Wet Hot European Garden Summer

Hey plant lovers.

And plant killers.

I'm Jonathan.

And I'm Jeanette.

We're 2 old high school friends.

Current geriatric millennials.

This is Plant Sluts.

The podcast where plants meet pop culture, sex, gossip.

And all the dirt in between.

Coming to you from a backyard in Salem, Oregon.

And a rooftop in Montreal, Quebec.

We're Plant Sluts.

We're Plant Sluts.

Hey sluts.

Hey sluts. Today we're looking at the 2 most toxic dating profiles in landscape architecture. On the one hand, you have the Italian Renaissance garden, the ultimate control freak who wants to tie nature down, put it in a box, and establish complete dominance.

On the other hand, you have the English garden, the guy who claims he's totally natural and low drama but actually spends millions of dollars and a terrifying amount of engineering Just to fake a chill vibe.

We fly across the ocean to speed date with each garden style and let you know what green flags and red flags we uncovered.

But first, let's share our garden status updates. Jonathan, what's going on with your garden?

I guess everything's going all right. I'm having a little bit of an outbreak of the red-headed flea beetle. I don't know if you know what this is.

Oh, not specifically, but Redheads are never a good sign.

Jeanette, we're going to get hate mail now. I'm just— they're eating all my basil and that kind of thing.

That's annoying.

I did have really good experience this year with my rapini. It's been 3 or 4 years that I'm trying to grow rapini, and this is the first year where it actually has like really good head development and giant leaves. You know what rapini is?

It's like a mixture of broccoli and— I don't know, a mixture of lettuce? No, that doesn't sound right.

Sometimes I think people say Chinese broccoli and it kind of seems similar, like it— but it's slightly different. It's like a looser broccoli with less dense heads.

Are you doing anything different?

Yeah, I put blood meal in the soil.

Ew.

A question came up in my head. If I'm using blood meal, Am I still vegetarian? Like, to grow my food.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's interesting. And is the food vegetarian? I mean, it depends. Where does the blood meal come from? Do you know?

So I looked it up and it seems to come from abattoir.

Avatar?

Abattoir.

The Last Airbender?

Abattoir.

Oh, abattoir.

Where you kill animals. What is that called? Slaughterhouses.

Slaughterhouse, yeah.

So they're like a byproduct of the slaughterhouse. So I guess they collect the blood and then they kind of like dry it, they package it, and it's like, it's basically only nitrogen.

I don't know, I'm, I'm vegetarian, but I think using the byproducts is like a good thing. If there has to be all this tragedy of killing animals, at least we can use all the parts efficiently. And I don't think they would kill animals for blood meal if they weren't killing them for food first.

So then like, what about tripe? You would eat tripe and feel vegetarian still?

Is that a fish?

Oh no, tripe is like the insides of an animal, like the intestines and all the different organs and shit like that.

No, I mean, I don't want to eat any of it, but I think not wanting to eat it is just like, you know, physically I don't want to consume things. But yeah, that's interesting.

So I'm not compromising my vegetarianism by like spreading this in my garden?

I don't think any more than maybe eating eggs or milk.

I mean, it's all kind of those When you're using manure, the animal is still alive.

That's true.

I feel like I have no problem using manure, but I guess it's similar to fish.

Oh yeah, I use fish fertilizer.

Emulsion?

Emulsion, yeah. It's so stinky, my dogs love it. I can't— I have to be careful using it. Yeah, they'll roll around in it.

Disgusting.

I mean, I kind of know you, so I know you actually don't care if someone agrees or not that you're vegetarian. There's no card we get in the mail that we have to like return if we use it, but I can understand feeling like a conflict knowing that you're using these like Gallons of bloods of slaughtered animals and being like, but my rapini is amazing this year. So it's tough.

Yeah, I don't know what to say to that. It's true, I don't care. But—

Yeah, there we go.

Other than that, I have some news to report, which is that I finally did my ex's garden.

Oh my God.

And I did not plant a poison garden. Oh.

I was really looking forward to that.

It was actually a really fun activity.

Well, that's good. So, he paid for everything?

Yeah.

Did he pay you for your time?

He did, actually.

Oh, good, good, good, good, good, good. Then he's not, you know, totally taking advantage of you.

He tried to round down, though.

Oh, what an asshole.

So, no, I was like, uh-uh, you round up, okay? You don't round down when it comes to labor hours.

Anyway.

Now I have like a good reason to walk by his street on the way to the market instead of avoiding it, because now I get to see the progress of the garden.

