Broadcasting from Studio A here at Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs.

It's time for the Gardening Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella, me Rick Weist, and our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson.

Today we're finding inspiration.

You can actively seek it out or it can come naturally.

And how do you do that with plants and your landscape.

Inspiration is insight, which refers to what we absorb or take in, and movement is how we act on it in our landscapes.

Without movement, insight is just knowledge and conversely, taking action without insight is simply doing so they go hand in hand.

How do you get inspired?

I really think one of the ways you do in a landscape is to think about the function of the space.

I have a perfect spot on the east side of my house where I can envision myself sitting there sipping on a cup of coffee in the morning as the sun is coming up.

I think a lot of inspiration is closely tied to drama, and I like the thought of utilizing some of the new cultivars that are available on the market today to help influence some of that inspiration for your landscape.

And I'm thinking about some plants that actually change color over the course of the season, providing drama.

You know, I love little Lime Punch hydranga.

And then in twenty twenty six, the Super Bell's Magic double grapefruit calibri CoA is coming that changes color also during the season.

And so Stacy, I was thinking about inspiration and it struck me.

Seasons provide inspiration.

Seasons in our lives provide inspiration.

So if you think about it, the seasons are kind of like theater.

And I'll put it this way.

Spring is a great awakening, Summer is a blockbuster movie, fall is the grand finale, and winter is reflection.

And so I think it's embracing the seasons.

That's one way to find inspiration in your garden.

And I think also starting small and building momentum because success breeds success.

We've heard that before, but success also breeds complacency.

So a lot of this is all about attitude.

That's for sure.

Yeah, you know, it takes a long time, and I think that's the important thing here is nothing happens overnight in the garden, and you don't have to get things right right away.

You know, you have your vision for this space, on the east side of your house.

I had a vision for all of these different spaces in my house, and I had lived in my house for a good nine years before I was ready to really pull the trigger and do what I did.

But I needed that time to kind of think about it and use my space.

And you know, I have no regrets because now I feel like we did the right thing.

So, yeah, it's an attitude and we're definitely not complacent.

There's still a lot of work to be done.

And think about this.

A great way to think about garden inspiration is to think of the opposite of inspiration.

So in lieu of inspiration, how about copycat neighbors?

All right?

Is it flattering or is it flat out annoying?

And I'm fascinated when I think about this because in my neighborhood, you know, when I got the house, immediately started tearing everything out, the lawn, changing everything over.

The neighbors were watching.

I have some neighbors who immediately started working on their landscapes and started copying some of the things I was doing.

It was as though I gave them license to do these things.

I have some other neighbors who dug in their heels and said, no way, I'm not doing that.

As a matter of fact, one of them put parked a boulder in his front yard and that's the extent of his landscape.

Very uninspiring.

But think about it.

And estimated seventy percent of American homeowners copy home related ideas from their neighbors.

So they're copying everything from the lawn furniture to lawn care, colored choices, purple front door, or anyone lighting upgrades, replacement windows, plants, and landscape choices.

But many people find well, you know, Oscar Wilde said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but sixty seven percent of homeowners find it uncomfortable.

Well, here's the thing about the Oscar wild quote.

It goes around a lot, but it's almost always missing the very crucial second half.

Were you getting into this?

Yeah, yeah, So we always make sure to say this around here.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness very goal.

So it's's not simply flattery.

I do not have to worry about anybody trying to replicate what I do in my garden.

My neighbors all think I am completely insane.

They do enjoy looking at it, but they do not envy me, or want the work or know how that goes all along with what I'm doing.

My neighbors think, however, Yeah, well, I think there's a there's a garden blogger.

Her name's Carol, and she wrote in a blog once, and I think it really sums it all up.

If your neighbors don't think you're a little bit crazy, you're probably gardening wrong.

Yeah, I agree, I agree one hundred percent.

My point here is, as we talk about inspiration, don't copy your neighbors.

Be an original.

And I would say, for example, there's a statistic I read, watch your neighbors when they're grilling.

One in six people, fifteen percent believe flames kill off bacteria, and twenty seven percent of people are confident dirt adds flavor to their cooking.

