Transcription of Derrick Daly for the show Hospitality for All Creatures, Great & Small #258
Dr. Belisle: Our next guest is Derrick Daily who is the head gardener at Inn by the Sea. Derrick is a southern Maine community college graduate of their plant and soil technology school. After graduation, he worked as an intern at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, before taking over the grounds of the inn more than fifteen years ago. Derrick also has private clients and last year, one of his gardens was featured in the Cape Elizabeth Garden Tour. Each year Derrick leads a group tour to a special garden for Cape Community Services. This year the tour went to the twenty acre Bedrock Gardens in Lee New Hampshire. Community members are invited to join Derrick every Thursday at 10:00 AM for complementary garden tours at the inn, all through the growing season.
Derrick also works with local schools, heading up the Community Earth Day beach clean up at Crescent Beach in the spring. Just last week, he had two school groups of young students studying entomology visit the inn for a hands on outdoor experience. Derrick has appeared on NECN and in People, Places and Plants magazine. Giving tips on gardening and sharing his passion for planting. Thanks for coming in.
Derrick Daily: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Belisle: I was looking at your Thursday at 10:00 AM garden tour thing, but you also give garden tours to little guys.
Derrick Daily: We do yeah, that just happened today actually. It’s called the Bugs Life Garden Tour. A child will come. We give them actually a blank paper bag. They transform that paper bag into an insect costume. We have paint, magic markers, crayon, tape. Your imagination just goes wild. You spend a half an hour on making your costume. You put on the costume and sometimes a headband with antennae too to mimic the Monarch Butterfly. We read them a story. It’s called the Monarchs of Astor way. It tells their whole life cycle. We tour the property and we highlight a nesting bird. A salamander, a frog and most importantly we highlight milkweed, which is the only plant the Monarch Butterfly can lay it’s eggs on.
Dr. Belisle: I was over at Inn by the Sea last week with my fifteen year old daughter and we were looking at a milkweed plant. The person who was leading the tour told me that you had a guest one time, that actually cut off a pod of butterfly and attempted to take it back home again. Somebody found out and said, “No, you can’t do that.” Then you went back through and you actually taped that pod and other ones that had been removed back onto the plants.
Derrick Daily: There is some crazy stories. That’s one thing that happened. One time I was leading a tour of children and just that morning, when the eggs hatch the larvae are very large, maybe the size of your average middle thing and they’re striped black, white and yellow, so they’re very easy to see. We had highlighted where all the larvae, the caterpillars of the Monarchs were. When it came time for the tour, we walked by and they were all missing. I was like, “Oh typical, they’re gone.” A boy who was staying in one of the room made kind of a crazy face. I said, “Do you know where these caterpillars are?” He had collected them all in a jar and had them under his bed in his hotel room. He didn’t know. He took them back outside. We saw them. We put them back on the milkweed and all was good. That’s one of the learning tools is, a child is just prone to collect everything.
Another quick funny story was, one time … They were long time guests at Vienna and they had three labs. Chocolate, yellow and black. Very rambunctious. They had those extended leashes. We went up to milkweed and it was a full of three beautiful caterpillars. We’re telling the whole story. Milkweed, Monarch butterflies, really getting into it. The dogs came running over to say hello to us. The owner yanked them back, but before she could yank them, the rope wrapped around the bottom of the milkweed. As she pulled the leash back, all the leaves, it went right up the stalk of the milkweed. The leaves went flying. The Monarchs, it was almost in slow motion. The caterpillars went flying up into the air and splat, splat, splat. It was just like, “Oh my God. The reality of nature really just hit you full on.”
The dog actually wrote a huge apology letter and it turned out to be okay. Three less Monarchs, but it’s just one of the crazy things that happens.
Dr. Belisle: It’s a big responsibility to take care of these butterflies?
Derrick Daily: It really is. It becomes more real every year. This year they had another horrible over wintering in Mexico. There’s many factors effecting the actual Monarch butterfly. Crazy temperature fluctuations that we have. The over use of Roundup, which is an herbicide. The lack of milkweed. People staying back in the day, I guess 1950, 1960, the early seventies. Milkweed just grew everywhere. On roadsides. There weren’t so many suburban subdivisions. There was just tons of it everywhere. No one even thought about it. Now, every year, with our population growing and more and more building, there’s less and less milkweed every year and less and less places for the Monarch to actually lay their eggs.
