A year ago, on 22nd September 2019, Joe Hollis had invited me to do a walk and talk with him at his Mountain Gardens in North Carolina! Before the event he took me around the woodlands to show me the woodland flora. I made a short video at most of the plants to help me remember what they were. I’ve now put them together into one video (see below). Joe talks briefly about the following plants: Disporum spp. (trachycarpum?) (medicinal) Medeola virginiana; Indian cucumberroot Hosta sieboldiana (self-seeding) (food) Panax quinquefolius; American ginseng Prenanthes trifolioliata; Gall of the earth (Food and medicine) Smilax rotundifolia; common greenbrier (Food and medicine) Acer spp.; maple Castanea spp.; chestnut Sassafras albidum; sassafras (Medicine and beverage/spice) Cacalia delphinifolia? (Far Eastern edible and medicinal) After the video is a gallery of photos taken on the same tour. Will post more from the walk and talk later. This is one of several blog posts about my visit to Joe. See more by searching here: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?s=joe+hollis
Hosta self-sows here
Laportea canadensis; wood nettle
Boehmeria spp.
An invasive Commelina species was everywhere
Hosta
Polygonatum
Allium tricoccum (ramps)
Hosta and Laportea
Goodyera pubescens (a medicinal orchid)
Medeola virginiana (cucumber root) was abundant
Where else would someone walk by with a rack of dried ginseng roots!
One year ago, it was a pleasure to spend some time touring Joe Hollis’ Mountain Gardens with these three guys who’d come all the way from NE Ohio and Columbus Ohio (an 8-9 hour drive). John Wright from NE Ohio Isaac John Koblentz from NE Ohio via Scandinavia :) Jared Morris (Columbus, Ohio) (he gave me some delicious pawpaws, Asimina triloba)
It’s a year since I arrived at Joe Hollis’ Mountain Gardens in North Carolina. I wrote about it here https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=24110 and just added a few additional pictures. Here are a few additional pictures from his extensive library, Chinese herb pharmacy and seed store which he offers as a resource for anyone wanting to study the useful plants of the world!
The library
The pharmacy (or herbal self-help centre)
The pharmacy (or herbal self-help centre)
Lysimachia christinae and Angelica pubescens
Polyporus umbellatus, Alisma orientalis and Coix lacryma-jobi
In April 2018 both myself and Joe Hollis were invited as speakers at The Potential of Perennials for Food System Resilience Symposium in Stans, Switzerland. I also had the opportunity to spend a great day botanising at two of Zurich’s Botanical Gardens with Joe, see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=17040
Joe said to me at the time that I should come visit if I was ever in the US. I already knew at that time I was invited by Sam Thayer and Melissa Price to the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival at the end of September this year, but Joe’s place seemed a long trek south, so I forgot the idea. Then this spring, I was asked if I would be interested to do a talk at the Atlanta Botanical Garden….and I managed to change my travel plans to do this…and looking at the map I noticed it wasn’t too far from Joe’s Mountain Gardens (aka as Paradise)! So I contacted him and he replied: “Good to hear from you and that is great news! I am very much looking forward to showing you around my garden and adjacent National Forest land, there is a lot to see”.
So it came to past that I arrived in Asheville, North Carolina on 21st September 2019 and picked up a hire car as Joe’s place was an hour or more up in the Black Mountains subrange of the Appalachians. Four hours later I arrived at my hotel, the Celo Inn (as for why it took so long see the album captions). It turns out that the Celo community is one of the oldest intentiona communities in the world (1937), based on ideals of cooperation between residents and care for the natural environment….and it turns out that a neighbour and old colleague back in Trondheim actually went to school here…small world!
The pictures below show the approach road to Mountain Gardens from the Celo Inn (only a 5-10 min, drive away) and my first look into the garden!
I hired a car in Asheville and drove up to Joe’s place, easier said than done as I lost hte GPS signal and my phone didn’t work. People I asked hdn’t heard of the Celo Inn where I as booked to stay nor Mountain Gardens. I finally got reception on some higher ground and finally got to the accomodation 4 hours after leaving Asheville (should have been a little over an hour!)
The Celo Inn!
Mountain Gardens is in the foothills of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak of the Appalachian Mountains and the highest peak in mainland eastern North America. At 2,037m, at this latitude the summit is covered in spruce-fir forest, Red spruce (Picea rubens) and Fraser Fir (Abies fraseri).
Who would guess that this is a sign to Paradise? This unassuming sign, along the road between the Celo Inn and Mountain Gardens was even pointing in the wrong direction
The approach to one of the most important places on the planet!
