187 Bring the Outdoors, Indoors. Edible Roses. Therapy Gardens.

Show Transcript

GB 187 TRANSCRIPT  Bring the Outdoors, Indoors. Rose Tasting. Garden Therapy.

Farmer Fred  0:00  
 Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred  0:32  
 We’ve often said here that when laying out your garden plan, make sure the edible garden is visible from the kitchen window. Today, we expand on that: tips for planning a garden so that the most beautiful spots outside are visible from the room inside in which you spend the most time. Think of it as the easy chair garden. Master Gardener Pam Bone has some ideas for you on that. Speaking of edibles, we revisit a chat we had with Master Rosarian Debbie Arrington about the tastiest rose petals. We’ll find out what they taste like, too. There’s no question that your garden is great therapy for your body, mind and soul. In fact, therapy gardens play a big part in our society in the rehabilitation, education and skill learning for those who need it the most. Diane Blazek of the National Garden Bureau talks about what some of those gardens are doing to make your country a better place to live.  We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. And we will do it all in just a bit over 30 minutes. Let’s go!

The Easy-Chair Garden: Bring the Outdoors, Indoors.

Farmer Fred  1:48  
We've got a quick tip for you. We're at the home of Master Gardener Pam Bone, here in the Sacramento area. And what a fabulous view there is from their breakfast nook, looking out to their backyard garden. And that's something for you to keep in mind. If you're a gardener, you ought to be able to enjoy the outside garden from wherever you are inside the house. And especially the room where you spend most of your time. In this case, it's a breakfast nook. But think about that as you go through your house. Where do you spend the time? What window do you look out the most? And then think about how you would design a garden for that area. And Pam, you've lived here for 40 years. So you've spent some time in designing this backyard?

Pam Bone  2:27  
Yes, I did. Actually it'll be 42 years this summer. We moved in and it was a landscape that was pretty bad. And I thought hmm, I'm a horticulturist, I have a degree in horticulture, but I'm not a landscape designer, there is a difference. So I went to a local community college and took a landscape design class and prepared a design for the property that has held up for almost 42 years. The basic bones are still there. And one of the things that I designed is something that I could look out a window to the garden and enjoy it. We have a lot of fruit trees in the landscape. And so one of the first things I did, because it's a southern exposure,  we put in an apple tree, a big old Granny Smith apple tree now graces the area and from that apple tree, we hang bird feeders and water for the birds. And we attract lots and lots of wildlife, sometimes unwanted wildlife, but the birds are an asset. So we sit at the breakfast table and often eat dinner and lunch here. I'll read the paper here and just enjoy the sights of the landscape of the garden. We put in a walkway that leads away from this area. So it looks like our eye is traveling out, we have a lot of flowers. Right now the clematis is blooming. And it's just probably one of the the nicest visual parts of our our house  to enjoy. And I think it's extremely important to the overall design. If you're a gardener, if you're a landscaper, something that you can take the inside out, and the outside in, and they're compatible. And in fact, we just repainted the inside of the house and I am mimicking in the inside what's outside, we have a pool off in the distance that's blue. So we've got a gray blue kitchen area, and we have a deck now that's a gray color so they really flow together. I think landscape design is integral to your inside and outside,  living in both.

Farmer Fred  4:26  
Obviously the apple tree is the focal point as you look out the window. It's planted 10 or 15 feet away from the window. But I've noticed you've pruned it in a way that allows you to see through the tree easily to your garden.

Pam Bone  4:39  
Yes, and I know that when you grow a lot of fruit trees, people will recommend that you keep them very low so that you can pick them, but one of the things that we did in most of our landscape is that our fruit trees are our landscape focal points, as well. They are a landscape feature so they may be just a little bit taller. We do  get on a ladder to pick the fruit, but that allows a view through, we still get a lot of fruit. If you notice, too, we positioned it slightly off to the side so that we could put the walkway and some flowers and shrubbery and stuff over to the other side. So then you have a view out to the yard and into the rest of the landscape. And you're not just looking at a big giant tree sitting in front of your window.

Farmer Fred  5:21  
the pathway itself actually takes your eyes out further into the yard. And that's a nice design of a curving pathway, a gravel pathway. And you've got all sorts of ground cover plants, low growing plants. And because there is an apple tree, there's shade loving plants.

