The Camellia of 10,000 Flowers: Dave Creech and 40 Years of SFA Gardens (Part 2)
Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture Guest: Dr. Dave Creech, Professor Emeritus and Director, SFA Gardens, Stephen F. Austin State University Producer: Rich Braman Episode: S02E11, Part 2 of 2, Blooms and Beyond, Season 2 Duration: 54:23 Air Date: October 4, 2026
Welcome
Ping Yu: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Blooms and Beyond podcast, a podcast that uncovers plant history, culture and management through the lens of science. I’m your host, Ping. How’s everyone doing today? Without further ado, here is part two with Dr. Dave Creech. I hope you enjoy.
What Survived: Azaleas, Camellias, and Japanese Maples
Ping Yu: Another thing that I remember a lot when I visited the garden, ’cause you guys have a lot of connections in azalea, camellia, and Japanese maple, and magnolia, you mentioned. Are you saying most of those are from, or connections from Asia?
Dave Creech: No, on the azalea world- The azalea world is changing. So they are Asian, and Japan, Korea, China, Nepal, etc. There’s lots of- Rhododendron‘s a very, very big genus. About half of, or maybe a third of our azaleas really took it on the chin. Minus four degrees was too much. Some indicas went to the ground, Kurumes were better. Some of the hybrid groups. So we had, we had a lot of problems. And so we did not allow a single pruner in there for over a year. I wanted to see the plant. And so in many cases it would’ve been better if you’d have gone into the landscape and seen some damage, and just cut it off at the ground and start over again. But we lost some, we lost some azaleas completely.
The same thing is true on camellias. We had a lot of edgy camellia species that I was real excited about. I’m talking trees 20 feet tall, 15 to 20 feet tall, and now there’s a sprout from the ground. You know, it’s not a pretty picture.
Forty-Year-Old Japanese Maples
Dave Creech: And then the Japanese maples, unaffected. Japanese maple’s a very special plant, and we got into them in the 1980s, so we now have nearly 40-year-old Japanese maples. And they’re not like me, they get better with age. [laughs] The older a Japanese maple it is, the better it is. And we just have some of the most beautiful maples, and I knew nothing, Ping, about maples. And Japanese maples are different in the sense that there’s so many cultivars you can’t- Cultivars that are this big, and cultivars that are huge, and weeping, and thin leaf, and thread leaf. There’s six different types of leaf. They’re all fine for us. I mean, we do rather well with them.
We have acid soils under a high canopy pine forest. We do know one thing, drainage, drainage. They have to be- We plant- We don’t ever plant a Japanese maple in our bottomland gardens. We put it on top of the ground and then build up a berm so it sits on a knoll. Drainage will- poor drainage will kill Japanese maples. And we’ve discovered quite quickly that they’re- Once they’re established, they’re very drought resistant here.
And the quality of the fall show- So we have a fall show that starts the first week of December. Never knew this was gonna happen, and it just was by accident, because we planted Japanese maples, a wide range of varieties, and I got the first batch of 50 from Del’s Maple in the Northwest. And he said, “What varieties do you want?” I said, “Just send me 50 different varieties. I don’t know anything about maples. Just send me something that can stand it to be really hot. It’s Texas.” And he did. And they were $2.95 for grafted liners.
Ping Yu: Mm.
Dave Creech: $2.95, nothing. And we planted them all out, many of those are still here. Most of them are still here.
And the other thing that’s interesting about Japanese maples is it doesn’t seem to have a chilling requirement. It can grow it in Houston, as long as you have drainage, and you can grow it in Minnesota. And so what’s going on there, it’s probably has to do with photoperiod, is what I think, is that it really responds more to the photoperiod than it does to the absolute hours under 45 degrees chilling requirement. And we have really very few problems with Japanese maples.
Maples Worth Stealing
Dave Creech: Our number one problem that we have is young plants being liberated and taken home by visitors. [laughs] And we’re working on that right now. We do have some cameras up, but that’s a real problem. People like Japanese maples-
Ping Yu: They are, they are pretty.
Dave Creech: And they are pricey. Very expensive. A good size, anything over a two inch is worth a lot of money, $400 or $500 wholesale really, a good sized Japanese maple. And we have very few people in Texas that are growing maples. They’re bringing them in from the Northwest nurseries, and they bring them in on tractor trailers. And they’re expensive because of the transportation costs, and that you can’t cinch them. So I don’t know if your audience knows what that means, but that means you can’t take a tree, put a net over it, and then tighten it up so that it’s just a pole and you can stack them up like poles. Japanese maples will break. They cannot be cinched. They have to be fitted perfectly, and they’re real brittle. They’re- You know, it’s a big problem. So we’ve ended up with over 400 varieties of Japanese maple, and then we work with a lady, Jen’s Maple, Tennessee, in, in Tennessee.
Ping Yu: I know her.
Dave Creech: Yeah, she’s awesome. She’s awe- She comes to IPPS. She’s awesome. And we work a little bit with Heritage, and we work with Hidden Hollow. We get some stuff out of Hidden Hollow.
And, and then we do our own, we graft our own. And so that’s a lot of fun in classes and everything and- But you do have to watch your- watch- You can drown a maple pretty easily in a container nursery operation. And if you skip a watering every now and then, it’s probably- They like that variable. We’ve ki- we’ve hurt maples at the nursery here by consistent daily water in a regular nursery shade house. And, you know, you can, you can blow their roots away pretty quickly. So they are sensitive to wet feet. That’s a major issue with them.
