From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. The last time I spoke to Ella O'Holfska from her home in garden in Ukraine, she confessed to growing about 120 different types of climatists, a number that after seeing her recently published ebook, Clemedis Passports, which profiles 140 kinds, I suspect has increased in the year and a half since that chat. Whatever the precise number suffice it to say that Aula is devoted to growing and propagating climatists and photographing them and using them and cut flower arrangements to and sharing them with others. There are joy of her life and the subject of our conversation today, so more in a moment, but first these messages. Underwriting support for a Way to Garden provided by Colorblends, wholesale flower bulbs. A third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. And by High Moeng seeds, Wolcott Vermont, Professional Quality Vegetable, Flower, and Urbel Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMoengSeeds.com. And by White Flowerflower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants on the web, WhiteflowerFarm.com. Alla with her dual passions for plants and photography lives and gardens in northeastern Ukraine in Harkiv where in the face of the reality of war the last three and a half years she has ramped up up a mail order seed selling business and written two ebooks about her special love, Clematis. Although was the subject of the documentary film Gardening in a War Zone, produced in December 2023 by Rob Finch of the famed Florette Flower Farm in Washington State, who introduced me to her then at that time to work on a New York Times Garden column together and I'm glad to have another chance to reconnect today. Hi, how are you? Hi Margaret, I'm so glad to meet you again. We are fine. Well, I'll put you at the visible here. I know. I know. I watch for your Instagram stories and so forth and see the news that way. And I'm sorry, but I'm glad you keep. You keep, you have a good spirit and I'm glad that the garden helps you keep that spirit going. So before we get started with our conversation, I wanted to say with the transcript of this

show over on my website away to Garden.com, I'll give away a set of your e-books. And of course, also information, all the links on how to find you on Instagram and on your website and so forth. So I know, just for some background for people who don't know you, I know there was a tradition of working with plants in your family. I think after World War II, your great grandfather started an orchard cold when he'd grow

of gardens. background for people who don't know you. I know there was a tradition of working with plants in your family. I think after World War II your great-grandfather started an orchard called Lyndon Grove Gardens at the plot of land where your climates now grow. And his intention, like yours, decades later, was to support the family, I believe. So tell us a little bit of the background. Yeah, this is really so. This garden was organized first by my great-grandfather, and the history of the family was really, really difficult because they lived in the neighboring region, Sumer region, and they had any state where they had lots of land and lots of crops which they were growing in their own land. But then the October Revolution started back in 1917 and Bolsheviks came to power and all there is state and all the lands they possessed were expropriated unfortunately. And later my great-grandfather, he was accused of hiding some food within his house. And at those times, such accusations, they were very, very widespread. And he was taken for prison. He was taken to prison just for hiding some food within his house. And actually later on, his imprisonment was kindly replaced by an exile to Sabiria. And also family, yeah. And also family followed my great-grandfather to Arhungelsk. They just hated Sabiria because the climate was very, very different. It's very severe, very cold and they didn't want to stay there. But then when the Second World War started, he was recruited and he managed to survive during that war. After the war, actually the authorities said that he was rehabilitated, but they never returned the estate and they never returned the land. But for the participation in the war, he He was granted a plot of land and he had a choice, So he could choose a plot near Kiev or a plot near Harcube and he chose Harcube because it was closer to our relatives to our initial estate and they wanted to come back to the land so much so that he chose Harcube and he came here. Actually he didn't have any money, just a plot of land, which was absolutely empty and he had to borrow money from this date in order to build this house. And he planted these apple tree orchard and his idea was first to support his family because the Soviet times were really really difficult times and the shortages were everywhere so you couldn't just walk to the shop and buy the food you want Even you had money so that was impossible and there were no good vegetables or good fruit in the Soviet Union. The food was quite poor and poor looking and his idea was to supply his family with fresh fruit and he planted lots of apple trees, mostly apple trees, but also had several cherries, several plums, several apricot trees, so his idea was to supply the family. But, so an agricultural background for sure in your family. Yeah, yeah. And then before the war began, and the latest war began in February 2022, you were on a personal path to start a nursery on that same plot of land. I believe Clemedis and species pennies and other treasures, but you had to shift gears Like your fellow citizens and you've kept shifting gears over and again But you had to shift gears to another sort of model of business to earn money for the family, right? You couldn't make the the nursery because people weren't gonna come to visit the nursery in a war zone, yeah? Yes, my idea initially was to create an serie, actually, my strategy differed from the strategy of the great grandfather because I like the Corritid Garden in more. And I started planting lots of decorative plants here and as the garden was very shady because we had lots of apple trees. My idea was plant under them lots of shade-loving plants, especially I like Japanese perennials but as the apple trees grew older and they were dried out and we had to cut them down. Lots of sun appeared in the garden and that was the time when I planted my first climatesis. Ah! Because they like sun mostly, most of climatis like sun, some climatis like Etrogenic climatis, they prefer shady conditions and they are still winding over the old apple trees grown by my great-grandfather. And my idea was to make nursery. That should be a rare plant nursery, because my plot is quite small. And the rare plants, rare perennials, are usually quite small plants, and I wanted to feed lots of them. And before the warm, we started creating flower beds for propagation with lighter soil and better conditions in order to provide better dividing of the plants to make it quicker. But then unfortunately my husband fell ill, that was before the war in autumn 2021. And then in February 2022, the war started and unfortunately I couldn't implement my plan into life.

