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Keeping It Green
Our landscapes have many functions; they add beauty to our surroundings, provide a place to recreate, reduce stress, and clean and cool the surrounding environment. They also provide pollen and nectar for pollinators and provide habitat for birds. Keeping It Green is a weekly podcast in which Penn State extension educators talk with ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts who add beauty and function to our landscapes. Topics will range from design, installation and maintenance, plant selection, pests, and other current horticulture topics.
Keeping It Green
Season 4 Episode 1 –with Penn State Extension Educator Ruth Benner and Dr. Margaret Hoffman, Program Coordinator for Penn State University’s Landscape Contracting Major, Associate Professor
Planning a trip to England and looking for inspiration on garden sites to explore? This episode of Keeping It Green is packed with insights you won’t want to miss!
Join the team as they sit down with Penn State Extension Educator Ruth Benner and Dr. Margaret Hoffman, Coordinator of the Landscape Contracting Major at Penn State University. They share highlights from their recent travels abroad, offering observations on gardens and plants across different countries—with a special focus on England and Ireland.
Discover what makes botanical gardens, historic estates, and public parks in the UK so unique. The conversation dives into contrasts between British and American gardening practices, explores iconic garden designs and plant selections, and reflects on cultural attitudes toward horticulture. Plus, learn why visiting historic gardens can be an enriching educational experience for anyone passionate about plants and landscapes.
Episode Hosts/Speakers:
Margaret Pickoff, Penn State Extension (host)
Tom Butzler, Penn State Extension (host)
Ruth Benner, Penn State Extension
Dr. Margaret Hoffman, Program Coordinator for Penn State University’s Landscape Contracting Major, Associate Professor
Photo: Sissinghurst Castle, Ruth Benner, PSU
Keeping It Green has an email: keepingitgreen@psu.edu
Do you have a suggestion for a future episode? Want more information on something we talked about? Send us your questions and comments, or just say hello! We would love to hear from you!
Check out Penn State Extension's Green Industry Team website!
Welcome to Keeping It Green, a podcast for ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts, with hosts Margaret Pickoff and Tom Buxley.
SPEAKER_04:Hello and welcome to Keeping It Green, a podcast from Penn State Extension for ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Pickoff. I'm a horticulture educator with Penn State Extension. And on each episode, I'm joined by my colleagues on the green industry team as co-hosts. On today's episode, my co-host is Tom Butzler. Hi, Tom.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, Margaret.
SPEAKER_04:But before we get to our interview with Ruth and Margaret, we'll start out with a little check-in about what we're doing and seeing at this time. So Tom, what are you what are you doing and seeing in Central PA?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, uh we started to get some rains. I mean, the middle part of this uh this year was really hot and dry. And I think we've talked about this before on on some of our previous podcasts, but I I it's gonna be interesting interesting to see what's gonna happen to some of our trees as we get into these very hot growing seasons. We're gonna see more stress, more uh mortality out there. I mean, I'm starting to see it on the mountainsides where we've had some uh spongy moth infestations, and then you throw in some of these really dry, hot months, and uh some of these trees are really starting to hurt. So uh uh it's gonna be travel the fittest, I suppose. So we'll see which ones um you know make it through these these growing seasons. I guess the other thing of note, kind of a fun thing, is um I planted some pawpaw trees several years ago, and and they've really been um throwing off a lot of fruit and um been harvesting uh some of those pawpaws the past couple weeks. I mean it's it's over now. Um it's uh it's a different tasting fruit. Um, it's a native one, and uh I think it you acquire a taste to it. So I've I've been eating it and trying to uh come up with some interesting ways to to make some recipes with it. So I guess stay tuned. We'll see, we'll see how that works out.
SPEAKER_04:Wow, I I love pawpaws. I um yeah, it and I've never done anything with them except just eat them raw, but I think part of it is like getting the ripeness just right because if you try eating it too early, it's like you really have to wait till it gets like soft and kind of gooey.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, yep. I started a bunch from seedlings or from seeds, so um, I'll I'll I'll give you one next year. I'll give you a couple next year. You can start your own pawpaw patch.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, wow, cool. That would be great. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So what's going on going on in your uh the eastern part of the state?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so uh here in Philly, we've also gotten a little bit of rain, not not nearly enough, but um, you know, we've definitely had a shift in in the weather, the temperature. We were just talking before we started recording about how it's been a little gloomy lately um statewide, and we need we need some sun. Um, but yeah, for me, um the sort of field-based season has wound down. So not getting as many uh client questions, but shifting more towards event programming for the winter, um, which is exciting. Um and uh it's early, but just to put this out there is that uh our green industry conference that we hold in the Philly area at Temple Ambler every year, usually is the first week of January. So it's right after New Year's. Um this year, based on some feedback from our participants and folks who do snow removal in the winter, uh we've actually pushed that back to March. Uh, so it's gonna be March 5th this year. We have a really great schedule of speakers, including um one of our guests today, Margaret Hoffman, who's gonna come out and speak for us, um, and Tim Abbey, who's in the background of today's podcast. But yeah, great schedule of speakers. Um, I'm really excited for that conference. I think it's gonna be uh super fun. So it's a it's a great time of year because we get to sort of yeah, put on our planning hats and um and come up with some great programs for the winter. And as long as we get enough sun and make it through the winter, we'll have some cool stuff going on in the spring.
