Music I'm really excited to be here in the garden with
Tingshu Hu and Philip Zhao this morning because they are the Reader Garden Award winners for 2023
and thank you for welcoming us into your garden today it's so beautiful. Thanks for coming to our
gardens. We're so excited to be here. Great pleasure to have you here yeah. Well thank you and there's
a lot to talk about here, there's so many different things I'm excited to share with our viewers
this is a great and really pretty entrance to your garden here with these perennials here it's
really colorful, when did you plant this? Yeah , actually it was very different last year we had
three big mugo pines, each one was like eight feet wide! Oh wow! They take up all the spaces
and it doesn't look very good so we replace those with this Blue Spruce and lots of perennials.
So how did you get these, so these perennials are only one year old or some of them are. Yeah, only one year old. So
how did you get, you must have great soil here. We dumped a lot of compost, chicken poops, on top before the planting. So how do you get your
chicken, your chicken manure compost? You have chickens here, right? we have about 30 to 40 chicken. Oh
wow! It keeps those uh just to for fertilizing on the vegetable garden, for our garden. So you have a
good supply of compost then? Yeah we never we don't buy fertilizers. What's your process for
making the compost? Oh yeah just uh we have several dump um composed bins, we save those chicken poops
from there for like half a year and then we move them to the vegetable gardens and then spring in the
spring we spread them out in the garden. Okay so so you rotate them. Yes. To different bins throughout
the year and what it's six to eight months. Yes. You have finished compost. Yes. Perfect that's
great well. I can't wait to see more let's take a look up here a little bit further, Okay, sure.
Let's go, let's go. Tingshu, I love all these little plants that you have intermixed together,
ground covers and reseeding plants these little violas when did you how long have you had these?
Oh I don't know maybe for 14 years. Oh gosh! I just planted a couple of these plants in the
backyard I have no idea how they got here maybe the Chipmunks, or something yeah. The birds or something. The birds.
that lives on this yeah and so I don't need to plant them. It's so interesting how they
just insert themselves in between the cracks and in between stones it's it's better than I mean
I couldn't find a better spot for them than they found for themselves I think. Yeah there's tiny
spot it's very hard for me to plant them yeah but a different spot. Do they, so in the summer
I'm assuming they sort of start going down a little bit in the summer or they don't look quite
as pretty as they do now. Yeah they will grow like this tall, two feet, and then the seeds will start you will get
ready and then I don't want to have too many of those so I just pull them out and the good thing
is that the roots is very small, just a little bit, and then when you put it out it
will not disturbish the soil. Oh, perfect okay, and then and then all these Ground Covers
it's just sort of like a living mulch through the garden. Yeah, yeah. Let everything go
together. Yeah, only in the first year, before the feeding of this space, I add some
mulch, put it down. Yeah I don't need to do. But now you don't need it because everything is just
woven together into this yes beautiful tapestry. Thank you. You two have a really productive
partnership here, what are your specialties? Yeah, I think Tingshu is the Master Gardener of
the gardens, she knows everything about plants. The plant person. Yeah ,yeah but for me I like building
things. Okay. And this is the one that the newer uh project we just built last year. Okay. So we
wanted to add a modern touch to this Garden and uh we built up this shallow fish tank, fish
pond and we have a smaller tank that collects all the leaves over and over there we have the pump.
Pumps water all the way back here and this is a filter that serves dual purposes so it's actually
a tiny aquaponic growing patch so it collects all the nutrients from the fish pond and release the
cleaner water back to the fish pond. So in this way I don't need to clean up the filters very
often. Nice, because that's good and then you can grow different things right here in this little
in this little garden that's fed. Exactly, yeah we are trying uh strawberries and tomatoes this year.
