Speaker 1: Coming to you from Studio A here at Proven Winners
Color Choice Shrubs. It's time for the Gardening Simplified radio
podcast and YouTube show with Stacey Hervella Me, Rick weisst
and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well. Over the
past few weeks, the Gardening Simplified Show has gone on
the road. We've gone our separate ways on trips, and
today we'll share some of those adventures with you. Stacey
went to Japan, Adriana went to Australia, and I went
to Costa Rica now Putavida. It's pure life. What a
wonderful life it is. I loved Costa Rica. It was great.
Speaker 2: I have heard great things. I have also had people
say to me, if you go to Costa Rica, they're
going to have to drag you away because they're going
to go crazy from all the plants.
Speaker 1: And there are many Americans, many Canadians who live in
Costa Rica. I look, the US Department of States said
one hundred and twenty thousand private US citizens, many including
retirees like me and tourists, live in Costa Rica. So
it's pretty cool. Twenty five percent of the land is conservation,
with twelve ecological zones over one hundred national parks, reserves
and protected lands. It was incredible, and the people there
I found to be very very friendly. The people are
very proud of their country. They're proud of their echodiversity,
the plants, the birds, the animals. Every morning, at seven
o'clock in the morning on the radio, they play the
national anthem. Oh and I don't know if you've ever
heard the national anthem of Costa Rica, but it's a
pretty cool national anthem. You get adjusted pretty quickly for breakfast.
Forget bacon and eggs. You quickly learn to eat gallo pinto.
It's a breakfast breakfast staple essentially beans and rice.
Speaker 2: Love it very good.
Speaker 1: The people there I think are very healthy. Gallo pinto
means spotted rooster. I don't know why. Nobody could tell
me why, but it means spotted rooster. Of course, as
far as agriculture and horticulture are concerned. Coffee, rice, banana, sugarcane, beans, citrus, plantains,
which I found interesting stacy. You eat those for breakfast,
chopped up and fried and just like climatis or clematis.
Some people call them plantins and some people call them plantains.
Speaker 2: Or platinos. If you're a goods.
Speaker 1: There you go exactly, or platano, whatever it may be.
But pie, passion, fruit, dragon fruit, coconuts, pineapple, watermelon, cantaloup.
It goes on and on and Stacy. I thought of
both you and Adriana often on my trip because if
bird watching is a favorite pastime of yours, Costa Rica
is a must visit place.
Speaker 2: You know. There, I've read about so many different birding
excursions and hotels resorts that are specifically up in the
mountains for birding in it. It's definitely my dream to
do one of those one day. And you saw some amazing.
Speaker 1: Birds, amazing bird The two cans, of course, were just unreal.
Tell me back to my childhood when I eat fruit
loops for breakfast, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Sam, So, were those just common, like, oh, there's
another two can because you had multiple photos of them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and no. It was more so when we got
into the rainforest area near the volcanoes. That's where I
really saw the two cans, the sloths, which were just amazing.
I had some personal interaction with some snakes yikes, like
the eyelash eyelash pit viper. And this is a snake
that preys on hummingbirds. Oh no, yeah, ziplining saw you know.
They tell you not to go ziplining because it's not
too safe. But it was fine, and I got up
close and personal with the birds, hummingbirds. There's a social
fly catcher called the kiss Kadi. I thought that bird
was beautiful and if you're watching on YouTube, you can
see a picture of that. I got a kick out
of these white throated magpies. They look like bluebirds. No,
not bluebirds, they look like blue jays with a little
tuft on their head. And of course in Costa Rica
it's nice and warm, so the restaurants are open air.
And every morning I'd watch these guys, the locals there
call them horakas, and these horakas would gather on tables
and railings outside of the restaurant and you'd watch them
have a little conference, a little meeting, and they would debate,
and then finally one of them would be knocked to
the ground, and I guess that's the designated hraka to
make a venture into the restaurant to see what kind
of food or snacks the haroca could find. And I
watched every morning someone would be pushed to the ground.
The horocca would fly into the open air restaurant and
return about thirty seconds later with two sugar packets in
their mouth, and they would drop them on the floor
and then there'd just be an all out brawl. They'd
fight over the sugar, and then the whole thing would
repeat itself.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, not many places can boast free entertainment
at breakfast, so that is impressive.
Speaker 1: But it was fun for me. You know, I live
in Michigan and enjoy the hummingbirds, the Baltimore Orioles in
spring and summer, and to see them vacationing down there
in Costa Rica was pretty cool. Speaking of flying, it
took four attempts to land the plane in Liberia.
Speaker 2: Oh dear for a tech.