SPEAKER_02:Um winter meetings, nice to get out there and um present some of this material, but it's also great networking with our clientele, with with folks that work in the green industry. So, yep.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's always good to see everybody after the busy season.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, great. Well, uh it's nice to catch up with you, Tom. I'm glad you're here today. Um, and so let's shift to our conversation with Ruth and Margaret. Um, just by way of a really quick introduction of uh both of these folks. Um, Ruth Benner is a commercial horticulture educator on the green industry team, uh, just like me and Tom. She's based in Erie County, and her work focuses on plant ID, greenhouse and nursery production, IPM. Um, and so we're really uh excited to have her on today. Um, Margaret Hoffman might be a familiar name because Margaret was actually our first podcast guest three years ago, which is hard to believe. But we had Margaret on to talk about natural swimming pools um all those years ago, and now she's back. Uh, she's an associate professor in the Department of Plant Science at Penn State, and she specializes in landscape contracting, um, landscape design, uh, green roofs, landscape construction, lots of cool stuff. And the reason we've invited Ruth and Margaret on the show today is to talk about um overseas horticultural explorations. So uh both of our guests have traveled um to Europe and beyond and um have seen some amazing gardens, arborita, uh, other sorts of plantscapes around. And so we thought it would be fun to invite them on and and kind of talk to them about their travels and what they've seen and observed. So welcome. That was a long introduction, but welcome, Ruth and Margaret. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. So um I figured we could start out with just a little intro to how you relate to this topic of traveling internationally to see plants and realizing that that might not be the only reason you're traveling internationally, but um since we're a plant podcast, that that'll be our focus today. But um, yeah, could you tell us, you know, where you've been recently and kind of broadly uh what sorts of um plants and and settings you've kind of seen cool plants uh in the last couple of years? And maybe we'll start with Ruth and then we'll jump to Margaret.
SPEAKER_03:Um Okay, so well, most recently I uh just earlier this month, I took a my first cruise. Um, and so we sailed from Miami to the Dominican Republic, and um there was a mountain called uh Mount Isabel Torres, a mountain that we uh drove up to the mountaintop and got to see the tropical plants, bromeliads and orchids growing through this tropical forest. Um, and then a nice comparison was when we got back to Miami, we spent a couple days there and got to see Fairchild Botanical Gardens and a museum and garden called Viscaya, and um, where there's a historic house and you get to appreciate the architecture, and it has this wonderful um like central courtyard that had at one time been an open courtyard in the center of the house. Um it's been enclosed since. Um, but you get to tour the house, and then nice thing about houses as part of gardens is you get to see the garden from different views, different elevations in the house. So that was my most recent trip where I got to see tropical gardens both in the U.S. and in the Dominican Republic. Um earlier this year, I got to go to England. I got to have my second visit to Wesley Gardens while I was there. Also got to visit um a couple other like historic houses. Um, Blenheim Palace was one of them. And um, so you get to see the house, you get to see the surrounding garden and how that garden, uh, well, the whole landscape was designed around the home so that the the homeowner would get to the view the different places. So typically when I travel, um, it's usually around some kind of work event of for my partner. So he usually is going to a conference and I get to to tag along on the trip. And so wherever he's going, I instantly go, okay, we're going to the UK. Here's garden, you know, what gardens are near that city? Um and in the UK, I usually don't just look for botanical gardens, I also look for parks because public parks often have some normal garden as part of them. I also look for other things like the National Trust. The National Trust is a program where kind of people get into a partnership with the government or with this trust to overtake part of the cost of maintaining their estate. Sometimes the families can still live in the home or part of the home, but then they open up that historic home to visitors to both the home and the gardens, and it helps to maintain them. It also helps to offset, I guess, the the amount of taxes they owe the government. So, but uh you can join the National Trust as an American. They have like a like a uh non-English membership that, you know, if you're gonna visit at least two of the homes while you're traveling, it's worth the cost to just join, because then you can go to all of them under that membership. So that's usually what I do. I look for gardens that fall under that, um, under the National Trust or other really well-known gardens, um, like any of the gardens that are part of the Royal Horticulture Society.
SPEAKER_04:Margaret?
