Activity in the garden is never-ending. As the seasons shift, the garden flexes, grows and changes right before our eyes. Though we are a mighty 10.5 acres, there is much to see.

To keep this garden fresh for members and visitors, there is an evergrowing and unabating list of projects and areas to freshen up. A brief few highlights include the following projects.

Our spectacular Perennial Border continues to delight with multiple seasons of interest stemming from the constant evolution of colors and textures throughout the growing season. Tim Alderton, research technician, has been hard at work rearranging, planting, editing, pruning and keeping this backbone of the garden finely tuned.

Another area that is freshly green after a long, drawn-out season of brown is the newly sodded Gathering Lawn. Previously the temporary home for Mt. Raulston, you will now find freshly laid Bermudagrass rooting and spreading as I type this newsletter article. It will soon be ready for a spring filled with cloud gazing, picnics and maybe even a wedding or two.

Finally, Tim has also been busy at the entrance to the Nook.

Forty-seven pallets of fresh sod ready to be installed on the Gathering Lawn

Where is the Nook you ask? It’s the garden area on either side of the new path between the Perennial Border and the Finley-Nottingham Rose Garden. After much contemplation, the discovery of some extra goodies in the nursery, as well as a large Agave that needed to be relocated, the recipe was set. The goal was to make the entrance to the path more inviting and increase the plant palate that had become overgrown and one note. It is still young and developing, but it is a good welcome to this part of the garden and a nice makeover.

Keep your eyes peeled for future projects. We have eager volunteers and lots of creativity to share.

There is a special tree growing at the JC Raulston Arboretum, a Chinese relative of the United States native sassafras called Sassafras tzumu. Our one-and-only specimen is growing in a prominent spot in the Sunken Garden between the Ruby C. McSwain Education Center and the parking lot. Our specimen is still fairly young at just 20 years old and 25 feet tall, about one third its eventual height.

The native range of Chinese sassafras covers the entire Yangtze river basin of southeast China. In its native China, Sassafras tzumu is popular as a timber tree and a landscape tree. In addition, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine use the young leaves, pith and root bark as a cure-all in a manner similar to how Native Americans used Sassafras albidum. Curiously, as popular as it is in China, S. tzumu is rarely grown in the rest of the world.

Sassafras tzumu is a counterpart to the eastern U.S. native Sassafras albidum. As a garden plant, S. tzumu is different from S. albidum in several aspects. Our native species produces copious root suckers and without management spreads into an unruly thicket, whereas S. tzumu is a well-behaved, single-trunked tree. Both species have tiered branching although S. tzumu tends to grow a bit taller. Both species also have mitten-shaped leaves and nice fall foliage, but our native S. albidum with its yellows, oranges and reds is generally considered to be more colorful than the clear orange and yellow fall foliage of S. tzumu.

Both species produce clusters of fragrant yellow flowers in the spring, but S. tzumu blooms about a month earlier and is far more showy in bloom. Our native S. albidum is dioecious, requiring two plants to make seed while S. tzumu is at least partially hermaphroditic and can set seed by itself.

Sassafras tzumu showing its form and fall color as a younger tree in the Arboretum, 2007

The two species do not cross pollinate because they flower at different times, so hybrids are not known but represent an interesting opportunity for plant breeders. On both species, the approximately one centimeter fruit is an attractive dark blue color that is popular with birds. S. albidum holds the fruit on colorful red cupules while on S. tzumu the cupules are not showy. Chinese sassafras is best propagated by seed. We have had little luck with cuttings, whereas S. albidum is easily rooted from root suckers. One downside to S. tzumu is the tendency for late winter freezes to nip the flowers and leaves, not unlike the woes we face with deciduous Magnolia.

Clusters of fragrant yellow flowers covered Sassafras tzumu last winter in late February

The dark blue fruit of Sassafras tzumu

Introduced from Asia, CMBS was first reported in Texas in 2004. Since then, it has rapidly spread as far as Virginia, probably through infected plant material in the nursery trade. CMBS is a pinkish scale that produces a white waxy protective covering that grows and thickens as the scale ages. Males have wings and will fly to find and reproduce with females. Once the females produce eggs, they die leaving the eggs protected under their bodies and thick waxy coating. The females produce hundreds of eggs which hatch in the spring. Depending on the temperature, this can take place early April to mid May. The hatched stage of CMBS is called a crawler. They are pink and very small. The newly hatched crawlers will move out to new twigs on the crepe myrtle and find a spot to attach and begin feeding on the phloem layer beneath the bark. Heavily infested plants will be coated with CMBS with thick layers of the waxy coating visible.

