This was published originally in 2011. Doc Martin passed away earlier this month. He loved his garden and he loved talking to people about it. There was nothing like it anywhere in Indianapolis. RIP Doc Martin. — jems, 7/20/18
Most of us have been moving our pots of rain lilies and bananas indoors or digging dahlias, cannas and other tender plants for winter storage, protected from freezing temperatures.
For Freeman Martin, this rite of fall takes at least two weeks and six box trucks to move hundreds of tropical begonias, gingers, cordylines and hundreds of other exotic plants. Some of his plants, like the brugmansia, tower at 7 feet or more.
The goal is to avoid cutting the plants back each year so that they keep their size, drama, color, scent, flower and foliage. He moves them to his vacant childhood home. After the first frost, the 74-year-old Indianapolis physician populates the homestead with the plants, kept comfortable with temps in the 50s and a few overhead fluorescent lights.
His tropical fever began years ago when visiting a friend in the Caribbean, where he snipped a piece of a plant to start his own collection. Known locally as Doc Martin, he’s a frequent shopper at garden centers, where he hunts for the latest coleus or begonia and buys about any large tropical he can find.
Tropicals “totally give you the feeling of being somewhere else,” said Martin on a late summer day at his residence on Indianapolis northwest side.
From the time you drive up, you know you are some place exotic. Dozens of lantana adorn the bed that greets the street, followed by numerous begonias, impatiens and fuchsias planted among hardy hostas. A tunnel of brugmansias leads visitors to a backyard, densely planted with more exotic plants.
He moves plants from their winter home to his suburban landscape beginning in mid-May. “I was still arranging them on this July 4, so I was a little later than usual.”
Every year he says he threatens to cut back. Seeing him joyous in his element, though, you sense it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