SPEAKER_00:Well, so my motivation originally for going um to the gardens that I visited in both Ireland and England, particularly, was um more education um motivated. So I was either bringing students or I was developing um materials that I could use in my um classes, specifically like the um landscape design courses. And so the first time I went to England, um I went to all like the RHS gardens, the Royal Herticultural Society gardens, and then also went to some of the National Trust, but I sort of um targeted those that had famous landscape designers, like Vita Sackville West or um Gertrude Jekyll, um Edwards Lutyens, uh people that the students should know about. And then I filmed the gardens using a um 360 camera and created these tours of them so the students could put the headsets on and then experience the gardens, you know, walk through during the tour and see the different um highlights of the garden. And um hoping that would help them to understand how really good designers use principles and elements of design when they're you know creating a garden. And so the the first time was I basically went to Kew and then Sissinghurst, which is Vita Sacville West, and then Great Dixter, which was Christopher Lloyd, and now um Fergus Garrett is in charge there. Um, and then Gravetie Gardens, which um is actually attached to a Michelin Star restaurant and a wonderful hotel, and uh that's where William Robinson um made his home um when he wrote The Wild Garden, which is kind of a classic. And where else did I go after that? That was um that was a shorter trip. And I I think oh, I went to Hyde, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in London, um, and also toured the uh Tower of London because the moat had been just turned into this um like a super bloom by Nigel Dunnett. So I wanted to see that also. So that that was um kind of my maiden voyage to the world of gardening in um England, and then I was that was in October. So then next May I went also and went to the same gardens and did the filming so that we could see how the plant material um presented, you know, in both spring and fall. And then for my planting design course, students could see, you know, how great designers design for really, you know, all the seasons. So there's interest throughout the year. And um, and so I went to all those gardens again, but that time I added um Sheffield Park. Um I'm trying to remember all the ones I've been to. Sheffield Park was um basically a big, it's a private estate, National Trust, um, and it has a beautiful, beautiful home that's still lived in. Um, and then uh a lake and a beautiful, like it's it's mainly the whole big landscape effect, is what they're going for there. Um, I also went to Heaver Castle and Garden, which was where Anne Boleyn was raised. Um so that was interesting. Um, and that that was a fascinating garden also because you got to see the castle and um the old Tudor residence, and then you know, see the the garden, which has gone through many iterations in its lifetime. So that that was really fascinating. Um and I think that oh, I went to I added Hampton Court that year too, which is the palace garden, palace and garden. So you you're right, Ruth. Going through that palace was like it it really adds to your sense of the surrounding landscape. And for one thing, you know, you just know looking at the landscape that they had a small army of people living there that were doing nothing but taking care of that landscape. Because I mean, you never could have managed it otherwise. Um, and that had, I mean, many wonderful gardens attached to Hampton Court, but one that was my personal favorite was the rose garden. I just have a soft spot in my heart for roses. So, and it was in full bloom when I was there. And that that again was that was in May. And then this last May, I brought students over. And um, you know, one of the joys of that trip was seeing how they viewed the gardens and how they recognized things that they hadn't learned in their time at Penn State, you know, in design courses and plant ID courses that they thought they were never going to use ever, but they went to these gardens and they'd be like, Oh, I remember when you talked about this, and you know, this is that principle and element of design, and this is that plant. And, you know, they just got, they just loved it. Like at the end of the um the 10 days that we were there, and I asked them what their favorite garden was. I mean, they honestly could not pick one. They just we went to, of course, brought them to Q, Whistle, um, and they loved Whistle, just loved it with a passion. And then we went to Gertrude Jekyll's garden, um, Hestercombe, we went to Um Kidcoat Manor, uh, then we went to Beth Chadto's, which is a whole different kind of thing. So Beth Chadow was the person who kind of first started the right plant, right place movement. And um, you know, basically felt that if you created the environment that that plant had been um, you know, had been growing in and had developed, you know, over time, evolved in, if you created that environment in your garden, they would be fine. And so she had like gravel Mediterranean gardens, she had wetland gardens, she had woodland areas, um, and they really loved that one. Then we went down to Sissinghurst, Great Dixter. I think they universally felt like Great Tickster, Great Dixter was like, it almost was overwhelming to them because there were so many plants there. And it like it's just it's so lush, and it's not uh in landscape contracting, they're often taught, you know, to really control their gardens, you know, to manicure them, to uh use pruning, which which a great dixter does. They have some great like U hedges that are um, I think they're it's it's amazing how often they actually are pruned. But they, you know, they have walls, they have passageways, they have um, you know, they're into like trimmed into bird shapes, just amazing. Um, but then there are all the other areas are just full of this tapestry of plants, and um I think it was overwhelming for them. For me, that's the kind of thing I like, so I loved it. They were just kind of like, wow, there's so much here. They didn't even know what to do with it. Um and then after they went home, I stayed because I wanted to look at some gardens that I hadn't seen before to see if like the next time I bring students, if we should change, change it up a little. So I went more like to the southwest. Yeah, southwest