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