrine flower. Tropiolum peregrinum. Has like a really ciliate. Would this be considered the petal or? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It almost looks orchid like. Mm hmm. Doesn't it? Yeah. But yeah, And then is this some type of bamboo or? It looks like it. It's actually a type of mulenbergia. Oh, my gosh. Like native muley grass. I love muley grass. I even like the little weedy kinds. I just found one in my lawn that I wish I knew I should have seeded in with my Lomo native lawn. And it's called shreiberry, mulenbergia shreiberry. And it's kind of a bit more matte forming. I guess people consider it a little bit weedy because it's a grass, but it's it has a beautiful purple inflorescence, but short. So it's kind of like an Aragostis, like not as fancy as an Aragostis because it's a bit more like straight up and it but it but still has a gauzy inflorescence and it doesn't grow more than like six inches. So it's perfect for Lomo. And I was like, God, no one told me about this native muley grass. But yeah. Oh, wow. So does it get it? Definitely not a Lomo. Yeah, no, this is not a Lomo. Is this like get a big inflorescence? I've never seen it flower. Wow. OK, gosh, what an incredible and this is not hardy to our zone. No, but again, I mean, it can take it cold. So, I mean, we it's really useful having something like this that can give us height in early spring when everything else is just like native geophytes and like just like tulips coming up. Having something like this absolutely. And you can see the grassiness of it now. Wow. This is this would have totally thrown me off. Tell me about this. That is water hawthorn, Aponogeton dystachios is the botanical name. Flowers are often fragrant in the morning, kind of have like a vanilla scent to them in South Africa. And it's also a delicacy there. I think people pick the buds and saute them up. Now, I'm fascinated by these small planter like container planters, but with pond garden plants. What do you do to take care of this? Do you have to swap out the water? Do you have little snails in it? Like what is is there a technique to this to keep it nice looking for the season? Yeah, so it depends on which plant it is. I mean, some plants don't really need to root into anything like water. Excuse me, water lettuce, that sort of thing. These have a topsoil in the bottom of them. You don't want to use a container mix or anything because then the the finer particles, everything will float. And so you want to use kind of a screened mineral topsoil if you can. And then so we just plant into that. Raise the water only a little bit after you plant in. I think a mistake a lot of people make when they're planting aquatics in containers is they try and flood it to the full depth right away. Interesting. And what happens when that happens? It just like drowns the plant or? Yeah, depending what it is. I mean, it'll just drown it. They'll rot out because I mean, it hasn't rooted. It's just it's almost counterintuitive, you know, in a way, because you're like, it's a water plant and you can rot it. Yeah. Yeah, so this I think it wants to be at a depth of about like six or 12 inches. OK. So yeah, we just gradually brought it up. Well, that's really good tips because I know they have now like smaller water lilies and everything like that that you can put into containers. Oh, here we go. Yeah. Here's another one. This is the water poppy. Oh, it's so cute. It's just beginning to open. They slow down in the cooler weather. It's more of a summer bloomer. But yeah, so this one, by contrast, I mean, that doesn't want to be in any more than six inches of water. OK. And so you have a substrate down there. Yeah, exactly. And you're just growing them in like these glazed terracotta pots, which is just really nice. I think that's the fun of containers. I mean, being able to put a pond plant next to a banana, next to a cactus, next to whatever. I mean, just getting away with things that you wouldn't be able to otherwise grow. Absolutely. And I have to point out this while we're here. This is one of my favorites. It's a type of sugar cane called Hilo Buddha. Buddha, I think, just for the belly, because they're all kind of cinched at the internodes. I mean, it's so cool. It looks like one of those, you know, when you braid your hair and you kind of pull it into with a little wraparounds around it. That is so neat. It's like segmented like an insect or something in nature. Kind of bizarre. And is this lemon mint? Apple mint. Apple mint. OK. Nice. This is another fun one. This is the old man palm. So named for obvious reasons. Cuban native. Critically endangered and wild, but not super uncommon in cultivation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In Florida, I always see it in someone's garden, you know, so. Yeah. Hooray for cultivation. Yes. Hooray for cultivation in that case. Cultivation and conservation sometimes can go hand in hand. Now, this is funky. Is this the flower? It is. Yeah. Oh, wow. I don't think I've ever seen. This is Jatropha. Yeah, Jatropha. But I don't think I've seen the flower on this one. Oh, that's really nice. And then if you look more closely, you can see how huge the fruits are on it, which kind of cracks me up in comparison to the flower. That's pretty impressive. And it's actually planted in a modest size pot. I like that little rollover on that terracotta pot. Yeah, this is one of my favorite plant things that we have on the terrace. It's funny because it almost now the leaf I'm looking at it, it almost looks like I don't know if you know the house plant Schefflera nova, and it is a Schefflera actinophylla, but it has a I don't know