Oh my gosh, for real, Yeah.

For real, dirt keeping up with the Joneses.

So I wrote you a little copy cat.

I'm going to think twice about going to anyone's house for a barbecue.

Ever, again, they might be in the twenty seven percent.

It's scary, isn't it.

So here's my copycat limb A rick about my neighbors.

They're watching from a distance.

Call it neighborly coexistence, looking for inspiration to enhance their curation with the path of least resistance.

I was trying to be original, but now I'm just miserable.

They all copied my design that I had found online.

It's downright wrong, despicable.

Am I flattered or annoyed with my idea?

They have toyed?

In December, I'll copy their lights, Christmas decor and holiday sights.

I'm sure they'll be overjoyed.

Yeah, I tell you what.

Well, you know, this did happen to my colleague and she was upset.

So she built a very distinctive front fence pattern.

Okay, that was not like you know, it wasn't something off the shelf.

She you know, designed this and they built it.

And then the place next door to her went up for sale and they wanted to spruce it up and they built the exact same fence and she was not happy.

I tell you what.

It happens.

And with my landscape, I think a lot of inspiration comes from the vibe that you're trying to create and living on the in West Michigan, on the Lake Michigan, shoreline and near the beach.

I wanted tropical vibe, so I went for swaying grasses instead of the traditional evergreen foundational plants, and they became the backbone of my landscape.

And then I picked out tropical plants, or at least plants that had tropical appeal at allocacia, colocacia, bananas, high biscuits, cannas, different types of cannas, kalladiums, color blaze colias, cordelines, all of that, even hardy cactus.

All of that makes a difference and helps create that vibe.

Adding water features to something like that also helps add that vibe.

Now in my case, I have a built in borrowed water feature, and that is Lake Michigan.

You can hear the waves from my house.

Using containers for true tropical plants and annuals, areas of shade or filtered shade, get that rainforest vibe, palms, all of that sort of thing I think are very important.

So tune into what vibe you're trying to create.

And then again, like I said, the seasons, I think fall is a great time for inspiration in the garden, and we're going to talk more about that in future.

We nice you know.

I think that people can be excused to a certain extent for copying you because it's a little bit like, you know, learning to cook.

They're like, Okay, I want to make a chocolate cake, but I don't know what ingredients I need to put in here, and you, as a horticulturist, you have that ingredient list, and they see the ingredients of a great garden in your yard and they're like, you know, just like we were saying before, when I go to the garden center, I am just bewildered by choice.

Rick seems to know what he's doing.

These plants do well around here.

I want what Rick has, so they you know, you're a role model.

They're not just a you know, they're not just imposters.

They're looking up to you.

But I would proceed with a word of caution, and that is with those recipes.

I'm the type of person who doesn't necessarily follow I add a little of this, take that out rear, and sometimes it gets me into trouble.

It's true, if you know what you're doing, you're willing to take risks that the people who don't know what they're doing are probably not going to be very happy.

With but they might ask you first, but.

I'd far rather be inspired because life is more fun that way.

Yeah, and then your whole neighborhood look amazing.

You'd be responsible for transforming your entire neighborhood.

We'll give you some inspiration ideas and segment four next, let's see how Stacey ties this all in in plants on trial.

That's coming up next here on the Gardening Simplified.

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Were Reading's gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Joe, where the topic of today is inspiration, the perfect, hopefully little you know, thing to get you through how hot it has been, how dry it has been.

If you were out here in West Michigan, we're like, what four inches below normal for July.

And you know, between the heat, the humidity and the lack of rain, it can make you feel pretty darn uninspired.

So that's when it's time to kind of dig in and look back as to why you gotten yourself into this whole gardening mess in the first place.

I think there's two great ways to do that.

There's two ways I normally do that, and number one is to look at books, and there are some wonderful picture books of gardens from all over the world.

Or of course you can browse websites of different public gardens around the world, find great pictures and get inspired that way.

And then the other thing is, of course, to visit public gardens.

And that is where I will say that I have found my biggest inspiration, which Rick, I don't know if that makes me a copy cat like your neighbors, or if I'm just, you know, doing what every artist or creator has ever done, which is look at something that someone else did and start taking it in a new direction.

