The Bald Cypress Tunnel of Love: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 1)
S02:E11

The Bald Cypress Tunnel of Love: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 1)

Nacogdoches, Texas
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Episode description

The Bald Cypress Tunnel of Love: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 1)

Episode Description

Dave Creech was registering for his second semester of agronomy at Texas A&M when J.B. Storey, a six-foot-four pecan professor, grabbed him in the old basketball coliseum, walked him past every registration table, and introduced him as the next great horticulturist. Dave switched majors. Forty-seven years at Stephen F. Austin State University later, he directs SFA Gardens, 138 acres of mostly bottom land that marks its 40th anniversary this year. In this first of two parts, Ping sits down with a horticulturist she first met as a PhD student at Texas A&M.

His favorite plant is bald cypress, a tree that can last 3,000 years. SFA holds 136 cultivars and selections of it along Lanana Creek. Dave follows one of them, ‘LaNana’, from an unexpected email out of Nanjing Botanical Garden, through USDA quarantine at Beltsville, to 2,000 trees headed for Memorial Park in Houston. Then comes ‘Cascade Falls’, a weeper Dave calls gravitationally challenged. A nursery that couldn’t sell it shipped him several tractor trailers of 12-foot trees, and he trained them over steel pipe into a tunnel where people now propose.

Ping and Dave also compare how China and the United States plant trees, from the tree-lined medians of Chinese highways to weeping willows on every lakeshore, and ask why sweet olive stays a minor crop here when Dave once counted 169 varieties at a single conference. Part 1 ends on February 16, 2021, when SFA went to minus four degrees. Dave spent four days trapped at home, and the Asian evergreen magnolias he had praised on garden tours were later finished off by a nine-degree December night. The plants that made it gave him a new rule for any landscape: 80% natives. Part 2 picks up with Ping’s questions on azaleas, camellias, and Japanese maples.

Listen Time: 53:10 Follow Along with the Transcript

In This Episode

Guest

Dr. Dave Creech, Professor Emeritus and Director, SFA Gardens, Stephen F. Austin State University. He taught horticulture in SFA’s Department of Agriculture from 1978 to 2007, retired, and was hired back to direct SFA Gardens. He spent his childhood in India, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and Burma (now Myanmar), where his father, an agronomist and former vo-ag teacher, took him along to field plots in Nagpur. He came back to the United States at about 16, moved from agronomy to horticulture at Texas A&M, earned a master’s at Colorado State University on a National Science Foundation fellowship, and finished a PhD in fruit physiology in 1978. His international work has taken him to Guatemala, Mexico, Pakistan, Chile, New Zealand, and, starting in 1994, 27 times to China. Bald cypress is his favorite plant.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture

Main Topics

  • Welcome (0:00)
  • Meet Dave Creech: From Nagpur to SFA Gardens (0:51). A childhood in Asia, a professor who changed his major, and a nine-month contract that suited a peach grower
    • Raised in Asia (2:27)
    • The professor who made him a horticulturist (3:50)
    • Leaving the Mecca on the Brazos (5:28)
    • The case for ornamentals (8:55)
  • Bald Cypress: A Tree That Can Last 3,000 Years (12:10). A collection of 136 cultivars and selections on Lanana Creek, and a clone born in China
    • From Nanjing to ‘LaNana’ (14:18)
    • Trees down the median (17:50)
    • A village that moved (19:45)
  • Cascade Falls and the Tunnel of Love (23:19). How an unsellable weeping bald cypress became SFA’s best-known feature
    • Trees for highways and byways (27:40)
  • Summer Heat, Dinosaurs, and Knees (28:31). Why bald cypress waits for summer, and what the knees might be for
    • Montezuma cypress is hardier than expected (30:43)
    • What are the knees for? (31:38)
  • Cuttings, Clones, and Weeping Plants (35:11). Seedlings versus clones, topophysis, and plants that carry a culture
    • Why weeping plants are rare here (37:14)
    • Plants that remind you of home (40:06)
    • Family trees worth a fortune (41:11)
  • Building SFA Gardens (42:02). From a quarter-acre patch and a privet-choked floodplain to one of the gardens of the South
    • Two years of care (44:25)
    • How patents changed plant sharing (45:43)
  • The 2021 Freeze and the 80/20 Rule (46:52). What minus four degrees and a later nine-degree night taught SFA
    • Minus four degrees in February 2021 (48:06)
    • Plant 80 percent natives (51:12)
  • Closing (52:12)