Yeah, that is nice. I thought when you mentioned the possibility of making the garden, I remember when we'd walk by and I think definitely checking on the plants and watching their progress is better than peeking in his window and seeing if anyone's over.

Or it's like a good excuse to Oh no, I'm not looking in the window. I'm just looking to see how the black-eyed Susans are doing.

Oh my God. I can't believe he asked you. Yeah, he's going to see you out there, like, rummaging around all the time. You'd be like, what? I'm just checking on the foxglove. Any particular style you gave him for the garden? Was it based on anything or was it, you know, a native garden?

So he wanted something that would have flowers for most of the year and to have a little bit of winter interest. I put a mix of tall grasses, like, I think miscanthus grass. As well as some winterberries. It's like a type of holly, so they have like really bright red berries that stay throughout the whole winter. And some native black-eyed Susans and some native goldenrod as well.

Oh, that sounds nice.

And then he wanted a big Japanese maple. So that's, that's like the pièce de résistance.

I'm glad at least you got to do some gardening.

Yeah, from scratch. That's what I kind of enjoyed, like doing it from the, from the start.

And getting paid for it. Cha-ching!

So what about your garden? What's going on on your side?

Well, in the last episode, I really complained a lot, but I'm—

Isn't that your thing? That this is just your—

Well, yeah.

Your outlet for complaining?

Yeah, we complain about gardens. I'm enjoying my garden a lot more now. I ended up actually going to the grocery store, and of course they have a nursery, so if I go there to buy like a food, I end up buying plants. But anyway, they were having a sale. It was an end-of-season clearance, so all the vegetables were a dollar.

Nice.

And I kept some of the seedlings I started, and none of them are really taking off, but the ones that were the grocery store discount ones are doing really well. And I'm kind of thinking next year I might not start veggie seeds, but buy them from the nursery once they're already going, but not buying them at prime full-price time.

Buying them when they're like clearance. But then you're— but then you're left to like choose—

Rummage.

Yeah, like rummage and choose from the leftovers, the things that people didn't buy.

Maybe I just don't worry too much about starting seeds. I think I'll still start some because it's so fun when spring is almost approaching and you have something to do. But I definitely think I'll scale down my seed starting because I worked so hard to like keep them warm enough, keep them watered, cool enough, and then I wasn't able to keep the temperature perfect and I feel like I stressed them out. So maybe I should just plant in the dirt. Luckily, though, my loofah took off.

Has it started to flower already?

It hasn't flowered yet. I'm going to put some more fertilizer down, some flowering fertilizer. I also made banana peel tea, and I think that helps flower because it has a lot of potassium.

Yeah. I just imagined actual tea for you to drink.

I just watched it while I was drinking my banana peel tea, and I really feel like that helped with the vibes. And I have 3 little ones started already because I subtracted, you know, 110 days by the first frost and I still had time. So I have 4. 3 of them are just little seedlings, but one of them has really taken off. So I'm more optimistic this episode than I was the last episode with all of that going on.

Are you going to give me one of your loofah once you harvest them and turn them into loofah scrubs?

Yeah, I will. I want to make little loofah Soaps, like learn how to make maybe some sort of botanical soap.

Like where you have the loofah inside the soap, so it becomes— it's like abrasive. It's like an exfoliating soap. Yeah.

So even if I grew— like if I end up with 1 or 2 loofahs, even 1, I can still cut it up and make a couple soaps, hopefully. Oh my God. But we'll see. I mean, I feel like since it hasn't flowered, we're kind of far off from having loofahs. But more importantly, I have some updates about the woodchuck. For our little subsegment, Grandma Battles the Woodchuck. And we figured out what woodchucks were in the last episode.

Groundhogs?

Yeah, I think they're groundhogs. Yeah.

Yeah, groundhogs.

Okay. So she told me that they're climbing the bushes now. She blocks off the stairs to her patio to put out flowers, but now they climb the bushes. And one day she was looking out the window and it made eye contact with her. It was looking at her, she was looking at him as he was climbing up the bush. I just talked to her yesterday about all this, but They caught 2 woodchucks.

Oh, caught them in humane traps or something, or they just—

Yeah.

Okay.

They just held them.

I don't know. I can't imagine her killing a groundhog.

She caught 2 and smashed their brains in. No, she caught 2 in live cage traps, and she said it's illegal to transport them out of their native habitat. And I guess the native habitat is her yard.

Like suburban— Massachusetts? This is their native habitat?