Oh that's that's not copycat, that's just learning.

Because for me too, I've I've received all kinds of inspiration from gardens in the Netherlands, British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest, you know, all of the you know, and you can point them out and they've helped helped inspire me.

So if you do it in a public garden, that's.

Not and that's that's a free for all.

That's a free okay.

Now, unfortunately you don't have a ton of public gardens out here in West Michigan.

We do have a couple, but certainly if you're traveling or planning travel, I love to plan what I'm seeing around public gardens and public gardens are a way to not just see, you know, new ideas and new combinations, new plants and us.

If you're copycatting, you're gonna have the labels there, which is good compared to most people's yards, although some people do label their plants.

And it is at a public garden that I found one of my biggest garden inspirations, and that is the late nineteenth century gardener and writer William Robinson.

So Adrian is nodding because of course that is Adriana Robinson.

I'm not sure if that's any relation.

It would be nearly impossible to tell, but let's just pretend it is.

So he was pretty much the first gardener and designer with any kind of influence to speak out against the status quo, which was at the time Victorian carpet bedding, and so if you're not familiar with that concept, it was basically like different shaped beds in turf that were planted very tightly with colorful annuals.

And that was a garden back then.

You know, this is really sort of there was still like a landscape movement, but even that was just kind of like trees.

They were trying to replicate nature.

And William Robinson came along, you know, kind of on the tail end of the Victorian period and basically is the person who is responsible for everything that we think is gardening today.

And it's so wild to think, you know, that there was a time where the way that we combine plants and the way that we build gardens now simply did not exist like it was.

It was impossible to imagine until William Robinson came along.

And William Robinson wrote two seminal books that you can still find today.

You can usually download them for free if you are an ebook reader, because of course they are well off copyright, The Wild Garden, which is my personal favorite and my biggest inspiration, and The English Flower Garden.

And both of these books, you know, they were written before photos, so they have some illustrations, and I think there might be some more modern versions with some photography, but these are really the books that kind of brought us to where we are now.

And if you admire the gardens of you know, just to name a few big names, Omi and Van Sweden who really kind of brought this style of planting out in the nineteen nineties, or more recently Pete Audolph.

That's really they were sort of informed by William Robinson's style and it was such a sea change from what had been happening.

So I really got inspired to read William Robinson and learn more about him and his planting style and everything that he contributed through the wild Garden at Wavehill.

So Wavehill is an absolutely incredible public garden in the Bronx in New York City.

It's not one that people usually visit.

It's off the beaten Path.

You can't take the subway to it.

You can take the Metro North train.

You can also take a cab or a you know, ride share.

There's lots of ways to get there now.

You can take a bus.

But if you have a trip planned to New York City and you're going to see one garden, you know, of course I've been to the New York Botanical gard and that's my alma matter, that's where I went to horticulture school, and of course I love it.

I've been to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

But if you were going to spend your time in one single garden in New York City, I would urge you to make it Wave Hill because it is just so beautiful and so inspiring.

And the Wild Garden at Wavehill is to me the most awe inspiring of all, which is really saying something, because the entire garden, from the moment that you walk in, will just completely take your breath away.

The Wild Garden was based on the work of William Robinson, and it has a really cool kind of seating area, and the centerpiece of the plants in the garden is a giant, beautiful, mature cut leaf Sumaco and it is just it's trained and grown in this way that really sort of epitomizes everything that William Robinson was teaching, which is to take plants, especially native plants, and don't really take the wild out of them, but use your gardening skills, in your gardener's eye and your artist's eye to make them sort of more of a sculptural element.

He really wasn't looking for ornament, he was looking for plants themselves as ornament.

And that's what this sumac at the Wave Hill Garden really does.

And I always knew that someday when I had house, I was gonna want to have the same plan in my garden, just because it's so beautiful and so interesting.

But then I got a house, and my quarter acre suburban town lot isn't really necessarily that amenable to this very large plant that also suckers.

So if you make a smac happy, it suckers and comes up all over the place.

It becomes kind of a management nightmare.

And so I found, much to my surprise, I wasn't planning this.