Bear left at the crossing
Parking the car on the now gravel road, it wasn’t difficult to spot that this was Joe Hollis’ place and again a modest sign welcomes the visitor at the entrance!
Mountain Gardens from above
Black walnuts and a myriad of other native and introduced trees form the canopy of this forest garden
Entering the garden for the first time I spy what is probably the native North American devil’s walking stick Aralia spinosa in full flower. Does this species flower much later than Japanese Aralia elata? My A. elata had finished flowering at home.
Joe Hollis and his son
Black walnuts?
A home made walnut cracker
…or crack by this method
The following morning I walked around the grounds of the Celo Inn on a warm sunny day with monarch and swallowtail butterflies on the ornamental Asters. The owners had quite extensive vegetable beds and the ripe chilis bore witness that the summers were hot even up here in the mountains.
Thanks to everyone for supporting me on the perennial edible adventure I’ve been on since my little story was published 5 years ago today!
It’s not too late to be included in my gallery of #ATWselfies either!
Please send me your picture and you’ll be added! You will be showing support of a very good cause: the conservation of the amazing diversity of food plants and their related traditions Around the World. See the album of #ATW Selfies below and also on FB here: https://www.facebook.com/stephen.barstow.7/media_set?set=a.10157331181205860 and previously on this blog at http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=466
And it’s always nice when your peers say nice things about your creation….here Joe Hollis of Mountain Gardens :) (I was sitting there though!)
191119: The first new #ATWselfie is from my new friemd Isaac John (Coblentz) from NE Ohio (with a bit of Finland in the mix!) who sent this picture and wrote these nice words: “This is one of my favorite books. I keep it in my backpack and never tire of re-reading. Your book has also expanded my diet and improved my health. It is a real treasure. It was so nice to meet you and spend time with you and Joe Hollis at Mountain Gardens. Thank you for the years of time you put into this wonderful book!”
201119: Thanks to Joshua Christian for this inventive #ATWselfie! He writes: “Making a sandwich with some of the ingredients from the book (and some that aren’t). Clockwise from left: small (salad size) Taunton dean kale leaves, profusion sorrel, patience sorrel/dock, large (cooking size) Taunton dean kale, garden sorrel, atriplex canescens, dittander, sweet cicely, rosemary partially hidden by dandelions, chicory. Inspirational and well thumbed book.”
211119: Check out Jake Rayson, forest gardener from West Wales :)
231119: From my friend Eliane Vivi Frieda Bonde on the beautiful island of Bornholm!
231119: Looking particularly cool with my book, Mr. Bram Cools…who writes: “Bad selfie with backlight, with a great book by Stephen Barstow on Edimentals. Anyone who likes gardening and want more than radishes should buy this book!” :)
Many thanks for this Lillian Berthung! I remembe how we met on a flight from North Norway to Trondheim. You sat next to me, I was reading one of Sam Thayer’s books (whom I finally met this year) which you asked me about :)
This picture taken in Elin Rydningen’s greenhouse, https://www.facebook.com/alchemilladrivhuset , should of course also be in my #ATWselfie album!
231119: Sallandse Eetbarebloemen Linde’sbloemetjesthee en Karen Winkel
Isaac John Koblentz (see his #ATWselfie) was one of 3 guys who travelled all the way from northern Ohio for the joint walk and talk I did with Joe Hollis at Mountain Gardens (North Carolina) in fall 2019! Here they tell a little bit about each other! Thanks so much for coming!
What an amazing place, at Joe Hollis’ Mountain Gardens in North Carolina yesterday!
My favourite forest garden anywhere!! At 77, Joe is still expanding having purchased more land and with several new projects!
Thanks to all who came including the three who drove down from Ohio for the event (9+ hours!)
The picture shows me and Joe in his largest patch of Udo (Aralia cordata). Very much more when I get the time….on to Atlanta today and the gig at the Botanical Garden tomorrow!
Happy to announce that I’ll be in Switzerland the week after Easter to attend and talk at a symposium on “The Potential of Perennials for Food Resilience” Here’s the symposium announcement: https://www.perennials-resilience.org (more later!).
Excited that I’ll get to meet Mr. Mountain Gardens himself, Joe Hollis, who is also attending. Many of you will know Joe from his youtube videos, like this one on Udo (Aralia cordata): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNzCpfSQWks
Joe has spent 25 years developing Paradise Gardens, a botanical garden of edible plants in the mountains of western N. Carolina!
I will also visit Pro Specie Rara (KVANN – Norwegian Seed Savers’ counterpart in Switzerland!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProSpecieRara
Thanks to Matthias Brück and Katharina Serafimova for doing most of the organising!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