Camellias That Bloomed Through Minus Four
Dave Creech: On the camellia world, we have Bobby Green and Maarten van der Giessen, and have helped us so much in the Mobile area. And Bobby’s introduced a lot of plants that are bulletproof for this freeze as well, but there were a lot of camellias here. I, I love camellia species, just the straight species. And just to confuse your audience, there’s two that we got that are yuhsienensis and gauchowensis, and these were in bloom when minus four hit. It knocked the blooms off, but didn’t hurt the trees at all. So there’s some genetics out there, they’re Yunnan. There’s some genetics in the camellia world that’s very, very hardy, and we offered them out. The minute I saw something like that, what do I do? I go propagate them. Here’s something that can take a minus four event in bloom and just re- kind of came back and had another crop of blooms that had some buds that didn’t get damaged. So we need to be looking at that constantly.
Thirty Years Waiting for a Torture Test
Dave Creech: And Ping, I always like to tell audiences and people that the best investment that you make is in an arboretum or botanical garden that’s involved in long-term evaluation. So we spent 30, 40 years waiting for minus four degrees. This is a torture test. We’re waiting on it. And when you have 31 gardenias that are nice plants in the landscape, 31 different gardenias, we have two that really survived. The rest of them, down to the ground. And some of them are promoted by the nurseries, not making fun of them. Arctic Frost. Now, doesn’t that kind of imply that this thing’s gonna be hardy? Well, it went to the ground and below. So the point is, is that time is a wonderful friend to a garden, and you can learn a lot about a plant. But we still won’t learn, in some cases.
Look at Rhaphiolepis indica, Indian hawthorn. I’ve watched it die forever, ‘83, ‘89, in 2021, and yet we still gravitate back to it. There’s huge beds of Indian hawthorn everywhere in Texas, and it takes a year or two, people forget, and the next thing you know it’s back in the business trade. So we really need to look pretty seriously at our shrub world. Most of- A lot of our trees, native trees are fine, but our shrub world needs to be- Put an emphasis on trying to find something that is sustainable, and not just another candidate for debris removal when we have another one of these events.
Beyond Hardiness: Parrotia, Simpson’s Stopper, and a Champion Gardenia
Ping Yu: You mentioned that evaluation is very important to maintain a garden in the long run, but what kind of characteristics besides- ’Cause you briefly mentioned the hardness of the plant species over the years. Besides that, what are other characteristics that you think g- a garden or people who are interested in those plants should be evaluating,
Dave Creech: Very good point. Yeah. Okay, this one, one that we think, that we believe pretty firmly is that East Texas has some fall color.
Ping Yu: Some.
Dave Creech: Some.
Ping Yu: Oh, oh, only a little. [laughs] But it is-
Dave Creech: It isn’t the northeast, you know, where the whole mountainsides turn ablaze, and we have very few reds. And so there’s a plant that’s been out in America. It was discovered in Zhejiang Province, Ping, and it’s Parrotia subaequalis.
Ping Yu: Mm-hmm.
Dave Creech: Do you know this plant?
Ping Yu: No, I don’t think so.
Dave Creech: This is a shame [laughs] that you don’t know this plant. This is a Chinese plant, and it’s a Parrotia. It’s an ironwood, and it’s re- directly related to Parrotia persica, which is Persian witch hazel. But all the way across the globe there in China, in Zhejiang is this rare plant that wasn’t really described until the 1990s.
Ping Yu: Wow.
Dave Creech: It’s faster growing, it’s easier to root. It is fire engine red in the fall, and it has some hardiness built into it that we did not have any troubles with minus four. Now get out of the way. Do you want a fire engine red foliaged Parrotia ironwood? I think that’s a wonderful plant. It’s drought resistant. It’s got a lot of things going for it.
So that’s one of the frustrations as a horticulturist. It looks bulletproof to me. I’ve scattered it around. I don’t think it’ll do good in College Station. I think it’ll do wonderful in your backyard, but it just needs to be promoted more. People say, “Parrotia subaequalis, what is that?” It doesn’t have a common name really. Ironwood, Chinese ironwood, that doesn’t sound very appealing to me. And so you end up with this.
Simpson’s Stopper
Dave Creech: So I have another plant that I can’t seem to get people excited about. It’s called Myrcianthes fragrans. Are you aware of this plant? Myrcianthes fragrans. It’s called Simpson’s stopper.
Ping Yu: Simpson’s stopper. Okay.
Dave Creech: Okay. Now this plant, I had it from- A friend of mine gave me it out, out of University of Florida, and it’s actually kind of popular locally around the western side of Florida, and it’s a sand dune tree to about 12 feet.
Ping Yu: Ah.
Dave Creech: Myrcianthes fragrans is- It’s very, very salt tolerant. So I had one in the garden. I had one or, or two or three in the garden here that were at SFA, and they grew rather well, and they went down into the lower teens, in the high single digits, no problem at all. Minus four took it to the ground, but it grew back vigorously.
I’ve put it at Moody Gardens. We have a project, two-acre project at Moody Gardens, a wonderful- Looking for salt tolerant plants for the future, and I put it down there. And get this, it’s evergreen, cleanest foliage you’ve ever seen.
You can get some clones now. There’s a variegated, there’s a Mexican form. I got some from Cuba. So we’re looking at diversity in it. It has white flowers. It covers itself up with pollinator. It has this orange fruit, kind of like a long pepp- small pepper, that’s bright orangy red. That’s kind of attractive, evergreen. Exfoliating bark. You can train it like a two-thirds top, and one-third trunks. You can have then it’s exfoliating bark. It’s rather attractive dark bark, peeling bark, and the fruit cures diarrhea. Is there anything more that you need in a plant? [laughs] If you think about it- This thing is- That’s why they named it Simpson’s stopper. So basically- But- So anyway, I don’t like- I think that may hurt it. That’s a bad name, so we need to have another name for this plant.