The phloem is high in sugar, and the waste produced from the feeding can attract sooty mold. This black sooty mold will also cover the stems, twigs and often the trunk of the tree as well as any surface underneath. This is very unsightly, attracts yellow jackets and can seriously reduce the vigor of the plant.

The best way to avoid CMBS begins with good cultural practices. Proper planting, good site selection, mulching, avoiding drought stress and resisting over-pruning or "crepe murder" will help keep your plants stress-free. Additionally, selecting other species to increase diversity in the garden will help reduce the number of potential hosts.

Adult crape myrtle bark scale feeding on a crepe myrtle twig

If you do find CMBS on your plants, there are some control options to consider. A forceful spray of water will disrupt the insect. Fair warning, this has minimal effect and can also remove the desirable flaky bark. Horticultural oil sprays are a good mid-level defense. Treating the insect at the crawler stage is the most effective. Finally, a registered chemical treatment timed in early spring to avoid pollinators is very effective in eliminating this pest. There is much information about control measures for CMBS through the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, and consulting with a local arborist is always a good thing.

We are growing a community of learners and want everyone to be part of it! Through programs like "Intro to Gardening in the South," we are reaching out to new gardeners, new homeowners and newly relocated gardeners in our area giving them practical advice about how to create the home landscapes of their dreams. Our children’s program is transforming the gardens into a classroom for area school children and giving them the opportunity to experience the outdoors in a fun, meaningful way. But it’s more than just one morning education program or one school tour. It’s about a deeper, lasting connection with those we interact with. This past summer, our 2019 summer education intern, Alexis Tennant, returned as our summer camp teacher! Her experience as a summer intern in college permeated into her classroom when she became an elementary school teacher for Wake County Public Schools. She created a garden for her school students to tend, taught them about worm By Elizabeth Overcash Education and Communications Manager 7 composting and brought them on a field trip to the Arboretum.

2023 summer camp staff: Leah Poole, Alexis Tennant and Emily Workman

When there was a need with the summer camp program, she jumped at the chance to spend her summer with us again but this time as the lead teacher. She continues to be an important part of our community helping us reach more children and families, both here in the gardens as part of our summer camp program and in her classroom during the school year.

That’s the spirit of education that we hope to continue in the coming months and years. We want to share our excitement with you and help you learn as much as you can so you're hooked on plants just like us!

Joy Burns, school program coordinator, helps a student hold a pipevine swallowtail caterpillar as they are learning about butterflies

We are extraordinarily proud of the educational programming we produce here at the JC Raulston Arboretum. Our education team has had an exceptionally productive year connecting people to plants through education, so here are only the highlights that we’re able to fit on this page.

Our Children’s Program is perhaps the most exciting of our team’s successes. We managed to have a children’s program on our calendar every week this year from May until "Moonlight in the Garden," providing a platform for families to inspire a love of nature in their children no matter when they’re able to visit. We had eight phenomenal weeks of summer camps, all of which inspired creativity and curiosity in the little campers by providing them an opportunity to learn about the world in which they live by actually interacting with it (my niece, Lucy, thoroughly enjoyed our "Garden Critters" camp; her parents are still adjusting to the fearlessness with which she now picks up and plays with worms!). And our "Garden Storytimes" have been a huge hit, not just with the kids enjoying story and craft time in a beautiful garden setting but also with the parents discovering what a wonderful place for community interaction the JCRA can be. We ended up having to add three instances of "Winter Storytime" for early 2024 just to accommodate all the good vibes.

Our adult programming has been just as prolific, exciting and meaningful. NC State student and JCRA Education Summer Intern Allison Nidifer taught two sold-out sections of a class this summer on "Growing and Enjoying Cut Flowers," and everybody who took it could only rave about how much they learned. Our free biannual morning symposium for new gardeners "Intro to Gardening in the South" welcomed roughly 300 fledgling gardeners to the world of horticulture with lectures on soil, winter gardening, and planting and pruning. The recordings of all our free programs are publicly available on our YouTube channel, so everyone has the tools they need to plan and plant for a better world.

We also participated in NC State University’s "Wellness Day" offering forest therapy mini-sessions, a guided garden walking meditation and other activities (all free) that encouraged mental wellness through interaction with our gardens. It never hurts to remind everyone what a wonderful mental health resource the JC Raulston Arboretum is, always has been and always will be.