Speaker 1: Now, I didn't land the plane. It was the nice
Delta Airlines pilot who landed the plane due to debris
on the runway, potholes and torrential downpours. And that brings
me to my next point. If you're going to go
out traveling and enjoying plants, my gim a rick for
the week. These are life hacks. You can use travel
on the shoulder seasons because you get better deals and
fewer crowds just don't go when the rainy season is
supposed to end torrential downpours, unbelievable tropical depression, Hurricane Sarah.
And that leads me to my limb a rick for
the week. I had an inspiration, eureka, why not travel
to Costa Rica? Despite the rain? I went. The weather
did circumvent my route through Lovely Topeka. Actually I was
circumvented through Atlanta, but Atlanta doesn't rhyme with coast.
Speaker 2: Of fair Enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks, as far as plant material is concerned, Bird
of Paradise is a big deal in Costa Rica. But
interestingly enough, it's really not bird of Paradise. It's heliconias.
Heliconias are native to Central and South America. Whereas the
bird of Paradise Strelitzia was a plant that I would
often bring up to the garden center. People love it.
The foliage looks like bananas. Same thing with the heliconia,
which the hummingbirds in Costa Rica just love. They call
it false bird of Paradise or Pico deloro parrots beak
because they do look like some of those toucans that
I pictures of the Tucans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do. You know, when I was at the
New York Botanical Garden, they had an incredible collection heliconias,
and the common name that they would usually put on
them was lobster claw.
Speaker 1: Yes, lobster claw, which.
Speaker 2: Is accurate as the parrots beak.
Speaker 1: So you're right, yeah, just amazing the biodiversity in Costa Rica.
So if you're into plants, you're into birds, I recommend
you go the Guanacosta Tree. What a huge crown on
that tree provides shade in the hot weather. Some people
refer to it as elephant ear tree because of the
seed pods. The blue water in the waterfalls in proximity
to the volcanoes in the northwestern province of Guanacosta just unreal,
I mean waterfalls in general. And then to see plants
like Philodendron cordatum just lining the walls, plants that I
used to sell in the garden center and hanging baskets
and just growing in the wild. I mentioned the coffee,
the landscape and the vistas. It's so diverse. There was
a really cool tree called sandpaper leaf. You grab the
foliage and it is as rough as sandpaper.
Speaker 2: Interesting unreal.
Speaker 1: The snakes, the sloths, the lizards on the roof on
the clay tile roof, the leaf cutter ants watching.
Speaker 2: Them, those are amazing.
Speaker 1: They're fascinating. The monkeys I could not get used to
the howling monkeys or the howler monkeys. Man, do they
make a racket at dawn and at dusk? So the
papaya trees made me think of Steve Miller band. You know,
I brought you a creative papayas chewing on sugarcane. So
the lawn and short of it is, if you get
the opportunity to go to Costa Rica, don't go during
the rainy season. Even though the rainforest was just beautiful.
But I recommend that you not go during the rainy season.
But what a wonderful country, wonderful people and horticulturally agriculture birds.
It's a paradise.
Speaker 2: Did you see an equal frogs?
Speaker 1: Yes, incredible frogs. As a matter of fact, we have
a picture for the YouTube version of the show. Got
up and up close and personal to sloth, snakes and
frog and the red eyed green foot.
Speaker 2: Oh so beautiful.
Speaker 1: They're gorgeous, unreal. So I recommend you make a trip
to Costa Rica and go to Topeka too if you want.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds great, but I'll tell you if I went,
I think I would probably have to go for two
weeks because it would probably take me like an entire
day to go fifty yards.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable, It really is. It really is kid in a
candy store. Coming up next Adriana, we'll talk about Australia.
Stacey will talk about Japan. That's on The Gardening Simplified Show.
Speaker 2: Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs cares about your success in
the garden. That's why we trial and test all of
our shrubs for eight to ten years, making sure they
outperform everything else on the market. Look for them in
the distinctive white container at your local garden center. Reading's
gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show.
Today we are ripping up the script. We're doing things
totally different because all three of us have taken some
pretty amazing vacations. We've been lucky enough to do that
over the past couple of months, and we wanted to
tell you about what we did and what we saw
and maybe get you inspired to take a vacation. Plant
based vacation of your own. So I am going to
hand it over to Adriana, who's going to tell you
about her trip to Australia. But before I do that,
I do want to mention since we're talking about Adriana,
our editor and producer and who does all of our YouTube.
Of course, this is a great episode to join us
for on YouTube because there are run me so many photos, videos,
stuff like that that we took of our vacation. So
if you were interested, it would definitely be a good
one to tune in. Just go to YouTube and type
in gardening some fun. Yes, all right, so let's kick
it off.