So, for the first time in the history of the world, I found that AgriStarts is starting it with a variety called Geode. And so I’ve packed in some, and we’re gonna make some distribution.
We have a project on Galveston Island. Galveston Island is the ultimate torture test for all plants, salt, and wind, and everything leans. It’s hard. It’s a treeless island, let’s face it. It was treeless. So that’s giving these plants that kind of torture test, and plants that perform well in College Station, Texas are getting alkalinity and water quality issue testing all the time.
And so that’s the value of a botanical garden, just to look for plant materials that are not gonna fall apart under a freeze or a flood or- Because the million, billions of dollars that we spend in debris removal is not a good idea just in terms of ener- So it’s a huge amount. Oh.
Whispering Pines, the Champion Gardenia
Dave Creech: Now, this gardenia, we found these two gardenias, and I’ve learned a lot about the psychology of this because I think the homeowners, the horticulturists in our communities and our cities would go for this. I have yet to get- There’s a gardenia called Whispering Pines, and it was discovered by Jim Berry at Daphne, Alabama, near Daphne, Alabama, in a community called Whispering Pines. And it was the only- It’s a big double, and it’s a big plant, and it was 10 or 12 feet tall when minus four hit, and basically it was undamaged, and it bloomed fine. Never had a lick of problems.
And the reason Jim selected it, Jim saw it. It was behind a house place that had melted down, and it was a giant tree. It was giant big bush, and it had big ca- So he knew it’d been through a lot. He knew it was old, and so he got some wood, and he was growing it at J. Berry Nursery, and I was up there visiting and he said, “Ah, Dave,” he said, “I like it, but it doesn’t fit our product mix. I don’t think there’s anything different about it than some other doubles. Do you want some? Do you want some?”
I said, “I’ll take five.” So I took five back to SFA Gardens, and I planted three of them behind a bench, and that was in 2006 or ’7, somewhere like that.
So 14 years later, it’s just a nice gardenia, pretty bloom, doubles, fragrant. But 2021, it was the champion out of all of the 31 varieties that we have. All the others smashed to pieces.
My point is, is that arboretums and bot gardens can do that. We are there to test, evaluate, find plants for the future, and that should be a plant that ends up in the trade, et cetera.
So Creech, that’s me, I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna make a million dollars on this,” and I made a lot of cuttings and I distributed them to nurseries and I said, “This is really a hardy, a hardy gardenia.”
But Ping, the bottom line on it is that that’s an attribute that is not- Surviving a minus four event is not an attribute that perhaps a landscaper or a nurseryman really values that much. The homeowner might, the homeowner might, but a nurseryman probably doesn’t- And I’ve accused them of this in a meeting, that it doesn’t bother you so much if a plant dies after 10 or 15 years in a hard freeze, ’cause that customer is gonna come back and wanna buy another plant.
Ping Yu: Because you were like, “If you buy a plant and never come back, how can they make money?”
Dave Creech: Why get that worried about it? So, so maybe, maybe I’m wrong, but I just think that we ought to be looking at that.
‘Cause you just think about all the debris that went out of Houston and Dallas, Fort Worth from all of the trees that have been kicked around in the environment. It’s just frustrating. Well,
The Industry’s Biggest Challenge: Labor
Ping Yu: With your experience working in horticulture industry, ‘cause I know you work closely with the nurseryman and then the home garden, and you’re also the director of the, of a garden, what are the, like, big challenges that you think the horticulture, horticulture industry in the US are facing right now? Have you observed any change or the trend change over the years?
Dave Creech: Labor. Labor. Every level of labor. And, and when, you know, if you look at a lot of Europe, Europe is where a lot of technology on robotics et cetera, we’re, we’re gonna have to do it. We just have to face up to it.
It’s- And with the present situation with our Hispanic populations, which if you look at nurseries, that’s the backbone, that’s the foundation of our work, and in the landscape trade as well, we need to address how do we mechanize, how do we speed up things? Can we save some labor here, save some labor there? I think we’re doing it in the greenhouse already.
Ping Yu: Oh, we, we are-
Dave Creech: Robotics is part of it-
Ping Yu: are, are doing. It depends on where- Yeah. It depends on- ‘Cause I think that’s one of the issues a lot of, like, the nursery and greenhouses are facing. Depending on how the original operation are built upon, it’s hard.
If they are, if they have a very straight form, like for instance, if they have, if they take the Netherland mode in- for their greenhouse operation, which adapts a lot of automation in the beginning, it’s easier for them to involve in terms of automation. But if they are in a more like American model, which means that they build greenhouses and nurseries over the years, and so each site is different, it’ll take some time for them fi- to figure out how to incorporate all those technologies in incorporating the automation system.
Dave Creech: I think the greenhouse nursery is the one that’ll do it. And then the big wholesale nursery’s next. You and I have both been to a lot of these conferences where we see robots moving plants around. Jim Berry has robot trailers, J. Berry Nursery. I was impressed with that, and also doing drone spraying. And basically trying to save a nickel here and there, because it’s a pretty competitive world that’s out there.
So labor is a, a really huge problem in the fruit, fruit and vegetable industry. And anything that can be mechanized in a little better way to- Right now, Ping, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m working with kiwifruit- the fruit and vegetable side.