if it's a subspecies or if it's a cultivar, it's nova. And then so it's the umbrella plant. But with like serrations, it kind of reminds me of that a bit. Yeah, no, I'm not familiar with that one. Now, do you manage this part, too? Oh, wow. OK. So this is always changing because every time we come here, it's just like a theatrical progression of plants. And this is another perspective that I think about a lot, just going back to that conversation we had about legibility. Like there is so much that you can see just from this one vantage point. And in doing the winter planting, it's really easy to get locked in kind of like the independent identities of the different beds. Like the flowery lawn will have these plants, the west bed will have those. But when you plant them all out, you also think, hey, like these really need to go together, not be too redundant, but at least kind of belong to the same room. And yeah, this is one of my favorite parts of the shiny clear house, just because, I mean, going back to broad landscape, I mean, we just are in this perfect bowl of pine trees and everything. It's very nice. And you can see all the interaction with the butterflies and the bees in this, which actually makes my heart sing because you're also gardening for the wildlife as well. And that experience that people don't always get. Yeah. So we have some of our native milkweeds in here. That's Asclepias purpurescens right there. Pretty. Nice magenta flower. Not quite as aggressive as the Siriaca. And some Agostaki funiculum, which is a bee's favorite plant for sure. And then you have all these lilies. How do you have them out now? I feel like this is quite late, isn't it? This variety is, it's typical for this time of year, but it's Lilium formosanum. But you're right. I mean, like most of our lilies finish up in June. Yeah. And so yeah, the timing and the height are great for this. And also it gets really interesting seed heads. So you keep them up then for the seed heads? Yeah. Great. And they persist a surprisingly long time. I mean, even after drying down, I mean, I had them blooming or not blooming, but I had them standing with Narcissus when they were flowering this spring. So what's the yellow one in the back as well, the yellow clumps? Those are daylilies. That's a variety called September soul. I like the small flowers on those. Yeah. And they look very floriferous actually. And then I see the Bouteloua gracilis. Is this a specific cultivar or is it the straight species? That's a variety called honeycomb. Oh, it's so cute. Look at that little eyelash. Yeah. Right. Blonde ambition is one of the more famous ones. This one's just a little bit shorter. So a little bit more appropriate for this section, which we call the flowery lawn. And is this one like a euphorb or what is this one? Yeah. Euphorbia correlata, which is a native. It's a fun space. And I mean, really looking at this garden, there's a lot of plants that catch our eye, obviously, but the one that makes it is really the fine fescue that's in here. Is this a pastuca, is it a rubra or what's the, you're not sure. How do you plant this? Does it come in like, like a, like sod or does it, do you plant it in plugs? By seed for the most part. You could do it as sod. The problem with that is that most sod is going to come with netting and this is a very bulb heavy garden. A lot of people ask, like, what's the difference between a flowery lawn and a meadow? Like, and to me, it's that. It's the fescue, the kind of reinforcement of negative space. I think it just adds a little extra breath to the garden, which again, in this huge area, I think is really important for flexibility. It's also interesting, you know, to do a different kind of mode on the outside and then just letting it kind of topple over on the inside as a border, as almost like a double border, you know, just to give a little bit more break and, and show the intention behind it as well. Yeah. I think that's important with this style of planting where it can be a little more wild looking. Designers will talk about a cue of care. And so basically this is just a way of saying like, this is intentional. Like if plants are flopping, like we kind of mean for it. I know, you know, if only the people who live in HOAs could convince the rest of their neighbors, you know, we get a lot of comments about that where they're like, I'm trying to create this like wild scaped garden for the butterflies and the birds and things like that. And I'm like, isn't there a way that you could kind of like showcase that it's not like fully wild, that it's intentional? And this is a great technique. Just have one path that you mow every week and then just tell people that are interested you're looking out for it. Right. Approaching the east bed now. It's kind of a scary bed in a way. It's very deep and very long. So yeah, I've been trying to use more and more perennials. I mean, particularly with changing climate and everything, it's just more water wise. But even though we have perennials in our vocabulary, that doesn't mean that the perennials are going to be in the exact same space every year. Right. That's just kind of helpful for defining bedding pockets and giving a visual foundation. Is this an alpinia? That's a type of ginger. It's a ginger miyoga. Zingiber, okay. Oh, so it is a hardy ginger. Yeah, so it's maybe like white feather. They have different cultivars. This one is dancing crane. Dancing crane. It's a pretty one. I like the variation on this one. And the edibility of it is usually in the flower. Yeah, like the flower part at the base. Slice it very thinly and add it to miso soup and stuff like that. Nicotiana