Right, so you've transitioned to, besides you've, you've, you've, you've, you've,

You mail order seeds each year, I guess in the fall and beyond, you mail order seeds from your plants, send seeds all around the world to customers, I think.

And you also have written these two e-books, one called clemitis, and then one more recently called clemitis passports. So in order to earn money through these plants in a way and your love of these plants, you've shifted gears, as I said. And you learned about growing clemitis, I think, you know, a lot of it even online, even through groups, hobby groups and so forth. And it's really, but it's become a real passion. Do you know what zone you would be if you were in the US? Like, what, give us an idea of what it's like there. I think you have hot dry summers, but I don't know how cold you get in the winter. Well, I think I live in US days on five. Actually, yeah, this classification is very, very convenient. Yeah. And we use it widely. And usually I check the plants towards zone they belong under the US day classification. This is zone five. So our winter, yes, it can be severe up to minus 25 degrees Celsius. Well, I know that in the United States usually you use very high, it's difficult for me because our system is a little bit different. That's okay, I don't understand so I'll see. It can be quite cold, but plants belonging to zone 5 use days, they grow very well here. And the summer, well, it can be hot. For example, this year the summer isn't hot at all. The biggest temperature we had was around 30 degrees Celsius. So it's very, very warm but not actually too hot. And the plants feel just absolutely great. So how many climates varieties you have to confess and tell me the truth now? How many different ones do you have in your garden? Oh, well, for sure, 140 varieties. And even my goodness. Oh, yeah, because when I started creating my second ebook, Clematis Passports, my idea was to give the characteristic features of all the climates I grow in my garden, and also I provided the photos of all the climates I grow in my garden. And I counted them and if I had 140 climates in the garden. It's amazing. So you say the details, the pertinent details are like the hardening of stones, the pruning groups, when to prune them, the flowering times, whether they have fragrance, if they make a good cloud flower, all those types of details. And from those, how many months of bloom do you suppose you get from the earliest to the latest examples? Oh, just almost since the beginning of the growing season in April. Now,ana climates start to flower very, very early. And till the first frost, because I have many hieroglyphal varieties, the alate blue minil, so lots of climates, tangutica varieties, climates, sangarica, are the alate flower in species, and also also bell shaped climates. They fall very very long till late in autumn till first frosts like brinses red, grease bar their flowering till the first frosts. Well and you love the small flower not just for their charm and their beauty but also because unlike many of the the large flour varieties Those are many of those are hybrids and yours are often species types or open-pollinated types that can be multiplied from seed And it's it interested me when we first met and we did the New York Times story many of your small-floured varieties that you favor Are United States, South Eastern United States natives, you know, like the Glacafila, Texas census, Crisp of Yorna group, you know, these beautiful, little creatures. And I think they're commonly called, we call them leather flowers, that is it, right? The leather. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little, like little little pedal sort of almost. Yeah, really, yeah. This is really so. I have lots of small flowering species and hybrids as well. And I really prefer them. I have large flowers as well. And they are included into my book, Lematis, spasports, of course, but a small flower, they are better in several aspects. First of all, yeah, the flowers are small, but you have just a sea or even an ocean of those flowers. For example, climat is San Garrica. It's a stoner and well, when you see it in flower, it fascinates and it looks like a huge, huge, huge wall which can see completely with all those small flowers. So it's magnificent. So it impresses even more than big flowers. And also big flower species, mostly hybrids, they are very, very capricious. They need lots of care. And they suffer from wilt when their wine starts to fade. For unknown reason, it's some bacteria and I noticed that it doesn't matter what you do so you can use even some funky sites which is not actually good for your health and for nature but still it doesn't help well. So you will return to this problem every year with a large velvet varieties. I read several articles. For example an interview with Montfred Westphal from Germany. He has a very famous nursery and actually he told that our climate is not suitable for such hybrids and this is the reason why they suffer of all these diseases. And it's really difficult to grow them in the garden. While small flowered climates, they usually grow very, very well, absolutely well. They are more disease resistant. And they give you that wonderful, amazing flowering. Well, not big flowers, but very,. And I think at these advantages they just cover everything. You know, I loved I remember this is not only about climates, but I remember in an email once I sent you a picture of something that was moving in my garden, you know, you were just saying that you're growing many climatists from the South Eastern United States and native plants to United States. And I remember sending you a picture of something that's moving in my garden that I love in particular, this little corridorless, this corridorless solidar. You told me that that's a native spring wildflower in Ukraine, yes? So we're growing each other's plants. This is really cool. I love that. It's also very, very good to grow grow bell shaped climates from seeds. That's just great because yes, there is some interspices for liability. They also can make hybrids, natural hybrids, but they always are absolutely beautiful. So all the seedlings are very, very beautiful. I have lots of them and actually I have already selected some seedlings which look so beautifully and I treasure them a lot. So it's very, very interesting growing from seeds. And in your first book, your first book, Simply Teleclamatives, you explain the steps in two methods of growing from seed and also other methods of propagation and so forth. You also stress in that book how important it is to give clemedess support from an early age. The plants need the vine's need support from an early age and I loved when you talk about for instance one of the things you love to let them spill over when they're bigger is like pine shrubs and pines and so forth Other things that you have them growing upon you mentioned some of them are growing up into the trees the old trees Yeah, really so I just adore the natural view of the garden and my garden is a very very natural style and my Clements is especially and the clements is which adores shade, the conditions such as Etrogene, they are vining over old apple trees which remained after my great-grandfather. I treasure them a lot, I have several of them and with those clementists they look especially charming I would say and also I have a big foresee-to-beaut bush. It flowers, it is covered all over with yellow, bright yellow flowers. That was the forseat, right in the spring, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very, very big. It's higher than me. It's a huge bush. And I plant it. it's not that climaite is hereacally foliar, I'm stony, it's loose. Just near with this

