Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / Spring at Old Alabama Town - TPR's In Focus - March 25, 2026

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Spring at Old Alabama Town - TPR's In Focus - March 25, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from the Rosa Parks Museum on Troy University's Montgomery campus,
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  located on the spot of Mrs. Parks' historic 1955 arrest and featuring
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  exhibits that chronicle the history of the Montgomery bus boycott.
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  More information at Troy.edu slash Rosa Parks.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson.
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  Montgomery's old Alabama town offers a step back in early Alabama history, as
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  well as opportunities for birding walks and gardening instruction.
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  Jacob Van Megan, horticulturist and living block manager, joins our Back to
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  Nature series today.
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  Jacob, welcome to Troy Public Radio. Hi there, Carolyn. I'm very happy to be with
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  you this afternoon. Jacob, you are the horticulturist at Old Alabama Town for
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  Landmarks Foundation. Give us your background. So I will tell you some of my
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  background so the listeners can also adjust somewhere to my happy accent, but
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  my background is in agriculture. I'm a civic engineer specialized in water
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  management. You also, in your background, have an international journalism career
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  and an award-winning career at VAD. Can you fill us in? Yeah, I won a Lifetime
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  Achievement Award for my features for Lifestyle Magazine Productions for the
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  European Press Association, where I worked for 35 years, and that brought me to all
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  kinds of garden festivals in the UK, in France, in Morocco, and basically a
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  feature for the BBC magazines in 80 gardens around the world. This is an
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  incredible career because you covered the Royal Flower Shows in the United
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  Kingdom, France, and Morocco, as you just mentioned. I did. That was a fun, fun job
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  to do. I so much enjoyed it. Where is your original home? In Amsterdam. You know all
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  about flowers. Give us your advice about tulips. This is tulip season. This is
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  tulip season, and in the country where I come from, they just started to pick up
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  blooming now because it's a little bit colder over there. But the biggest advice
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  that I can give you about tulips, let them bloom, let them die, pick them up, and
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  put them in the freezer for 28 days before you plant them. They need a cold
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  stratification of 28 days to set bloom. What is your favorite tulip? Definitely
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  the French parakeet tulips. It's a beautiful red, green, and yellow tulip,
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  and that looks like the feathers of a parakeet. So, Jacob, as the
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  horticulturist at Old Alabama Town in downtown Montgomery, do you have any
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  tulips planted? I don't have any tulips planted because we try to use Alabama
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  native planting material, and tulips are not really part of that. Speaking of the
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  plantings at Old Alabama Town, you have events coming up which help gardeners.
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  What are some of the events coming up that the listeners can participate in? We
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  have workshops making seed books, bird walks. We have lectures about water
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  coloring, like William Bartram, cord painting workshops, coiling workshops,
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  soil management, a lecture about pollinator fields, birds, bees, and
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  butterflies, and how to attract them to the yard, lost vegetables. That program
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  is so extensive that there is something even for children. For children, we do
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  flower pot painting, butterfly feeders making, and it will be posted on our
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  website. The William Bartram exhibit, Jacob, it has been traveling to some of
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  the Alabama State Parks, and I'm wondering when it will be available for
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  the listeners to view at Old Alabama Town. Yeah, so it starts May 20th, and it
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  closes June 27th. Let's get to the Pass Along Gardeners educational program. How
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  does that work, and is there space open for some of your listeners? Absolutely,
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  and I wish for my listeners to come join some of those Pass Along Gardeners
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  educational program topics, because they will be listed on our website, and on the
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  website will also be a link to an Eventbrite page, because that is for some
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  of the topics is a coffee, and most of them include breakfast, and a lecture, and
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  an hands-on part. How did it get the name Pass Along Gardeners? It's a very
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  long-standing tradition in plant lovers to pass along the plants that you have,
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  but also pass along the knowledge that you gather over the years about gardening
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  with other plant and garden lovers. So you're actually recycling plants by
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  giving them new homes? Yes, just propagating them, put them in a pot, and
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  handing them to somebody else. Now you're doing this in collaboration with Eat South.
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  How does that work? So Eat South is doing some of the lectures here, and that
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  collaboration resulted in this year's new endeavor. They also going to use an
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  office space here, so there will be more interaction between us. I'm very much
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  looking forward to that. Could you give us a preview of the Saturday morning
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  birding walks? Well, it's a Saturday morning walk to start your day active,
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  and I cannot think of a better way to start your Saturday morning with a bird
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  walk with Christopher Joe. I always call him Christopher Birdman Joe, because he
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  is just so specialized in tricks that you didn't think about to attract birds,
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  and to locate them, and to point them out. It is just an absolutely wonderful walk
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  on Saturday morning, suitable for anybody. Christopher is just filling up
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  one and a half hour with joy about our wind trends. And I have planned eight
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  bird walks for this year, and that is always on the first Saturday of the month,
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  except for July. Do people need to sign up for these ahead of time? Yes, and the
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  bird walks are published on our website, and there is a cover fee, and they come
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  with a homemade breakfast. I always call it the light breakfast, but it is a very
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  spectacular sudden breakfast. And when do they start, the bird walks? The first one
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  is on April 4th, and that's the kickoff of this season bird walk program. Can you
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  tell us a little bit more about Christopher Joe? Yeah, the family of
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  Christopher Joe owns, top of my head, 140 acres Black Angus farm in New Bern,
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  Alabama. And as a kid, Christopher Joe started birding on their lands, and he
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  developed that into someone that you don't want to miss in a birding pool on
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  Saturday morning, you know. It's a way to step out of your routine and just
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  connect to the beautiful birds that Landmarks Foundation has on their 9.3
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  acres of land. And especially on Saturday morning, it's so, so peaceful
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  How can people register? Do you have websites so that they can go and find
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  out more information? Yes, the website is LandmarksFoundation.com, and scroll
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  to the menu, programming, birding, or program gardening, and you will find all
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  the past Long Island's program and all the birding dates with a QR code to the
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  Eventbrite page to reserve your tickets. You know, Jacob, our nation is
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  celebrating 250 years, and that William Bartram exhibit that you mentioned a
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  minute ago is part of that celebration. So Old Alabama Town, Landmarks Foundation
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  are doing a big part of the celebration with all of these events. Yes, a big part
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  of that. We have an opening reception for the William Bartram exhibition. We
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  have a closing reception. Katherine Braun is coming to do a lecture in
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  collaboration with the Armory. We have some watercoloring classes where you can
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  learn to draw and to sketch like William Bartram did 250 years ago. He was such an
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  interesting artist. One more time, can you leave us with the website? Yes, I
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  just checked it. It's OldAlabamaTown.com. Jacob, thank you for your visit today.
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  Thank you, Carolyn, and I wish you a happy the rest of your Wednesday. That
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  was Jacob van Megan, horticulturist and living block manager at Landmarks
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  Foundation's Old Alabama Town in the heart of downtown Montgomery. More
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  information about spring events and Old Alabama Town's historic structures can
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  be found on their Facebook page and at Old Alabama Town.com and Landmarks
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  Foundation.com. Thanks for joining us for the Back to Nature series on In Focus,
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  which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carolyn Hutcheson and this
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  is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.