Ping Yu: I know that. I enjoyed the seminar that you gave the other day.
The Math on Kiwis and Blueberries
Dave Creech: The math on, on kiwis is very interesting because it’s only eight cents a pound to pick. One human being can pick 500 to 1,000 pounds an hour. And they’re $2.99 a pound, $2 wholesale. So you can do the math, but whereas if you’re picking a blueberry, it’s crazy. You can only pick 150 pounds in a day, and you’re gonna pay, what, $50 for $100 a day? I mean, it’s, it becomes extremely prohibitive, where picking a kiwi is- they’re- they rain down. You don’t have any choices, you just pick. And I’ve watched them in New Zealand and in Chile, and it’s just like raining down. I mean, it’s very fast. They fill a bag, they drop it in there, they punch a card, and they get, they get it done quick.
So any crops that have a- can, you can reduce the amount of labor that’s going in there. And so blueberries are left to having a big field, 50 to 100 acres, and then you get a machine to pick, and that machine can pick for a dime. Whereas if you’re handpicking, it’s probably 40, 50, 60 cents a pound. With Mexico bringing in blueberries as we speak, that’s not easy to compete.
They pay 5 to- 8 to $10 a day in many cases. And so we have to look at the crops and see if we can pick them by hand, and when we can, competitively. They’re paying $20 an hour in New Zealand, so that’s lit- I think you can get some hands at $20 an hour. But maybe not, I don’t know. It’s just- labor is a huge issue but [laughs] I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s, it’s not the same world that it used to be, but labor is obviously one of the, the biggest challenges.
New Pests
Dave Creech: I think new and emerging pest is always a headache, particularly on new crops. But, you know, we have spot- We have a lot of pests that I’ve never seen before. Brown marmorated stink bug is here. Spotted wing drosophila is here. Ambrosia beetle is here. Just, I saw cal- like, this crape myrtle bark scale that Mengmeng made a career out of here. I saw- I see it on callicarpa now. And I don’t know if you know that. But crape myrtle bark scale is on my-
Ping Yu: It is the-
Dave Creech: That’s my native plant-
Ping Yu: It is on the host range trial on callicarpa when I was back in there, so I know it’s getting there.
The Next 20 Years and Never Retiring
Ping Yu: But how do you see, like, the horticulture involving the next maybe 10 to 20 years? We mentioned about the automation and adapting more high mechanical into the industry, but what about the climate? Or I wouldn’t say climate change, but the more severe weather issues and with the globalization.
Dave Creech: I can say, I can say climate change ‘cause I’m 77 years old, but we definitely have a change in climate. And one of the disadvantages [laughs] or advantages of being ancient is, is that I can remember I had 11 crops in a row in peaches when I was in business, and I never missed a beat. And then I had a freeze, and then I had another freeze, and then I was back to normal, but things have changed and it’s the severity. These late freezes have been a little bit different, but the midwinter low minus four, oh my God, that was devastating.
And then we have… I used to say in Nacogdoches, for the history that I’ve been here, 47 years, we’d get a flood every three years where it went out over the bottom. Now we’ve had three floods in two years. And so it’s really, we get these deluges, and so basically you have a more energetic climate. You have a lot more energy in the climate. The storms are gonna be a little rugged. The long dry spells are gonna be a little rougher.
The heat, 100 and… Everybody wants to block these out of our mind, but 2023, 112 degrees and 40, 42 degrees over College Station that usually that just burned it to the ground. It was horrible. So hot and so miserably dry.
“How Much Is Johnny Gonna Make?”
Dave Creech: So challenges are there, and I think one other thing I wanted to mention is one of the great issues is I have people come to my office, mom and dad and the young man or young woman, and they’re talking about horticulture, and they want to make it a major. And you know what the dad says? He says, “How much is Johnny gonna make?”
Ping Yu: Yeah. That’s, that’s what- That’s what he wants- is that. next generation- This the- like, “I wanna go into horticulture or agriculture in general just because I will not be well-paid.”
Dave Creech: Well, that’s the general tone, and I answer it differently ‘cause I know he’ll pay, make 40 to 55 or 40 to 60, and they want you to work Saturdays. And so I know that the jobs are out there. We have a lot of jobs. It’s just they’re not that appealing for somebody today who is spending a lot of money to go to college. I paid $3 a semester hour.
Ping Yu: Okay.
Dave Creech: And you’re paying 300. It was, I walked out, no debt. We have a lot of students at SFA walking out with a debt load. And so you’re, you’re ending up in a job that you spend $120,000, you know, or $100,000 getting a college degree when you could’ve gone and been an electrician in Dallas and made $150,000 a year. I mean, there, there’s a reality here. And it’s impacting our tr- it’s impacting our majors, it’s impacting our students.
Enrollment Peaked in 1977
Dave Creech: So the peak… A lot of people, young, young professors don’t realize the peak in horticulture was 1977. Did you know that? Real numbers. 650 at Texas A&M. Are you sitting down? You need to be. That’s a very high number. And a lot of universities had high numbers. I had 100 here. I wasn’t ar- I arrived and it was around s- 80 or 90.
But the peak was 1977, and then we kinda crashed in the ‘80s, and then we built back up, and we’re leveling off. And so I think there’s 210 now at Texas A&M. They were 140. They’ve gone up. They’ve gone up.
And I think we have 36 or 40 here now at SFA and I’ve been tracking these enrollments, but I got- most of the universities don’t have data before 1990. You can’t find the data. And- but I’ve been keeping it at SFA religiously and at A&M, and so I think that we need to do something with the peop- how we get that enrollment up and depends on how good you are.