Finally, in September we had a truly marvelous "Friends of the Arboretum Lecture" where we invited author and former JCRA Board Member, Diane Flynt, to discuss her new book Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South. Her lecture was fascinating and the supporting discussion featuring David Vernon of Century Farms Orchards and Ann Marie Thornton of James Creek Cider House was as much fun as the artisan cider and heirloom apple tasting that followed. We recorded the event for those who missed out; just make sure you have a few apples handy while you watch it – you’re going to need them!

Campers from “Garden Critters” camp looking for critters in the garden

Navigating the Plant Collection

To get started, simply visit our website at https://jcra.ncsu.edu/horticulture/our-plants/index.php.

On the "Our Plants" page, you'll find a user-friendly interface that allows you to browse and search through our extensive plant collection.

You can search for plants by common name, scientific name, plant type or even by specific garden areas within the Arboretum.

The bed map simplifies finding plant locations in the Arboretum’s collection

Many folks don’t realize just how much time and effort the JC Raulston Arboretum staff spends generating and managing records. Every single JCRA staff member is involved in this. Why is this necessary?

As Arboretum Director Mark Weathington likes to say, "A collection of plants without records can be a beautiful garden, but only by keeping accurate records can it become a botanic garden." He also is known to say, "A plant is not ‘planted’ in the garden until it is watered and recorded in the database."

I like to think of our records as an extension of our mission – the JC Raulston Arboretum exists to promote plants that diversify the American landscape. To do that, we collect, evaluate and select great garden plants to distribute to the public. In order to achieve those goals, we must have a good handle on where and how plants are acquired, where and how we grow them, how to propagate them, how they perform over time and to whom we gave them. All of these things require recording data in our plant database.

Whenever I record something about our living collection in the database, I think to myself, "In a hundred years, when some researcher is poring over our records trying to track down some source or performance datum, I want them to be able to have a clear understanding of how and why we did what we did." That’s a good approach for any arboretum to take.

The horticulture staff, Mark, Greg, Tim, Sophia, Bernadette and myself, along with our students and volunteers track the living collection to achieve our mission. For our wild collected plants, we record who made the collection, what type of material was collected (seed, cutting or scion) and where they were collected (latitude, longitude, altitude, environment and types of nearby plants). Once onsite, we research our plants to make sure that they are properly named, labeled and mapped.

We track how we propagate each plant and the growth history for woody plants. And when we deaccession a plant (a fancy word meaning remove from the living collection), we record why we decided to do so. Staff and volunteers also take photos of our living collection, so we can record plants visually too.

So the next time you see a JC Raulston Arboretum staff person hunched over a clipboard or a computer, remember, they are "gardening."

Volunteers Maryann Debski and John Atkinson checking plant labels and bedding maps.

One of the many bedding maps that show all the plants recorded in that section of the Arboretum

Known affectionately as "Miss Ruby," Ruby C. McSwain was known for her love of flowers and gardening and for being a generous philanthropist. Her support during the "Raise the Roof" campaign to build the education center that now bears her name has enabled the JCRA to provide some of the most impactful horticultural programming anywhere in the country. Her gift, along with the support of many other donors during the campaign completed over two decades ago, forever changed the trajectory and capacity of the JCRA.

Sadly, we no longer have Miss Ruby here to brighten the day as she did when she attended events and visited the Arboretum. Her passing in 2013 was a profound loss for the JCRA family as well as the many other organizations and individuals she supported through her friendship, advocacy and philanthropy.

Despite the loss of a dear Arboretum friend, her spirit lives on through the Ruby and Ernest McSwain Worthy Lands Trust. The trustees continue Miss Ruby‘s legacy of philanthropy for horticulture and education and have recently established an endowment in her honor that will play a pivotal role in advancing the daily operations for the Arboretum. Most importantly, this endowment ensures the Ruby C. McSwain Education Center will continue to provide a space for learning and engagement that can adapt and change as opportunities allow and will remain a cornerstone of our activities.

Miss Ruby always brought her smiling face to JCRA events.

The Ruby and Ernest McSwain Worthy Lands Trust JC Raulston Arboretum Endowment not only provides meaningful financial support for the JCRA, it is also a heartfelt tribute to a truly remarkable couple. Miss Ruby's love for horticulture and her unwavering commitment to community enrichment continue to shape the very fabric of the JCRA.

We are profoundly grateful to the Trust which continues to generously fund improvement projects over and above the endowment, ensuring that the Arboretum remains a beautiful and interactive space for our community. Thanks to the Trust's steadfast support, Miss Ruby‘s vision remains an enduring reality, and her legacy lives on through the vital work we do at the JC Raulston Arboretum.