It looks like they're growing well. You see these fruits, tomato fruits. Yeah, there's lots of
tomatoes coming on yeah that'll be fun fun to uh handy handy to pick too. Yeah yeah and then
also the waterfall the sound of it that we love it very much.It's relaxing really relaxing
here. Yeah and then so then you also built this Solarium at the same time. Yeah this is kind of
the temporary solarium and the seasonal solarium at the time because now it's spring and summer
it's wide open but winter time we'll cover it up with with glass, plexi glasses and in the coldest
of days when sun shines the temperature inside this solarium and can go way up and more than 80 degrees
and we have that pipe over there we have the blower underneath to guide the hot air back into
the house and we we still can feel it the warmth of it. It helps keep the house a little bit warmer in the winter time, and then what do you do with your fish in the winter? Yeah in winter time
because the the pound is too shallow. And these are Koi. We scoop them out yeah and get them back
into the sun room now we have a 250 gallon fish tank over there and they live happily over there.
And do you have an aquaponics system in there as well? There is another one as well yeah and we
like the idea of having the plants taking uh all the nutrients right. That's really smart,
what a great way to use to use all these resources. I love it! And then this is such a pretty
little bed over here, lots of color going on. Yeah. I like how you plant it in each of the each of the
holes of this, yeah, it's like a new planting pocket. Yeah versatile plants very cute but it will fill
up this bed. When they cascade over the edges. Yeah, this is like the creeping Jenny cover over yeah the
wall. That'll cover the whole thing, beautiful . I know you started in the backyard was this also
all lawn when you first moved here? Yes, it was. When did you how did you decide to start
planting here and when did you do that? Yeah we hated it in the very beginning because I
say I want to keep it consistent to our neighbors we all have huge lawns in the front yard and it's the time
when it becomes necessary when we got this. Luke! I want to give him a space that he can run
freely and and sunny space and that's the place. So that's that's the year of 2016-17. Okay.
So we started building the fences, the width you can see the width of these, the spacing,
the spacing is to the width that he cannot get out, but over the time we started planting
the the flowers around the fences and we got approval from our neighbors, they liked it. They
enjoyed it. They enjoyed it, then we started to plant more and add a vegetable garden here as well, it's
not visible from outside actually with the fences. Then we got problems of rabbits. Always the rabbits.
They can get through these fences so that is when we think about maybe we need to add an extra
layer of protection because we don't want to shoot them or cage them we just say it has a clear
line that say don't get in here then we live happily like in our own world so that's when
we add up these chicken wires so it's not that visible from a distance, Not at all. But it's functional very
much and it prevents rabbits from getting in. And do you put something down low as well do you
have to dig in? Yeah, we have to bury them deep down. For four or three feet, three or four inches
below the soil the chicken wire. Keep the rabbits it away. Perfect that's great. It's
really nice and then the other thing I noticed over here is you have this edging here along the
flower beds and that's for a new toy. Yeah, we just got a few months ago. That's a robotic lawnmower. Right. Yeah so it
needs guidance I need to have a runway to cut through all the edges of the the grass
so that's when we build up this one so the wheels didn't go up onto this pass so they can cut
its clean so instead of me to add in trimming to that. Well, it's a functional and beautiful both.