Pam Bone  5:36  
Definitely. That is the one thing that we do have a lot of shade in the summertime, particularly when the apple trees in full leaf and we also have a small Japanese maple that is right next to the house as well that offers shade, and so you have to keep in mind what grows there. Well guess what, a lot of ferns grow, a lot of native ferns too. I do try to incorporate a lot of native plants into the landscape. But I am one of those that advocate putting Mediterranean and native plants together if you live in our climate. Now, if you live somewhere else, you can plant natives with whatever else is adapted to that area from other regions of the world. And so yes, there's quite a bit of shade. Now one thing that we've done is we've kept the area right under the apple tree free, it's mostly just mulch. And the reason is that a lot of the bird seed falls down there. So you'll get weeds and things that come up, but also for picking the apples and for getting the ladder under there and doing your chores. It's easier than trying to walk all over plants.

Farmer Fred  6:30  
What's nice, too, and you mentioned the birds as you have several bird feeders,  too, there's probably more, there's a hummingbird feeder as well. And there's a lot of interesting, I guess you could call it, shabby chic of water features of repurposed things.

Pam Bone  6:47  
Well watering cans, I have a thing about watering cans. Once you get out into the landscape, you'll see that we have watering cans all over the place. So I just started hanging them in the apple tree because the birds actually like to perch on them. And so they look kind of cool and adds a little bit of a feature to the landscape. And then I will put some hanging plants out there. Unfortunately, I left a few of the house plants when we did the painting job outside and they didn't really like that cold weather that we had not too long ago. And so they kind of died back. But in the summertime, it's a great place to take and move your house plants out that like to have a little bit of  fresh air and little bit more sun and usually they rejuvenate and do really well. So yes,  my apple tree is all purpose.

Farmer Fred  7:32  
And it also is supporting probably the other focal point in the front of the yard here. And that's this rocket-shaped bird feeder. And you said it's squirrel proof?

Pam Bone  7:42  
Well, yes, actually, it is called a Squirrel Buster. That's a trade name for it. I think they are an excellent company, as far as I can see,  because their design is absolutely squirrel proof. We have a lot of native squirrels here and unfortunately introduced squirrels as well. And they are always trying to get to the bird feeders. And with these, they can't. I have to squirrel-proof the bird feeders and the Squirrel Buster is the one that holds the most seed and they can't crack it, unfortunately for them, but they then will spend their time on the ground trying to eat all the reservoir of seeds that the birds kick out.

Farmer Fred  8:22  
One thing you mentioned that we should reinforce if you're a gardener, and you want to design a focal point in the garden to look at while you enjoy the great indoors while looking outside, is to maybe take that landscape design course at your local community college, check out your local community colleges see if they have a vigorous horticulture department and take a landscape design course. I imagine there are things you learned in that class years and years ago that you still employ.

Pam Bone  8:48  
Definitely. One of the things that I learned, the very first thing is that you need a design, no matter what. And in our case, we were taking an old landscape, luckily it was an old landscape that really didn't have much in it, and we took everything out. All the trees came out, all the shrubs that were left behind, it was a mess. And so I learned, though, you don't just start going to the nursery and plunking plants in, which people do all the time or if they have an already existing landscape. "Oh that plant is so gorgeous looking" because it's in full bloom at the nursery and you bring it home and you go "oh now where do I put it" and years later you find out you've got it in the wrong location. It gets too big, it casts too much shade, there's not enough sun, or just whatever. And so by having a design then, you know that okay, I'm going to put in trees and this is what we did. The trees went in first because they take the longest to grow. And I'm going to know that that tree is going to shade a certain amount of area. Now I will tell you that over the years, things do change. I had a lot more vegetables. We put in a big vegetable garden in one area and now it's been reduced because there's more shade. We decided we liked fruit trees more than we liked vegetables and so the vegetable garden is down to those things we can't live without. First of all, all my herbs, and secondly, tomatoes, of course, and a few others, but fruit trees really took over. And then berries. We're a big berry family. My husband's from Oregon. I'm from Washington State, and therefore you have to have berries. So we've had berries in this landscape since about a year after we moved here. And you have to think about what it is that you want in your landscape. And if you have a plan, you know where to put it, and then you can do modifications over the years.