Speaker 3: I visited Australia and Tasmania in October, so while that
was fall for us here in the Northern Hemisphere, it
was spring down there. The first stop that I made
was in Sydney, and in Sydney I have to talk
about the jacaranda trees. The scientific name is Jacaranda mimosa folia. Yeah,
that's it, and it is in the family Bignoni a sea,
which is the trumpet vine family. These trees have been
growing steadily in Australia for around one hundred and fifty years.
They are not native to the area, they are originally
from parts of Central and South America, and they think
that the seeds were brought along with sea captains from
South America. This species epithet means having leaves like a mimosa,
and the leaves truly did look like a mimosa tree
with that really fine kind of foliage.
Speaker 2: But they are not related, yeah, because Momosa is in
the bean family and Jackaranda is in the big Nonia
the like you said. But the thing about Jackaranda and
when I saw your picture on YouTube, because I was
on vacation at the same time you were, and I
looked at your picture on YouTube and I was like,
oh my gosh, Adrian is there. When the jack Arandas
are in flower, I am so jealous. I mean, you
have to talk about what they look like when they flower.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Yes, especially being in Sydney.
Speaker 2: It's a big city so seeing these.
Speaker 3: Vivid, lavender blue flowers just lining the streets was incredible.
It almost looks like you're looking through a UV filter
or like a Doctor Seuss kind of tree. But they
are absolutely stunning and they do actually drop the flowers
so they kind of have a carpet like effect, which
I'm sure for some people if they planted by a
pool or something, could be a little annoying. But along
the streets it was stunning. And actually a fun fact
is that studies have shown it to have anti cancer activity,
antimicrobial properties, and antioxidant capacity, and these characteristics may be
used to fight off E. Coli, staphylococcus, and leukemia. In
these trees like Rick like it hot and sunny. And
so next we'll move to Melbourne, or Melbourne as they
like to say. In the Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria,
I saw a Banksia plant.
Speaker 2: Are you familiar? You know I am crazy about anything
in the proteac also known as Protea family. Australia is
an epicenter along with self the South Africa for these plants,
and they are They're just like nothing else that you
have ever seen.
Speaker 3: They are not. And so it was in the botanic garden,
but walking along it was kind of in a not
conspicuous area, but I just stopped me in my tracks.
So it's a genus in the Proteacea family with over
one hundred and seventy species, which I was surprised to
find native of them.
Speaker 2: Fabulous, all of them fabulous.
Speaker 3: Native to Australia and New Guinea, they can grow as
trees or shrubs and they are popular garden plants around
the area. Most of the species the flowers are quite distinguishable.
They're kind of like a bottle brush spiky cone of
flowers that usually has like one hundred to thousands of
flowers in that individual kind.
Speaker 2: Of conical shape.
Speaker 3: And then it's actually if you do run your hand
along certain species, it does have like a bottle brush
effect where it kind of feels bristly and hard a
little bit. A nice thing about these flowers is that
they produce tons of nectar, so they attract pollinators and
nectar loving birds.
Speaker 2: And guess what else? What else?
Speaker 3: Honey possums?
Speaker 2: What I did?
Speaker 3: Adorable little creeture. They look like mice, but they have
elongated snouts and they're perfect forgetting that sweet, sweet nectar out.
But I'll put photos in of these things because they
are adorable.
Speaker 2: Did you see one of them? No? I didn't, I didn't.
Gotta go back, I know, yeah, just another reason.
Speaker 3: So then the foliage size and structure will vary depending
on the species. But the fruit contains seeds and this
protective structure, so it's still that elongated kind of shape.
And most species will often open from exposure, so typically
with fire, so bushfires are kind of important for this
genus in most cases. And the seed pods are really
unique looking. The old flower spikes commonly referred to as cones,
but they aren't technically cones botanically speaking.
Speaker 2: But when they open, they kind of look like.
Speaker 3: What I think of as a chorus of singing cartoon frogs.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Yea, I do. Yeah, yeah, because they have like they
kind of open up like little mouths. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So on top of that, these plants typically thrive in
USDA zones nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: And they are you can find them as ornamental plants
in the US, not in Michigan, of course, but you
can also use get them as cut flower sometimes. So yeah,
it gets your little Australia fixed that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It was funny because when we were in Tasmania,
actually we were in the on this popular hiking trail
where it had beautiful vistas and overlooks, and I saw
a protea flower and it was just as perfect cut stem,
but it was overlooking what they call Wineglass Bay, so
it's like the super picturesque area.
Speaker 2: I was like, that's a weird spot, and I was looking.
Speaker 3: All around for the plant and I couldn't find it.