bush and it starts growing vines. Actually it's not a winding climates but it has very very long stems up to three four meters non-winding but he starts growing over that for this bush and as a result in September it starts flowering and it seems as if for Zytsya bush flowers with blue flowers it's covered all over and everyone with it in my garden asks what bush, what kind of bush it is so they even can't believe that this is calamities which covered all over the huge for Zytsya bush and I just adore this combo It works every year and thanks to this idea, this bush looks very very decorative two times in spring and in autumn. Yeah, I love gold, speaking of gold like the first idea is Bloom's gold in spring but I love gold foliage and there's one, I don't know if there's others but that clemeness Alpine, I think it's stalic gold. I don't know how to pronounce it. Yeah, that's right. It has gold foliage and I think purple flowers and that's a beauty too. Are there other ones with gold foliage or all of the rest of green foliage? There are already more varieties with golden foliage. I saw them in the nursery of Stefan Marcienski. This is a very well-known Polish climatic selectioner, Breeder. But in my garden I have only stone be gold, but I have saw it several times. And lots of seedlings, they also inherit this gene and they are golden-alived. And I completely agree with you because foliage always adds more charm to the garden. Yeah. Flowers then temporarily, like for a month, for example, there are maybe several ways of flowering, but still not like from April till October. and the foliage it remains decorative for a much longer period of time so it's very important for the garden. I love the non-vining, climate-stable shrubby ones as well and particularly speaking of colorful foliage there's one that I have had for many many years. It's a climate-issue reactor, it's a dark, almost blackish perp-beliefed one called

lime-close. And I don't know it. Maybe it's recta-perpory. I don't know. But it's just, it's not too tall. I mean, it's tall. Maybe it gets to be maybe as tall as my shoulders or something. If it's very, very established, sometimes it's shorter. But I guess kind of have it with a support and it kind of cascades over the top of the support. It's just that when it comes out of the ground, it's just the most beautiful dark leaves. It then has a froth of white flowers later on and it's

just very very beautiful so. Oh yeah I completely agree with you I have a variety of the modus recto velvet knight possibly it's velvet knight. Yeah as those dark leaves it's absolutely beautiful with those white flowers absolutely beautiful and by the way it has very special seeds like a seed per flower and it looks very very nice.

