22 the American Gardener

IT IS WELL WORTH the dusty tripalong winding Buncombe Road insouth central Tennessee just to walk

with Harald Neubauer through the fieldsof his family nursery. The vigorous 66-year-old’s face is tanned, his hair almostwhite, his enthusiasm contagious.

Behind him, the sun-bright leaves ofthousands of field-grown redbuds—Cer-cis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ and ‘Heartsof Gold’—stretch out in long, undulat-

ing ribbons of purple and warm gold to-ward the surrounding green hills. Con-tinuing the redbud parade are theglossy-green leaves of ‘Traveller’, a weep-ing redbud, and ‘Silver Cloud’, a white-on-green variegated redbud introducedby legendary Kentucky plantsmanTheodore Klein.

Their long rows join almost 100,000other diverse shade and ornamental plantsthat Neubauer and his son, Alex, have

budded in the field and offer in their Hid-den Hollow Nursery catalog.

GRAFTING MAGICThe trees are the product of an outdoorpropagating technique Neubauer all butpioneered; he was the first American nurs-eryman to bud thousands of magnoliasand witch hazels in the field. Budding is aform of grafting in which a single bud of adesired plant is inserted into a slit in the

BY BOB HILL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL HAYMAN

Working beneath the radar, Harald Neubauer is one of the propagation wizards who keeps

wholesale and retail nurseries stocked with the latest woody plant selections.

the Legend ofHidden Hollow

Surrounded by rows of field-grown ‘Forest Pansy’ and ‘Hearts of Gold’ redbuds, Harald Neubauer carries a harvest of freshly cut budwood.

the Legend ofHidden Hollow

BY BOB HILL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL HAYMAN

bark of a stock plant. He perfected thetechnique the hard way—bent like ahuman horseshoe over his rootstocks forlong hours in the Tennessee sun.

“I didn’t want to propagate indoors be-cause I didn’t want to water plants everyday,” Neubauer recalls. “I decided to throwthe book away and write my own.”

He is still easily able to bend at thewaist and place the palms of his handsflat on the ground, but with Alex joiningthe nursery full-time about nine yearsago, Harald has cut back his graftingschedule, which lasts three months eachyear, from seven days a week to a meresix. “I’m slowing down,” he says.

Father and son will annually bud the100,000 plants on their 10 acres, well upfrom the “couple thousand” redbuds Har-ald budded 22 years ago when he firststarted the nursery.

The budding understock is eithergrown from seed or purchased in huge lots.Using irrigation lines, fertilizer, and atten-tion to detail, the Neubauers can annually

coax six to eight feet of growth from eachtiny bud. It is “biological magic with aknife, bud sticks, and rootstocks,” saysMichael Dirr, a University of Georgia hor-ticulture professor and woody plant expert.

ALWAYS SOMETHING NEWScattered among the long rows of plantsare many new selections found by garden-ing friends around the world and sent tothe Neubauers to evaluate and propagate.One of the challenges for plant growers isrecognizing worthy new plants; another ismeeting the demand for their production.“Harald makes the best of the new varietiesavailable quickly,” says John Elsley, horti-cultural director of Klehm’s Song SparrowNursery in Avalon, Wisconsin.

Neubauer’s intuition and productionefficiency both came into play with the in-troduction of ‘Hearts of Gold’ redbud.The plant, with its golden yellow leaves inspring, was discovered in 2003 growingnear a dentist’s office in North Carolina,and was referred to Neubauer by North

Carolina horticulturist Jon Roethling. “I was told if I needed someone to

propagate a redbud, Harald was theman,” says Roethling. “He’s one of thebest budders and grafters there is.” So hesent a piece to Neubauer. Within a fewyears Neubauer had hundreds flowingacross his fields, in anticipation of the de-mand for the new selection.

When Dirr saw ‘Hearts of Gold’ for thefirst time at the JC Raulston Arboretum inRaleigh, North Carolina, he says, “I couldnot contain my enthusiasm.” He inquiredwhere he could get one and almost imme-diately received one sent by Neubauer viaa mutual friend. “He already had the plantin production,” marvels Dirr. “He’s alwaysahead of the curve.”

Steve Hottovy of Beyond Green nurs-ery in Dayton, Oregon, had a similar ex-perience with the ‘Wildfire’ black gum(Nyssa sylvatica), which sports dramaticburgundy new growth in spring. At first,Hottovy thought the plant was a photiniathat had popped up in a batch of seedlings.

23July / August 2007

“Harald is one of the great people in the business. He, like the noble DonShadow, can put roots on a telephone pole.”