Go down to a beach, another beautiful picturesque spot, and
there's another flower. And then it dawned on me though
it was probably from a photo shoot that someone had
been clipping these flowers and taking them along, so I
wasn't likely to find the plant there. But so now
moving over to Tasmania. I love Tasmania. I kind of
describe it as Jurassic Park mixed with Scotland. It's this
phenomenal landscape. There were so many plants here it was
kind of hard to pick which one. So I kind
of picked two staples, and the first one being eucalyptus,
and so Eucalyptus is predominant everywhere in Australia and Tasmania.
But what really struck me.
Speaker 2: Was the sheer size of some of these trees.
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk about Eucalyptus regnans aka mountain ash,
giant esh, swamp gum, and stringygum. These are in the
family murdy race Myrtasi myrtasi and our native to Tasmania
and Victoria. They're actually the.
Speaker 2: Tallest hardwood trees in the world.
Speaker 3: So red yeah, redwoods are softwood and they're they're kind
of up there as well, but these ones will often
reach over eighty meters or two hundred and sixty feet tall.
And fun fact, regnans comes from the Latin word regnar,
meaning to rule, so they kind of rain over the
forest there. And it was really cool to see these.
I saw these in the Huon Valley next to the
Huon River in Tasmania, which is southeast Tasmania area. It
was beautiful because you have these giant, towering Eucalyptus trees.
The understory is all rainforest, so just seeing them pop
up ever was absolutely phenomenal. The trunks are smooth with
a beautiful cream gray brown coloring.
Speaker 2: And some flaky bark because that bark's gotta go somewhere.
Speaker 3: And those ones actually grow mostly in cool, mountainous rainy areas,
so fitting for the Huon Valley. And because these trees
want to tower over most of the rainforest understory plants,
they take on that live fast approach, so they grow
very fast when they're young and then they kind of
peter out as they get a little older. But when
they're young, they'll grow from one to two meters or three.
Speaker 2: To seven feet per year. WHOA yeah, fast.
Speaker 3: Yes, But unfortunately these trees are quite susceptible to fire,
and they had actually had a fire in recent years
that you could see the damage from some of those
older mature trees. On the flip side. Moving on from
the eucalyptus is the huon pine with a very fun
scientific name Lageristrobos Frank Lnei.
Speaker 2: I practiced them one.
Speaker 3: Unlike Mountnash or swamp gum, which is a eucalyptus, the
huon pine takes the slow and steady approach to life.
So this long lived tree is only native to the
wet rainforests of Tasmania, so it felt really special to
see something that old and just kind of a staple
to the land. It's not actually a pine but a
conifer in the Podocarpesi family. Some have grown to be
over two thousand years old, making them some of the
oldest living organisms.
Speaker 2: On the planet. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And because they're so old, their tree rings have
actually been used to help establish records of climate variation
throughout ers, which I thought was pretty cool. And then
another fun fact is that it's highly prized for its
wood because it has a high oil content that makes
it impervious to insects and also quite waterproof.
Speaker 2: So the high oil content also.
Speaker 3: Allows the wood to bend easier, all of these characteristics
making it great for making boats. It was a sought
after lumber back in the day, so they were just
cutting these trees down until they kind of realized, wait,
these things grow pretty slow. Oh, and they take a
long time to grow. So in the nineteen seventies there
was a consensus that it is not sustainable to cut
down thousand year ols' trees, and they have since stopped
doing that.
Speaker 2: Well, thank goodness. Yeah, someone learns a lesson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, those were definitely some of my favorite.
I mean, the fauna and flora down there is absolutely incredible.
I saw little blue penguins which were amazing, and I
did cry walla, thees wombats, kangaroos, the birds were incredible.
So it was a phenomenal time and I highly recommend
anyone who was interested in nature to absolutely visit Australia
and Tasmania.
Speaker 2: All Right, I hear you on that one, and you know,
Tasmania is not as like a place where I don't
think people really prioritize for visiting Australia.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, honestly, you are the one who informed
me about it, and once you told me about it
and I started looking it up and everything. It is
just such a such a beautiful place. Everyone is so friendly.
We stayed in Hobart, which is a really cool old town,
and it was just incredible to see the variation of
the natural landscape around there, from rainforest to dry eucalyptus
for us, waterfalls.
Speaker 2: To the coast and caves. It was just absolutely amazing,
and all on a relatively compact island.
Speaker 3: Relatively compact island, I think it takes around four hours
to get from one end of the island to.
Speaker 2: The other, unless you're stopping for every bird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it'd probably take us at least four days.
Speaker 2: I feel that, all right. So that's a Dana's recap
of Australia. When we come back, I'm going to give
you my recap of Japan at proven Winter's Color Choice.
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local garden center. Greeting's Gardening friends, and welcome back to
the Gardening Simplified Show. Like I said, we're ripping up
the script today, doing things a little bit different, although
we will have some mailbank questions in the final segment.