this time. So I went to um the lost gardens of Heligon, which was amazing. So that's a garden that actually was um was part of an estate, and then in World War One, the uh all the gardeners basically went to the front, um and almost none of them made it back. And so because everyone on the state was like family, like the owner just couldn't, like he just didn't want to maintain the garden anymore. The um estate sort of fell into disuse. And then um, like in the past 20 years, they they went back in where the estate was purchased, they went back in and they found the bones of the old garden basically, and they just renewed it. And um it's it's really pretty amazing. So I highly recommend like that. One's definitely going to be on our list for next time I bring the students. Um, I also went to Stourhead, which is more of the classic, you know, um landscape garden, basically with big vistas. It's all about the the views that they created. Um and there was a really neat garden called the Garden House, which I had never heard of before, but I'm so glad I found it was just like this gem in this area called Yelverton. And it was it was just so worth going to. And then I walked from there to another garden called Wild Side, which is by Keith Wiley, who is sort of um uh a modern garden genius um in England, and that was like totally different than the garden house, but yet like had a lot of the same plant material, so it was but used in a different way. So that was fascinating. Um, and then where'd I go from there? Um oh, I went to the RHS Rosemore, which I had never been to, which is way on the western coast, almost by Cornwall. Um, and that was another just amazing experience. So you can hardly go wrong, honestly, when you're gardening and when you're visiting gardens in England. And I agree with you, Ruth. Like sometimes the most fun, like in London, London is such a walkable city, just walk everywhere, and you'll just see these little gardens and little green spaces tucked in between buildings. Like there's one um that's by uh I think it's called Grayfriars, and it was a bombed-out hospital, you know, during World War II. But it's a very old um, you know, when went back hundreds of years that it was a hospital. And so they created out of the wreckage basically a pocket park. And it's really beautiful, you know, just a little green space that they created so that the people in London City can, you know, enjoy and relax, maybe eat their lunch there or something.
SPEAKER_02:So I you know, listening to you two talk, I I I've realize I I've done very little international travel and have visited zero gardens overseas. So um that's something I guess I have to start doing. But I've visited plenty stateside gardens and arboretums and you know, managed places. Uh is there a difference, you know, when you you're here in the United States and you go to some of these overseas, I don't just use uh the ones in England that you've talked about extensively here. Uh is there a different philosophy um on how they're and you I think you kind of uh briefly mentioned this, but how they're managed, how they're laid out, how they're designed, and then how the public interacts. Um do you see a difference in the United States versus over in these gardens uh in England? Either view.
SPEAKER_03:I would say to some extent, but even in the United States, we're an immense country like England's not England itself is not that much bigger than Pennsylvania. But they have everywhere you go, wherever you are traveling, you can find these estates and the gar gardens to go to. So it seems to be much more part of their culture that um the aesthetic of gardening is very important in their culture, um, not just at the estates, but also in the towns. Um, people tend to have like fences and walled gardens, even around their own private property, where we tend to have much more open land here. But when I would go to these gardens, whether they were National Trust or if they were, you know, kind of self-run, there was a lot of volunteer workers that were there to learn or there for community to help maintain them. So I think that's part of how they maintain them. But I do see that to an extent here too. Some of our public gardens have a lot of volunteer base where they're there to learn and um to get their hands on plants. They might not have the land to to have their own garden. And so they get the opportunity to learn and do. Um, so I'm not sure if that's really a difference, but I I think maybe the the people's interest in volunteering there might be a little greater because I it just seems, you know, when I'm in there, I I mean I hate to make generalizations because when I'm visiting England, it's there for a snapshot in time. And I usually am kind of blown away by all the plants and all the designs and just trying to take everything in. But I do occasionally listen to the humans around me at the gardens too. And you'll hear them saying the names of plants. Like they don't, they're not looking for the tags, they know what they are. They seem to have just a uh a horticultural awareness that I don't generally hear here. Um, and even when I do like go to a public garden here, people are enjoying the outdoor space. And they might, I might hear people talking about the plants, but it seems like people are out for a stroll with their family and enjoying the day in an outdoor space. Where when I'm in England, I'll hear people discussing the plants or discussing the designs to a greater extent. And I, you know, my I referred to my partner earlier. He is really not a plant guy. And so when we go to these gardens, he'll he'll look at things that we have in our own yard. It happens all the time that we have the exact same plant in our yard. He walks by it, doesn't know it's there, but he'll see it in the garden, go, what, you know, what's that? And uh and I'll say, well, a lot of times I say the Latin name because I can't come up with a common name quickly. And in England I've had people walk by and go, hey, that's a spot on, that's what it is. And like, you know, they don't just know the common names, they seem to know the Latin names. Just people very, you know, freely can whip out those Latin names. And I'm like, wow, how great would this be to have friends who just want to walk through gardens and and actually talk about nomenclature with me? That would be pretty exciting because I haven't run into that too much among my friend set here.