It just kind of turned out this way that one of our plants in the proven Winter's Color Choice Shrubs line allowed me to reinterpret this concept in a way that actually worked for my yard, and that is lemony lace elderberry.

And I've said it before, this is a plant that I've always liked from the first time that I saw it, but I didn't love it until it came into my garden.

And I am just just love, love love, I'm just smitten with this plant, and it really has a lot of the same qualities.

So it has as you might guess by the name yellow very cut leaf foliage, it isn't going to be quite well.

Mine's pretty young still, so it may develop more of a sculptural kind of aspect like the sumac at Wave Hill did, but it does a lot of the same things and it kind of has evolved therefore into my own little interpretation of the wild garden in my yard like that.

It's pretty cool.

I've been to New York City many times.

How come I've never been to Wave Hill Gardens.

Thank you for the inspiration.

The book A trip right now.

It's it's so great.

I have to do that.

And Lemonie lace I have that in my landscape.

Had visitors this past weekend from Oklahoma.

That was the plant they were drawn to in my landscape.

I'm not surprised because it is such a great plant.

So it is hardy down to Usdazon four heat tolerant through USDA Zone seven, So not sure your Oklahoma visitors would have a ton of success with it.

It is not the most heat tolerant.

Apologies to are hot climate friends.

You might look into that sumac for your gardens instead.

It is, however, pretty shade tolerant, so mine is in part shade.

And I've also found that it's very drought tolerant, so you know, I don't really do supplemental watering.

Mine is probably three or four years old now, my lemony lace, and you know, no supplemental water, and it's doing fine.

It doesn't like dry out or get stressed or anything.

Of course, that probably helps that it's in part shade.

In addition to being hardy USDA ones four to seven, it is four to seven feet tall and wide now in my garden.

Because of that lack of water, I anticipate it staying on the smaller side.

But this plant just brings so much into my garden, and I like that it gives me some continuity because of course I can't go to Wave Hill all the time anymore.

I don't live in the Bronx like I used to, and so it kind of I like that it calls to mind that same experience and love that I've had for that garden and all the great times I've had in that garden, but in a way that actually works for my yard.

So it's kind of like, you know, a point of continuity between those two things.

It is also a native species, so Sambucus rasimosa is our native red elderberry.

It blooms early in spring.

So most of our elderberries bloom in summer.

Sambucus rassamosa red elderberry blooms very early in spring.

It actually blooms generally before the leaves come out, nice white flower clusters, fragrant, and as soon as those flowers kind of start to form, the foliage comes out.

When it emerges, it's this beautiful red color and the light hits it and it's just it's a magical, magical plant.

And I really I like that.

It has, you know, again, given me this apportunity to kind of take a bunch of my inspirations and reinterpret them in my own backyard.

I really like that.

And I would add to that also on the color wheel, opposite colors attract or can provide some real impactful inspiration in your landscape.

And my Lemonee lace, Stacey, I have blue fortune agasthat.

Oh I have one, You're there too.

I have that combination.

Is I think it's inspired.

It is, it is.

It's a beautiful plant, so if you can grow it, I would highly encourage you at least checking it out.

It's also very derresistant.

They have never touched mine even once, which is definitely saying something for where I have it.

So we will share some pictures on the YouTube version of the show if you are interested in seeing that, and you're not already tuned in there, but that's Lemony Lace and that's today's plant on trial, so you can decide if it earns a spot in your garden, wild garden or not.

And Adriana will put some links to William Robinson's works in the comments on YouTube or the caption YouTube as well.

We're going to take a little break.

When we come back, we're opening up the mailbags, so please stay tuned.

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Reading's gardening friends, and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show where it's one of my favorite moments in the show where we get to help you with your gardening questions.

And you know, if you have a questions that you would like us to answer on air, you can always reach us at Gardeningsimplified on air dot com.

That's a website.

There's a contact form there.

But I had a listener who wrote and she was worried about her cherry tree, and she said, please answer me by Saturday.

And sometimes we don't get a chance to answer you that quickly, but that doesn't mean that Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs does not want to help you.

We do.