We'll be back to our normal format next week, but
we wanted to just share with you because you know,
we travel for plants, we travel for food, we travel
for experience, but you know, plants and gardens are a
huge reason why I travel. And of course when it
comes to garden destinations, I think a lot of people
know that Japan is sort of, you know, one of
the places to go to see gardens.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I want to go some day.
Speaker 2: You should go. It's a long flight, but it's absolutely
worth it. Now this was actually not my first time
in Japan. I had been to Kyoto for my honeymoon.
And if you want to see gardens in Japan, like
the classic Japanese gardens, you have to go to Kyoto
that is really where all of these really famous, well
known gardens are. Kyoto is actually spared bombing in World
War two, so these really old gardens have actually persisted,
whereas Tokyo was completely destroyed in World War two and
so had to rebuild. So you don't see as many
of those older gardens as many of those venerable old trees,
although there certainly are some. But this time we did
just go to Tokyo, and I saw a lot of
really cool plants. But I honestly think that one of
the coolest things, and this was true in Kyoto as
it was in Tokyo, is that, you know, the Japanese
culture is just really just I don't even want to
say like plant focused. It's just that nature and plants
and the seasonal cycles are just such an intrinsic part
of Japanese culture and eating and everything, and so it's
just like there's this natural respect there for plants that
is really lacking in a lot of places. And it
really shows in the fact that even in Tokyo, which
is considered the most populous city in the world, huge city,
I think there's like thirty six million people that live there.
Any neighborhood street that you walk down, you see people
create these little tiny container gardens outside of their homes
and apartments, and I have some pictures of these. They
just take a little assemblage of plants and put them
out there for people to see and to kind of
express themselves. And so you're really seeing these like miniature
gardens everywhere that you go.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. I've seen that from friends in Japan. There is
just this appreciation for plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you don't have to like go to a
park or anything to see this, and that was a
very cool thing. So I have some pictures of that.
It's kind of like where do I even start. We
did visit some gardens, and the gardens in Japan typically
are either associated with a temple or shrine or are
like a historic park, part of a kessel, or a
former samurai estate as well. So I think my favorite
garden that we visited in Tokyo was Hamriiku Gardens, which
was a former samurai estate. It just had a lot
of really cool features and things like that, and one
of the things that it had were these seasonal beds
of annuals and there was a couple of them, some
of them were bare or had plants just getting started.
But what was at peak when we were there was
a huge planting of cosmos sulfurious. So a lot of
people know cosmos popular plant and cosmos sulfurious rather than
the typical pinks and white that you have in the cosmos.
Most people think of is as you might guess, with
the sulfurious yellow and orange. So there were these huge
beds of yellow and orange cosmos and they were just,
I mean, what's the verb that I even used to
describe it, just teeming with butterflies. I mean, I've never
seen so many butterflies in my entire life. And I
took a video of it doesn't do it justice, but
as you said, they're looking at this flower field full
of cosmos. I mean, there was just thousands of butterflies
of different species everywhere, and it made it so magical
and so interesting. So that was definitely a highlight, even
though I think that a lot of people don't think
of Japanese gardens as places to see flowers per se.
You know, there's gonna be hydrange as, there's gonna be camellias,
that kind of thing, but I don't think most people
think of them as like the traditional flower garden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more so evergreens, bones eye, Japanese maples.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. Another really cool thing that I saw. And
this I'm not gonna call it a weed because it
is native to Japan and grows everywhere. And this is
the first time I saw it, So even though last
time I was in Japan was also in the fall,
I had never seen this plant. And the plant is
Trichosanthe's pulosa, also known as the Japanese snake gord. Now,
the first time I saw this, we were just walking
on the street kind of getting from one area to another,
and we're just in transit. Basically, it was hot, it
was humid, I was getting tired and a little cranky maybe,
and there was just this sort of like railroad station
with this vine growing all over it. And you have
to see these flowers to believe them. They are so
in it. There are just hundreds of little filaments that
start all curled up into the plant and then they
just unfurl into this like a magical undersea creature looking
flower that is just beautiful, pure white. And then when
the flower matures, it becomes the snake gord, which does
not actually look like a snake. There are, of course
those long snake gords that you see, but this is
just kind of a small, round, orange red fruit. And
it turns out this is like a very kind of
poignant association with autumn in Japan, and I actually bought
a piece of fabric that had them printed on there,
and it's really so just a special thing that I
you know, it was just growing unattended and just really
really cool to see. So I definitely want to grow
that from seed to kind of connect to that memory,
and also because it is just incredibly, incredibly beautiful. You know,
a lot of the plants that we grow in our
gardens are actually native to Japan, and so it's very different,
I think, you know, seeing them in place where they're native,
even if they're in a cultivated area like a garden.