I always answer the, the father, I say, “Depends on how good he is.” I have so many former students that own the business, that have money. They bought land in San Antonio on the- or Austin and r- watched it grow for 30 years and so it’s not a matter of, of how much your starting salary is, although that’s pretty darn important. You can tout, we can tout lots and lots of former students in Ag, in A&M as well, that have gone out and made a huge amount of money, and it’s because they had a product and they grew and they grew their business. And those are the ones that I’m most proud of, are the ones that happen to get a job in Dallas, happen to start their own business, happen to grow, happen to buy land, and then the next thing, 30 or 40 years.
Ping, what do you think it’s like for me to have so many former students that are retiring?
Half Time, Not Retired
Ping Yu: You should slow down. You should slow down, ‘cause I was so amazed. I was talking to my mom the other day, I was like, “Oh, Dave Creech giving us a seminar on kiwi fruit.” And I was like, “He’s supposed to slow down a little bit. He’s like in his 70s.“ And then my mom was like, “Yeah, he’s- I’m gardening.”
Dave Creech: I’m… No, I’m, I totally understand that.
Ping Yu: I think-
Dave Creech: But basically I’m-
Ping Yu: the fact about people who was gardening, who are a lot of people who are in this, in your role, similar role like you, they never retire. They just never. Even though you’re officially retired, you’re hurt by-
Dave Creech: I’m half time. I’m half time.
Ping Yu: You’re, yeah, you’re half-
Dave Creech: I’m not retired, I’m half time.
Ping Yu: You, your workload, you’re putting yourself more than like a full-time employee, basically. So-
Dave Creech: Yeah, but this is… You’re surrounded by ex- a lot of excitement and travel, and it doesn’t strike me as, as work. And I, lot of people say that. I, they say, “Are you working over 20 hours a week?”
Ping Yu: No, more than that.
Dave Creech: And I say, “I never worked a day in, I never worked a day at, I never worked a day in my life.”
Ping Yu: Yeah.
Golden Kiwi
Ping Yu: So you’ve been working, I know how, like you never stop working. But what is your next excitement for horticulture in general? Is that, is the golden kiwi your next excitement for horticulture, or are there any other current projects?
Dave Creech: Well, sometimes, Ping, when you’re stubborn about a crop, stubborn about it, and you run into these obstacles, and I am pretty stubborn about golden kiwis, and I’m usually negative, that you can’t make any money and blah, blah, blah, this and that.
But I think golden kiwis, we make crops, we have to manage them better, and we did not thin enough this year, so we have plenty of kiwis, but we didn’t thin enough and so they’re small. And this is a crop that’s very unforgiving, and you need to invest $20,000 an acre, maybe 40 if you get high shade on it. But it can use 40, it can make 40,000 to 50,000 pounds on an acre, and they’re two bucks.
And so the, the- And it’s a restricted market. They’re basically, it’s kind of a monopolized market. And producing four to five in a pound pan- a pack, in a clear pack tray is, doesn’t seem like would be impossible, but it is very hard to get a, an industry off the ground when you’re asking somebody to put up 20,000 or $40,000 or something.
Why Golden Kiwi Fits East Texas
Dave Creech: And so whether or not that actually happens here, and I’m even more optimistic because the Golden Kiwi was, it’s been tried in California. They grow greens out there. They, that they own the market for domestic production on greens, and the Golden won’t grow in Northern California very well because it’s not, it’s too dry. So the kiwi shrivel.
Where I stepped off the airplane in Changsha, China, it was the summer, end of the summer, it was 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and I just started sweating, it was so humid. And I said, “I am in Nacogdoches.” And it is, it’s a very similar climate, and the Golden Kiwi is in that area. The green is a little further north in Wuhan area.
And so I have a lot of horticultural optimism about the Golden Kiwi, and when you have a crop that can make you that kind of money, you can do the things necessary to avoid the frost, sprinkling for frost protection, do this, do that. There’s a lot of things that you can do. I’m not like that about a lot of crops. Most crops I say, “Eh, it’s not gonna, it’s gonna be tricky.”
Feijoas, I’m working with feijoas now on a TDA project with Texas A&M, Tim Hartmann, and I like it, and I think we can make some feijoas. I’m just not too sure that’s gonna be a very popular crop. But our surveys with people that eat our golden kiwis are- they knock it out of the park. The Golden Kiwi is very popular.
A Three-Year-Old Golden Kiwi Fan
Ping Yu: My son, my three-year-old son is a big fan for golden kiwi. Every time we go to Costco, every time we pass the aisle, he’ll be like, “Kiwi, kiwi, I need one.” I was like, “Okay, we’ll get you one.” So every time, every week, we buy, we buy one, at least one, one pack for him.
Dave Creech: You can bear- Can you afford it? [laughs] They’re pretty high. I’ve- $2.99, $3.99, and $4.99 a pound for five or six of them, four to six of them.
And I’m, I’m amazed, and they pack a million trays a week in, in New Zealand at the pack house. It’s unbelievable, and they can be stored for four months. That’s pretty impressive, and that’s what makes it a worldwide continuous supply. So I remain optimistic about it, but, it’s a long way from the industry, that’s for sure.
Blueberries I’m not as optimistic about because I think the small farms, the pick your own, the local farms are gonna work, but the Mexico production is, is we can’t compete with for our life.
