🐝THRIFTED Rooftop Pollinator Garden❗️|| Linda Vater

well tracy i have been wanting to do this for  so long and we had planned on doing this over a   year ago but then coveted and all sorts of  different things kind of prevented that so   you guys i am so excited to be here we have  wanted to do this field trip for such a long   time i'm here with my friend tracy so tracy  and her daughter have this absolutely magical   business in automobile alley off of broadway in  oklahoma city called the plenty mercantile it   has such a captivating story i'm so inspired by it  by tracy and her daughter brittany so share just   a little bit about your pilgrimage on how you  got from where you were to how you have opened   up this incredible place you're so sweet um this  is actually my daughter's business plan from osu   she went through the entrepreneurship okay i wish  you guys oklahoma state university not yet yes   we don't want to we don't want her to get mad at  us yes oklahoma osu oklahoma state university go   pogs um the entrepreneurship and sustainability  hybrid program so she wrote a business plan we   decided we would go into business together looked  all over downtown oklahoma city for a building   we're hoping for a much smaller size but we  fell in love with this 1920 chevy dealership   and historic automobile valley and that was 2012  so we've been here for nine years so first of   all it shows you what a good business plan it was  that it's so enduring this whole area is exploding   you guys i keep saying that oklahoma city is the  new austin and this whole area is just absolutely   incredible this building is magnificent it's the  venue for something called creative mornings here   in oklahoma city it's where tracy and i got to  know each other um and everywhere you look i i'm   almost a little bit overwhelmed because there is  charm absolutely everywhere you look and it is a   good aged sustainable earth friendly reuse recycle  repurpose kind of kind of charm that is just what   i and tracy are all about just um like from the  doors to uh you're hanging olive baskets over here   to the industrial feel of your furnishings and  everything we've tried to make it a venue that   you don't have to bring a lot of stuff in so you  can come have your event and it's already it's   already here for you yeah and it's it's just  it's not too precious it's tough it's rugged   i don't want to spend too much time down here but  it is an event center and you can come over here   there's a bar that can be set up there is just  all sorts of activities that can take place here   you can see the homage yeah the homage to the cars  and things um with the garage doors that open up   these old industrial windows that are a lot of  weddings we have a lot of people that get married   in front of the windows we have a great alley so  we have food trucks that pull into the alley with   white lights so you can eat upstairs or downstairs  except for incredible okay so here is my first   you're gonna want to copy this this is this is  what i'm talking about the kind of stuff that   just makes my brain buzz just look at the ladders  over here and how they've painted them halfway up   and how the paint color matches the wall color and  just how chic that is how chic how simple simple   simple how it's just rustic elegance it's got that  kind of shaker simplicity that i absolutely adore   and the cafe lights the exposed beams the  light fixtures the industrial chic kind of   of light fixtures that's  just really really incredible   and tracy go ahead okay no we've got  daughter no no absolutely this is fun coming in there okay so you guys  you guys meet brittany no no no   she it was her brilliant business plan  that made all of this happy it is a   multi-generational thing i'm linda i have not  met brittany brittany oh so nice to meet you   you're great yes so it's just we're going to take  a look at the rooftop we're going to kind of look   around the shop and i just can't sing you guys  praises enough it's just absolutely incredible   what you've done here we're the team we have an  amazing team that helps it all through or make   it happen well i'm sure we're going to meet  them a little bit later a little bit later so   if you will excuse us we'll let you get back to  your work and we're going to go upstairs to the rooftops tracy and i have just come up the  stairs and i really want to give you all   a feel of the the size and the scale of this place  look at this massive hanging basket it's a wooden   hanging basket on this incredible industrial  chain right here and then very considerately   because we've had so much rain lately they have  umbrellas at the ready and then look at that   magnificent wall display through these plate glass  windows of the cactus collection that they have   and i'm sure there is a story behind those behind  those containers what are those tracy carry grain   on a conveyor belt they scooped up grain so  where do you find all of your things just in a   we do a lot round talk canton just flea  market just for the markets well sometime   um i need to go along with you just to see i know  that would be so much fun i would just love to see   how your brain works um i can drive a trailer  like nobody's business i i bet she can i have   already seen her uh her driving backing abilities  today that's a whole nother video but look at the   scope this is downtown oklahoma city so we are  just just very or you don't consider yourself   downtown but this is the automobile alley  district which is just contiguous to downtown   would you say that and stuart can show you the  skyline and the devon tower for those of us around   the world or in other parts of the country that is  the tallest building west of the mississippi true   and it is an energy business oklahoma city is  kind of one of the energy capitals of the world   um for oil and gas but it's just so cool  there's even even on a hot day like today   there's a nice beautiful breeze up here  and this is the rooftop garden that's just   absolutely absolutely incredible so tell me about  the genesis of this how you