Farmer Fred  10:29  
We've learned a lot today just staring out Pam Bone's breakfast nook window at a beautiful garden. Pam Bone, Master Gardener, thanks. 

Pam Bone  10:37  
Thank you. 

Smart Pots!

Farmer Fred  10:37  
You’ve heard me talk about the benefits of Smart Pots, the original, award winning fabric container. Smart pots are sold around the world and are proudly made, 100%, here in the USA. Smart Pots is the oldest, and still the best, of all the fabric plant containers that you might find. Many of these imitators are selling cheaply made fabric pots that fall apart quickly. Not Smart Pots. There are satisfied Smart Pot owners who have been using the same Smart Pots for over a decade, actually approaching 20 years. When you choose Smart Pot fabric containers, you know you’ll be having a superior growing experience with the best product on the market. And your plants will appreciate Smart Pots, too. Because of the one million microscopic holes in Smart Pots, your soil will have better drainage, and the roots will be healthier. They won’t be going round and round on the outside of the soil ball, like you see in so many plastic pots. The air pruning qualities of Smart Pots create more branching of the roots, filling more of the usable soil in the Smart Pot.  Smart Pots are available at independent garden centers and select Ace and True Value hardware stores nationwide. To find a store near you, or to buy online, visit smart pots dot com slash fred. And don’t forget that slash Fred part. On that page are details about how, for a limited time, you can get 10 percent off your Smart Pot order by using the coupon code, fred. f-r-e-d, at checkout from the Smart Pot Store. Visit smartpots.com slash fred for more information about the complete line of Smart pots lightweight, colorful, award winning fabric containers and don’t forget that special Farmer Fred 10 percent discount. Smart Pots - the original, award winning fabric planter. Go to smart pots dot com slash fred. 

Have You Ever Tasted a Rose?

Farmer Fred  12:35  
Rose blooms are making their annual springtime debut in our area right now, a show coming soon to your area, too. Did you ever wonder what a rose petal tastes like? They are edible! Back in Episode 35, we chatted with Master Rosarian Debbie Arrington on that topic, and she’s a big fan of serving up rose petals on a plate at mealtime. And Debbie, you actually have conducted a taste test of various rose petals. 

Debbie Arrington  13:07  
Yes, I did. And well, I should note that besides other things, I'm president of the Sacramento Rose Society. And so I am surrounded by a lot of rose experts. And we're always looking for new things to do with roses. But my rose taste test came many years ago back when I was a food editor, and I wrote a story about edible flowers. And so then we did a little taste test of what do flowers tastes like and which ones are good and which ones are not and roses are probably one of the most easiest, edible flowers that are around you. Now the thing about roses is you want to make sure that they're not sprayed. Because you know you don't want it you don't want to eat anything that you've been using insecticides or or pesticides on anything like that. But when you think about it, roses are from the same family as a lot of fruits. That's why you have rose hips on rose bushes that are there after the roses are developed and mature,  that has rose hip jelly and rose hip tea and all sorts of different things with that, but the flowers also are very tasty. And what we found was that the flowers that had the best fragrance, the strongest scent, tended to have the most taste in the petals. Awesome. 

Farmer Fred  14:26  
Is that a good thing though, is it an amazing flavor? 

Debbie Arrington  14:29  
It was a pleasing flavor. It was like slightly sweet cloves. They both have a lot of vitamin C in them. So they have kind of that. Oh, that citrusy note that you get from any of your citrus family where you have that kind of kind of zesty taste on the back of your tongue. You think to yourself like oh, this is vitamin C you know that? You know is that it's probably said it, but but the main flavor that you're getting out of it. Most roses is sort of like cloves. It's a little spiciness that you've that you've sent on the back of your tongue. What we found also was that roses, the old style roses, old garden roses, that have a ton of fragrance. They have a lot of flavor awesome. And I also found that the Austin roses, which are big shrub roses and and also very, very fragrant. They not only have that slightly sweet spicy, clove to them, but if down in the little petals that are towards the center of the, the flower, they pick up a little bit of the nectar too. And so they're actually sweet, sweet, like, like honey sweet. what's interesting with the the ones that we found that had the most flavor, tended to be the red colored roses and the red on them. I think part of that is that those roses tend to have a lot of fragrance also, like you're Mr. Lincoln's you know, other you know, red roses that that have that definite Oh fragrance to them, but the ones that were just like light colored White Rose, they tended not to have much taste to them at all they they kind of like crunchy lettuce. 