The Camellia of Ten Thousand Flowers
Ping Yu: You have been to so many different countries and so many different places, what is the rarest or most unusual plant that you have seen, visited, and where did you see them? And w- or are you, have you thought about on your wish list what kind of plants that you would wish to see them more here in the United States that you have seen overseas?
Dave Creech: Not really on the latter, but there’s, the one that I, I’m a little bit of a camellia nut, and I did get, I g- I had an experience in the Yunnan with my friends, and there was a camellia that’s in the mount- near the Himalayas there, and it’s near Kunming to the west, and it’s called the Camellia of 10,000 Flowers. Have you heard of this plant?
Ping Yu: Yes.
Dave Creech: You know this plant?
Ping Yu: No, have not. I am, I’m a Chinese.
Dave Creech: So I asked my-
Ping Yu: There’s a lot of…
Dave Creech: [laughs] So anyway, I asked my friends, I said, “You know, this, we’re close to this area. Do you think I could go see the Camellia of 10,000 Flowers?” And so they said fine. We jumped in the van. We went up there.
It’s about a 45-minute drive, and it’s a monastery, and the village around it is the Naxi. So anyway, we went around the monastery, and then we went to this plaza, and there it was. It was obvious, and it’s… This camellia was huge, and it’s grafted to two clones. One of, I can’t remember the name of them, and it basically, there’s two varieties on it, and it was all woven together. If you type in the, on a Google, Camellia of 10,000 Flowers, you can get to my article on it. It’s really pretty amazing.
The Monk Who Guarded the Tree
Dave Creech: And sitting there is a monk. [laughs] And since he was a child, no, I’m not lying, since he was a child in his 20s or 30s, he trained under the monk before. This thing goes back to the 1400s, and he’s been sitting there, and his job every day is to sit by the tree and protect the tree. So I got a picture of him, and I was just kinda like in a state of shock that this tree has had a monk sitting by it for this many years, and it, it’s a different kind of… There wasn’t an insect on it, that’s for sure. It’s well-protected, and it was in a plaza all by itself.
This monastery had been invaded twice and burned to the ground by mo- you know, it’s been through all this history. And the amount of protection and love given this tree by, at this monastery was kinda shocking to me.
And China has a habit of moving trees that you wouldn’t think could be moved, [laughs] and to get ‘em out of the way of a highway or off the mountains or something. Anyway, it’s amazing to me, and I really enjoyed meeting him. Although that’s a tough job. Can you imagine that job, sitting in a tree for your whole life? He has passed. I found out he has passed.
Ping Yu: No, I cannot. I’m just like, no, that’s definitely [laughs] not gonna be-
Dave Creech: That’s not your job aspiration.
Ping Yu: No. I would be so bored.
Dave Creech: No, that was pretty interesting.
Weeping Sophoras
Dave Creech: I don’t really have any trees that… There are some small trees, some trees here and there that I wish we had in America from other countries, but there’s some sophoras in China that we don’t have. The golden sophora that’s weeping, a weeping golden Sophora japonica on a tall stem. I thought that was pretty good, and a lot of weeping trees that are not in this country yet. And there’s a lot of breeding lines that are going on in China that, at the institutes of colleges and at the universities that I’d would like to see here, but that’s, those are minor really in a way.
Travel and a Changed Worldview
Ping Yu: So was your… Like, ’cause you basically were abroad when you were just only two year old, and then you spent your 14 years abroad before you come back to the US.
Dave Creech: I came back on home leave.
Ping Yu: And then after you started your horticultural career, you’ve been to, I don’t know how many places and how many different countries, but with all those overseas experience, what… Can you share one or two stories that you still remember, or in terms of what are the some of the moments that shocked you when you, when you visit other places?
Dave Creech: Yeah. Well, I can. You know, I mean, there are a lot of them.
I was in Pakistan in the, the 1980s as a result of the money coming from USAID into Pakistan. The Afghan refugees were coming across. Russia was fighting in the valleys, and these, these refugee camps were so big, and they were tents. And then I was back there the next year, and they were mud houses. And then I was there the next year, and they were houses with nice roofs, and they’re, they’re just building them right there. I was kind of impressed on that.
And we were going, and I was doing apple trees and peach trees, and they had wonderful orchards there and karezes and ancient irrigation systems. And they handed me off to these villages, and he’d come with me, and I’d spend two or three days at a village, and I’d do a pruning demonstration and do the, you know, talk, had, had slides back when there was slides.
Travel Leaves You Restless
Dave Creech: Travel is its own punishment to me because it leaves you restless. Jefferson said that. It’s a wonderful thing, but it leaves you restless, ‘cause there’s always a new place that you can go, and you can go see, and you make friends along the way. And some of the best friends I’ve ever made are still with me today from 40 years ago of travel. And it’s just too bad politics gets in the way, ’cause we all wanna be friends.
Ping Yu: I think it’s one of the things that why the horticulture in and of itself brought all the people from different places all together. And then when you go visit a place because you wanna go see the plants over there, you’ll get to expose the culture, the history, the people there. And those experience and the people that you met there, the experience that you had there are really the one that makes your… I don’t know if that’s gonna be, if I’m exaggerating it, but 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. I think that’s one of the things I love about-
Dave Creech: It’s my worldview. Well, I, I agree.
Being raised in Asia and then ending up working there on short-term basis, a month here and a month there, it was, had a huge impact. And bringing Janet, my lovely wife, to many countries, and it’s opened her eyes and she appreciates it, too. She’s kinda got a world, world view anyway, and, and we are… The more you travel, the more you try to be understanding and kind each other, and it’s just, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just the way it is.