came up with the idea   and just a little bit of the background  well we fell in love with the building   and we knew that we wanted a green space and  really the only green space there was was the   rooftop so we went up through the skylight uh put  our decking on and then started our vegetation we   knew that we wanted to be a pollinating pocket  for downtown that was very important to us   we wanted to harvest rainwater to the extent that  we could um and grow some grow some plants up here   and do workshops so that we could um bring people  which brings people into the shop yeah so amazing   amazing venue and just beyond the alert we're  going to put our heads together and we're going   to come up with some workshop opportunities that  some things that i can do up here maybe we should   do something on thrifting wouldn't that be fun  yes that could be so much fun so speaking of   the sheep trough so they cut it in half and it has  cushions that go on it and so do you guys do your   your metal work and your magical transformations  in house do you we have a list of makers that we   work with and if we get an idea we send it  off and they tell us if we're crazy or not   and usually send it back to us and they're  just super creative and very supportive so   and and i know that you try to work with local  artisans as much as possible and you'll see   that in part two of this which will be another  youtube video we will actually go into the   store below and we will do a little bit of  shopping uh maybe maybe a lot of shopping uh   and you can share a little bit more about  that tell us about this whole area well we   because of square footage we can uh our occupancy  on the deck is 150 people um in order to have the   deck at the front of the building we would  have had to taken out the roof oh my this is   not occupiable space but we wanted we wanted  to um to use it we wanted it to be part of   our pollinating pocket so we have raised beds  and irrigation and trees that have made it we   have our solar panels so we are now running  on solar energy which is very important to us and we have butterflies we work three years  to get butterflies on the rooftop which is   extraordinary when you're having we do a lot of  weddings so that's a just a nice thing to have   so it's more of an event center you you can't come  up here and have a drink on a friday night but you   but it is and unless you happen to know the  owner yes exactly we're going to start that   on friday we're going to start dipping shops we  are friday and shops okay how many ideas have   brainstorming ideas have we come up with in  just about the past 125 yes i know our list is   is so so long but okay so here's another great  idea you know how i've always talked about   partitioning whatever space you have whatever  size or scale of your garden whether it's large   and massive or to small urban garden like mine in  crown heights or it's even even a courtyard garden   you can still partition it into different  garden rooms with different kind of spaces   so if this would kind of be your massive dining  room your massive entertaining area replete with   bar stuart if you don't mind showing the bar over  there and i can't i can't convey just how magical   it is at night when all of these string lights are  lit up it is magic okay let's stop for a moment   can you hear the church bells in the distance  it's just it the ambiance is just incredible   downtown okay downtown okay so then you go through  this this wonderful gate um and we're going to   be coming back here shortly actually to take some  stills because part of the reason that the timing   on this came to pass is because i'm shooting some  stills up here for my book and rooftop gardens   it's all about the elegant and edible landscape  and this is about as elegant in terms and both   aesthetically and functionally as any space  i've ever seen with your water barrels with   your absolutely with your gorgeous view with your  solar panels with your darling little rustic carts   i just can't wait to get these we use those i  use those every time oh i can't imagine how handy   they are so this is just this is absolutely just  absolutely brilliant oh you you know you know i do   so tell us now tracy about we've got she's got her  own um her own definition of raised bed gardening   that runs the length of this fence which by  the way has detail on it that we claimed all   reclaimed was it when you got this as reclaimed  fencing did it have this multi-colored multi   we took a barn down our families took a  barn down first and last but we've salvaged   almost entirely every piece of wood that's up  here came from a barn that we took down and how   oklahoma house how oklahoma is that so great  homage to it yes continuing the life so yeah   yeah i love it um it's a rooftop experiment that  that the plants do not go all the way down to the   rooftop because the rooftop heats up so they're  suspended and we brought in roof like dirt but   special composite for rooftops and it's worked  out great for us okay so tell me about roof light   dirt and where you get it i got it online  oh actually i got i found it online and   i can't remember it's a local place that you can  get it okay so on our brainstorming list she must   send me the link to this because it  would be perfect for hanging baskets anything where you really wanted to reduce  the weight where weight was was an absolute   consideration and so all of these your intent  was pollination pollinator friendly pollinator   we use magnets chemicals our biggest um i  think adversary are people pour their drinks   out because we're in event space so they water  our plants with alcohol so you'll you may see a   few little yellows they might be going like  this maybe they might look a little drunk   but you know it's a little early for that so we  do have some pockets and we just pop plants back   in there and um we rotate plants out seasonally  we do a lot of weddings so we say you know in   in winter you'll probably see native oklahoma  grasses um but it does rotate as the seasons   as the seasons change and