Growing a Greener World Episode 1111: Creating Paradise Through a Shared Passion for Gardening

growing a greener world is made possible in part by the subaru crosstrek designed with adventure in mind built in a zero landfill plant so you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint subaru proud sponsor of growing a greener world [Music] i'm joe lampell for 10 years growing a greener world has told the stories of the people and the places who are making a difference in the health of our environment and the sustainability of our global community but as we embarked on our 11th season life changed overnight so many things we took for granted would never be the same again now it's up to each of us to take a more active role in not just saving our planet but making it better feeding our families with organically grown food conserving vital resources protecting natural habitats starting in our own backyards growing a greener world it's still our mission and it's more important than ever sometimes you just get a feeling about a place about a person sometimes you're just drawn in for reasons that aren't apparent at the time sometimes even though you might not be able to put your finger on why there's a part of you deep down that instinctively knows you've stumbled across something special and that's what happened to me right here just two miles down the road from my own house in the ggw garden farm a spot i've driven by countless times but it was this little sign stuck in the ground advertising a plant sale something we've all seen before but for whatever reason this time it struck me so i turned in i really wasn't looking to buy any more plants and i certainly wasn't prepared for what i'd find when i met the couple who lives here i quickly realized that margo and larry were outstanding gardeners that much was obvious but the longer i spent with them talking plants in their yard i came to understand that theirs was a story that could teach me a thing or two about growing a greener world and maybe teach all of us a thing or two about creating something magical something that lasts a lifetime and beyond i think to garden together i think it takes a certain person really or a certain couple not everybody can do that and i don't think you can train yourself to do that i don't think you can say i really like the way they work together let's try to do that you know i i think it's something that comes naturally first of all it's love for plants and nature if you both love plants and nature then there's a pretty good chance you can garden together yeah i think it is it's sharing those common values i mean and we do we're you know if you're if you're together 24 hours a day and you really do learn to take on each other's values it's really rewarding and i think it really keeps us closer together because they see the world and with the same kind of eyes that when we look at plants we know that both of us are real excited about that if we see something that's really unusual and we just can't wait to share it with each other so it's really fun having your soul mate and your lifetime partner and your best friend as a gardening buddy it's there isn't anything better than that our kids are a little bit concerned about us spending so much time together because they feel not that it's not healthy but i think they're starting to think as we get older you know what's going to happen you know one of us isn't here so i don't know it's something i shouldn't be thinking about anyway just enjoy today enjoy my garden enjoy the beauty enjoy nature that's all i have to do every day margot and larry attic have done exactly that every day just as she said for 40 years they met through a mutual friend and literally didn't spend a single day or night apart for the next eight years it was love at first sight i met her and i just knew and she just knew and i know that it sounds strange but we are in love like it was the first night so we it's just a wonderful life that we've got together and we enjoy gardening together which is really fun my gardening life started off in iowa i was born and raised on a farm in iowa and we did a lot of row crop farming so i had a lot of experience growing plants and then we always had a vegetable garden we always had an orchard and we always had a flower garden and that's how i kind of really got my love for gardening that's how it got started [Music] it's not really what i plan to do i was in nursing school got out of nursing school tried corporate got out of it and just have always have always loved messing with plants so it was probably in my blood from the very beginning i just didn't know that i wanted to be a nurse but instead i'm a plant nurse i take care of plants i just love it and i go somewhere i have to go to the farmer's market i have to go to the botanical gardens if i'm someplace where their plants aren't there like at my daughter's house or my son's house i like to mess with their plants mess with their yard can't wait to get home to see my own i think it could be a possible addiction i think i'm addicted to it and i love it it's therapy it's serenity [Music] margot and larry have been transforming this one and a half acre lot in the suburbs for over three decades now all by themselves but the garden they've created even surpasses many of the most memorable gardens i've ever seen when i first met margo and larry it was for a plant sale and i made it up to about this point in the driveway and now there are a lot of customers here and i overheard margo tell one of them that there was this trail back to the woodland garden and i heard that and i said i got to make a note of that so when the crowd cleared i asked margo if i could take this woodland trail and visit that garden she said yes and i'm so glad that