Whether or not we could all travel, I always think that everybody should travel and try to meet… And I never met a stranger. I’ll talk to a guy on the street corner.
Guanxi
Dave Creech: And, and one thing about China that’s interesting to me, ‘cause I’ve been going there 30-plus years, is that the older you get in China, the better you’re treated. [laughs] And- And I don’t know why, but-
Ping Yu: There, there’s a culture behind that in… A, a- But it is true Asia in general, or at least in Eastern Asia, a- we value one, we value one concept, that we need to respect the elderly. That’s just how the society treats the elderly, and everyone was like, we have s- that kind of… I don’t know if you can call it a ladder or social ladder, so the elder, the older you get, the higher your ladder, your social ladder is, at least from the family standpoint. Within a family-
Dave Creech: There’s a term- There’s a term, and you can… There’s a term, it’s called guanxi. Guanxi, the art of relationships, time, trust, friendship, experience. It’s how you… Guanxi, that’s what they always say, you have good guanxi, you have-
Ping Yu: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, guanxi, yeah, basically develop friendship, relationship. Yeah, it, you’re, you’re right.
Dave Creech: [laughs] Okay. I’m not very good at pronouncing it. How did you say it?
Ping Yu: Guanxi.
Dave Creech: Yeah, guanxi?
Ping Yu: Yeah. It’s, it means, it translates to a relationship, so yeah, you’re right.
Mentors and Advice for Young Horticulturists
Ping Yu: The- You have been a inspiration for a lot of people in horticulture, me included. Have you… If you, if I’m asking you this, who would you think, who has impact you significantly in your career in horticulture?
Dave Creech: My advisors at Texas A&M, Hollis Bowen and J.B. Storey, were really inspirational. That was at a time when I was young, and I thought they were gods. I was… We just had a different kinda attitude about professors then. And when they said, “Jump,” we said, “How high?” We never asked, “Oh, I’m over my time. I can’t work any…” We n- we just… It was a different philosophy about being a graduate student and being an undergraduate student.
They ran the roost, and so those two really steered me, and J.B. Storey probably in particular, Hollis Bowen.
Old Main and Milt Workman
Dave Creech: I had a professor at Colorado State as my advisor, Milt Workman. I did potato tuber physiology, post-harvest phys project. Wonderful project.
Had a lot of fun, but it was the Vietnam War, and we were trying to come home, and I arrived at Colorado State, and Old Main was burned down by the mobs. There was four dead in Ohio. It was Kent State. There was a lot of protesting around the campus.
We had a lot, lot of problems going on associated with the Vietnam War, and I arrived, and this building burned down. I was out at, it was m- it’s called Old Main, and basically it was set on fire by 5,000 or 6,000 kiddos, kids, students. And it was a lot of uproar all over the United States when Kent State occurred, and so I’m starting off my master’s degree, and my university, they’re burning down this university building that was there, and I’m worried about my potatoes in the greenhouse. You know, I’ve got some potato breeding things going on.
And, and I look at Milt Workman, and he had four kids, and he was the kindest professor that I’ve ever had, and he was very philosophical, and he’d had a wonderful career there, and he really helped me. He stewarded me through a very wonderful master’s degree program.
Seven Had Failed
Dave Creech: So I look at J.B. Storey for what he did to me to get me into horticulture, Hollis Bowen, who was my PhD boss, and I was the first of eight to graduate. Did you hear that, Ping? Seven had failed.
Ping Yu: Really?
Dave Creech: That’s pretty amazing. Yeah, there were seven before me, and he told me that the day I started up underneath him. He said, “I don’t know if you’re gonna make it.” You know, I mean, he meant it, too. It was… This is old school. This… They were tough. They tried to break you rather than prop you up. And it was a d- different kind…
But I look back on it now, and I think, “Oh my God,” you know, “what a, what a great man,” and he b- he had a lot to do with my philosophy a little bit. Helped me to stay in horticulture, for sure.
Ping Yu: But if- Now-
Dave Creech: We don’t do that now. I have to take sensitivity training. You do, too.
Ping Yu: Oh, we have a lot of-
Dave Creech: And so we have to-
Ping Yu: We have a lot of training in terms of how we treat students now.
Dave Creech: We, these old professors would have all gotten an F on sensitivity, ’cause they were pretty hardcore about that.
Ping Yu: Yeah.
If You Love What You Do
Ping Yu: But if, if a young kid or a young man comes to you and say, “Hey, I would, I am interested in horticulture,” what kind of suggestions that you would tell them?
Dave Creech: If you love what you do, you’re, you’ll be fine. If you get to work three minutes early and leave four minutes late, well, if you’re consistently late to work, I’ve always told students, your bosses may not care that much, but if you’re consistently late and you’re consistently breaking away, then that’s- and it, it… That to me means you don’t love what you do.
Now, that doesn’t mean, like in the peach business you can’t move for three, four months, but you can go fishing in the fall. And so there’s, there’s a lot of attitudes about work, and we never had this 20 hours a week for the graduate degree thing when I went to grad school at Texas A&M. They… It was 168 hours in a seven-day week, and the boss had all of it, and we just did what they… That was pretty true. There was a lot of activity going on after hours, on weekends, et cetera, and it was just kind of a different philosophy.
Now it’s different, and it’s probably for the better, because, you know, we have to be sensitive to life balance. You’ve heard of this?
Ping Yu: I-
Dave Creech: Have you heard of this thing called life?
Ping Yu: heard that.