Dr. Belisle: You officially the Inn by the Sea is considered a Monarch weigh station, is that right?
Derrick Daily: Correct, we’ve been deemed a Monarch weigh station, which means we provide food and shelter for them. When the Monarchs, on their journey from Mexico, when they land in Cape Elizabeth, we welcome them as we would a hotel guest. They find plants that provide them with nectar and pollen. They provide milkweed to lay their eggs on. They find an environment safe, free from the over use of pesticides, so they can feel safe, comfortable and happy. Every year for the last three years, we’ve actually watched the females lay their eggs. Watched the eggs hatch. The little caterpillars eat the milkweed down to almost nothing. Make cocoons and then do on and move on.
Dr. Belisle: You were telling me that, it’s actually four generations before the butterflies go back to Mexico.
Derrick Daily: They over winter in Mexico and then early in February, they leave Mexico and go to Texas. That’s where the male and the female mate and they lay generation one. That male and the female pass and then their eggs hatch. They move further up the east coast, probably as far as North Carolina. Same deal. Mate and lay their eggs all along the way. Then the third generation is New Jersey, up state New York. Fourth generation mate in Canada. Yes it’s really involved life cycle.
Dr. Belisle: That must be part of the reason why it’s so important to actually provide weigh stations for Monarchs.
Derrick Daily: Very important. It’s something that’s very tangible, that an every day person … You don’t really even have to know anything about gardening can do, to help a species, like a Monarch Butterfly continue its life cycle. Their numbers are plummeting. If you were to just allow milkweed to grow into your yard, whether you lived in Maine, North Carolina, or Florida. You’re doing something very positive for the environment, by providing a place for a Monarch Butterfly to lay its eggs.
Dr. Belisle: I remember reading the book by Barbara Kingsolver a few years ago and it was about Monarchs. She’s a fiction writer, but she writes very environmentally aware pieces. I really was struck by the fact that Monarchs … They’re not just a pretty insect. They really are representative of a greater group of pollinators, that if they’re not doing well, there’s kind of something that’s not going on in the right way for the Eco system.
Derrick Daily: Great point and parallels the very existence of human beings, not to be dramatic. Pollinators in every aspect, butterfly and bee, are all not doing well, because the environment is becoming so overloaded with pesticides. A lot of different problems. The crazy weather patterns we’ve been having and lack of space for them to raise their young and diseases are effecting some of them too. You can think of it this way. The butterfly as goes the butterfly, so goes we as the bees as well, because they provide so much of our food. Every time you eat an apple, strawberry, cucumber, orange, it’s because of the bee. A bee has pollinated that, or a butterfly has and it’s thanks to them that we produce as much food as we do.
Dr. Belisle: We’ve been hearing more and more about bees. I don’t know if people have heard as much about Monarchs. What do you think?
Derrick Daily: That’s a good question. I never actually thought of the comparison of the two, as whether you’ve heard about them. I think if there are movies made about Monarchs today. President Obama made a huge effort last year, to preserve land for all pollinators. It’s definitely something that is much more talked about today in 2016, then I would say 1996, or 1986. Every year more and more people learn about them. Schools make a huge effort to teach children about them too.
Dr. Belisle: You’ve been doing the work with the Inn by the Sea, that you’ve been doing for more than fifteen years.
Derrick Daily: Yeah.
Dr. Belisle: You’ve seen this whole evolution form perhaps people being much less aware, or complete unaware of things like pollinators, to now having learned about it in school.
Derrick Daily: Yeah it was fascinating actually. I moved here to attend Southern Maine Technical College. My mom and dad retired here. I lived with my mom, I went back to school. I was thirty five at the time. Never had imagined myself living here for as long as I have, but time goes by so fast. Anyway, went to school. Started gardening there. That was right at the time, when I first started at the Inn by the Sea, there were hardly any gardens. The owner, inn keeper at the time was Marty McQuaid. She was a great woman. Very passionate and very empowering of an employee. I had all this knowledge from SMTC. I planted gardens. We specifically made them low pesticide and insect friendly. Gardening became a passion in the United States.