Farmer Fred  16:04  
So how are they best served?

Debbie Arrington  16:05  
In a salad, fresh. It's that they're better when they're younger. So if the rose has been if it's already bloomed and on its last legs and beginning to brown and stuff like that, it's over the top and it and it tastes sort of like wilted lettuce. But if the rose is fresh, it has that crispness. And it has that kind of slightly spicy taste. It's sort of like a mild arugula. It's sort of like in that thing where there's, there's like a little spice and bitterness, but not too bitter. It’s kind of like a sharpness to it, then bitter and so solid, it's definitely a solid ingredient, and they also can be used in tea, you know, you can just go ahead and  that the pedals in and put them in some water and then steep.

Farmer Fred  16:46  
Is there any advantage to a single pedaled rose versus a multi layered rose flower?

Debbie Arrington  16:54  
a lot of the single pedal roses have a lot of fragrance and  so they do you have pretty good flavor also,  you can also use them in to flavor  sorbet or sugars and candy and things like that too.  

Farmer Fred  17:08  
So you, being a rosarian, would have the name for a rose flower that has rows and rows of petals. Are any of those better than others? the younger ones versus the older ones or the smaller ones are they tastier than the larger ones? 

Debbie Arrington  17:25  
Oh, you mean the size of the roses of the petals? Well  the small petals that are towards the center of the flower. Those are the ones that are going to pick up a little bit of the nectar from it, so those tend to have the best taste to them. And the older  ones, the larger pedals on the outside, they've been around longer. Think of it as like a head of lettuce and the outer leaves of the lettuce. They tend to go limp, you know, and they tend to have the less taste while the inner leaves are the lettuce there in the heart. They seem to have the best crispness and the best taste.    

Farmer Fred  18:04  
Is there a bitter part to that rose petal like the point where you yank it away from the flower, that little brace towards the back of the pedal. Is that more bitter than the rest of the pedal?

Debbie Arrington  18:16  
No. The bitterness that I found with some of them was they were just older. They you know, had had bloomed for a while and had gotten a little tired. 

Farmer Fred  18:27  
Since you are a Master rosarian, Debbie Arrington, and a garden writer and a big time vegetable gardener, defend the use of having a rosebush in a food garden. 

Debbie Arrington  18:38  
Oh, because it's like a big sign to bees and other beneficial insects to come and get it. There's lots of stuff here.

Farmer Fred  18:48  
So it attracts beneficials and pollinators.

Debbie Arrington  18:50  
it attracts beneficials and pollinators. Yeah. And it's pretty, and it's free. Yeah, yeah. And also the rose is a food, but you know, so why not? This is the thing about roses. Is it you got to think that roses are the favorite thing for deers to eat. The roses are deer candy, and wild roses,  out in the forest, they just go crazy over them. There's a reason why; it's because they taste good. And they they like them compared to other things. So that's one of the reasons why they gravitate towards it. 

Farmer Fred  19:22  
There you go. Roses for your garden, even if it's a food garden, you're adding another source of food to your backyard cornucopia. 

Debbie Arrington  19:30  
Yes and and if you are seriously looking at the rose plant as a food plant, definitely let your hips develop because the hips are delicious. Roses are from the same family as plums and peaches and things like that. So the hips kind of tastes like a tangy, apricot flavor. They, they have that sort of brightness to them. And the rose hips have the most flavor of any part of the plant. And so they they make an excellent tea. They make an excellent jelly, and they're just pretty too.

Farmer Fred  20:03  
So I guess the way to develop rose hips is to keep your shears away from the rosebush.

Debbie Arrington  20:09  
Exactly, well, you don't really want them to develop hips yet, you know, because they stay blooming as long as you keep trimming off your  spent blooms. But in the fall,  starting in October, go ahead and let those spent flowers, stay on the plant and mature and then you'll get your rose hips and they'll turn a nice orange and red color and that's when you harvest them. 