—Michael Dirr, woody plant expert

Above: Harald Neubauer and his son and business partner, Alex,right, stand amid a field of a yet-unnamed variegated dogwood varietythat features an attractive reddish blush on new growth, left.

24 the American Gardener

He mentioned the plant when Neubauerwas visiting Oregon. The following year,Hottovy sent Neubauer some scion wood.

“He sent back eight-foot trees in oneseason,” Hottovy says. “It was amazing.”

EARLY UPHEAVALSIt is also amazing that Neubauer endedup in rural Tennessee at all. He was bornin 1941 in Silesia, a strongly German areain what is now Poland. When the Russ-ian Army approached the region at theend of World War II, his father, a railroademployee, smuggled out his wife andfour children in a railroad car. The fam-ily fled to Torgau on the Elbe River,

which, after the war, was part of Com-munist East Germany.

Neubauer’s childhood playground waslittered with the refuse of war: guns, phos-phorus grenades, and airplane fuel tanks.His first garden was a collection of smallcacti. After about 10 years in Torgau,Neubauer’s father arranged once again tohave the family concealed in a railroad carcompartment and smuggled past armedguards across the Iron Curtain to WestGermany, where he met them.

“It must have been rough on my par-ents,” says Neubauer. “That was twicethey left everything behind.”

LEARNING THE TRADE After high school, an uncle with a nurseryin Berlin helped Neubauer get a job at anursery in Elmshorn, where he learned tograft plants such as willows, currants, andgooseberries. The experience got him

hooked. “It seemed like magic,” he says.In 1964, at 23, he brought what Elsley

calls “a traditional nursery backgroundand a European sensibility” to the Unit-ed States for a one-year apprenticeship atthe Shadow family nursery near Win-chester, Tennessee. There he workedwith Don Shadow, another nursery leg-end in the making, establishing hisAmerican roots. Hidden Hollow wouldeventually be located only a few milesfrom Shadow’s nursery.

Neubauer returned to Germany to at-tend college and after graduation went towork for a veneer manufacturing compa-ny. His first assignment was a six-monthjaunt along the barely navigable roads ofSouth America in a Volkswagen bus insearch of veneer. “It was quite a trip,” hesays. “I didn’t speak a word of Spanish.”

Over the next few years, as he traveledthrough Central and South America,

Bud grafting in the field requires a strong back, as Alex Neubauer and a nursery employeedemonstrate, above, while budding 'Tennessee Pink' redbuds onto a row of rootstock. Theprocess, left, involves removing a section of bark from the rootstock where a bud of thedesired plant, or scion, will be attached.

Neubauer learned to speak Spanish, Eng-lish, Dutch, and Portuguese.

He met his future wife, Susie, on ablind date while back in Tennessee for avisit. They were married in 1970 andlived for a time in Honduras. ButNeubauer missed propagating plants.“You cut down a lot of trees in the veneerbusiness. I thought it was time to payback.” So the Neubauers decided to re-turn to Tennessee and start a nursery.

A FAMILY AFFAIRIn the early days, Neubauer raised cattle onthe farm while grafting Japanese maples forDon Shadow. But he stubbornly began

field grafting redbuds and witch hazels forhimself. “I love witch hazels,” he says, buthe was told they’d be difficult to sell sincethey would already have bloomed by thetime the garden centers opened in spring.“I said, well, all of Europe can’t be wrongbecause everybody has a witch hazel intheir yard,” says Neubauer.

Susie Neubauer worked with her hus-band in the fields and handled the officework. Neubauer honed his techniqueswhile increasing his stock and client base.

Over time, the Neubauers expandedtheir small house, nursery, and family. SonsNick and Alex both worked in the nursery,but it was Alex who developed the most in-

terest in plants and propagation. After at-tending the University of North Carolinain Asheville, Alex returned to Tennessee tohelp with the family nursery. Now co-owner of Hidden Hollow, he and his wife,Amy, and their two children live in a housenear the propagation fields.

REDBUDS, DOGWOODS, AND MOREOf the 100,000 plants they propagate, onlyabout half end up as stock the Neubauerswill ship all over the United States and theworld. The rest are culled in the interest ofquality control. “We have a reputation forgood plants,” says Neubauer.

Shipping season means 90-hour workweeks for everyone. The Neubauers pushto keep the plants going out the door—and their ever-growing customer base sup-plied—has been matched by another chal-lenge: finding new plants to propagate.