I credit Martha Stewart with it, because when she came and she made a fine English gardening accessible to the average person, with her magazine, her gardens, her programs, everything. Every person, gardening all of a sudden became a passion. So many people came to the Inn and that’s when we started Garden tours and we started showcasing the gardening we were doing there. We have a lot of feedback. A lot of give and take. The garden tours went into love the environment and respecting how our land, Crescent Beach Sate Park. Approximately five years ago, the new management of Inn by the Sea did a huge renovation. Part of that renovation was to make a rabbitat, which is for the endangered New England cottontail.
That is also helpful. Anytime you make one area more habitable for one species, they all benefit. That whole area and the whole native gardening, using native trees, plants and shrubs in your foundation, in your gardening has come full on. We’ve just paralleled society in a small way. Tours Eco, tours of the Great Pond, children’s garden tours, an awareness of our surroundings.
Dr. Belisle: Talk to me about the rabbitat. From what I understand the issue was that there were invasive species that were taking over from what the New England would normally live in. You tried to reintroduce plants that the New England cottontail would actually enjoy living in.
Derrick Daily: There’s a patch of land, right where our property ends and Crescent Beach begins. If you’ve ever taken the boardwalk from the hotel to the beach, you’ve actually walked right through it. Before it abuts a salt marsh. That whole area, which is approximately I would say six acres, was completely inundated with Japanese Knot weed. It’s an exotic invasive bamboo, that is literally impossible to remove. We’ve battling it tooth and nail for the last five years. We’re sort of winning, but it has a really thick white tap root. If you leave even the tiniest little chunk of root, it can rejuvenate itself and it pops up all over the place, where you haven’t seen it for years.
Long story short, the Japanese knot weed was removed. Honey Suckle was removed. Multi Flora Rose was removed and Bitter Sweet. The plants were removed. The soil was planted with five hundred native trees, plants and shrubs and that is to create a thicket, or a brier, where rabbits will feel comfortable. Coming out of the forest, living in the brier. The endangered New England Cottontail is food for everything. Owls, hawks, coyotes, foxes, you name it. He’s a crucial part of the whole food web. He’s very shy, he or she. They love to just eat clover and grass underneath shelter of a shrub. This whole area, this brier, thicket area was disappearing from our environment, due to the fact that our forest had to matured to a certain point and lawns usually went right up to the forest.
Well this is an area between lawn, or meadow and between the forest, where shrubbery just grows wild and the rabbit feels very comfortable.
Dr. Belisle: You’ve also created a space that’s very healthy for humans, if you’re not spraying as much and the kids are out playing on the lawns. Then they’re not rolling around in pesticides. From what I understand the pool, which is heated by solar panels is not chlorinated. It’s cleaned with I think bromide.
Derrick Daily: Yeah a type of salt.
Dr. Belisle: A type of salt. It seems like all of these things are working together, to try to create a healthier Eco system for really all levels of life.
Derrick Daily: Definitely yeah. Every department in the hotel, they call it a common sense approach to bring. We do everything from the recycling card boards. All of our food scraps are recycled and a company comes to pick them up. Our gardening, the weeds and the clippings too are all taken to … It’s compost and it’s all composted down into this beautiful black gold. The scraps go out and then it’s made into compost and people can use that compost to fertilize their yards.
Dr. Belisle: You grew up outside of Manhattan. How do you become a person that decides he’s so interested in gardens and soil and little critters, and big critters? How did that happen for you?
Derrick Daily: I just was living and working outside of … Living in New York City, grew up outside of New York City. Lived in the city for a while. Did a variety of different jobs. I would always read gardening magazines the night before I went to bed. I was fascinated with gardening. I never envisioned that I would myself be able to create a beautiful garden with perennials, flowering shrubs, annuals, and it was just something that I was always interested in, but it was just more of a hobby than a career. My parents retired here. My dad worked in Manhattan his whole life. My mom and dad moved to Cape Elizabeth. My brother was a graduate of Maine Maritime Academy. They started to vacationing on Peaks. When it was time to get out of the city so to speak, they moved to Cape Elizabeth.