Key Highlights

  • A job built around peaches (5:56). Dave owned a 35-acre peach orchard, started when land sold for $300 an acre. A nine-month teaching contract at SFA left his summers free, so he left the “Mecca on the Brazos” for a small university near the Louisiana border.
  • Ornamentals outgrow poultry (11:24). In a department of agriculture where poultry and cattle rule, Dave points out that ornamental horticulture, counting retail nurseries, wholesale nurseries, and landscape, is worth four or five billion dollars at the gate. Ping adds that Georgia’s ornamental industry ranks among its top four or five commodity groups, and that raising its profile is one reason she started this podcast.
  • A clone from China (16:05). Of 15 bald cypress clones that came through USDA quarantine at Beltsville, one resisted the foliage disease Cercosporidium and stayed nearly evergreen. It is half bald cypress, half Montezuma cypress. Dave’s Chinese colleagues let him name it ‘LaNana’, and 2,000 are going into Memorial Park in Houston, planted “like huge soldiers in a row.”
  • Why a clone fits a highway (17:13). Bald cypress seedlings all grow at different rates and look different as they age. A clone comes “out of a cookie cutter,” so the trees in a row stay even, which is what highway plantings and windbreaks need.
  • Trees in the median (18:04). Chinese visitors riding from the Houston airport to Nacogdoches on Highway 59 could not understand the mowed median. On China’s big G highways, trees line the sides and fill the middle.
  • Twenty generations in one village (21:07). Professor Yin Yunlong took Dave to the village his family had lived in for 20 generations, since cleared for agroforestry and fish farms. The whole village had moved into seven or eight high-rise buildings around a plaza, and Yin’s father, asked whether he was angry about it, said, “Look at where I’m living.”
  • The tunnel of love (26:13). ‘Cascade Falls’ grows straight down, and left alone it will crawl the ground like a snake. Dave tied it to steel pipe bows for two or three years until the growth turned to wood. The tunnel now runs about 100-some feet under a high-voltage line, where the rule is nothing over 15 feet, and it has become a place for proposals and weddings.
  • A bald cypress waits for summer (29:02). Bald cypress is slow in March, April, and May. Once the summer heat arrives, a well-watered tree can put on four to six feet in a year.
  • Leaning into a hurricane (33:12). In wind-machine work done at the University of Florida, two 427 Chevrolet engines drove a fan that put a 180-mile-an-hour wind on trees. An oak or an elm snapped. The bald cypress, with its feathered needles, leaned over and did not break.
  • A root that may build land (34:07). Some think bald cypress knees catch debris and trash, building up knolls and berms, so the tree helps make its own soil. Dave also offers his dinosaur theory for the knees, and he labels it himself: “This is not science.”
  • 169 sweet olives (38:46). At a sweet olive conference Dave counted 169 varieties. The plant has a strong fragrance, can live 2,000 years, and has its own festivals, yet it remains a minor ornamental in the United States.
  • A garden athletics wanted too (42:52). SFA Gardens started in 1985 on a quarter-acre patch. Dave then went after a stretch of bottom land that athletics also wanted, and he got it. It was floodplain covered in privet, and his students thought he was crazy when he promised it would be one of the great gardens in the South.
  • The 80/20 rule (51:12). After the freezes, Dave’s mantra is to build 80% of a landscape, its backbone, from native trees and shrubs, and use the other 10 or 20% for adventurous plants from China, India, or Nepal, so one hard winter cannot wipe out the whole landscape.

Key Quotes

“I wasn’t a horticulturist, but he made me be one.” Dr. Dave Creech, on professor J.B. Storey (4:28)

“In horticulture, it’s not just fruit and veggie, but also ornamental.” Dr. Ping Yu (10:21)

“Well, in 1,000 years it’ll own your whole lot, your whole home lot.” Dr. Dave Creech, on how big a bald cypress gets (12:49)

“It is gravitationally challenged.” Dr. Dave Creech, on the weeping bald cypress ‘Cascade Falls’ (26:10)

“So now my new mantra with this new wisdom is that, plant 80% of your landscape, and the backbone of it, in natives.” Dr. Dave Creech (51:12)

Educational Highlights

Three cypresses meet in East Texas. Dave describes East Texas as the place where bald cypress and pond cypress meet, with Montezuma cypress genetics from Mexico to the west. He says Taxodium dubium goes back 90 million years, that the genus was once found around the world, and that it now grows only in North America and Mexico.

Montezuma cypress hardiness. Growers long assumed Montezuma cypress was tropical. In 1983 a young Montezuma cypress at SFA, from an area that rarely freezes, came through a hard freeze unharmed. Dave now grows it in Oklahoma. It is less hardy than some bald cypress, and much hardier than anyone expected.