Farmer Fred  20:33  
October for California for the warmer parts of California for other parts of the country, though, when should you stop pruning back your roses to let the hips develop?

Debbie Arrington  20:41  
At the same time, about October. Yeah. Because because they will still be ready in about four weeks. So in November, that'd be fine. 

Farmer Fred  20:49  
There you go. Roses. It's part of your daily diet now. Master Rosarian, Garden writer. She is the author of the Sacramento Digs gardening blog and excellent garden resource for us here locally. If you live someplace else, check it out. There's a lot of good information in there. sacdigsgardening.blogspot.com Debbie Arrington, thanks for eating roses for us.

Debbie Arrington  21:11  
You're Welcome. Thank you.

Dave Wilson Nursery

Farmer Fred  21:19  
If you haven’t shopped at your favorite independently owned nursery lately, you’re missing out! Now arriving are Dave Wilson Nursery’s excellent lineup of Farmers Market Favorites of great tasting and healthy, fruit and nut varieties. They are already potted up and ready to be planted. We’re talking about almonds, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, figs, grapes, hops, kiwi, mulberries, olives, pomegranates and much more!

You want more? Here you go! Your favorite Dave Wilson bare root deciduous fruit trees are arriving: peaches, plums, cherries, including my favorite, the plum-apricot cross, the Pluot.

Wholesale grower Dave Wilson Nursery has probably the best lineup of great tasting fruit and nut trees of any grower in the U.S. Find out more at their website, DaveWilson dot com. While you’re there, check out all the videos they have on how to plant and grow all their delicious varieties of fruit and nut trees. Plus, at dave wilson dot com, you can find the nursery nearest you that carries Dave Wilson plants. Your harvest to better health begins at Dave Wilson dot com. 

 

Horticultural Therapy Gardens

Farmer Fred  22:35  
Here in California right now the roses are starting to put on a show. You know what's nice about gardening and especially in springtime, you're employing all five of your senses. When you're out in the garden. Here in California, you see the roses starting to bloom. If you listen carefully, hey, there's a bee buzzing around the rose. You can, of course, smell that new bloom, that new blossom for 2022. Maybe you have David Austin roses, which are very fragrant. You can feel the rose, too. Have you ever felt a thorn? Yes, I thought you would have. And you can also, as we found out from Debbie Arrington just a few minutes ago, you can certainly taste rose petals as well. So it's good for your senses. It's a physical workout. It combines weight bearing and cardiovascular exercise. It's good emotionally, because plants don't talk back to you. So you can have a joyous time in the garden. It is very good therapy, both for you and your yard and for your family. And, for a lot of people who need therapy. We're talking with Diane Blazek. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should. We've talked to her in the past about All America Selections Winners. And,  she has the distinction of being the very first guest on the very first episode of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast back in April of 2020. And Diane, congratulations on all of us making it this far.

Diane Blazek  24:05  
It's been an interesting ride in the last couple of years.

Farmer Fred  24:07  
Yeah, it has. And  especially with the COVID outbreak cultivating something like 18 million new gardeners in America. This is actually it's a wonderful time for gardening and I think garden therapy has proven itself over and over again in people's backyards, during this time period. But also it has succeeded in settings where therapy is really needed. Now, Diane, besides being with the all America Selections winners, she is also the executive director of the National Garden Bureau. And the National Garden Bureau has combined with American Meadows and Sakata Seed of America company, they have united to provide $5,000 in grant money for three, well deserving therapeutic gardens in North America. What is a therapeutic garden? Well, Diane Blazek, this is a wonderful thing and people don't realize  how much gardening is employed in our society for rehabilitation.

Diane Blazek  25:07  
Oh, absolutely. You know, I think if my memory and history is correct after World War Two, I mean, you know, everything happened in between the two World Wars and a lot of the gardening and hybridizing came out. And especially after World War Two, there was a big recognition of how getting in the garden, I don't think it was quite termed horticulture therapy at the time, but getting out in the gardens was good. And then it just generally evolved when they saw mentally and physically how good it was for the veterans returning from the war, once they were out there working in the gardens. And so it is just continued to evolve and expand to where it is today.