And one of those that I saw that was at
absolute peak was triceurtus, also known as totally very popular
autumn flowering perennial for shade, moist shade, and you know,
in every garden that we went to and in many
of those little residential gardens that I mentioned, it was
in full bloom and just so so pretty and again
just such a great association really with autumn. And you know,
I thought of you Rick, because lots of miss canthus.
Oh loves fall, you know, so plenty of miss canthus
everywhere in flower and just that beautiful, silky, you know,
tassel flower that they get. So you'll see some pictures
from Shinjuku go In, which is the National Garden in Tokyo,
sort of around this beautifully landscaped pond with you know,
cloud prune trees and I'll talk more about cloud pruning
in a moment. And yeah, the miss canthus was just
at peak and looking gorgeous, fantastic, So shouldn'tchuku In is
a really special place. I saw so many amazing trees.
And it's always funny. I think, like when you go
to another country and see a North American native and
you're like, whoa, that's so cool. And for me on
this trip, that was actually seeing our native bald snipers
Taxodium disticum growing in chin Juko go In with the
coolest news. You know how the taxodium gets the woody
protuberances because it grows in wet soil, so it does
the it creates these knobby looking things. Yeah, yeah, to
be able to get some oxygen. And the coolest planting
I think I've ever seen was actually in Japan, So
there's a picture of that on YouTube and ginko. So
you know, I was there in the last half of October,
and so it was really too early for fall color.
Yet you know here in Michigan that I missed peak
fall color here in Michigan and didn't quite get it
in Tokyo, they were still probably a good month away
from developed fall color. So the ginkos didn't have their
gorgeous gold fall color. But what they did have is fruit,
and a lot of fruits. Now, if you're not familiar
with ginko fruit, it stinks real bad. It smells as
when the fruit falls off the trees, it sits on
the street or whatever sidewalk, gets stepped on ferments in
the sun and starts to smell like vomit. The seeds
are edible, and we were served them at many different restaurants.
They're actually quite good, kind of like a nut. But yeah,
you know, in the US now basically all of our
ginkgos are grafted, so you're only getting a male ginko,
so you don't have to worry about those smelly fruits
coming everywhere. You will still see them sometimes in cities
like I know in New York, Like in older parks,
you would still see some female ginkos. But ginkos have
basically been grafted in the US to be only male
since probably the nineteen seventies or thereabouts, but not in Tokyo.
Lots of female ginkos everywhere. That made a little memorable
smell memory for a trip.
Speaker 1: So it was too early for the ginkos to be
brilliant yellow, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: But definitely peak fruit season, sir. And it was hot
and humid, so you can imagine the combination of all
of those things. So Tokyo is home to the Japanese
Imperial Palace, which is of course a big tourist attraction there,
and you know, of course we were going to go there.
But what I was not prepared for with the Imperial
Palace is that it is just surrounded by acres and
acres of cloud pruned Pina sunburgii or Japanese black pine.
And when I say cloud prune, so you might not
be familiar with this term, but cloud pruning is basically
the term that describes the way we all think of
like the way a Japanese tree is pruned, you know,
with that very meticulous it's called cloud pruning because the
foliage is all on the upper side of the branch,
kind of hanging over it like a cloud. It's pretty
labor intensive. You do have to start from a young
age for the tree, not for the person pruning it.
And every single year you have to go in and
you have to do what's called cutting the candles. So
you know, pines put these candles out. You have to
go in and cut them at a certain point so
that they will continue to grow in the direction that
you want them to. And I mean the Imperial Palace.
I couldn't even begin to fathom a number of pines
surrounding this place. It would have to be I mean,
it would have to be twenty thousand or more. And
I just cannot even imagine the labor that goes into it.
And its timing is super crucial for cloud burning. You
can't just say, oh, yeah, we'll get to that in
a month. You know, you have to get it when
the candles are at a certain stage. So it was
really just I think an incredible monument to the effort
that goes into gardening what it means to really, you know,
take care of something and have a vision for a
garden or a plant. And yeah, it was just an incredible,
incredible experience and great food, great people. I loved every
single minute of it, despite the heat and humidity which
is a little bit extremely So we're going to take
a little break when we come back. We're going to
answer some gardening questions before we wrap the show, so
please stay tuned. The Gardening Simplified Show is brought to
you by Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning
flowering shrubs in evergreens have been trialed and tested for
your success so you enjoy more beauty and less work.
Look for Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs in the distinctive
white container at your local garden center. Greeting's gardening friends,
and welcome back once again to the Gardening Simplified Show.