i did and now they're going to take us and show you too and i'm so glad you did too oh thank you all right so give me the 30 000 foot view how did this part of your garden evolved well originally this was just a path to get to the backyard and we really had no intentions of ever landscaping it because i didn't think it could grow any plants back here because it was just all shady so i decided that we would start planting a few hosta my mother gave me these hosta from her home back in iowa years and years ago wow so i planted a few of those and they really multiplied over the years there's so many things that do grow in the shade beyond just the hostas you've got already several varieties i've noticed of the fern like the japanese painted burn yes one of my favorites yes i love that and it's a very it spreads very nicely over the years so we've had that for several years and it spreads a lot that's nice nice bonus yes i'm not sure which side to look on because there's so much to see no matter where you go another one of my favorite ferns this is mariana maiden fern right yes mariana maiden fern and we refer to it as the downy fern because it's real soft and downy it's really really a beautiful fern and it spreads really rapidly underground a lot like the ostrich fern does so it's a great fern we love that and we have plenty of them and i love that it spreads really easily because i have my shelves on the car so if you see me digging a few uh don't worry if you don't get enough we'll have more for you in the spring yeah we'll be digging more of that perfect i have to talk about this for a second first of all i love how many japanese maples you have that i've seen so far and i'm sure there's more but what i love about this one besides the fact that it's perfectly sided next to the pond is the way that you've pruned it because the experts say that the way that you prune a japanese maple is so that a bird could fly straight through without ever having to think twice and you have that it's so open and airy i didn't know that but i do watch sometimes when the hawks fly through these trees it amazes me that they can do that but yeah and we've had this for about 25 years and it's just kind of a natural thing for us we kind of wanted to be able to see out and so we just started pruning things off but it turned out it does give a nice uh canopy for the for the pond too it's so graceful see i just love the naturalness of this and how you left that stump right there that's art yeah that's god's work speaking of art what is this right here what's going on with that this is a big white oak tree that fell in a storm about two years ago and pancaked about four other trees and after it was here when they were cutting it up the guy said do you want me to cut the uh grind the stump up and i said oh no not at all let's leave it because i was thinking that as the soil washed off it'd give a kind of a spider web effect and we're working on that so it's getting there and you've got the moss and the mycelium right here you can't buy this kind of stuff this is beautiful where it is it's pretty cool isn't it who would have thought to just leave that there and it becomes a focal point yes we didn't really have any plans and even today when we do things we don't really have a real plan we'll walk outside one one day and i'll see something and i'll go you know what i think we could do this and so we will take a small area and work on that and and it evolves into something so far it's done very well but that's kind of what we do we just do it piece by piece we don't really we don't have a master plan that was it was a blueprint we didn't have a landscape architect or anything so everything has been it's just from the heart and what we like and and it turns out other people seem to like it too so and we can spend the whole day out here we could spend the whole day out here but there's a lot to do but there's a lot of enjoyment too you know it's not just all work and it's really important to enjoy your garden enjoy what you're doing don't don't think of it as work it's not work you know it's it's i feel very very blessed they say that if you take your bare feet and come out and put it on the grass or in the soil somewhere that it'll immediately change your whole way of thinking i don't usually have to do that i just come out here after 74 years of working in the garden i'm at the stage in my life now where i i feel like all i really want to do is share and i want to share not only the fruits of my labor but i want to share my knowledge to to help other people know about [Music] gardening larry you have some beautiful water features and some gorgeous koi in every one of them but you also have one of these motion activated sprinklers and i know that's there to protect those koi right yes so have you had a problem in the past we had a real problem and the big problem is heron and uh heron have incredible eyesight they can spot fish from miles above i believe this can conferred them out so we tried for several years we used decoys and different things but nothing has really worked until we got this we've had it about two years now the reason i did this is because if the heron happens to land here and walk by any any movement along this side of the pond it's going to pick up it's going to detect that and so typically unless he does come and land like on the bench or by the bench you know that could be an issue but so far i've had it for about two years and i haven't lost any fish prior to that i lost a lot of fish well that's a testament yeah it startles a lot of people when they're walking down the path so if you don't tell them about it but other than that it's done really great i'm really pleased with it what you're telling me is when i get my water features