i bet tracy would be  willing to share this is something that i'll try   to put up on my website or on instagram i bet you  would be willing to share your plant list with us   of course because these all look great i mean  the dodge pod of it just looks great but it's   it is a designed hodgepodge you can see that she's  got a rhythm and repetition of these pollinators   across the space and that's what makes it look so  brilliant and so cohesive and probably so healthy   before we get down that way this is another steal  this tip another idea because if you had bare wood   here whether it was pressurized and treated or not  this would be a problem so talk about these little   end caps little little solar light so it casts  the light down and we also made our uh fencing   it's called a drink shelf so it's wide enough to  set a drink on so we can accommodate more people   on the rooftop so all the way around is a drink a  drink shelf yeah now i am thinking that on almost   under any circumstances this would be if you were  single a great place to meet a significant other   and tell me about that our i knew it was like it  is but additionally our uh brittany our my partner   and daughter met her husband here he walked in the  store the first week we were open and they were   married uh two kids later gave me two grandkids so  i love this place it was a win-win win-win-win-win   did i include everyone okay all the way around  this is so cool stuart you've got to show this   is one of the best things about oklahoma  look at that oklahoma sky look at that cool vista over that way and the scott chevrolet brick  work up here again you guys this is automobile   alley we were just talking with our friend joe  who what's his formal title joe hudson he is the   automobile alley representative for downtown okc  and automobile alley does absolutely incredible   things with their christmas lights with their  parades with it it's just yeah it's unbelievable   and we're going to be doing more about that but  this is just such a it is just such a special   special area um so let's go over here so how you  said this had a capacity of 150 what did you do   and we purposely left it wide open so you can  bring in rentals we have some rentals we knew we   didn't want to chop it up so you  could design it any way you wanted   so my brain again is going over time so i am  thinking i don't know that you know this but   i've got a son who is getting married in colorado  this month july 31st and another son who is also   engaged in getting married he is in singapore so  their locations are both far away and i'm already   thinking we were talking about having a party here  in oklahoma city for both of them this would be   the perfect great place for you this would be the  perfect venue thank you for taking that off of my   things to stress about list check absolutely  incredible and look at this okay so she's got   all of these cute and it's on is that on drip do  i hear drip back here yes it's on drip irrigation she's got alyssum dusty miller milkweed  you even have some evergreens in here   that's incredible you've got some hellebores  you've got what else do you have here   more hellebores and this is by the way  you guys we are facing north so this is   on the south side so these hellebores are  in enough shade but still in enough light   uh we have oh that's just  that's blooming dusty miller   i thought at first from a distance it looked  like it was yarrow right yeah maybe uh moonshine   moonbeam yarrow but again you guys she's got  this planted in patches is this and i assume   this is indian is this indiana thorn okay so what  she's done is she just has a formula of milkweed   with dusty miller hellebores alyssum her evergreen  which could be i say evergreen because you could   use different types of indian hawthorne isn't  in your repertoire and then she comes over here   she's got some diamond frost euphorbia but it's  all in a tight color palette it all meets your   specification of attracting pollinators and it  just all looks so well thought out it's a neutral   palette for pictures too so for photography it  doesn't pop out and applies to everyone so we've   we've tried to be very intentional about that and  we add in if there's a hole or something we just   pop something in there yeah so you could add  you could do that plop and pop thing where   somebody has a has a color motif for that  event you could literally just pop in some   pots here of color and it would then conform to  whatever the color palette was stewart really   stuart really liked that can and it's very  experiential oh look the lights have come on   we had a gender reveal and we turned them  to pink the other night which was a lot of   fun they're all led they're all made by jasco  locally and what a ginger reveal a gender reveal   so they found out they were having a girl so we  turned all the lights pink which was really cute is there anything you haven't thought  of oh well you and i are getting   yeah i'm going to help do you think of the legs okay these these would be tractor seats  am i right am i right yep we just powder   coated them powder coated tractor seats  i'm sure you had the powder coating done   earlier all of this is weatherproof look at her  scales recycled glass inside the composite yep   tell us about some of these fixtures  over here tracy that is a flea market   find all of it and we just rotate our plants out  of that we we pulled the sink out of the field   out of an old barn i had a friend that just let  us have it and we just built it in all of the   metal it's roofing from the barn that we took down  we use the the trough for drinks beer sodas and   this over here we use that for it's a  champagne it's a riddling rack to dry   champagne bottles and once we serve wine we  just stack it so it's kind of a hands-on thing   throughout the night and makes it fun we  also have herbs behind we have a bartender's   herb so you can go back in i'll switch places  with you stuart go back and use our mint   and our rosemary the last freeze wiped out our  seven-year-old rosemary it wiped out