Dave Creech: And… But you and I are gardeners. That’s not exactly a hard row to hoe. I mean, that’s not… Really, to me, what I do is not really work. I’d want to do it anyway. I’d want to garden anyway. I’d want to plant something.
And so, I don’t know, I’ve always been confused about this is work, this is play, this is, you know, lining them up in a row. To me it’s all just part of being alive. You have 24 hours in a day and what you do with it.
I do know my energy level is less than it used to be, and it’s something you should think about, and my energy is real good in the morning and afternoon, and then I’m, I fade in the evening. I’m not very good. am- Is that your case?
Ping Yu: I, I, I’m more, I’m a morning person, I would say. I, my energy level is way higher in the morning and then in the afternoons. So that’s why a lot of times in the morning I would do more productive brain-demanding activities, and in the afternoons I would, I n- tend to set schedule meetings that doesn’t need a whole lot of thinking in the afternoons, so I can bear with that. But, yeah, for-
Dave Creech: I can promise you this, Ping, it gets worse as you get older. That late afternoon it’s gonna be worse. It just, you get tireder. It…
And then there’s a little bit of philosophy in there, like what’s the point? This work will be here tomorrow. You know, it’s not critical. If there’s a deadline, I’m, you know that’s bad, but still, still, you know, it’s, it’s…
“You’re Still Alive”
Dave Creech: When I look back on my career, and this is, I feel so blessed because I’ve had nothing but fun and I’ve had so many wonderful students, thousands actually, that have come through the courses and everything. I used to teach three or four courses a semester, twice a fall and spring, and, and it amazes me to see them at TNLA and the conventions and across the South. And most horticulturists end up in horticulture, and I think that’s really commendable. They’re not off in some other arena. I have had some leave horticulture, but it’s always great to see them, and they’re always stunned.
Matter of fact, I was just at TNLA in August, and you were too, and I had a former student I hadn’t seen in six or seven years, and he came up to me and recognized me and he said, Ping, he said, “You’re still alive.” [laughs] And I thought that was so cute. I said, “Yes, I may outlive you. My mother lived to 102. That’s pretty good genes.”
You know, I thought, that’s kind of rude. But anyway, he was a fun student, and he’s out in the industry working hard, making money, got kids, you know. And it’s…
As an advisor, as you know, you get to know students for four, five, maybe even six years if they’re slow to get out, but those people are with you- forever. Yeah. ‘Cause that’s what makes you a professor, and the better they do, the better it makes you feel about it.
Ping Yu: Right.
SFA Gardens Today
Ping Yu: So, last comment about the SFA. Are you guys providing any resources for, for people who are interested in gardening? ’Cause I know you have some series for master gardeners. Are there any resources that people wants to look into it?
Dave Creech: We do- We have a s- we do. We have a wonderful building over here, the Ina Brundrett Conservation Education Building. I’m at the Native Plant Center right now.
40 acres, on the north side of the campus, and part of the campus really, and we have a once-a-month lecture series. It’s every second Thursday, and we bring in people, and it’s endowment that allows us to do that. So we can- P- you’re coming to speak for me.
Ping Yu: Yes, next year.
Dave Creech: Next year. And we pay you well, we feed you, we send you home with plants. It’s, it’s a plan. And that’s been great.
And then my staff, we have eight staff, and so we have grafting seminars and workshops. We have a number throughout the year, and you can type in SFA Gardens and you can get our website, and it’s got all the events, et cetera, for people that are local. And we, we, we’re real pleased to have a lot of horticulturists that enjoy coming here because I send them back with plants. I’m not sure they wanna come, but they like the fact that we really do share some of the largess here to send back in terms of the new plants that we’re working with. So I don’t know.
Environmental Education for Kids
Dave Creech: That’s- We also have an environmental education program for kids that we’re bringing back. So we’ve had 12,000 children a year coming through under Elyce Rodewald, our environmental ed coordinator. It went to zero. I lost the position, and now we’re back.
We have a new hire, and we’re seeing that growing. And so these are the third to eighth grader kind of an emphasis, and I think that’s really important, trying to stimulate and excite young people about getting in the out of doors and working gardens, and we’re doing some raised bed projects.
And actually, there’s a ready market for it. The teachers like it ‘cause we’re essential element compatible. What we teach they’d have to teach anyway, and so you cover it that way. So we’re a busy, real busy garden at SFA.
Joining the University of Texas
Dave Creech: The University of Texas has been here for about a year, and there are a lot of changes, and so far, we’re still standing, so we’ll see what happens.
Ping Yu: Okay.
Dave Creech: Send me some money.
Ping Yu: That- [laughs] He has all the money.
Dave Creech: No, UT has got a lot. It, it does.
And I- So far what I see on them in terms of how they’re handling endowments and fiscal aspects of it, I’m impressed. I’m very impressed. We operate on nine endowments. People have g- been generous to us, and following donor intent is a really important thing to people that are relying on that kind of income, and I think UT has a vision in that way that’s encouraging for us.
Thank You, Dave
Ping Yu: Yeah. All right. Thank you, Dr. Dave Creech, for all those wonderful stories and information about plants, about international travels, about everything related to horticulture, and thank you so much.
Dave Creech: Enjoyed it a lot.
Ping Yu: Well, thank you, Dr. Dave Creech, for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with us as always.
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Thank you for listening. Till the next time, stay healthy and go plants. Adios.
Closing
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Thank you for listening. Till the next time. Stay healthy and go plants.
Transcript produced for Blooms and Beyond / UGA Center for Urban Agriculture