So if you have a timely question, please don't send it to the show and hope that we'll get to you, because we may not, but we do want you to have success.

So instead go to proven Winner's Color Choice dot com and use that contact form and you will get a response from one of our horticulturists in a more timely manner than we'll be able to give you on the show.

Just don't want to leave anybody hanging, especially in all this heat and stress and drought and humidity.

And I mean, are you liking this?

You know, you talk a lot about how much you love this summer in July is your favorite month and the heat.

And I am wondering, like.

You're going to get in trouble for saying this, But I just love it, Okay, good, I can't help it.

I love it.

I suffer during the wintertime, good, And that's why I said, when it comes to inspiration, embrace the seasons.

And I've been working real hard to embrace winter.

But it's a struggle.

Yeah, I can't embrace winter.

But I also am not loving being you know, four to six inches deficient in rain.

That it's a little drug that is making this July a little bit tough to enjoy.

I'm not gonna lie speaking of inspiration.

As my good friend the Vincent van Grow would say, it's getting a little sketchy out there.

Yeah all right, So with that, Rick, what do we got in the midle there?

Forgive me, I'm only humored, Okay.

Carla writes to us, I have purchased a chokeberry bush.

It's July it's full of green berries.

I worry it will send its energy to making fruit instead of getting roots established.

Should I trim off the berries or will that encourage it to send out new growth?

So, Carla, I am in the camp that you shouldn't do a thing.

Just keep it watered and keep it happy, and the plant will basically decide I'm using air quotes here if it can maintain that fruit or not, because if it has you know, plants basically have an energy budget, just as we have an energy budget, and if they have enough energy in that budget to both maintain the fruit and grow roots, then they will do so correct and if they don't, then they will drop that fruit because they are capable of doing that.

Of just saying like whoa too stressed?

Need to concentrate on root growth this fold, these fruits are out of here.

I think sometimes people get that was a piece of advice that was often given, I think in earlier years, that you should take all the buds off your new apple tree or you know, and it's just like, do you really not have anything better to do?

Or do not trust plants to kind of be able to do this stuff?

You know?

Fruit drop is a very real thing on fruit trees.

Plants are smart.

Plant foliage will fold on itself to conserve moisture.

So I agree with you.

Let nature take its course.

Right, So definitely keep it healthy, keep it happy.

If you are as dry as we have been in West Michigan, make sure you're giving it, you know, some good water.

Even though chokeberry erronea is very very drought tolerant as well as wet soil tolerant.

You want to avoid them being stressed, you know, during their first year.

But I think you're gonna get lucky, Carla, and have a beautiful crop of red fruit to enjoy our very first year, as well as a healthy, well established plant.

I've got a really nice letter from a listener, Brenda, who discovered US two months ago.

She wants our feedback on an idea she has.

I've recently taken over the maintenance of an established garden in Wisconsin, Zone five.

The garden has several overgrown areas.

One area in particular that I am keen to enhance has a large raised bed of Bishop's weed.

Ooh, my most hated plant.

Oh yes, your most hated plant that is self contained.

It's more than I could remove any time soon.

Thoughts about intermingling Fallen Love's sweetly Japanese anemones within the Bishop weed patch?

Will they commingle nicely?

Will one or the other outcompete the other?

Will the anemones spread to other separate parts of the garden by seed, et cetera, et cetera?

And how many years will it take for new plants to bloom.

I'm hesitant to experiment in a garden that I do not personally own, and I've declined inviting anemonies into my own garden for fear of an invasion.

So I have ero experience in growing.

So what Brenda is proposing here is fighting fire with fire.

Yeah, that's an interesting approach to me.

I don't know if I've ever kind of dealt with with a bed of an invasive, difficult to manage plant and thought, you know what, I'm going to grow another invasive somewhat difficult Well, I mean, Japanese enemies aren't invasive.

They're aggressive, but you don't for can only find them, you know, popping up in the woods or out stepping their boundaries.

But they are a very aggressive garden plant.

They're aggressive but gorgeous.

They're gorgeous.

They are so pretty.

I mean, it's hard to resist how pretty the flowers are.

I kind of like this though, you know, let them duke it out and figure it out.