or? Yeah, Nicotiana langstorfii. I like the color. It's kind of like that green chartreusey. Which I guess I see a little bit of that in the bed too. The greens and whites and stuff. At least right now, because some of the things are not fully in bloom. Yeah, so it's kind of a textural moment right now, which again just kind of reiterates the value of the perennials that are in here. The foliage is carrying the game. Because summer stuff is starting to slow down, but I mean we have a bunch of fall things that are going to come on with different chrysanthemums, rhabdosias in here, some fall blooming salvias. So flowers will. Now is this the aragrostis? Um, close. It's agrostis. Agrostis. A-G-R-O-S-T-I-S. Yeah, yet another agrostis. We have some, it's called red top growing, and I actually really like it because it kind of reminds me of the aragrostis or like a bulimbergia because it has this beautiful seed head. Yeah, so this is agrostis nebulosa. Nebulosa. Yeah, and I'm a big fan of it. I mean, it just self-sows around and the bloom time is, well for one, like much earlier than bulimbergia for instance. Right, exactly. And much longer than aragrostis. Yeah. You don't get the purple red hues, but I mean you just get this really beautiful gauzy green that kind of then fades out to more of kind of like a tawny, tawny tan. I'm trying to think of the one in our landscape. It may be agrostis gigantea, and that one is a bit more red, which is nice, but it's tall. Yeah, right. Is this sea kale? It is, yeah. Oh, nice. I will eat this sometimes. Yeah, do you blanch it? I do. I like to cook it with like a fish and then I blanch it, and it just is so, I like the texture of it. It like really has a nice. Very toothsome. Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, very good word. Yeah. And here's a little another tradescantia. Ohioensis or? Or virginiana. It's, yeah, one of the native spider wards. So this is another example of just kind of using the the foundation of Chanticleer, the buildings, to really drive the way that we're gardening it. So we added this mulch over here. It's a baked clay. Oh, interesting. Called turfus. It's actually the same thing that they use in baseball diamonds in the infields. Yeah. But there, they roll it here. We just can leave it like a little fluffy. Is it just a topper, or is it the whole bed? Yeah, it's just a topper. Okay. Yeah, I thought that was just a perfect complement to the copper of the rouge, and then the blue of the pool, and just kind of gives like a nice beachy atmosphere. Opens it up, and then that, between those colors, we've kind of figured out the rest of our plant palette with a succissa here, which is one of my favorites, and we have katananki. This one right here? That is pretty, and the bees seem to really love it. Yeah, that one's succissa pretensis, or devil's bit scabious. Does it sow around a lot, or is it an annual? No, it's perennial, but it'll sow around a bit, but not too much. It's a very nice one. Yeah. I'm making a mental note of that one. And then there's another one I can point out over here, which is basically a shorter version of that called jacinni. And this is an elderberry black leaf? Yeah, black leaf. Wow, it's so succulent, actually, of the leaf. So down here? Had a lot of rain. Yeah, you can kind of peek at it from right here. So katananki is a closer one, and then just behind it, kind of behind that white pot. Okay, so it's a really small one. Yeah. Nice. And what's the one in the bowl with the verdigris color? That's another euphorbia. The cultivar is something like arctic frost, arctic freeze, something to that effect. Nice. And then our alcantara, as we pointed out on the terrace, are coming back. So yeah, just trying to repeat plant selections in different contexts. But also one of my favorite things about the turface mulch that we have here is just being able to rake it. I think that adds just kind of another quality that you can't really get. It looks like a calcined clay, like they puff up, that sometimes they will use also on like the surface of like a green roof or something. I wonder if it comprises of that. It looks really attractive, especially, you know, sometimes you don't want the chunkiness of the mulch. Yeah, exactly. Well, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for showing us and sharing your work. I know you do things beyond this. We won't get a chance to actually see them all today. But if anybody gets a chance, come see Chanticleer. You're open until roughly around, like you said, October. Yeah. And it's just such a wonderful garden. And we'll also link to the tour that we did of the whole garden as well. But thank you so much for your time. Thanks for coming. Thanks for making yourself available. We have so many great garden tours, both indoors and out here on Plant One On Me and also on our sister channel over at Flock Finger Lakes. So go check out those videos as well if you have an interest. And you can support the channel here by liking, subscribing, hitting the notifications button, tipping, or even becoming a supporting member. Now, stay tuned to our group botanical tour launches as well, because we recently made the announcement that we'll be going to Japan in the autumn of 2026. So if that interests you, head on over to homesteadbrooklyn.com, click the Learn tab, and then go to Botanical Tours to reserve your spot or see where we're going to next. I'll also leave a link in the description below the video as well. And be sure to check out all of our online houseplant courses on homesteadbrooklyn.com, from Houseplant Basics to the Houseplant Masterclass. We'll see you in the next video.