August 1, 2010: A Trip to Two Indiana Farms

HomeGrown keeps it local this week with a visit to a pair of Indiana family farms dealing in food, wine, ornamental grasses and flowers. Bob and Jeneen drop in on Stream Cliff Farm near Commiskey, Indiana, a fifth-generation family farm featuring wine, homegrown food, gardens, flowers, old buildings and nostalgia. Then it’s a stop at Memory View Greenhouse south of Scottsburg, which offers almost 50 cultivars of ornamental grasses along with many perennials, all of it set on another historic family location.

See photos of Memory View Nursery and Stream Cliff Farm

Find out more:

• Memory View Greenhouse contact info
• Ornamental grasses for Indiana landscapes
• Stream Cliff Farm
• Indiana Wine Trail
• Indiana Agritourism

Do you know of a local garden or farm that HomeGrown should visit? Get in touch and tell us about it!

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Got a question? Bob and Jeneen may have the answer. Your question could be part of the next HomeGrown program. Ask your question via phone at (502) 814-8246, or send us an e-mail. You can also write to us at 619 S. 4th Street, Louisville, Kentucky, 40202.

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About the hosts: Bob Hill has been a columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal for 25 years, including several years spent wandering Kentucky and Southern Indiana in search of interesting people, fun, fact and whimsy. He’s also written eight books on subjects as diverse as gardening, the history of basketball, the history of the Louisville Slugger bat, manic-depression through the eyes of five families dealing with the illness and a true crime book about a Louisville man who got away with murder. He’s also published two collections of his columns. He and his wife Janet are co-owners of Hidden Hill, a plant nursery and sculpture garden built around their old farmhouse and eight rolling acres of land about eight miles northeast of Louisville near Utica, IN. Bob has been raising and propagating rare and unusual plants for 20 years, and has traveled to England and Ireland as well as much of the United States in pursuit of his hobby. Send Bob an e-mail.

Jeneen Wiche, a native of Louisville, started gardening as soon as she could walk. Her professional career in gardening, however, did not begin until her father, the late Fred Wiche, died of cancer in 1998. After his death she began writing the syndicated garden column that had been his. Today she writes a weekly column that is published in about 20 community newspapers across Kentucky and Southern Indiana. In 1999 she started to produce a weekly garden segment for WDRB-Fox 41 television. And in the fall of 2001 joined Bob Hill and began producing HomeGrown, her favorite job outside of working in the garden. Jeneen earned a Bachelors degree from Kalamazoo College in 1991 and a Masters in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona in 1996. In addition to her horticultural pursuits, she has been teaching American Indian Studies courses part-time at the University of Louisville since 1998. She lives with her husband, Andy Smart, in western Shelby County on 20 acres named Swallow Rail, the place her father began to shape into a horticultural farm in 1979. Jeneen and Andy continue to cultivate his legacy with an eye towards diversifying the overall garden scheme including herbaceous and woody plants, native prairie and aquatic plants, an orchard, nut grove, fruits and vegetables. Send Jeneen an e-mail.