SPEAKER_02:Well it sounds like Ruth, you need to take your partner and tour your uh garden at home. Um show them the pulp the plants. I so you think the you think the same thing um with your experiences?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um I I do think that the um average um person visiting an RHS garden or a National Trust garden is more informed than our average visitor who goes to our public gardens. Um I mean, I definitely get get that sense. And I think part of it is also um, you know, they have that allotment system. So in almost every small town or large town, they have um like empty lots that they designate as allotments, and you can apply for a plot in the allotment, um, and then you can put in a garden. Um, and you have to maintain it. So normally they're putting it in for um, you know, vegetables, but um they also will put you know some ornamental plants in there just to make it pretty too. And this is in so one of the places I visited um was Clovely, which is this little town on the um western coast, and it's um it has no motorized vehicles or anything, it's the original cobblestones, it's built on the side of this hill, and then the harbor's right below it. Um I think it's one of the oldest incorporated um villages um that's still intact in England. Um it used to be like associated with a monastery, and then in the dissolution, when you know Henry VIII um took property away from um like religious orders, um He gave it to a noble family and gave the village to the noble family, and that village or that family still has the responsibility for that village and the um abbey house that they own. And so it's it's it's a fascinating place. But these are old, old houses, old uh cobblestone streets, but they still have an allotment. And they these people who are actually renting the houses from that family, you know, that was granted the the village, they still have their little allotments. And like the the place that I stayed, the little bed and breakfast that I stayed there, um, that woman was just recovering from Lyme disease because she was out working in her allotment and she got a tick.
SPEAKER_01:She got a tick.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But her and you know, her little courtyard in front of the bed and breakfast was one of the most beautiful little places, you know, that I had ever, you know, had the fortune to stay in. And she had all these plants, and um, you know, they it's just part of their their culture.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you wonder, it is that something that's brought up through the family, or is that something in their education system where they have you know something on horticulture or plant biology and and an emphasis on it, some something that we don't do.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if it's part of their education or if it's something that they are brought up with. But the other thing I would say is they tend to have, as a society, more of a respect for like a being a gardener is a respected position, you know. Where for instance, if you you say you're a landscaper, you know, people don't necessarily think that that's like that's interesting, yeah. Anything to write home about. Um, but there, like being a gardener, that's like that's pretty respected. Um, so there is a a difference societally in that sense, I think.
SPEAKER_03:And I think even uh like their mainstream, like Gardener's World is a television show. Um that that is it's it's streamed prime time Friday nights. It's not we can watch it, yeah. Monty Don, you can watch it the next morning here in the US on Brit Box, um, or you can watch older episodes on other streaming services. But that's you know, usually eight or nine o'clock Friday nights, that's what people will watch. And it it's very popular there. Um they have their own uh garden show. There's other garden shows, the Hampton Court Garden Show, Chelsea Garden Show, which is probably the most famous, but they have a number of them all over the country. Um, our our garden events are usually like home and garden show, and it's mostly like somebody selling you spas and siding and new roofing material, and there might be one or two landscapers and a handful of plants, but their garden shows are focused around the plants, the horticulture, the design, um, and not just, oh, it looks pretty, but there's usually like a lot of concept into it. Like each one usually has garden has a focus on maybe something environmental or something concerning mental health. And people often, when you like go to the garden show and listen to people around you, people have already read or heard about who this designer designed this. And this is um, you know, this pathway was designed to illustrate this idea of going through the recovery process of for something. You know, like the people around them who are around you at these garden shows, they kind of know what they're going, they want to see, and they're there to get ideas. Um, and I think that's very, very different than when I've gone to garden shows here. It's more like, what can I buy? Um in what service, what contractor can I get a contract with or a special show rate? So I think it's that's very different. Of course, you can buy plants, but I can't smuggle them home. So I don't, so I don't, so I just browse through that.
SPEAKER_04:It's the limitation of international garden view.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, you can't just like especially working for extension. I'm always like, oh, could I could take the seed, but I don't want to be the person who brought home whatever weevil is in hiding out in that seed and start a whole new problem. So so yeah, I just take pictures and leave the plants there.
SPEAKER_00:But uh yeah, I think you know, my students, when they were looking at the plants, the one genus that really amazed them was Salvias. Like, you know, I tell them when we're teaching perennials and annuals, you know, like this this is a really large genus. This is really large. We only grow a small fraction of them, you know, and especially commercially available here. They're walking through these gardens and they're like, what is this? I'm like, that's selvia, blah, blah, blah. Then they're like, What is this? Oh, that's another, that's salvia, you know, another one. And they just are amazed at all the different ways that that you know genus expresses itself.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, I it's well that that makes me think of another benefit that they do have that makes horticulture a little more tangible is their seasons, what they can grow there. Um, I definitely get zone envy when I'm there because they can grow a lot of things that we couldn't grow here in Pennsylvania or that our seasons just much too short for.
SPEAKER_00:Well, in part of their, you know, country, they can actually grow tropicals, like parts of Cornwall, you know, even though they have very tough, you know, weather at times, they still are able, they they use garden walls very well, right? Like they both um plant-based walls and you know, like hardscaped brick walls. And they're there's a lot of advantages to them. They, you know, they help protect from sea spray, from salt, from desiccating winds, they keep you know, warmth in, um, they radiate heat when it does get cold. Um, so they they really are the masters of using um garden walls.