They purchased a home and they said, “Derrick, this is your time, if you want to make a change in your life. Come live with us and go to SMTC and learn about horticulture. I didn’t bat an eye literally. I was vacationing with them, went home, gave my notice. Packed up a U haul. Came here. Went to SMTC. My first semester I took botany and I failed the math entrance exam, because it had been years since I’d done any type of fractions, or decimals, or anything. It was a great program. It was taught at the time by Doctor Richard Churchill. He’s the best. He started the whole plant and soil technology program at SMTC. Went to school. Loved every minute of it. Did an internship at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain, which was just fascinating in itself.
Went through school. Loved, loved, loved it. A woman who was in the program, Brenda Santoro. She was the head gardener at Inn by the Sea at the time. Right as I graduated, it was her time to move on and I moved in and fast forward fifteen years ago. That was fifteen years ago. It blows my mind to say that. Every year they give you a certificate at the end. When mine comes up and this year it will say sixteen. I’m just like, “Oh my God. Yeah, that’s how it all happened and then I’m just still here.
Dr. Belisle: It’s interesting that you would have something that you were passionate about, but in your mind it’s just a hobby. Once you decided, all right, you know what? I’m going to go towards this thing that I feel so passionate about, even if it’s just what I read before I go to bed at night. Then it’s this whole second life for you.
Derrick Daily: Yeah. It was almost as if, the universe had a line to allow me to do this. Do you know what I mean? My mom heard about the program at SMTC. They happen to move here to retire. I was just so fed up. I was a waiter at TGI Friday in Hackensack New Jersey. I remember one day, a customer asked me for a glass of water. I went in the back and I was just like, “I can’t believe they’re drinking water.” A manager pulled me aside and said, “Derrick, you’re burnt out. You’ve just been waiting tables for too long. You’re great, we love you, but it’s time for a change.” That happened. I was like, “You’re right.” That happened right before I came to visit my mom and dad here in Maine. Flew up. They laid their whole plan on me. I was like, “This is genius, whatever, let’s do it.”
It was like something in the universe was aligned to make it happen. I was fed up with my job and my life in New Jersey. Came here. Loved SMTC. The real clincher for me was how I stayed in Maine. One winter I went to live in Jacksonville Florida. A friend of mine Amy Peterson owns Peterson and Then Productions. I lived there for a whole winter. It was fun, but Florida was just one gigantic highway. We went to a million different venues. Did all kinds of crazy things. It was super exciting and super fun. It wasn’t until I went to Florida, Jacksonville Florida for a winter. Then when I was driving back, I remember crossing over from New Hampshire into Maine and taking US Route 1, just to get off the highway for a while. It just hit me. I was like, you know what, I was meant to be here.
It took me seeing the life style in Florida to appreciate what I had right in front of my face the whole time. When I returned from Florida, my parents, that was an incredibly bad winter. They said, “We’re moving to Florida.” I said, “I’m staying here.”
Dr. Belisle: Somehow whatever it was, the alignments, or the energy, somehow you ended up getting put in the right place. It sounds like you’re doing the right thing at the time, at a place where people are a lot more interested and open to you rabita and pollinators and Monarch butterflies. What do you see happening next at the Inn by the Sea? It seems like you are continuing to progress the things that you offer people, your classes and the bugs life tours. What else do you have in that mind of yours?
Derrick Daily: Somewhere in the near future, I see us actually producing flowers, vegetables, that will be used in the kitchen and a beautiful garden of cut flowers that will be used for weddings, for banquets and stuff like that and to decorate the lobby. More towards, taking the amount, the X amount of acres we have now and using pockets all around the property, to actually produce things, that people use.
Dr. Belisle: Is it interesting to you, that you are directly next to Maxwell, where people do pick your own strawberries? Is it interesting that Inn by the Sea if right there?
Derrick Daily: Yeah definitely. It’s a real thrill for someone … I don’t know, if you could imagine living in Manhattan, or Washington DC, or Miami Florida. Then you wake up the next morning. You see the beautiful ocean in front of you, the salt marsh. Then you look to your left and you see people actually … There’s tons of people there today harvesting strawberries. It gives a real … Again, something real, something tangible, a hands on connection to the whole agricultural part of Maine.
Dr. Belisle: Do you think that there are more people going into soil science, gardening and getting the sort of the education that you got? What’s now SMCC, but what was SMTC when you went through?