Farmer Fred  25:45  
And therapeutic gardens are used in a wide variety of settings as well. You mentioned hospitals, I see more and more local hospitals that have gardens to help recovering patients. There are schools with therapy gardens for special needs students, and just a wide variety of entities that are using gardening to help people with occupational, physical, vocational or rehabilitation therapy. It's all taking place in a garden setting. And this is a wonderful thing that you're doing with American Meadows and Sakata Seed, giving them a little boost.

Diane Blazek  26:19  
Yes, right. I mean, we couldn't do this without them, because they are the ones that are donating $2,500 from each company. And so we combine that, and then we are able to give away these grants. So we give away $3,000 To the top vote getter, which we can explain later. And then we give the other two gardens each $1,000. And then the whole intent is they use it to expand their garden, expand their program, whatever it is that they're doing, we want them to do more of it.

Farmer Fred  26:49  
And I guess we shouldn't leave out Corona tools, since they're providing quality garden tools to each of the three winning therapeutic gardens. 

Diane Blazek  26:56  
Absolutely. You know, yeah, if you're going to work in a garden, you probably need some tools. And they have wonderful tools that are meant to be used by people with certain disabilities.

Farmer Fred  27:06  
And this isn't some sort of a pandemic project either. The National Garden Bureau has been doing this for what, eight years now?

Diane Blazek  27:13  
Yes, we did our first one in 2014. And the first year we did anything with therapeutic gardens, or horticultural therapy garden, was with a garden here in Chicago, where we're located, and we did it as a fundraiser. And this particular garden was not only a horticulture therapy garden, but it was a vocational horticulture therapy garden. And they worked with young adults, maybe right around the time, they're 21, they are aging out of the school system. And so what they were doing, their whole intent was, let's get them in the garden. Because we know that children and young adults with autism do very well in that setting. Let's not only teach them about gardening, but also about holding down a job. How do you ride the bus? How do you clock in? How do you take a break? It was some of these basic things, but it was all happening in the garden. And there's some wonderful stories about the successes of that garden, as well as all the others. You know, we've now helped about 25 different therapeutic gardens. And  it's a wonderful history that we've made in eight years.

Farmer Fred  28:22  
Yeah, gardening is just a wonderful learning experience. You talked about how students learn both gardening and work skills, like learning to be on time for work, remembering their tools, and doing their very best each time that they're working. And a lot of these training sessions could be applied to young families who may have taken up gardening for teaching their children those very same skills.

Diane Blazek  28:47  
Oh, you're so right. Yeah,  it's kind of a gray area, I think, between children's gardens and horticultural therapy gardens, you could certainly say that pretty much all children's gardens are therapeutic gardens because of what they can achieve. And then there's other maybe more sophisticated or more severely physically disabled or mentally disabled where those gardens are working on maybe something different, rather than just getting the children outside. So there's a huge variety of therapeutic gardens. And that's part of what makes this so interesting and fulfilling, to work with these different gardens.

Farmer Fred  29:28  
I would say the majority of gardeners that I've interviewed over the years have always pinpointed a parent, a grandparent or some other influential adult in their lives, who exposed them to the garden, and its joys, and it has stuck with them ever since.

Diane Blazek  29:46  
Yes, I would agree with you, even more than 100%. We actually did a survey one time and we asked, "How did you get interested in gardening?" And I think 99% mentioned either grandparents or parents, more said grandparents, but in total, everybody picks it up by learning from one of their elders.

Farmer Fred  30:09  
Exactly. And they're going to pass that on to their children or their grandchildren as well.

Diane Blazek  30:14  
Right? We hope, and so on, and so on, and so on. Yes.

Farmer Fred  30:18  
All right, to give people a better idea of horticultural therapy gardens, talk a little bit about last year's grant recipients, you had three winners from across the country, and talk a little bit about them and what they do to help people with gardening.

