A twosome of weeks ago , I was part of a group of garden bloggers invited to Little Rock , Arkansas , for P. Allen Smith ’s 4th annual Garden2Blog consequence , an all - expenses - pay meetup to get word about new drift in the industry . ( Check out the highlights from this issue — all in the cast of amusic video ! )
Do you knowP. Allen Smith ? I actually watch of him a class ago when I start spell for KCET’sLivingblog .
Allen ( just Allen , ’cause we ’re friends now ) is a storied garden fashion designer , bestselling author , and TV and radio personality . His show , P. Allen Smith ’s Garden Home , is syndicated on KCET , our Southern California PBS affiliate . Every calendar week he talk gardens , base design , and how - to task , and offers glance into the grand the three estates he owns on the south bank of the Arkansas River — an landed estate that is basically his testing ground for those very garden , home figure , and how - to projects on his show .
The landed estate is calledMoss Mountain Farmand embrace the P. Allen Smith Garden Home , patio gardens , rose garden , apple orchard , stone fruit grove , a one - acre veg plot , a field full of hundreds of Narcissus pseudonarcissus , and the aptly named Poultryville , where Allen mould to economise heritage breed .
I knew all this heading intoGarden2Blogbecause of his show , but to see this place in all its aura is something else .
Now , I could easily make this Charles William Post all about the Garden Home , of which I took too many image and felt like I was a tourer conk out through an open house . It ’s hard to put the camera down when there were so many things I need to tally to my “ future house ” filing console …
Like these separate fridge and Deepfreeze units . Need !
And my dream quiescency porch . This one ’s in full riddle in to guard against those monster mosquito in the Dixie .
And this gorgeous Cu bathtub that sits on theotherside of the sleeping porch … for when you require to take a soak and slide right into layer .
And this view of the Arkansas River from your bed .
An out-of-door kitchen , complete with a red brick oven .
An art studio right in the heart of the garden , with said purview of river . ( Would you ever sap of all that inspiration border you ? ? )
And this beautiful , lofty erstwhile oak tree , which I considered the anchor of the whole dimension .
But despite wanting to drop the respite of the good afternoon under that tree , sipping some kind of southerly Bourbon dynasty cocktail , my preferred part of the farm was the farm itself — all the unlike “ garden rooms , ” as Allen calls them , that palpate like you ’re research an out-of-door home .
Behind the Garden Home are the terrace gardens , filled with beautiful flowers and bush of all kinds ( outpouring was a good time to visit ! ) . Can you depict yourself getting wed here ? patently , you could ! We saw two weddings getting set up on the prop for that weekend .
Here you’re able to see the upper quiescency porch . The bottom porch is a dining and lounging sphere .
While I can apprise the beauty of a flower garden , I get really , reallyexcited when it occur to a veggie garden . And Allen ’s one - acre plot of ground of pabulum did not disappoint . The garden is filled to the brim with brambles , herbs , and vegetables in raised beds , with wad of plant left to bloom for the pollinators .
Got an quondam , rusty wheelbarrow that no longer works ? twist it into a planter .
So what does Allen do with all these vegetables ? He eats them , of track . And he sells them to restaurants in Little Rock . And as you might have seen on his show , the garden serves as a testing ground for various constitutive gardening method acting and a breeding ground for young variety show of plants .
From the veggie garden , we made our agency to Poultryville , whose architecture included these rather rudimentary chicken tractors …
Until you get to the big mamba jamba , aka the Poultry Palace . It was so vainglorious , I could n’t even get the whole matter in figure . And it serves as Allen ’s chicken coop , though to call it simply a coop is highly underrating it .
Allen found theHeritage Poultry Conservancy , whose mission is to bear on and support threatened heritage breed and strains of domesticated poultry .
For the most part , commercial-grade broiler and layer farm ( which bring on the chickens you eat and the eggs you bribe ) resurrect only a select handful of strain . These breeds have been crossed and created to be extremely effective as debauched agriculturalist or productive layers , and rarely is an industrially call forth chicken both .
That leaves the many , many other breeds of Gallus gallus — like mybeloved ladies — to decline in phone number as their genetic science become drop off in favor of what ’s “ bigger and skillful . ” conceive of it as the poulet equivalent to the heirloom veg versus intercrossed veg scenario : If it were n’t for generations of James Leonard Farmer saving seeds and preserve their favorite variety of ribbed , speckled and marred tomatoes , all we ’d ever have sex are those perfectly undifferentiated , red and round Lycopersicon esculentum we see in the computer storage . No character . Less flavor . Same with chickens — there ’s a noticeable difference in how a pastured heritage poulet cooks and tastes . And even if you do n’t eat them , inheritance breeds produce some of the most beautiful eggs in all shades of brown , pink , green , and blue .
I see so many gorgeous , showy roosters at the Poultry Palace , I almost consider dumbfound one for my backyard . Almost .
These little fellas have n’t moved into the Poultry Palace yet — but they ’ll get there soon !
Allen also raises and preserves heritage duck and bozo .
Can you believe these are ducklings ? They grow so fast ! And are endearingly fumbling , constantly actuate over their own feet .
After a full afternoon of tour the grounds , it was back to the Garden Home for felicitous hour under the tree .
This is Arkansas farm life ? I ’ll take it .