Yeah.

Now, now I can't say who will win.

That's the tricky part.

I mean, Egapodium Bishop's weed is such an aggressive plant as well, and that's why it is so invasive and so difficult to manage.

Both of them are very shade tolerant.

Both the Japanese and eemone and the Bishop's weed are very very shade tolerant.

So you know, whether this will work, I don't know, but I do think it's worth a try.

You know, it would be easier if the plant you're trying to out compete was a sun lover, and that the Japanese and Emenies would then provide the shade and kind of shade it out.

But I think that it might be able to compete.

I wouldn't worry too much.

I feel like the Japanese and Emenies don't spread by seeds so much as they spread by roots.

Yeah, and that's true, well, very very true.

Yes, But I'm just sitting here thinking why not just kill the Bishop's weed first and then plant away.

But maybe you're I don't know, you're hesitant to do that because you don't own the property.

Yeah, maybe they don't want to use pesticides for whatever reason, because you know, again, I am for the judicial use of pesticides.

But as far as I'm concerned, if it's an invasive plant, that's a pretty darn good special.

If it's bishop of pesticides, yes, I will admit I got great pleasure from killing the bit of Bishop's weed that was in my yard when we purchased the house.

So Brenda, if you don't want to just straight out, you know, spray the Bishop's weed to get rid of it, I think it's worth a try.

The fall in Love Sweetly is the proven winner's variety.

It may not be as aggressive as some of the older varieties like Honourine Jobert, which are easier to find, so you might want to start with something that you know is more aggressive, because a lot of times the winter's plants are bred to be less aggressive and a little bit more refined, so that might not have the competition level that you need for this project.

So I would try it with one of those.

The great thing about the Japanese and Emenies.

If you can find someone who has them, they always have them to spare, so you don't necessarily need to invest a bunch of money in buying the plants.

So and I love them.

I love the way they dance in the landscape.

I guess my advice would be, why just pick one type of plant?

If you're going to get in there and fight with that bishop's weeds, let's pick out a few different types of plants.

Yeah, you could definitely do that.

And you know, of course the Japanese and Emenies don't really do much until fall, so you might want some other stuff in there just to keep it interesting.

But you know, you'd have to do some some research onto what else could be as aggressive.

But I would I would start small, get some plants from someone who has some, and put them in there and see what happens and let us know, because this fighting fire with fire technique could potentially be a brilliant new solution.

Sounds like a great joke.

A bishops weed and an emonee walked into a bar.

Now, okay, we'll move on.

Marjorie writes, I have several varieties of PW.

Perennial hibiscus in my gardens every summer, the Japanese beetles skeletonize the leaves but leave the flowers alone.

Also, the darker foliage Hibiscus seem to be more affected than the green ones.

Is this the color or just the location?

These are my favorite plants.

They make such a statement when in bloom.

I agree.

Please advise on how to keep the Japanese beetles at bay oof.

You know, that's a tough one.

That is a tough one.

Now, of course there are traps out there, but many people say, if you are a gardener, don't put the trap in your yard because it will just bring literally putting all the Japanese beetles your yard.

If your neighbor's not a gardener, perhaps they will let you put one in their yard because it doesn't, you know, if they don't have plants that they're trying to, you know, to conserve, or if you have maybe a common area in your neighborhood and you can put it over there.

I think that the best management approach for Japanese beetles is definitely to go after the grubs, either with a nematode, a predatory nematode, or BT, which is the only thing that BT is actually effective against is Japanese beetles, but it takes a couple of years for the population to get established in your garden as far as the varieties go.

You know, there's something that we see here very often in our trials, and that is that some roses initially seem to be less favored by Japanese beetles than others.

We have noticed that roses with thicker, more glossier leaves seem to be less favored.

However, I would not ever take that to mean that if that was the only rose that you had in your garden, that the Japanese beetles would ignore it.

It's just so much harder to test if there is true resistance within a plant or it is just the location, like Marjuri said so, and breeding Japanese beetle resistance again is also not as straightforward as like breeding for another color or breeding for a different size.

So I don't have any great news for you on that front.

Maybe one day, but I would do some research into controlling the grubs.

