The Camellia of 10,000 Flowers: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 2)
S02:E11

The Camellia of 10,000 Flowers: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 2)

Nacogdoches, Texas
•

Episode description

The Camellia of 10,000 Flowers: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 2)

Episode Description

Dave Creech says SFA Gardens spent 30 or 40 years waiting for minus four degrees. When the 2021 freeze finally brought it, only two of the garden’s 31 gardenias really survived. The champion was Whispering Pines, a big double that Jim Berry had offered Dave because it didn’t fit his nursery’s product mix. In Part 2 of Ping’s conversation with Dave, the long wait pays off in plant picks: Japanese maples that came through unaffected, two camellia species that were in bloom when the cold hit, and Parrotia subaequalis, a Chinese ironwood that turns fire engine red in an East Texas fall.

Then the talk turns to the people who grow plants. Dave names labor as the industry’s biggest challenge and runs the numbers: a kiwi costs eight cents a pound to pick, while a hand-picked blueberry runs 40, 50, 60 cents. He makes his case for golden kiwi in East Texas, a crop he admits he is stubborn about, and Ping reports that her three-year-old son asks for one every week at Costco. Dave also has a number for young professors: horticulture enrollment peaked in 1977, with 650 students at Texas A&M.

The second half travels. Near Kunming, in Yunnan, Dave went to see the Camellia of 10,000 Flowers, two varieties grafted and woven together in a monastery plaza, with a monk whose job every day was to sit by the tree and protect it. He remembers refugee camps in Pakistan going from tents to mud houses to houses with roofs, a PhD advisor who told him seven students before him had failed, and the former student who walked up at TNLA and said, “You’re still alive.” Part 2 ends at SFA Gardens today, with a lecture series every second Thursday and an environmental education program for kids that is coming back.

Listen Time: 54:23 Follow Along with the Transcript

In This Episode

Guest

Dr. Dave Creech, Professor Emeritus and Director, SFA Gardens, Stephen F. Austin State University. He has lived in Nacogdoches for 47 years and works half time; in his words, he is not retired. He studied under Hollis Bowen and J.B. Storey at Texas A&M and did a master’s in potato tuber physiology at Colorado State University under Milt Workman, arriving the year Old Main burned. Raised in Asia, he has been going to China for more than 30 years and worked in Pakistan’s orchards in the 1980s. He once ran a peach business, and his current projects include golden kiwi and feijoas.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture

Main Topics

  • Welcome (0:00)
  • What Survived: Azaleas, Camellias, and Japanese Maples (0:25). Which plants at SFA Gardens came through minus four degrees, and why a long wait is the best test
    • Forty-year-old Japanese maples (1:44)
    • Maples worth stealing (4:04)
    • Camellias that bloomed through minus four (6:05)
    • Thirty years waiting for a torture test (7:07)
  • Beyond Hardiness: Parrotia, Simpson’s Stopper, and a Champion Gardenia (8:48). Fall color, salt tolerance, and a gardenia nobody wanted
    • Simpson’s stopper (11:05)
    • Whispering Pines, the champion gardenia (14:03)
  • The Industry’s Biggest Challenge: Labor (17:14). Robots, drones, and what a crop costs to pick
    • The math on kiwis and blueberries (20:00)
    • New pests (21:49)
  • The Next 20 Years and Never Retiring (22:28). Floods, heat, enrollment, and why Dave is half time
    • “How much is Johnny gonna make?” (24:13)
    • Enrollment peaked in 1977 (25:36)
    • Half time, not retired (27:40)
  • Golden Kiwi (28:50). The crop Dave is stubborn about, and why it fits East Texas
    • Why golden kiwi fits East Texas (30:16)
    • A three-year-old golden kiwi fan (31:49)
  • The Camellia of Ten Thousand Flowers (32:55). A grafted camellia in Yunnan and the monk who sat beside it
    • The monk who guarded the tree (34:37)
    • Weeping sophoras (36:10)
  • Travel and a Changed Worldview (36:51). Pakistan in the 1980s, friends from 40 years of travel, and respect for elders
    • Travel leaves you restless (38:33)
    • Guanxi (40:26)
  • Mentors and Advice for Young Horticulturists (41:51). The professors who shaped Dave, and what he tells students now
    • Old Main and Milt Workman (42:47)
    • Seven had failed (44:09)
    • If you love what you do (45:17)
    • “You’re still alive” (48:09)
  • SFA Gardens Today (49:40). Lectures, workshops, kids’ programs, and a new university system
    • Environmental education for kids (51:05)
    • Joining the University of Texas (51:58)
    • Thank you, Dave (52:39)
  • Closing (53:25)