Yeah, it saves lots of time yeah as well. That's nice. It's enjoyable to see it working while
sitting there sipping on coffee or something . That's right, exactly exactly, and then this is
uh one of your sunniest spots in the garden. Yes, yes. Full sun. Full sun spot, so you
have a couple of vegetables growing here it looks like. Yeah. You've got the garlic and uh I see it
has some scapes on it right now. Yes, yes. So tell me about how you how you harvest your garlic. Oh
I use that tool yeah. So you have a special tool? Yeah, I have a special tool I just use that too
to cut through a very thin layer of it from top to the bottom and then just slide this out. So it
slices all the way down. Yeah. And then you harvest the whole the whole scape all the way down to
them. Yes. I always had been harvested I'd been doing it wrong all this time just snapping it
off at the top. You wasted most of the delicious part. Now I know. Because actually it's very
sharp it will have minimum damage to the leaves so the leaves will keep growing and feeding
the bulbs. So that you can harvest the bulbs. Yes. In a month or two. The bulbs will be this big in another month. Perfect, perfect and then this is an unusual
lettuce and I've never seen I've never seen before. Yeah, this is called Celtuce, or stem
lettuce. Stem lettuce or Celtuce, OK. We have it for the stem. It will grow like this big. OK. And this tall. Wow, and so when you harvest it
you take the leaves off? Yes, the leaves, the leaves also can be cooked okay but because I have
too much of this I feed it to the chickens. Right, well you have well-fed chick well-fed and
healthy chickens oh yeah lots of they eat their greens. You take the leaves off
and chop chop up the stems. Yeah. And use them like you would use celery or? Yeah like I can fry ,
stir fry or just like make some kind of salad with it. Right or like pickle. Marinade and then you eat
them raw. Perfect, that sounds delicious. I have two different types of lettuce over here, one is early ripening, I have already harvested all of them, and this is uh we'll be in like two or three weeks and then we'll be ready. So are the early ones the early ones are quicker
to to bolts and yeah they're a little bit more heat tolerant yes so they're a little slower in
the bolt. Yes, okay and then I plant this summer vegetables and those kind of. So you interplant
the early season crops with the summer heat loving crops. Yes. in these beds. That's
perfect, that's a really smart use of the space. Yeah. That's great. So the backyard's where your
garden started right and what was it like when you first moved here? When we just moved here
there's nothing just a lawn, all grasses and it took too much effort and water, fertilizers, we decided
to make it into a garden with a variety of plants. We started with two key elements in this garden
that we we built - first one is this crabapple tree that Tingshu likes the most. It has to be at the
center of this gardens if she wants to see from inside, and my dream of a garden is a fish pond.
I want it to be at the remote end of the lawn so that we have a destination, a focal point that this
is has a reason for us to go through the garden to to that fish pond. So this is how we started. We
planted this tree first, and then we built up that fish pond over there and after that everything is
built around these two key elements So they were all framing, it's all framing and working around
these first two things that you put in. You have borders and plants all over and then
you've got these paths that go through and did you you did all the path you did everything
yourself? We did everything, we build up everything for our hands and this path is uh not what we
originally designed, initially we thought about more natural curving winding path to the back,
but when we got these bricks and we had a second thought because a winding path where it needs lots
of cut. On the bricks. On the bricks, so then we decided we probably should go with straight line. Well
I like it because the the the plantings are so exuberant and beautifully mixed together it's kind
of nice to have those straight line contrast. Kind of contrast. Yeah yeah it's a nice combination.
It turned out to be pretty good. Yeah, I think so too I think so too. These hazelnut trees serves
actually two purposes here it's sitting in between the garden and the greenhouse and the height is
perfect that it blocks the view from the garden. Nice. And winter time and when all the leaves
fall they still get the sunlight through into the the greenhouse, but it has another interesting function is that we have peach trees over there on
the on the slope and the squirrels coming from the trees over here and these hazelnut stop squirrels
from going further into the peach trees. They're well fed here. Yeah, they're very well fed here,
they they love the hazelnuts, nice, so it stops them from getting the peaches over there. So you like
peaches better than hazelnuts. Yes so we are happy as well just let them get all the hazelnuts. Yeah,
I would say that too that's good and so speaking of the greenhouse then this is your pandemic
project. Yes, exactly so when everybody stays at home it's 2020 yeah and we use this as a
physical exercise so this one is half sunken for multiple reasons, the first one is that because
of the scale of it the size of it we don't want this overtaking the view of the garden, so it's
less visible with this height and the other part is that this is built with the climate battery
and the geothermal concept in it, so it's a sunken greenhouse, makes it better to keep the heat in
the winter time, This has been so interesting and fun today giving a tour of your garden, it's just beautiful
and so in so many things to so many ideas and projects to learn from as well and I'd like to
just really congratulate you on the 2023 Reader Garden Award. Thank you for the award. Thank you so
much for visiting us, you're welcome back anytime. I would love to come back and see it in a different
time of year I know it's a beautiful all year.