I found a great publication from the USDA on this, and Adriana will link that so you can get the benefit of that information and hopefully get a handle on your Japanese beetles.

But hey, at least you're still getting flowers on those summerifics, so that's a good thing.

I spram with kneem oil or insect decidal so during the heavy pressure periods, and last night I was out there hand picking them and Marjorie I found it to be very therapeutic.

Oh, that's good to know.

You can also kind of just take the plant and shake it over a bucket of soapy water and let them all fall in there.

Or get chickens.

Chickens do you love to eat them too?

So not all practical advice for you, but hopefully we've got some nuggets in there to help you out.

Oh nuggets, good one.

We're going to take a little break.

When we come back, we're continuing our conversation on garden inspiration, so please stay tuned.

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Welcome back to the Gardening simplified show.

As we talk about inspiration and stacy.

These days, I think most people are finding inspiration for plants and landscapes via a digital source, YouTube, or whatever it may be.

But with well over forty years in the garden center industry, I will tell you that you can find inspiration at garden centers and greenhouses, and I encourage you there are many a wonderful we call them igc's independent garden centers throughout the United States and Canada and of course in Europe where you can walk through and get inspired.

And I can tell you, having worked in a garden center for years, I could point out to you a number of people who would come on their lunch hour and just wander around, and it's a great way to get inspired.

It is like a garden.

And you know what, the IGC the garden center offers something that you can't do necessarily at a public garden or a neighbor's garden, and that is that you can take the plants and move them all around right and hopefully not leave them that there, but you know, take some, put them on your cart, and then go and find those combinations.

It kind of lets us like a try before you buy situation.

You can't do that everywhere.

That's exactly it.

Of course, Proven Winners provides a lot of great recipes online that will help give you inspiration.

But you're right about that, Stacey, because I would also watch people who would experience or participate in something I call plants envy, and that is when someone has filled their cart up with plants, someone else looks at what's on their cart and now we're full circle back to the whole copy there.

Yeah, where'd you find that?

Ooh, I want one of those.

Yeah, I've seen that.

I've been responsible for that on both ends myself.

Sometimes it's just a matter of you couldn't find it and they just saw that part earlier, and you're like, show me where you got that.

I want that exactly exactly.

You know when it comes to inspiration too.

I was thinking about this the other day.

Let's not forget about the renters.

I looked that up the other day and it said in the United States, as of twenty twenty four, there are approximately forty four million renter occupied housing units.

And when I was doing my live gardening show, when someone would walk up to me and say, hey, I love listening to your show, and I don't even own a home.

I would always love it when they would say that.

And so my point is is, if you want to get inspired, participate in some container gardening.

And again I love some of the work out there with proven winners where we get a little daring and we'd put flowering shrubs in containers and it's doable.

Yeah, absolutely, you can do the mix.

You can do them on their own and a great thing, especially if you do rent you may not have a lot of privacy.

You can use shrubs and containers to give yourself a little temporary privacy.

And that's a you know, very easy thing that you can do.

There's just yeah, there's so many different ways to use containers and so much inspiration out there, you know, a lot.

Like I was saying before, it's hard to believe there was a time where container gardening was little more than you know, the cauldron or the swan, right and you put like a geranium in there, the whiskey barrels of course, the original container and now container gardening is you know, is mostly probably what drives annual planting every year.

And I love, love, love my containers.

I don't put really any annuals in the ground.

All the annuals I do are in containers well, and.

The beauty of it is, if you're a renter, they're on the balcony.

As you garden, you're not going to have deer pressure, at least most likely not going to have deer pressure.

As a matter of fact, I have a picture to share with you our YouTube viewers of a neighbor of mine who was frustrated with the deer pressure on arbor vities, and so he just planted them all up in containers and has them on his deck overlooking the yard.

I guess he was inspired to do something about deer.

Trees, of course, are inspirational.

They're an anchor, a ceiling, a focal point in spring when they leave out in summer, when they provide shade, their fall color and shadows during the fall season of course, and then in winter their structure.

I find a tree, for example, like a ginko tree, a living fossil that's survived for millions of years, as a tree that's inspiring to me, especially when it turns color and fall.