Key Highlights

  • Fifty maples by mail (3:00). Knowing nothing about maples, Dave asked Del’s Maple to send 50 different varieties that could stand the Texas heat. They came as grafted liners at $2.95 each, and most are still in the garden. SFA now grows over 400 varieties and puts on a fall show that starts the first week of December.
  • Maples that walk away (4:04). The number one problem with SFA’s Japanese maples is young plants being “liberated and taken home by visitors.” The garden has put cameras up.
  • Blooming through the freeze (6:24). Two camellia species, yuhsienensis and gauchowensis, were in bloom when minus four hit. The cold knocked the blooms off, didn’t hurt the trees, and some buds came through to make another crop of blooms. Dave went straight to propagating them.
  • A name that hurts sales (12:41). Simpson’s stopper has white flowers, orange-red fruit, peeling bark, and clean evergreen foliage. Dave says the fruit cures diarrhea, which is where the name comes from, and he thinks the name holds the plant back.
  • Galveston as a test plot (13:16). Dave calls Galveston Island “the ultimate torture test for all plants”: salt, wind, and everything leans. SFA has a project there, and a two-acre project at Moody Gardens looking for salt-tolerant plants.
  • The gardenia nobody wanted (14:44). Jim Berry found Whispering Pines behind a house place that had melted down, a giant old bush. Dave took five, planted three behind a bench in 2006 or 2007, and in 2021 it was the champion of SFA’s 31 gardenias.
  • Why nurseries shrug at hardiness (16:16). Dave has accused nurserymen, in a meeting, of not minding much when a plant dies in a hard freeze after 10 or 15 years, because the customer comes back to buy another one.
  • Automation depends on how you built (18:54). Ping points out that greenhouses and nurseries built up site by site over the years, the American model, will take longer to automate than operations designed for it from the start. Dave has seen robots moving plants at conferences, and Jim Berry’s nursery runs robot trailers and drone spraying.
  • Three floods in two years (23:31). Over Dave’s 47 years in Nacogdoches, a flood used to go out over the bottom about every three years. Now there have been three in two years. He calls it “a more energetic climate.”
  • “Depends on how good he is” (26:46). When a father asks how much his son will make in horticulture, that is Dave’s answer. His proudest former students started their own businesses, bought land, and watched it grow for 30 years.
  • Golden kiwi by the acre (29:35). Golden kiwi takes an investment of $20,000 an acre, maybe $40,000 with high shade, and an acre can make 40,000 to 50,000 pounds at two dollars a pound. This year SFA didn’t thin enough, so the crop came in plentiful and small.
  • “I am in Nacogdoches” (30:41). Stepping off the plane in Changsha at the end of summer, 104 degrees Fahrenheit and humid, Dave felt right at home. Golden kiwi grows in that region; the green kiwi grows further north, around Wuhan.
  • A monk by the tree (34:37). The monk guarding the Camellia of 10,000 Flowers had trained under the monk before him, and the tree goes back to the 1400s. Dave photographed him and later learned he has passed. Ping’s verdict on the job: “I would be so bored.”
  • Seven had failed (44:09). On Dave’s first day as Hollis Bowen’s PhD student, Bowen told him, “I don’t know if you’re gonna make it.” Seven students before Dave had not. Dave was the first of eight to graduate.
  • Back to 12,000 kids (51:05). SFA’s environmental education program brought 12,000 children a year through under coordinator Elyce Rodewald. It went to zero when the position was lost, and it is coming back with a new hire, aimed at third through eighth graders.

Key Quotes

“So we spent 30, 40 years waiting for minus four degrees. This is a torture test.” Dr. Dave Creech, on long-term evaluation at SFA Gardens (7:20)

“Do you want a fire engine red foliaged Parrotia ironwood?” Dr. Dave Creech, on Parrotia subaequalis (10:26)

“I never worked a day in my life.” Dr. Dave Creech, on being half time and not retired (28:42)

“I really think the people or the culture that you see with the plant really played a big role in changing your view of the whole world.” Dr. Ping Yu, on what travel for plants gives a horticulturist (39:25)

“If you love what you do, you’re, you’ll be fine.” Dr. Dave Creech, his advice to young people interested in horticulture (45:28)

Educational Highlights

Drainage first for Japanese maples. SFA never plants a Japanese maple in its bottomland gardens. The tree goes on top of the ground with a berm built up around it, so it sits on a knoll. Poor drainage kills Japanese maples, but once established they are very drought resistant in East Texas. In containers they like a variable schedule: consistent daily watering in a shade house has hurt maples at SFA’s nursery.

Chilling or day length? Japanese maples grow in Houston, given drainage, and in Minnesota, and they don’t seem to have a chilling requirement. Dave’s view is that they respond more to photoperiod than to hours under 45 degrees.

Why a big maple costs so much. A Japanese maple over two inches is worth $400 or $500 wholesale. Few Texas growers produce them, so they come in on tractor trailers from Northwest nurseries, and they can’t be cinched. Cinching means netting a tree tight into a pole so trees stack like poles. Japanese maples are brittle and break, so each one has to be fitted on the truck.