SPEAKER_02:You've created microclimates.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And and I mean, and using them to add to the overall ambience of the garden, too, like can contribute to the garden design.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, you've both talked a little bit uh about the sort of historical context of a lot of these gardens. And that's something I'm kind of curious about as another potential difference between what we've got going on in the US, which again is like very broad, as Ruth pointed out. It's a huge country, um, uh, versus in the UK. Um, and I'm kind of in an interesting spot because I live in Philly and we have gardens here that are as old as or older than the founding of our country, um, that were started by usually men who uh even if they were born in Philly, they were maybe one generation away from being English and so are very sort of um seem to be very influenced by the sort of uh English view of gardens and interested in interesting plant collections from around the world and uh you know uh just amassing these collections um uh on their personal estates, and then those estates became gardens at a certain point. Um, in the Philly area, we also have a lot of famous gardens that were the estates of uh industry leaders, of like railroad people, I guess. I don't know, people who had tobacco empires and things like that. And maybe their wife was really interested in roses, so they have this rose garden or something like that. But it's it's a little bit more, a little bit newer. Um, and the collections seem to be a little bit more like American, even though I don't totally know why or how. But I just wonder in terms of the plant collections themselves, like how does history sort of impact what we see today uh with these two kind of separate approaches to um to making a garden?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think in England, I mean they definitely went through different um like design periods in gardens. And um I mean the gardens that we're mostly familiar with um were often wealthy people, right? Just like in Philly, the wealthy people could afford to have a garden that was just there for their enjoyment, right? And they could afford to pay a big staff to take care of that garden. Um, now a lot of wealthy families, like the woman, um, that's project they took on, they would do the design, like uh Vita Sacville West, um, or Gertrude Jekyll for that matter. Um but I think and I think that's probably true to some extent in the US, also, is that the larger gardens started with wealthy families who could afford both to send someone out to collect the most interesting plants and that added to their cachet, basically. And then, you know, often was driven by the wife's personal tastes in in garden, um, which were often driven by the English garden um styles. So it's it's kind of it's kind of interesting, I think, how how they have still maintained that, but now it's like no one can afford to maintain um that huge a staff. So they've had to do things to make them manageable. And and and also, you know, now people it's more accessible to the average person, right? So like if in Colonial Williamsburg, the gardens there, they didn't have gardens, they just had grew vegetables. I mean, the they are gardens, but they certainly didn't have gardens that were there for aesthetics. Every space was there to help them survive, basically. So they'd have their livestock and then their vegetable gardens. Um and it's only when we started having the time to actually put in a garden for our own enjoyment. You had to have the time, you had to have the money, and you had to have the land to be able to do that. So I don't I don't know. I would really like to study what motivated the two gardens, you know, for the average person in in like here versus Europe. Because I I think they there's just something subtly different, and I don't can't really put my finger on it. I don't know. Ruth, you probably have a better take on that.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know if I do. Um, I mean, I I agree with everything you said as far as, you know, if you're wealthy, you can afford to put on the show and one up other you know, it was a lot of it was like, oh, his pond and fountain is this big, my vista is gonna be even bigger. Um you see some like when I'm in front in France, you can see differences in design. Like, oh, like yeah, we're gonna have these formal gardens, but lots of curves. Where in England you see a lot of like right angles and um long straight passageways, the not gardens are straighter. Um I I see differences with that, but in American gardens, it seems like a lot of times we're taking pieces from what they saw when they were on their grand tours of Europe. Like, here's what I saw in England, I want this, or here's what I saw in like if think about um Disney World as being a garden, because it is, it's beautiful there. That a lot of that was taken from Tivoli Gardens in Denmark. And when you're there, you can see pieces of it that is like, oh yeah, I can see how Walt Disney saw pieces of this and took this to to design uh Disney, Disneyland. So I I think we take a lot of pieces of what we admire from different landscapes and and piece them together. And so I've a lot of times it seems like American gardens might be a little slightly more eclectic. Um But you know, I guess that's I don't know, because Margaret, you've been to lots of places like um when you're in England, you see a lot of follies where they're taking pieces of what they saw maybe in Roman rumin ruins, the columns from Roman Roman or Greek ruins, and making follies out of them to put in their English garden. So I guess it's something that they've done as well, where as they traveled and saw Europe, they took pieces of what, oh, I I admire this, and this represents power and money. I mean, white represents money more than having a folly, something that's like a structure that has no purpose other than to look like to be a focal point in the landscape, but it really doesn't have any other purpose. And you know, that's that's pretty much the height of um I guess they have one in Chanticleer, don't they? They have a folly that they built a ruins just to be the a focal point.
SPEAKER_04:Wow, and you I feel like you can learn a lot about human psychology through garden design. Like this is what humans value and and are drawn to.