I just love it, you know.

And trees also, if you are more of a birder, you will have so many more birds in your yard if you have a tree, at least one tree.

And I have found too that you know where you place your feeders makes a big difference if you plant them, if you place your feeders near a tree, and if so, if birds or what are inspiring you, you place your feeders near a tree, and the birds feel safe, like they have a place to flee to.

If you know a hawk flies by overhead or something, you'll get a lot more birds.

And so that's another way that you can kind of combine your passions in an inspiring way to get even better results.

Yeah, and so I think it's important to remember again if you're trying to get inspired with your landscape.

Some plants just live for drama.

I think about Bird of Paradise, Strelitzia, or even let's talk about Hollywood high biscus.

I mentioned how with my landscape I wanted to get that tropical feel in my landscape and did that with a variety of plants, But if you add something like Hollywood high biscus, that will really give you that feel.

Some plants inspire when it's their time to take the stage.

Lilacs in spring, lavender in summer.

So again, I keep going back to this thing, Stacy, where you have to focus in on the vibe that you're trying to create, and I think you might be amazed at how inspiration will come along.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, one of the things that I'm finding super inspiring in my garden at this very moment is my cup plant Selphia portfoliatum in full flower.

And you know, this thing is towering ten feet above my garden.

Absolutely love to see it, and I if you look at it, you spend any amount of time looking at it, you will just be again inspired by the amount of the diversity of creatures that this thing is attracting and supporting.

I mean, at any given moment, there are just dozens and dozens of different species of insects.

There's butterflies, there's goldfinches, there's hummingbirds, and they're all just buzzing around this plant.

And that's why igarden, that's my vibe is you know, let's get all these insects in here.

I want to stand in my garden and be at least somewhat deafened by the humming of insects like that is my vibe.

That's what I love now.

Probably no one's going to copy that.

It's a hard sell, I understand, but I love it.

Yeah, and you know, try it.

If it doesn't work, then you can try something else.

Not all inspirations are great.

I mean, the Beatles were considered a great rock and roll band, but not all their songs were great.

Well, no, when bats a thousand.

I mean, you ever listen they have a song called dig It.

I don't know that one.

Oh it's terrible.

But you know, I have a friend and we talk about this where he gets his motivation from doing things that most people don't do.

And I have found that my whole life also is if I'm willing to dive in and do something that most people don't do, you find inspiration.

Yeah, you can make you can make yourself look silly, but you find inspiration that way.

And a garden is just like your mind.

It's easier to be inspired when you clear the clutter, brain fog.

That's why I need to clean out my garden, shed take inventory of what brings you joy.

Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts now, Stacy Adriana.

We we got that comment from a listener on YouTube, and I thought that that was brilliant and it's something to sit back and think about.

Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts.

I love that.

Yeah, it's true you need a lot of patience, but it's uh but you're always it's in a constant it's just dynamic.

Even though it's slow, there's always something happening.

But a garden's never really finished, so speed is kind of relative.

So to inspire and I agree, And that's why I say, again coming from the garden center industry, when I see people pick a Saturday in May and that's when they get everything, buy everything.

You're going to get it all done that day.

It doesn't work that way.

Your centers are open other days besides Saturdays in May.

And we have the upcoming fall season which is just so important and so.

Great, and PS has a lot of sales there you.

Go exactly So to inspire you and taking a look at your home life landscape, I'm going to say this, and that is domestic landscape design is about taking risk, sometimes taking the path less trodden, and being brave with design choices.

Yes, again, your neighbors may be watching through the curtains.

You might not be successful, just like some of the Beatles songs.

But you got to get out there and try, because, as I said at the outset of the show, there's insight and there's movement.

You gotta have both and hopefully you'll find an inspiration that will bring you real joy.

Yes, indeed, Well this has been fun.

I hope you're inspired.

Thank you Stacy, thank you Rick, thank you Adriana, and thanks to all of you.

Remember you can get our show via YouTube podcast wherever you get your favorite podcast.

Of course our radio show version, and make sure to visit our website, Gardening Simplify on air dot com.

Have a great week.

M