mine too   it was heartbreaking wasn't it then they  were huge they were huge just yeah it really   and and this is a little bit exposed up here so  the fact that that rosemary lasted for seven years   is is pretty incredible remarkable pretty  incredible now another thing that i want   to demonstrate is that all of this industrial  these industrial chic components that again you   have thrifted you have staged them in a way that  speaks to almost any type of aesthetic you have   so tell us about you've got a modern aesthetic  at your home or you i assume you did because you   said you were near downtown yes we're in a in  a modern home here we just felt it was very um   it was just important to appeal to to everyone so  when someone walks up here and they have a modern   theme that that it works in this space and the  juxtaposition of very modern against rustic i love   yeah i love that that that high low tension yes  um looks great so it could go any of this type   of stuff and any of this stuff in her store by  the way which you guys will just go crazy over   it speaks to any kind of aesthetic any kind of  interior decourse if you like farmhouse chic   if i have english traditional if you have  a modern streamline aesthetic if you have   colonial prairie if you have um shaker if you have  any of that kind of you know just prairie style   all of this type of thing can speak the  language of all of those different types   of expressions of creativity wow well we hope  so thank you for that yeah it really really can   so i hardly can stand to leave this  because a cool front has come in it's crazy   isn't it that's oklahoma though yeah okay  45 minutes it's a whole totally different   yeah what did roger say about our weather  i know we have the book i should know this   yeah if if you don't like the weather in oklahoma  just wait for a minute and it will change true and   it has and i always want to do a huge prayerful  call out to everybody on the west coast and on the   east coast who are having the kind of weather that  we normally have this time of year experiencing   yeah really really brutal temperatures and we  here at least are prepared for it and have air   conditioning yes and some of you guys don't  i can't thank you enough oh my god i can't   say thank you honored to have you here hello it  has just been incredibly fun look for a lot more   activity ideas programming uh from the plenty  mercantile and we'll have the train take us out   perfect well welcome to the monsoon season  in oklahoma stuart and i just got back from   shooting our video at plenty mercantile on  the rooftop and we just got it completed   before this skies just completely opened up it  is still raining as it has been doing non-stop   for the past almost two weeks stuart look at you  can see in the back standing water the ground is   so saturated there's just no place else for it to  go and yes i do so wish i could send some of you   some of this rainfall that so many  of you are desperately needing it   i i put on this ensemble today because it  was sunny this morning when i got up for a   brief nanosecond and i thought oh i can finally  kind of have a summery vibe with one of my very   favorite things i've ever gotten off of amazon  this is a straw fedora i absolutely love it it   is such good quality and i think it was all of  like fifteen dollars you guys and i will put a   link below because you're gonna want one comes in  all different colors i wear this all of the time wow big thunderbolt uh the jeans are excuse  me i'm just kind of undone with this storm   the jeans are banana republic i've had these  four years and i fringed them myself to make   them a little bit more occurrent i just got  these sandals from dillard's the other day   they are chelsea and violet i don't know if you  can get these online or not but i will look for   a link i love them they're very comfortable and  they were on sale um my top is another one of   my favorite madewell t-shirts my earrings you  guys are another pair of those atrios earrings   this time it has the thin band i cannot tell  you how much i love this line of jewelry now   i'm becoming infatuated with it um we're  ordering a pair for stewart's mom aren't we   remind her to send me which one she wants i'm  ordering a pair for my daughter-in-law to be so   i absolutely love them um my jewelry so i do i do  want to share my jewelry today too this bracelet   my husband is a thrifter too i guess he actually  got this at an estate sale and it was being sold   in a shop in downtown salida and i got this for  mother's day a number of years ago it's one of my   real treasured pieces this bracelet with a little  bird on it i love this this comes from janet mavic   from orchard jewelry i will put a link below all  of her stuff is garden and nature inspired i love   it this little bracelet i'm only going to show you  this because it has such sentimental value to me   i've had this bracelet for probably 40 years and i  bought it when i was in school when i was in high   school and in college i worked in a gift shop  and i bought it at that gift shop wow years ago   and this little chain link just delicate gold  chain bracelet this belonged to my mother-in-law   that passed just recently so my ensemble of  bracelets all has meaningful for me today um   stuart and i are gonna try to wrap things up in  here we're out in the studio but just in case   um it really is getting a little scary lightning  thunder and the lights have also been flickering   so who knows if we're gonna retain power or not  so anyhow there's my fashion ensemble for today

Channel: Linda Vater

Views: 20,172

Keywords: potagerblog, Linda Vader, garden life, garden designer, garden landscape design, garden design, garden media, gardening, Linda Vater, southern gardening, thrifting, Garden Answer, boxwood, topiary, garden tour, evergreens, favorite plants, garden center, Oklahoma gardening, garden, lifestyle tips, garden lifestyle, pollinator, pollinator garden, rooftop, rooftop garden

Id: n7Y_23R6irw

Length: 29min 9sec (1749 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021