One of Neubauer’s most significantcontributions to the garden industry, ac-cording to Elsley, is “the wider availabilityand greater selection of redbuds.” In addi-tion to ‘Forest Pansy’, ‘Hearts of Gold’,‘Traveller’, and ‘Silver Cloud’, there are‘Appalachian Red’, a glowing pink-red in-troduction from the late Max Byrkit ofHagerstown, Maryland; ‘Tennessee Pink’,a Neubauer introduction with true pinkblooms; and ‘Royal White’, a prolificwhite-flowered selection.

And redbuds are only part of the show.The fields include dozens of rare cultivarsof dogwood (Cornus kousa and C. florida),yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), tulippoplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), magnolia(Magnolia spp.), witch hazels (Hamamelisspp.), zelkova (Zelkova serrata), and blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica).

25July / August 2007

Harald Neubauer was the first to mass-produce Lavender Twist® weeping eastern redbud (Cerciscanadensis ‘Covey’), a small variety featuring purplish-pink flowers and contorted branches.

Neubauer found this variegated native witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana), which he hascloned at Hidden Hollow Nursery.

Hidden Hollow Nursery214 Tanager Hill LaneBelvidere, TN 37306. ■ Hidden Hollow is a wholesale nurs-ery and is not open to the public. Forinformation about wholesale plant orders and availability, e-mail AlexNeubauer at amyandalexn@aol.com.

The Neubauer propagation fields typ-ically include 35,000 dogwoods, 15,000redbuds, and 7,000 witch hazels amongthe other woody treasures.

Eastern dogwood (Cornus florida) se-lections include red-flowered ‘CherokeeChief ’ and white, double-flowered ‘Plena’.Hidden Hollow also offers three newmildew- and anthracnose-resistant dog-woods from the University of Tennessee:‘Appalachian Blush’, ‘Appalachian Snow’,and ‘Appalachian Spring’.

Chinese dogwoods (Cornus kousa) in-clude the heavy-blooming ‘Milky Way’,the pink-flowered ‘Satomi’, and the green-and-white variegated ‘Wolf Eyes’.

There are also his homegrown surpris-es to be evaluated; the variegated, dwarf,upright, or weeping plants the Neubauersfind popping up among their own stock orin the surrounding fields and woods.“Every spring you get new stuff,” saysNeubauer. “They start coming out like lit-tle kids and you want to run over to seewhat they’re turning into.”

With his eye for recognizing remarkableplants and his gift for propagating them,Neubauer has helped introduce numerousvarieties that might otherwise have been

lost. He “saved many one-of-a-kind plantsfor us from a single, dying stick of wood,”says landscape architect and plant explor-er Ozzie Johnson of Chamblee, Georgia.

Neubauer combines his skills with pa-tience, hard work, and a demand for qual-ity. Johnson observes that Neubauer’s“uniqueness begins with his honest, opendemeanor and hospitality and ends withthe great contributions he has made to theintroduction of great garden-worthyplants.” As Dirr notes, “Our gardens arericher for his passion and efforts.” �

Bob Hill is a columnist for the LouisvilleCourier-Journal and a co-owner of HiddenHill rare plant nursery and sculpture garden.

26 the American Gardener

HARALD NEUBAUER’SINTRODUCTIONSHere are some of Harald Neubauer’sfavorite selections—both in cultivationand under evaluation.

Black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) ‘Autumn Cascades’ (a weeping form) ‘Red Rage’ (clean green leaves) ‘Wildfire’ (red-tipped new growth)Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas)‘Kintoki’ (a dwarf cultivar with

bright green leaves)Eastern dogwood (Cornus florida)‘Appalachian Spring’ (a white-

flowered plant resistant to anthracnose)

Redbud (Cercis canadensis)‘Appalachian Red’ (brilliant reddish,

pink flowers)‘Hearts of Gold’ (golden-yellow

foliage) ‘Tennessee Pink’ (Neubauer’s own

selection with a true pink flower)‘Traveller’ (a weeper with glossy

green leaves) Sweet bay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana)‘Coosa’ (dwarf form)‘Green Bay’ (evergreen)Sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua)‘Slender Silhouette’ (can grow 60

feet tall and six feet wide)Tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)‘Little Volunteer’ (dwarf form)Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)‘Little Susie’ and ‘Little Daddy’

(dwarf forms)‘Mohawk Red’ (red flowers)Zelkova (Zelkova serrata)‘Ogon’ (yellow-green leaves and light

orange bark)

Top: ‘Wolf Eyes’ is one of several Chinese dogwood cultivars propagated at Hidden HollowNursery. Above: Harald Neubauer takes cuttings from a new variety of dogwood producedfrom a cross between Chinese and American species.