The Propagator
Stopping to smell the flowers
Arlene Marturano

Arlene Marturano is a master gardener, writer, and educator. As an advocate of gardening as a tool for learning, she helped develop the Carolina Children's Garden at the Sandhill Research and Education Center. She is an education consultant with T.E.A.C.H. marturano@yahoo.com

She slips into green garden clogs early in the morning because she would rather be in the yard than the house. Known as the Flower Lady by neighbors in the Berkeley Forest subdivision in southeast Columbia, Rosa Mullen is also known for making plants multiply.

Mullen's tidy beds and abundance of healthy plants have been a work in progress for 30 years. By adding tons of mushroom compost, cow manure, and compost Mullen has built a rich and crumbly soil in which seeds, bedding plants, shrubs, and trees thrive.

Mullen's plants reproduce so readily she swaps, gives away, and sells surplus. Her collection of groundcovers is extensive and even the more rambunctious spreaders such as ajuga, creeping sedum, periwinkle, liriope, thrift, lamb's ears, English ivy, and hosta are controlled by her adept clipping, pruning, and dividing.

Using groundcovers in the landscape has several advantages. As living mulch they retain soil moisture, prevent soil erosion, and smother weeds. A well chosen ground cover can visually unite a bed.

Mullen has designed curved beds appropriate to the contour lines of her property. The beds include shrubs, annuals, and perennials with vertical and horizontal appeal year- round. Tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, grapes, and herbs are unobtrusively set in large tubs among the beds. An old fig tree bordering the property is covered in fruit, and the soil beneath its branches contains composts from kitchen scraps.

As a propagator, Mullen saves seed from annuals and perennials in paper envelopes. Plants that reseed and spread energetically are the red hot poker, tansy, coreopsis, zebrina, vinca, zinnia, and kale. The petite zebrina, or French hollyhock, stretches its central stem upward two to three feet throughout Mullen's garden.

Mullen uses layering to reproduce many of her shrubs by placing the lower branches under the soil beneath the plant and secures them with a brick. After roots have formed, she cuts the branches from the mother plant and transfers the new plants to their own pots.

When camellias, hollies, and crepe myrtle sprout from seed, she transplants seedlings into pots filled with Miracle- Gro potting soil and nurtures them until the next plant sale. Mullen credits the great variety of birds visiting her yard with assisting in propagation by seed.

Spring and summer bulb plants are in profusion, too. Mullen divides iris, cannas, caladium, crinum, and daylilies and places the bulblets in pots for development and eventual sale.

Rosa Mullen, the Flower Lady, points out one of the many features of her growing garden.

Mullen obtains her original plants from plant exchanges, garage sales, local gardeners, Lowe's and Riverbanks Zoo plant sales. She recalls getting a sweet grape vine and herbs at a garage sale. The owner didn't realize the dead- looking plants were dormant and was selling the pots.

Mullen is constantly picking off dead leaves, clipping and deadheading flowers when she hoses the garden. Water is also essential to keep the plants looking fresh and may be one reason neighbors declare her yard the yard of the month all the time.