Hodge Podge

Hilltop Arboretum’s volunteers lunch, laugh—and sometimes even work—to keep Emory Smith’s native plant nursery alive

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One Wednesday in July, two months before the LSU Hilltop Arboretum’s thirty-second annual PlantFest, there was the suggestion of urgency in Janet Forbes’ voice when she said, “We’re beefing up now. A lot of these plants are donated, and we’re starting to order from dealers. If we wait too long, the dealers are out of plants.” Forbes, the arboretum’s first director and now a volunteer, is in charge of the nursery, other volunteers, and plant sales.

The Hilltop complex, seated on a bluff above Highland Road six miles south of LSU (between Bluebonnet Boulevard and Siegen Lane), has won awards for its architecture. Emory Smith, the retired LSU post office worker who spent his middle years and old age turning his twenty-acre farm, bought in 1929, into a native plants nursery, wouldn’t recognize the old place were it not for the busy corner near the Smith family’s old cottage.

Smith, his wife Annette, and their daughters lived in a small house overlooking one of four ravines that shaped Smith’s idea of adapting natives from the Tunica Hills north of St. Francisville to Hilltop. Hilltop, with native plants from around Louisiana and Mississippi, mimics the ravines and ridges of the Tunica Hills.

Annette Smith died in 1980. The next year, Emory Smith and his daughters, Esther Smith Webb and Gwendolyn Smith Patterson, donated a fourteen-acre portion of the farm to LSU. Hilltop is managed by the university’s Robert S. Reich School of Landscape Architecture and the Friends of Hilltop Arboretum board. Emory died at Hilltop in 1988. He was 96.

Just outside the cottage where the Smiths spent their last years, the Hodge Podge (“Podge” for short) works year round to supply the plants sold at LSU’s Hilltop Arboretum. The group is made up of about twenty women and men who regularly volunteer Wednesdays to work and to keep the Smiths’ story alive. The Hodge Podge pots plants on benches beneath a shade canopy a trowel’s toss from the LSU Hilltop Arboretum’s $3 million office, gift shop, auditorium, and pavilion.

“We couldn’t do what we do without the volunteers,” said Hilltop director Peggy Coates. “PlantFest is the biggest event, but every event is run by volunteers. Janet is so astute at matching a volunteer’s skill with what needs to be done in the nursery. She creates a relaxed work atmosphere. They bring lunches they share. It’s like family.”

Plant leaves and damp fronds of the volunteers’ hair wave in the forced air of a big fan. Sporting the latest in waterproof garden footwear, members of the Podge move through a sultry sea of silky, deep-red butterfly weed, Bolivian Sunset Gloxinia, Big Momma Turk’s Cap, EmeraldChoco Zebra, Siam Tulip Ginger, Harlequin Glorybower, Rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan), Summer Phlox, Dutchman’s Pipe, Beach Rosemary, Firespike, Maiden Grass, Lantana, Obedient Plant, and Coffee Cup Elephant Ear.

When the volunteers break for lunch, it’s to the spacious air-conditioned arboretum office. At the table, the plants-people share food they’ve brought from home or the deli, talk about the morning’s work, and catch up on each other’s lives. Together, volunteers have weathered deaths in the family, divorce, illness, and the vicissitudes of aging.

“We give free medical advice,” said 90-year-old Helen Levy, a retired microbiologist at LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

“We all want to grow up to be Helen,” said Carolyn Englert.

Ages of the volunteers range from 45 to 90, which means the Podge needs some young people who like to play in the dirt.

“We need younger volunteers,” Forbes said. “That’s going to be necessary pretty soon.”

“We don’t have dues or hazing,” Levy said.

The volunteers’ work amounts to $30,000 in net proceeds from PlantFest and three other plant sales during the year. LSU contributes seventy-five percent of Coates’ $50,000 salary, but most of the arboretum’s $200,000 budget and building fund is self-generated from sales and donations.

The volunteers take plants, books, and tools to sell at plant shows around town. In the run up to the October plant sale, there are “the iris people, the fern people, natives, orchids, yard art, and furniture people” to talk to, said Pat Hollowell who, with volunteer Margaret Humble, deals with “the vendor people.”

“It’s a very democratic organization,” said Tom Humble, Margaret’s husband. Tom, who oversees the set-up for PlantFest, was repairing a red, rusted child’s wagon on the tailgate of a truck. The wagons are used by plant shoppers, and Hilltop gladly accepts donated red wagons.

Tom Humble has a list of names of men who’ll turn out as needed. “I’m not interested in getting into their day-to-day stuff,” he said, sweat rolling down the face of the retired chemical engineer.

In Hilltop: My Story, a little classic that ranks with A Sand County Almanac, Emory Smith describes setting out plants for sale on the honor system when he and Annette were away, napping, or playing Scrabble. Then, and now, Hilltop is open to the public at no charge seven days a week, sunup to sunset.

The Podge no longer sells plants on the honor system, however, forced to abandon the cash-and-carry policy because some visitors neglected to pay before carrying. Other buyers left money for their selections in a mailbox near the nursery but didn’t include tax.

Smith opened his burgeoning native plant nursery and outdoor laboratory to teachers and their students, his neighbors, and their children who explored Smith’s natural playground. The Hodge Podge helps maintain that link with the public.

Details. Details. Details.

PlantFest!


October 3, 9 am–4 pm and 
October 4, noon–4 pm


11855 Highland Road


Baton Rouge, La. 


lsu.edu/hilltop

If you miss PlantFest, plants can be purchased from the nursery Tuesday through Friday from 9 am–4:30 pm. Pay at the office.

To volunteer or donate a red wagon, call (225) 767-6916 or email hilltop@tigers.lsu.edu.

Amazing Arboretum

This summer, the LSU Hilltop Arboretum learned of its selection to BestCollegesOnline.org’s “50 Most Amazing University Botanical Gardens and Arboretums in the United States.”

“As one of the 50 locations selected for our list, LSU Hilltop Arboretum caught our attention for providing enriching educational opportunities for the community in addition to cultivating a wide variety of native trees, shrubs and wildflowers,” editor Joy Warner wrote in a letter to LSU.

BestCollegesOnline cites Hilltop’s relationship with students in the LSU College of Agriculture and the Robert S. Reich School of Landscape Architecture, Southern University, the arboretum’s summer camp for children, Junior Master Gardener Program, classes for adults, and an annual symposium on gardens and design.

The “Amazing 50” arboretums were selected based on points given for, among other things, awards, number and variety of plant species, conservation and education, endangered plants, horticultural library, buildings designed with energy conservation in mind, relationship with degree-granting programs, and “wow” factor. LSU received a points rating of 4. There was no “wow” factor cited.

Hilltop’s goal of getting homeowners and gardeners to consider native plants may not qualify as wow-worthy, but cardiologist Terry Rehn, president of Friends of Hilltop, the arboretum’s board, said it’s the most important thing Hilltop does. Natives promote a healthy ecosystem, Rehn said. Native plants support birds, butterflies, and other wildlife. If a homeowner doesn’t specify natives, a landscaper may fill a yard and garden with any kind of nursery plants and trees, he said.

Crape myrtles, a popular tree in the Baton Rouge landscape, come to mind. Rehn has crape myrtles in his yard. “It’s a catch-22,” he said. Because they’re relatively bug free, crape myrtles aren’t much support for birds.

“People like crape myrtles because they’re free of insects,” Rehn said. “Oaks in general support the caterpillars of more than five hundred species of butterflies. Crapes support three species of butterflies.”

Read more at bestcollegesonline.org.