SPEAKER_03:Um I think so. I think like for me, um, the idea of enclosure is something like I think one of my first uh like like fantasies in my head of what I wanted a garden to be was from the book The Secret Garden, where the little girl discovers the key to a walled garden and and takes it over. I read that as a child, and then when you go to England, you get to see a lot of these walled gardens, and you have that sense of safety and enclosure in these um enclosed spaces. It's it's really charming. And I think that speaks to psychology. Like, how do I feel when I'm yeah in this garden?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and actually that's that's one of the things that this I think the students realize when I like I teach garden rooms, like you create garden rooms because they tend to be more functional, and also you can decorate them, right? You can make them yours, you know, put your stamp on them basically, but they create a sense of security for people to be enclosed, right? You don't want it to be stifling, but you want to at least give them that feeling of security, and they really that really came home to them in the gardens because almost every English garden we went to had that sense of enclosure. Some of them were maybe larger scale, but you know, would still have a portion that would be you know smaller. Um, and you know, I think there's a lot of things like I'm just thinking of things that I've brought home. So like at Grave Tie where William Robinson was, they have this vegetable garden that's like amazing. And it um that they use all the produce in their um award-winning um restaurant, even like the flowers they grow, they grow for you know to be put into salads or desserts or whatever. And they have the main path is lined with um espaliard apple trees, but they're this high. So they're a fence that's only like not even as high as my knees, that go along both sides of the path, and they have different types of you know, apples, and then all the walls that enclose it, they have um espaliard fig trees, they have aspaliard apples, they have you know, you know, almost any type of fruit you can think of. Um, and so, and then also like other gardens, they they do bleaching a lot to create alleys. And um, I'm in um a small property up here in State College, and I'm looking at the like there's a fence, but it's like a split rail fence, but I'm like, hmm, I think I'm gonna start a higher level fence that'll be pleach trees to go along the back. So it'll still be give me that sense of privacy and enclosure, but also be something different and you know, kind of fun. So, you know, I wouldn't have thought of doing that hadn't I visited if I hadn't visited those gardens.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. Um well have you been to Ham House, Margaret? No. Um, Ham House is pretty close to to London. It's worth the trip. I think you'd like it. They have the espaliard apples and the walled vegetable garden. Um, but they have the pleached trees. I think they're uh I think it's carpinus that's bleached. And then under it they have taxis, and it just shows you how much shade taxis can can grow in. But you have this lower shaded level of a taxis hedge, and then maybe a foot or two of clearance so you can kind of see through the tunnel, and then almost a tunnel of the pleached trees that you walk through. And so I I know my enthusiasm for gardening is really high until about July. And then July and August, it wanes a bit. And I question is this really what my passion in life is? Um, and it it seems like the a lot of the English gardens have a lot more space dedicated to like, here's a pathway of shelter. Um, in this, even though there could be really functional gardens where they're growing their own food, they also have these areas of comfort that I'm like those are some of the ideas I steal and want to bring home is how can I have these comfortable little nooks through my garden where I still can enjoy being outside in July?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, to that point, one of the things that I've I always looked at as a failure of mine as a landscaper, a gardener, and I'm just talking about my own property. So I, you know, we'd walk through every night, you know, go through the whole property. And instead of sitting there on the beautiful bench that I built into this little, you know, like a little nook, or on a small little wall, circular area where the paths come together. I never sit and enjoy those spots. I'm always going through, picking weeds, you know, like cutting something here, or looking to see if there's like an insect problem or disease problem. And I'm like, this is not the this is not what you're supposed to be doing. You should be out enjoying the garden. Like that's something that's um a goal of mine, to actually quit working in the garden and start enjoying it, at least for a little bit of time. Because I do think that the uh English like the normal English person spends time and enjoys the experience in the garden. They're not constantly like trying to control it, weed it, you know.
SPEAKER_04:So um, I have I have a kind of a a closing question for you both. And we usually end our podcast by asking, like, what do you like to do outside of your work? But because of our topic today, um, I'm gonna ask something that I I also think will shed light on who you guys are personally for our audience, but is also very related to this topic. Um, and this could also be a very long answer. Uh so if you're able to distill it down, but something I'm curious about from you both is when you arrive at a new garden that you're visiting, what is your approach to experiencing it? Like, do you just launch yourself in and kind of go where your eyes are drawn first? Because that's what I usually do. I don't have a plan of attack ahead of time. I'm just kind of like, I'm here and I'm gonna see some stuff and then I'm gonna leave. But I have a feeling that each of you as lovers of design and big lovers of plants have a little bit more, I don't know, maybe you don't, but maybe more structured approach to visiting and experiencing these spaces. Um can you share that with us in maybe a slightly shortened format?
SPEAKER_00:So I I'll just jump in here quick. I think it depends for me. Um, if I'm doing filming, I will, you know, grab the garden map and I will look at it and I'll talk to the people who work there and you know what are the things I absolutely don't want to miss. Like I need to film. And I will say that when you're filming a garden, it's kind of like what I was saying about my own garden at home. You're not really experiencing it because you're filming. It's like there's a whole difference. So I I try to do the filming and then put the camera away and maybe come back the next day and just walk the garden and experience it because it's a very different um experience. So and I so if I go someplace and I'm not filming, um I just enter the garden and wander. That I don't have a plan usually.