You know, we always say that we love answering your
gardening questions. That's one of the ways that we try
to simplify gardening for you here on The Gardening Simplified Show,
and that's why in this vacation themed show, we are
devoting at least one segment to answering all those burning
gardening questions out there, even though I think here in
Michigan this season is officially at it's.
Speaker 1: Ad and end, but we can dream at Christmas time.
And I love the fact that you go to Japan
and you get some beautiful fabric of a snake gorg. Yeah, yeah,
I love that I go to Costa Rica and I
end up in one of those touristy shops and get
this cheap taki shirt that you see me wearing here.
Speaker 2: I like it. Do you like it a lot? Yeah?
And Adriana did get a clip on Koala that did
not make it on air this time, but it's out there.
It's out there, so wonderful. But anyway, if you have
a gardening question for us, we know that just because
the gardening season might end, your questions don't and we
answer questions about indoor plants and that kind of thing
as well. So you can reach us at Gardening Simplified
on air dot com. There is a contact form there
you can fill that out. You can even attach a
photo if you'd like, and explain your issue and we
would be glad to answer your question on the air
if we can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or send pictures of your garden this past year
and dream with us.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's such a good idea, because, yeah, it
is a little bit of a waste until next season.
You don't tend to notice that in the holidays because
you got a lot to think about, But once January hits,
you're kind of like, m oh boy.
Speaker 1: Well, Stacy Tina writes to us, Hi, Rick and Stacy,
I loved listening to your show. I learned so much.
I've had this dilemma over a Wjila am I saying that? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've talked about that.
Speaker 2: Well. It is one of the ones that trips people up.
Speaker 1: It has grown way larger than I thought it would,
But I do not know the name. You can see
that it says tall as the house, or it's as
tall as the house. I've trimmed on it occasionally, but
it just seems to keep growing. How far down can
I trim it without killing it? I hardly ever see blooms,
so that doesn't matter if they don't come back for
a while. It's on the south side of the house.
Plenty of sun trying to take over Northwest Florida's Zone eight.
Be any suggestion.
Speaker 2: Yes, So the answer is in the question this time,
interestingly enough, So what's happening here, Tina? Is that your
why gela is not flowering because it's just too darn hot.
Why Gela is one of those plants like lilac or
apple that actually needs a period of cool temperatures, cold
temperatures in order to set its flower buds for the
following year, And in your Florida USA Zone eight B,
that is just not happening. So that's why it's not flowering.
So you know, in that case, I would potentially, I mean,
I don't know why you're growing it, or what you're
hoping for it to sort of accomplish, or what kind
of role you wanted to fill in your landscape. But
if you wanted flowers and it's not doing that and
it's not looking good, I would say just go ahead
and take it out.
Speaker 1: I would agree. But now you're not going to kill
it by pruning it, that's for sure. They respond well
to pruning.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and so on that same note, if you
do want to just keep it and give it a
new lease on life, there, you can pretty much prune it.
I wouldn't print it flesh with the ground, but you
can certainly prune it to just a couple of inches
above the ground. Get a chainsaw or some heavy duty
looppers or a handsaw. It is gonna probably be a
big job having such a large, mature one like this,
but you can take that down to just three inch
stubs and it will start to come back and the
foliage will be fresh. And you can do this with
almost all shrubs, or some shrubs that take to it
better than others. I know, for example, that elderberry doesn't
take to this very well, but why Gila is one.
It certainly does. And that's called a rejuvenation pruning, and
that'll give you a fresh start. Or if you know
someone with a pickup truck and got a strong metal chain,
then maybe it's time to just pull it out and
put in something, you know, that's a little bit more Florida.
Take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: You know, Stacey, you say that so nicely. A rejuvenation pruning.
In the industry, we'd call that a hack job. But
either way you get there, I recommend it.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess you know. Hackjob is what you say
to the other people on your team. Rejuvenation pruning is
what you say to a client a little bit nicer. Now. Interestingly,
now that it's December, we had a number of questions
about Holly, so I think people are getting ready to
deck the hull. So our next two questions are two
different questions about Holly.
Speaker 1: I see that, Stacy. Christine wrote to us from Quebec, Canada.
Bou sure, Christine, so Christine says, First, I love your show,
Thanks Christine. Second, I bought a very heavy gold winter
berry on a whim at the end of season clearance sale.
Don't you just love it? I love it.
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful plant.
Speaker 1: End of season bargains, and yes, beautiful. It came in
a pot with a Mister Poppins winter berry. Since it
was mid November, I just planted the whole thing, both
the female and male, into a single hole come spring.
Should I separate the two shrubs and move mister Poppins
away to give them space to grow or do I
just let them grow together? I couldn't find any information
on the plant tag or PW website. Thanks Barry mulch,
and I didn't say that, Christine said that. Good job, Christine. Thanks.