Oh, I didn't know that. And speaking of seeds, so you sell seed for clemeness. And for what else? You have other rare special choice plants, species pennies, for instance, I believe you also sell seeds. Celci other other things that are in your catalog that you love and you also sell the seeds for. Yes, Mrs. Panis is my big, big love. I do them by the way because of the decorative foliage. Their flowers are absolutely beautiful. You can see them in my blog because I have a big collection and it was very very difficult to

collect this collection because they're rare. But the foliage remains decorative throughout the season and they are absolutely stunning on the flower beds. So yeah, I sell seeds of species penies but I do not have many of them and it's also a very very big demand for them. And I wish I had more. And also I sell seeds of fox peniculata. It's a very very popular flower here in Ukraine, so everyone likes it. Another Native American flower. Yeah, Yeah, possibly, yeah, possibly, even. Yes, yes, yes, yes, it is. It is.

It's absolutely beautiful. They are so stable. And they flower for a very long time and the modern varieties, they possess such amazing, he use very often, they're bicolored and they are very easily grown from seeds and they hybridize easily. And the seed I have in the gardens they are so nice I just don't grow in them from seeds. And the clementus I think can take some time from seed and you have as I said instructions in your first book, clementus, your firstbook about how to do that, the methods to do that.

Do the species pennies take us long? Or are those... I get self-stones from the species pennies in my garden. They sell themselves around, you know, in the garden. I get volunteers, yeah. Yeah, this is really so. I also have lots of self-sealings because though I collect seeds every It's impossible to collect every seed. Right. And well, no matter how you collect them, several seeds will fall down to the ground and will sprout. They take time. So if you saw them naturally, you will need two years because they sprout only on the second spring. Oh, they need two winters, they need two stage stratification. And, but, well, actually here in my garden, I saw them every year because part of seeds I saw in my garden in order to increase the number of plants I have to produce more seeds. And over a year I have plants that already start flowering and the plants which just sprouted and it's like a non-stop process and I'm not waiting for these particular seeds to sprout. So like I just saw them. But I think it's a peculiar, it's about every gardener, so you just keep planting something, keep sowing something every year, and then you enjoy the results. Right. On the one hand, it's two years, but on the other hand, like they fly very, very quickly, and you do not know it is that, but when you see the result, it's absolutely great. So we just have like a minute left and I just wondered, I wondered if a person has more than 140 of a beautiful plant called Clamadas. Can she have a favorite? Is there a favorite? It's a very, very, very difficult question for me because they are all my favorites. But one of my favorites is by the Veikates sangarica sundance and because it's a huge plant with a notion of flowers and it has the most beautiful seed heads of all the climates I have by garden just magnificent and they're great in various arrangements and it has several stages of decorativeness. And by the way, if you do not cut it down, it will be decorative for the whole winter due to the seat heads it has. So I will provide photos. It's absolutely stunning. And tell me the name again. Klemades Songarika Sundance. Sundance. Yeah. OK. Oh, good. Well, I'm always glad to connect with you. And I think of you all the time. And as I said, I'll give all of the links with the transcript of this show over on away to Garden.com, my website, for how people can find you on Instagram and on your website and find your seeds and find your two ebooks and so forth. And we'll have a giveaway of of the ebooks with the transcript of the show too. And I'll be thinking about you. So thank you for being in touch again. Thanks for making time today. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to speak to you. And I hope I'll speak to all of you again soon. Now don't miss an episode. You can subscribe free to the podcast version of the show on Apple

podcasts or Spotify and you can find me anytime at away to garden.com and on Facebook and on Instagram as at away to garden and happy gardening meantime. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by color blends wholesale flower bulbs. A third-generation bulb company offering top-size flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, colorblens.com. And by High Moeng Seeds, Wolcott Vermont Professional Quality Vegetable Flower and Erbil Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified on the web, highmoingseeds.com and by Whiteflower

Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants on the web,

WhiteflowerFarm.com.

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