Diane Blazek  30:35  
Sure. So  we get these applications in from all over the country, you know, as well as Canada also. One of them, the main last year, was Inova Mount Vernon Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. Then we also had a children's garden that was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And then our third one was at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morristown, New Jersey. And one of the things we do is we asked on the application,  which segment of the population are you working with? Quite often, a lot of these therapeutic gardens have a slice, one may work only with veterans, one, maybe work with children with autism, like I mentioned earlier, a couple years ago, we had one that worked with homeless children in Texas, because of mentally what happens to these children when they don't have a home, they're living on the street. So this was their way to have a routine, to have a place to go. They also were learning how to grow their own food. So that was really wonderful. I mean, there's so many different stories with the different organizations that we're giving grants to that, I tell you, I get chills every time I talk about it. More than once, I've been giving presentations to the industry. And I get teary eyed and choked up just knowing the impact that these gardens make on the people that are able to participate in it. It's mind blowing, really. So this first garden that I was talking about, with young adults with autism, one of the times during that summer that we were working with them, we went down and there was a young man that we were trying to talk to. We asked him, what has working in the garden given you? And he said, I learned how to use my words. And it was only later that I found out when he came to the garden, he was nonverbal. And he actually began to speak and literally was giving garden tours after spending like two or three months there.

Farmer Fred  32:43  
And it's not just the gardens. It's also the people who are working with these new gardeners, a registered horticulture therapist, and most of these are shoestring operations. And the success of these programs really depend on these individuals being there.

Diane Blazek  33:01  
Yes, number one, we do require that each garden have a registered horticulture therapist. And it's not trying to say, oh, unless you're a registered horticulture therapist, you don't know what you're doing, because a lot of people do. But we ran into a few things where it was very obvious that they did not have a horticultural therapist on board and they were making some mistakes that might have been more harmful than helpful. So we work with the American Horticultural Therapy Association, they help us go through the whole list of applicants and narrow it down to the ones that really are serving a need, or doing it properly and reaching a large population. So yeah, it's the people that are working there. And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna say 100% of the applicants we get do have a big group of volunteers. I think a lot of Master Gardeners work in these horticultural therapy gardens and other people throughout the community. They just find out about these gardens and they want to help. So yeah, we have to give major kudos out to everybody who's working in the horticultural therapy garden.

Farmer Fred  34:08  
There may be some gardeners listening, who are doing this volunteering and helping out, but they may want to learn more about becoming a horticultural therapist, as far as maybe there are some techniques that you should be employing that you could learn. And you can find out more at the American Horticultural Therapy Association's website, which is AHTA.org. , AHTA.org. And they have definitions of what a horticultural therapist is, as well.

Diane Blazek  34:39  
And you're right. They will have more information. I have also found that a lot of public gardens, too.. Like I said, we're here in Chicago and the Chicago Botanic Garden has this great program and a certificate to certify you as a horticulture therapist, to anybody listening. If they have any interest whatsoever. You can probably Google, you can learn some of the public gardens in your local areas, some of the local colleges, I'm sure that there are a lot of different certificate programs that are being offered.

Farmer Fred  35:09  
Oh, Diane, you're wonderful. You've gone back to my mantra, all gardening is local.

Diane Blazek  35:14  
Yes, you're right. It really is. Yeah.

Farmer Fred  35:17  
So if there are therapy gardens out there that want more information about the grant money that's available from the National Garden Bureau, American Meadows, Sakata Seed, and of course, Corona tools, how can they get that info?

Diane Blazek  35:29  
It's on our website. And it's easy to find. So our website is just three letters N G B, for National Garden bureau.org. There's one of the tabs up at the upper right, that says garden grant. So when you click on one of those buttons, you'll find the application. Click on the second button and it just gives you a little bit more history and profiles of the gardens that we have given these grants to over the past few years.

Farmer Fred  35:57  
Therapeutic gardens. They're a part of our society, and there's probably one in your backyard right now, as a matter of fact. Diane Blazek is the Executive Director of the National Garden Bureau. Again, to find out more about the grants available for therapeutic gardens, go to the National Garden Bureau's website, NGB.org. Diane, thanks so much for this therapy session.

Diane Blazek  36:21  
Well, thank you. It's always good to talk about gardening right?

Farmer Fred  36:23  
Yes, indeed. 

Farmer Fred  36:27  
Garden Basics With Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics dot net. That’s where you can find out about the free, Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you so much for listening.