Speaker 2: He went for the double pun, the rare double pun
I love it so Christine. This is interesting because it
is not typically sold that way. There's certainly no issue
really with it being sold. Obviously it's much more convenient,
not just for you, but for the garden center as well,
because you know it can be difficult you could to
maintain adequate stock of both plants, the male and the female.
And of course Holly needs both a male plant and
a female plant, and only the female will set berries.
But I would say you did the right thing by
going ahead and planting it now together. But I would
definitely separate these outcomes spring. And here is the reason why.
In this case, very heavy gold, fabulous plant, just so
unique and so beautiful, is going to get to be
you know, I didn't check the height before I came here,
but a good eight feet tall, if not bigger. Whereas
mister Poppins is actually a dwarf variety. And so what
is likely to happen is that since the female is
larger and probably more vigorous, it's very likely to shade
out the male, and if the male is in too
much shade, it won't flower, it won't pollinate the female,
and it will just end up kind of disappearing and
negating its point of being in the same pot with
the very heavy gold in the first place.
Speaker 1: I agree they can enjoy the holidays together and the
holly days together. But I agree next year, let's separate
the two. Not too far, but let's separate.
Speaker 3: The two, right.
Speaker 2: And you know, Christine did say within fifty feet of
each other, and that is what we recommend. That is
what university is recommend because that is the average distance
you can expect a pollinating insect to fly on its
foraging trips to ensure pollination. So go for that splitting
come spring, Christine, and enjoy two fibulous plants.
Speaker 1: I love this question from Penny writes to us. I
have three miniature eyes ilex rock garden plants. They seldom berry.
What male pollinator should I get? My two red sprites
don't have a male pollinator, and they are exceptional. You know,
this particular plant being a smaller plant. I was visiting
Isley Nursery in Oregon.
Speaker 2: Such a they have such amazing plants.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. And they had these growing in troughs and containers.
What an interesting plant?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is so a lot of people aren't
familiar with this it's certainly not common. You aren't going
to just see this at your run of the mill
garden center. But it is a very dwarf holly with
small leaves, small thick, pointy leaves. And yeah, it's called
rock garden because it's the kind of plant that you
put in a rock garden. Just grows as a nice
kind of little tough itt. As I was reading about
it and preparing for the show, grows about one inch
a year.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: That is some slow growing, slow growing plants right there, Patients,
is a fact, which is great, you know. It's it's
kind of nice to have something that you don't have
to worry about overgrowing its space at least in your lifetime,
you know. But one thing that's interesting is so rock
garden is indeed a female holly, so you have the
potential for berries. But I have to say, in every
single source that I looked at through like the first
three pages of Google, I did not find a single
recommended male pollinator for this plant.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you if you could put
like a large castle wall holly somewhere in the yard,
whether or not it would work, right.
Speaker 2: So the tricky thing here is that I not only
did I not find a specific male pollinator recommended, but
even really reputable sites like the Missouri Botanic Garden just
said it's a hybrid holly, like they didn't say it's
a blue holly, or it's an English holly, or it's
any kind of specific holly. And the key to holly
pollination there's two crucial things. Number one, they have to
be of the same species so that genetics are compatible.
And number two, they have to flower at the same time,
the male and the female, because of course, if the
bloom times don't overlap exactly, you're not going to get
full pollination. So it's interesting that your red sprites are
doing so well. Red sprite is a winterbury holly, like
the same kind that Christine was asking about, So this
kind of loses its foliage in in winter. So what's
happening there? If you live in a neighborhood, is your
neighbor or perhaps if you're out in the wild, a
wild specimen is just pollinating those. But there is nothing
around for your rock garden holly. And I'm not sure
exactly what I would recommend, since I wasn't able to
find at least the species part. But yeah, I think
that a blue holly like castle Wall would be a
good start. But the only thing that concerns me with
that is I feel like there's such common landscape plants
blue holly that if that could do the trick, probably
a neighbor's blue holly would potentially already keep dollinating pennies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. I think the timing thing, you're right on,
and I think that's the problem.
Speaker 2: It could be timing. The other thing is rock garden
holly is not the hardiest of holly's, probably due to
its hybrid nature. So another possibility is that the flowers
are just being lost to cold. You know, that the
winter is killing the flower buds without actually harming the plant.
So I would say look for those flowers to appear.
If you have a friend who has a male blue holly,
you know, maybe get a little clipping of it when
it's in flower, put it next to this one, you know,
just in a little vase or you know, jar or
something like that to keep it hydrated and see if
that works. Sometimes you just got a experiment. So we
want to thank Adriana and Rick for sharing their incredible
vacation experiences and thank you all so much for listening.
We truly appreciate you and hope you have a wonderful
week ahead.