and buy my koi i'm going to be buying one of these too you definitely will this is money well invested noted [Music] you know margo after i had a chance to tour your garden and see your home i kept wondering why i felt so connected and at peace walking all around here and sitting inside and i realized it was because i feel like nature is everywhere on your property like with these pieces here and then i realized that you are the one responsible for making these well it starts by gathering some median to work with it's different kinds of barks sticks different sizes different pieces but i just pick up a lot of different things because i don't know exactly where it's going to lead when i start right and then with her garden materials and a simple hot glue gun margot lets inspiration take over on planting pots of all sizes even the throwaway pots that the plants come in picture frames decorative containers sometimes larger tabletop items she finds at garage sales or the thrift store margo sells her creations at local markets and their own plant sales every piece a stunning study in nature and a one-of-a-kind work of art anything goes yeah they kind of all take on a different effect and there's no way that i can make two the same i've tried i can't they'll say can you make me matching vases i just that's what makes me special yeah i can't do it what a great way though to uh for anybody that wants to bring a little nature inside their house what a beautiful way to do that and an easy thing to do if they wanted to do it themselves yes it's fun it's fun collecting it it's just as much fun collecting it as it is to design it but margot and larry's collecting also include some pretty surprising plant specimens i love this room it would be my happy place but it's definitely a testament to your ability to take care of plants because again every plant in here is in perfect condition this right here a norfolk island pine right yes i'd say that's 15 feet tall yes and i've had it for 35 years i got it when it was 18 inches tall was my dad's christmas tree and he gave it to me to take care of and he never took it back and i've just raised it i've repotted it several times i fertilize it a couple times a year and he just stays inside now all the time in here and he's very happy this is living proof to your ability and your knack for taking care of plants this tree is showing you how good you are at that's my passion yeah well it shows [Music] well one thing i've noticed actually i've noticed a lot around here marco you have a real eye for design but you also have a neck for keeping these plants looking in peak shape especially the ones in containers because that's not always easy to do no i keep them trimmed up i keep the dead off of them i make sure that they have the right exposure i also make sure they have the right watering needs that's the big one right the big one and you're supposed to keep your plants evenly moist well how many people can keep their plants evenly moist with a watering can right so what i do is irrigation i don't do it but my husband larry puts irrigation on these pots so that they can stay evenly moist and they can water themselves by getting a little bit of water every day for maybe two minutes okay what you're describing is drip irrigation and now i'm seeing it yes okay i didn't even notice it but okay you got the you know the spaghetti tubing as i call it it's all woven into the basket he's got it going all the way over and down he painted it and he kept it so that it wasn't noticeable and obviously most people do not see it and he's got it woven into the hanger and it's painted up there that is slick and he's got it on a swivel he sure does and that's good because you can move it around for exposure right he has it on for two minutes every day and that's the key and that's the key i gotta talk to larry nice [Music] well larry i have bad news margo let the cat out of the bag as to your secret for keeping those hanging baskets looking so good and yet hidden all the time that stealth way you have of irrigating those with drip irrigation so if you don't mind i need to hear how you do that i love that system okay and so i've used this thing and it's a little manifold and it has six ports on it this can be screwed on the head of an existing uh head on your zone right or you can tap into the the line and run a if it's not convenient run it to where you want it to be and put this on also as long as it stays on that zone so that it's controlled by the zone got it and then we run a little uh quarter inch line up to uh and underneath the porch usually what i do is run underneath the porch so that um it goes up through the cracks or it goes onto one of the posts and it goes across the ceiling and drops down into the hanging basket there's elbows there's t's there's connectors so that you can and you can splice these off so like if you run one line up and you've got two parts that are real close together you can just put a t in there and run two lines and then we connect it to the little spray heads these spray heads have a pattern of about four inches and you can all control it by either opening or closing it how much spray you want to have now for the people that don't have an in-ground irrigation system it's still no problem these are so easy to configure you can just tap into your spigot or your hose or something on the side of the house and do the same thing right and you can take a hose and at the end of the hose you'll get a little adapter like this all this stuff can be bought like at the big box stores right it's put this little adapter on there and then you do the same thing run your line up run your spray heads but also the thing that's really great about that you can buy a little timer so they're not very