SPEAKER_03:Um yeah, I I guess my answer is pretty similar. Uh if there if it's a famous garden and there are certain vistas you want to see, I tend to make that a priority to make sure I get there. Um I hate to say it because it's not quite great quality, but I I tend to have that fear of missing out when I go to places. So I do usually take the map and try to hit everything. But it's a very happy day if I can go through the garden once um and take pictures and and see it. I have used a lot of um of the photographs for work projects, like the online courses that we wrote that you were all um a part of. Uh a lot of those pictures for the design course came from my trips to Europe and from and gardens in the US as well. But so so there's that element of want to take pictures. I might be able to use this for work, but it's really wonderful. Um, most of these gardens in in UK in particular will have a cafe where you can sit and relax. And I highly recommend having a cream tea, which is where you get a tea with a scone with a little jar of jam and clotted cream. Um, and you sit and relax a little bit. And then usually after I have that, I'll go back to the garden like Margaret does, try to keep my phone in my pocket and just take it in. Um for me, if I can hate to say this, but um spend a little time just by myself without other people and without the phone, just taking it in um and not worrying about if I'm slowing anybody down or if someone else is bored, that's that's the key time. So I I hate to say it, but if you love plants and your travel companions don't, send them to a museum or something else they'll like. So you can just kind of take it in. And if you want to spend, you know, 15 minutes looking at a certain moss or a fern that you've never seen, it you have the time to do it. Um when I went to England uh in in April, I got to spend the entire day at Wisley by myself. And instead of worrying about when are we gonna eat, when do we need to do this, when do we need to leave, I they had a lot of these, like uh what do they call them? Uh walls made uh in England. A lot of times, instead of using like plastic stakes or manufactured staking materials, they'll use twigs and sticks. Um, and they'll weave them together to make like these little domes so the perennials can grow up through them and support them. You don't see a whole lot of human-made manufactured plant supports. And so I just spent time taking pictures and examining how they wove these pieces of willow or or birch together to make these little things. And then they had these like, I can't remember the right name, like bed walls where they'll make um like fencing for the landscape, kind of little um dividing sections that they pound a couple dead pieces of wood into the ground, and then they'll fill up between these layers with sticks and things, and it makes shelter for wildlife, not necessarily you something we all want to have in our like some of us have too much wildlife. I wouldn't necessarily want it close to my house, but they'll use instead of like hauling it off to a compost facility, they made all these walls out of um just natural materials that were there. And I just got to spend time checking that out, looking at how they how did they actually put that together so it would be stable? Um, which is something that's hard to do if you have a bunch of other people around you. So um that's I don't know, that that's one of my uh takeaways is just getting to actually look at yeah, I got to see the beautiful aesthetic. Um, here's how it looks from 40 feet away, 20 feet away. But getting to look up close, like how did they prune this? Like where did they make that cut? Because some of the uh horticultural skill skills you'll see there are just pretty impressive. And and I I've learned a lot about what I need to learn more about by looking at the way different people have done things. Um, so yeah, just taking the time to look close.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. One thing I I want to just interject is that um one of the advantages. Filming, especially when you're using a like um an 360 camera because it looks different, right? And then you're setting up um, you know, you set up your shots on a tripod, and I usually try to hide so I'm not always in the picture, and then I just use my phone to take the shots, right? And I get so many interactions with the people who work in these gardens because they have no idea what I'm doing, right? And so I get it's just it's a great icebreaker, and I get to talk to the professionals there and then talk to like the garden they're working in, or the section of the garden they're working in, and what is their background? And you know, they asked me about gardens in the States, and like one of them was going to be going to work at Longwood Gardens um in like two months for for like an exchange program. And um, you know, it's just like people I probably wouldn't have met or had a chance to talk to if I didn't have this weird-looking camera and be on my phone, you know, taking pictures or hiding behind plants, and they're like, what is she doing? Hiding behind all those plants, you know, while I'm taking the picture. And it's it's been a really good way to um yeah, meet people who are very knowledgeable about the gardens. Spend some time talking to them.
SPEAKER_04:That's a good tip. Like, do something's a little bit strange in the gardens.
SPEAKER_02:Not too strange, Margaret. You might be put in the slammers.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Um, wow, I love that. Thank you both for sharing um your approach because I I think uh it's it you can tell a lot about a person about you know and their relationship to plants and landscapes, about how they how they sort of visit these places. Um, I feel I can't speak for you, Tom, but I feel very inspired by our conversation to go and visit some of these places. Um, and maybe you'll you'll give us a map or a list of of your your highlights so that we can use it in the future. Um but thank you both so much for being here and sharing such uh wonderful experiences and information. It's just so clear how much you both love this, you know, travel, uh visiting these spaces and how much sort of reverence you have for them. So it's uh it's really nice to hear. And um yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing with us. Well, thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_04:All right, take care, everybody.