Knees, or pneumatophores. The knees that rise from bald cypress roots are pneumatophores. Their purpose is still debated. Cutting them off does not slow or kill the tree, but landscapers dislike them because they come up wherever there is moisture and tear up lawn mowers. Chinese breeders were the first to cross bald cypress with Montezuma cypress to get rid of the knees.

Seedlings versus clones. In the United States, 99% of bald cypress are grown from seed, and every seedling is different. Clones, made by grafting or rooted cuttings, are identical. In China and other places, cultivars reproduced by grafting or cuttings are the norm.

Juvenility and cuttings. A cutting roots only from a young plant. Dave’s example is a thousand-year-old bald cypress: take a cutting from it and you cannot root it, because the tree has lost its juvenile ability.

Topophysis and plagiotropic growth. A cutting taken from a side branch “thinks it’s a branch” and keeps growing sideways for a while. That is topophysis, and the sideways habit is plagiotropic growth. The fix Dave learned in China: after one year in a one-gallon can, cut the plant back low, and it will send up a good leader. Those trees can grow six feet the second year.

Training a weeping tree. A weeping bald cypress sends its new growth straight down. To make an arch, Dave tied the plants to bows of steel pipe and left the bows in place for two or three years, until the new growth turned to wood and held its shape.

Two years of establishment. SFA’s standard for a new tree is two or three years of care: keep the weeds away, mulch around the plant, dig a decent planting hole, and water. After that, Dave says, a tree “better learn how to live in East Texas.”

Plant patents and sharing. When SFA Gardens began, universities traded plants freely and academia had no patented trees. Patenting took hold in the 1990s, and people grew nervous about giving away plants bound for royalties. SFA puts patented plants it receives into the garden, but keeps them out of its plant sales.

Why the magnolias died. The February 2021 freeze killed SFA’s Asian evergreen magnolias, some six to eight inches in diameter, back to the trunk, and they regrew fast. A December with no freezes and bananas on the banana plants followed, then nine degrees on December 23rd. That second freeze caught the vigorous regrowth and killed the magnolias. Live oak, native along the Gulf South but not in Dallas-Fort Worth, lost seedling trees when Northeast Texas went to minus eight, minus nine, and minus 11.

Resources & Links

  • Website: bandbpod.com
  • SFA Gardens, Stephen F. Austin State University
  • Search “Taxodium distichum ‘Cascade Falls’” with “SFA” to find the bald cypress tunnel; Dave says SFA is one of the top results (26:32)
  • ‘LaNana’ bald cypress, now in the trade (16:47)
  • Places named in the conversation: Nanjing Botanical Garden, Tyler Botanical Garden, Memorial Park in Houston, the Mast Arboretum and Ruby Mize garden at SFA, the US National Arboretum, Atlanta Botanical Garden, Houston Botanical Garden, and Mercer
  • People named in the conversation: Professor Yin Yunlong, Nanjing Botanical Garden; Dr. Shiyou Li; Dr. J.B. Storey and Dr. Hollis Bowen, Dave’s professors at Texas A&M; Dr. Mengmeng Gu, his partner on the post-freeze plant evaluation; Doug Arnold of Trees USA, who grew the ‘Cascade Falls’ trees; Don Shadow, who introduced ‘Falling Waters’; and Neil Sperry

About Blooms and Beyond

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Credits

Host: Dr. Ping Yu Producer: Rich Braman Guest: Dr. Dave Creech, Professor Emeritus and Director, SFA Gardens, Stephen F. Austin State University

Episode Release Date: September 27, 2026 Episode Length: 53:10

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

0:00Welcome to Blooms and Beyond
0:51Meet Dave Creech: From Nagpur to SFA Gardens
3:50The Professor Who Made Him a Horticulturist
5:28Leaving the Mecca on the Brazos
8:55The Case for Ornamentals
12:10Bald Cypress: A Tree for 3,000 Years
14:18From Nanjing to 'LaNana'
19:45A Village That Moved
23:19Cascade Falls and the Tunnel of Love
28:31Summer Heat, Dinosaurs, and Knees
31:38What Are the Knees For?
35:11Cuttings, Clones, and Weeping Plants
37:14Why Weeping Plants Are Rare Here
40:06Plants That Remind You of Home
42:02Building SFA Gardens from a Floodplain
45:43How Patents Changed Plant Sharing
46:52The 2021 Freeze and the 80/20 Rule
48:06Minus Four Degrees in February 2021
51:12Plant 80 Percent of Your Landscape in Natives
52:12Closing and How to Support the Show