expensive and they'll come on every day i think the minimum you can do is like five minutes but that's not a big deal because if it overwaters in the snow big deal they're gonna drink right and so that's the thing that i found that uh works really good so those are pretty handy ways to do it i like it great tip [Music] i can't imagine what it would be like without having margot with me doing our gardening and and i think about that sometimes i think about because as i am starting to get older and i realize how much fun we have together and it is just shared love and so when i think about that it is just a little bit scary i can't imagine what it would be like i don't know that i could even do it i can't envision gardening without them and i don't think i could do it for one thing it's not as fun it's not enjoyable i mean it's work and i don't like my garden to be work and that's why when we are out here together it's fun i don't there's nothing i like doing without him nothing one of the most beautiful gardens i've ever seen and one of the most beautiful love stories i've ever heard all wrapped up in one there's no way either one would exist without the other it's easy to say that larry and margo created something magical with this garden but it's just as true to say that this little piece of property has helped to create something pretty special and rare too and it occurred to me over the time i spent with them that when larry and margo are talking about their garden they're really talking about their life together you know when i think about it it just evolved i mean when i look at it now i'm like it's hard for me to believe that we really did this because we didn't have a plan we liked plants we just bought them because we liked them we put them somewhere and sometimes we had to move things but you know it just uh it amazes me too that it's turned out to be the way it is yeah sometimes when i look at the place now and think of what it was like you know that 34 years ago it almost seems like it was planned but it wasn't it was like she was saying that it just evolved and like we would look at one little spot and say i think we should do this and so we would attack that and then we still do that and we just attacked an area over there this year and redid something and so it's constantly evolving but it's that common bond of both seeing the garden for what it is and seeing the beauty of it and we both we appreciate it so much and i think that that just makes it um so special so every time that we're together in the garden it's it's like being in love on steroids you know over my personal and professional gardening life i've had the great fortune to visit a lot of gardens some of the best of the best both public and private gardens and i love spending time in every garden and they all leave an impression with me in some way but there's never been a garden that i can recall that has left this kind of impression with me but from the moment that i stepped foot into this garden it just felt different unlike any other garden i'd ever been in before so in the days and the weeks that followed i just kept asking myself why was it that this garden felt so different and so right and so good and i think i came down with two main things and the first is that it is just a suburban garden with no big budget or crew to make it look this way and the second thing i think is the winning combination and the secret formula two people that love each other so much they're soul mates and they're life partners and they share a passion for gardening and more than anything else than spending time together anywhere spinning it together in the garden cultivating this magical place that's what they love to do the most and it shows to not be in a hurry but just to allow it to evolve over time one day at a time one plant at a time working with mother nature the ebbs and the flows the bad with the good to cultivate and nurture what comes together over time no need for instant gratification that's special and when you have that one person that life partner and that soul mate that shares your passion for gardening to do that together with to create a place like this that's garden paradise and that's what margo and larry's place is and why it feels so special i hope that you are able to share your passion for gardening with someone that special in your life and if you are you're one of the lucky and fortunate ones and i hope to get to see your garden and meet you too someday but if you'd like to learn more about what you saw today we'll have that information on our website under the show notes for this episode and the website address is the same as our show name it's growing at greenerworld.com thanks for watching everybody i'm joe lample and we'll see you back here next time for more growing a greener world i just want to conclude our great day with larry and margo attic and my crew here and you know it's a great day because when you leave with plants right and that's carl's car [Music] you knew that was happening [Music] now you can continue your garden learning online and course is for me joe lampl in my online gardening academy classes are designed to teach gardeners of all levels from the fundamentals to master skills explore the courses available right now plus new topics covering everything you need to know to grow like a pro take each class on your own schedule from anywhere plus you'll have opportunities to ask me questions about your specific garden in real time go to joegardner.com learn for details [Music] today

Channel: Growing a Greener World

Views: 470,717

Keywords: gardening, backyard gardening, garden art, gardening partner, soulmates, water features, gardening paradise

Id: z6CVLry8ZpI

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020