What long-term evaluation catches. Of 31 gardenias at SFA, two really survived minus four; one sold as Arctic Frost “went to the ground and below.” Indian hawthorn, Rhaphiolepis indica, has died for Dave in ’83, ’89, and 2021, yet huge beds of it keep coming back into the trade a year or two after each freeze. His conclusion: native trees are mostly fine, and the shrub world needs the attention.

Parrotia subaequalis. This Chinese ironwood was discovered in Zhejiang Province and, Dave says, wasn’t really described until the 1990s. It is directly related to Parrotia persica, Persian witch hazel, grows faster, roots more easily, is drought resistant, and turns fire engine red in fall. It came through minus four without trouble. It has no real common name, and “Chinese ironwood” doesn’t sound very appealing to Dave.

Simpson’s stopper, Myrcianthes fragrans. A sand dune tree to about 12 feet, popular on the western side of Florida, and very salt tolerant. At SFA it handled the lower teens and high single digits with no problem; minus four took it to the ground, and it grew back vigorously. AgriStarts is now starting a variety called Geode. Clones are available now, including a variegated form and a Mexican form, and Dave has plants from Cuba.

The cost of picking. One person can pick 500 to 1,000 pounds of kiwis an hour, at about eight cents a pound. Blueberries run about 150 pounds a day by hand, 40 to 60 cents a pound, which is why larger blueberry plantings of 50 to 100 acres go to machine harvest, which can pick for a dime.

Where golden kiwi grows. Golden kiwi has been tried in California, where growers own the domestic market for green kiwi, but Northern California is too dry and the fruit shrivels. Its home region in China, around Changsha, has a hot, humid climate like Nacogdoches. Golden kiwis store for four months, and New Zealand packs a million trays a week, which makes golden kiwi a worldwide continuous supply.

New pests in East Texas. Dave lists brown marmorated stink bug, spotted wing drosophila, and ambrosia beetle as pests he had never seen before. Crape myrtle bark scale, the pest Dr. Mengmeng Gu made a career out of, is now turning up on callicarpa, a native plant; Ping saw it on the host range trial on callicarpa.

A camellia carrying two varieties. The Camellia of 10,000 Flowers is grafted, with two varieties growing on one tree, woven together. Dave says the tree goes back to the 1400s.

Guanxi. Dave describes guanxi as “the art of relationships, time, trust, friendship, experience.” Ping says it translates to relationship. She adds that in Eastern Asia the older you get, the higher you stand on the social ladder, at least within the family.

Resources & Links

  • Website: bandbpod.com
  • SFA Gardens, Stephen F. Austin State University. Search “SFA Gardens” for the website and event calendar (50:38)
  • SFA Gardens lecture series, once a month on the second Thursday (50:04)
  • Dave’s article on the Camellia of 10,000 Flowers: search the name of the camellia (34:29)
  • Simpson’s stopper ‘Geode’, started by AgriStarts (13:05)
  • Gardenia ‘Whispering Pines’, selected by Jim Berry of J. Berry Nursery (14:17)
  • Places named in the conversation: the Native Plant Center and the Ina Brundrett Conservation Education Building at SFA, Moody Gardens and Galveston Island, Texas A&M, Colorado State University, the TNLA and IPPS meetings
  • People named in the conversation: Dr. Hollis Bowen and Dr. J.B. Storey, Dave’s professors at Texas A&M; Milt Workman, his master’s advisor at Colorado State; Jim Berry; Bobby Green and Maarten van der Giessen, who have helped SFA with camellias from the Mobile area; Tim Hartmann of Texas A&M, Dave’s partner on a TDA feijoa project; Dr. Mengmeng Gu; and Elyce Rodewald, SFA’s environmental education coordinator
  • Japanese maple sources Dave names: Del’s Maple, Jen’s Maple, Heritage, and Hidden Hollow

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: October 4, 2026 Episode Length: 54:23

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

0:00Welcome to Blooms and Beyond
0:25What Survived: Azaleas, Camellias, and Japanese Maples
1:44Nearly 40-Year-Old Japanese Maples
6:05Camellias That Bloomed Through Minus Four
7:07Thirty Years Waiting for a Torture Test
8:48Beyond Hardiness: Fire Engine Red Parrotia
11:05Simpson's Stopper Needs a Better Name
14:03Whispering Pines, the Champion Gardenia
17:14The Industry's Biggest Challenge: Labor
20:00The Math on Kiwis and Blueberries
22:28The Next 20 Years: A More Energetic Climate
24:13How Much Is Johnny Gonna Make?
28:50Stubborn About Golden Kiwi
32:55The Camellia of 10,000 Flowers
34:37The Monk Who Guarded the Tree
36:51Travel and a Changed Worldview
41:51Mentors and Advice for Young Horticulturists
45:17If You Love What You Do
49:40SFA Gardens Today: Lectures, Workshops, and Kids
53:25Closing and How to Support the Show