Derrick Daily: Definitely. I don’t know if the whole ornamental end of it and salt perennials gardens. I maintain the property. My passion is a flowering garden. I always say, if I had to grow my own food, even though I know a ton about plants. I would have to have … I’m not a farmer so to speak, but the thing that excites me the most, is I see young people, more and more and more, getting into actual farming. Purchasing old farms. Rejuvenating them. Growing apples. Making hard cider from the apples, corn. That whole thing is a really fascinating aspect of horticulture.
Dr. Belisle: You draw an interesting distinction and I guess that I have heard that some people really like ornamental gardens and flowers and that things that are related to ornamental gardens. Some people, really it’s the food. What is it about the ornamental gardens that really draws you?
Derrick Daily: I guess it’s just a dream I had in my mind, when I would read gardening magazines. Before I would go to bed every night. I would read about beautiful gardens in England. Just breathtaking gardens in England. I would think, how could someone be so educated to know the whole timing of it? The perennial? The annual? The bi annual? The flowering shrub? The flowering trees? It’s almost like an artist uses paints to create a painting. You use flowers to make something beautiful. It’s your median to express yourself with. It’s fascinating, because you would never … Even if you lived for two hundred years learn every single thing and there’s always new introductions to the market place too. It’s something that keeps your mind always going. You’re always reading more about it, always learning more about it.
The greatest thing to do is go to someone else’s garden. I’ll give a shout out to the Cape Elizabeth Garden Tour. It’s amazing, coming up. You see what other people do with their property. It energizes you to come back and just do more with yours.
Dr. Belisle: I agree with you that the Cape Elizabeth Garden Tour is amazing. I think Maine home design has always been very interested in promoting the Cape Elizabeth Garden Tours and other types of garden tours. The landscape around the house can be just as important as the house itself. It’s the setting that we live in. I think about people who visit Inn by the Sea and wherever it is that they came from. They’re getting this little bit of respite from maybe a city, maybe a desert, whatever the landscape. Part of this is because of the work that you do.
Derrick Daily: Definitely yeah. I think of it as one giant outdoor room. Housekeeping works so hard. The restaurant works hard, the front desk is so amazing. Everyone does their part. My piece of the puzzle is providing an outdoor setting, where you’ll be a little wowed. Every gardener had a pride and they want … When you open the two back doors and you over look the property, you want someone to be like, “Wow.” We do get that reaction sometimes. That motivates you to work hard and my piece of the puzzle is the outdoor part of Inn by the Sea, is one giant room so to speak, where guests, children, dogs, anyone can enjoy themselves and give you something beautiful to look at and something to experience.
Dr. Belisle: Do you have any tips? Other than go visit Inn by the Sea, which I will encourage everybody to do, because they will want to see your beautiful work. Do you have any tips for people who are trying to make their own gardens healthy for pollinators, or maybe do other things that a little bit more Eco friendly?
Derrick Daily: Definitely. My greatest tip to gardeners is, as opposed to using chemical fertilizers, like your miracle grows. Before you even plant, use compost. We buy our compost from Jordan in Cape Elizabeth. It’s made of lobster shells, cow manure, oak leaves, branches, leaf clippings. All things deemed unusable by society and food scraps. They break down into what I call black gold, because it really is. You take the extra step by, you lay out your garden. You incorporate your compost. You plant in that compost and then subsequent years, you top dress with compost. What I’m saying is, compost is great and that’s my tip. Definitely check out compost and use compost in all your gardens.
Dr. Belisle: I’m a huge fan of compost. We did half a show on compost, not too long ago. We love compost here. I’m totally with you. Rock on compost. When I start my garden next year, I think I will be following that tip. I appreciate the time that you’re taking, I know it’s a busy season for you and all the work that you’re doing within the gardens, the education that you’re doing. We’ve been speaking with the head gardener at Inn by the Sea, Derrick Daily, who is an SMCC graduate of the plant and soil technology school and also has been an intern at Arnold Arboretum and for the past fifteen years, we’ve been luck to have him here in Maine at Inn by the Sea. I encourage people to go to Inn by the Sea. Maybe have a garden tour with you. If you have a small child, or a large child, do the bugs life tour, or really get to know what types of things Inn by the Sea is doing.
You can also read about the Inn by the Sea in an upcoming issue of Maine magazine. Thanks so much for coming today and talking with me today.
Derrick Daily: Yeah, definitely, it was great. Thank you very much.