Yeah, but anyway, they did end up driving them a couple miles away and dropping them off in their enemy's yard. No, just kidding. I don't know where, but somewhere. That'd be really cool.

Drop them off at Dunkin' Donuts.

Yeah, pin a dollar to its fur. Get yourself a coffee and get out of here. But she said she really wishes she had painted them so that she would know if the same ones came back, if they were new ones.

Ooh, yeah, tag them.

So I'd be really excited to hear if there's any more woodchuck drama this year.

Yeah, keep it up, Grandma.

All right, it's time to grab a mug, pick some herbs, and spill the tea. Jonathan, you are a fountain of garden tea.

Yes.

Always giving us more and more and more. What's going on?

I also have an update on the new garden committee because in the last episode I talked a little bit about how it's changed. The committee is now full of like newer people, younger people, people that are a little bit more policing, you know, of like the rules and that kind of thing. So I received a phone call. I think last time I mentioned that I had received an email.

Yeah, you said you got an email and it kind of just said you're in violation and then just gave you like all the rules so that you didn't really know specifically Specifically what you had done, right?

And we had read off an exchange from the Facebook group, you know, where people were like, "Oh, the ambiance of this committee has changed." Who else is feeling like it's a little bit aggressive or blah blah blah? Well, so I got a call from the president herself. Oh, and I pick up the phone and I'm like, "Allo." Bonsoir. Yeah, she's like, "Bonjour." She presents herself and I'm like, "Okay." And then she says, "Oh, I'm just wondering, when when do you think you're going to be cutting your rhubarb spikes?" That's That's the thing you said a month ago is what they were worked up about, that they were getting into the path. Yeah, yeah, that the rhubarb was overgrown and it was kind of in the way.

Yeah.

But the, the spikes are on my— they're above my garden. They're not overstepping into the path. And so I don't really like rhubarb that much. It's something that I inherited from the previous person, and I don't care enough to like cut down the flower spikes. I think they look nice and the pollinators really love them. Like, they're all over that shit.

Yeah.

So I respond, well, I'm not planning on cutting it down. And then she responds being like, well, usually people cut it down. Okay.

Like to harvest it?

So apparently you cut it down and it just helps conserve the energy for next year's leaves, right?

Hmm. I didn't know that.

Instead of having it expend all of this energy into making the flowers, it'll put it all into storing sugars and to grow the plant.

Oh, yeah.

I don't care enough about it, so I tell her, well, I'm not planning on cutting it down. She responds trying to say like, oh, well, people usually do that. It doesn't look nice. It's been like a week that there's been spikes. And then I just respond, are you asking me to cut it down? Like, do you want me to cut it down? Is that why you're calling me? Yes, that's why I'm calling. I would like you to cut it down. So I was like, okay, no need to give me this passive-aggressive kind of like, when are you going to cut it?

What's cool is you don't have this people-pleasing thing where you're reading into what she's saying. You're like, just say it. You're not gonna have her say, when do you think you're doing it? And you'd be like, oh, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. You're like, tell me, tell me what you want.

Yeah, like, just be clear.

But with this phone call, did she call you out of the blue? Did she tell you she was gonna call? And do you answer your phone when people call? I'm just really more curious about that.

So I, I did not receive any notice that she was going to call me. It was a cold call. Yeah, I'm not sure why I answered. If I don't know the phone number, I tend to answer.

That's so weird.

Because I think like, ooh, it's like something new.

Do you get a lot of AI scams? People like using your family's voices, calling, asking for money, things like that?

No.

Oh.

I don't. I only get calls that are telling me that, like, there's some weird charge on my credit card or, or like it's Amazon telling me that I need to pay this money to get my package because there's like customs or something like that. I know that those are fake.

I almost feel like, yeah, it's like scary to answer your phone because it is probably just a crazy scam.

I really like filling out surveys, so I like, I pick up with like the, with the hope that it's like someone asking me my opinion.

Oh my God. I feel like everything I buy lately, they're asking me to rate and review and, you know, and do a survey. Like I'll buy $5 worth of something and I'm getting an email being like, what did you think? And I hate those emails so much.

Okay, well, yeah, that's annoying. I want people to ask me about my politics.

Oh, those kind of surveys.

Yeah. I want to tell someone that I think that cars should be banned and that we're not doing enough for the climate crisis.

It's interesting that the president of the committee has time to call you. Can't they just go around with like a hedge trimmer and just cut everything that's overgrown into the path? Would that be like super taboo?

I mean, there's a lot. There's 200 plots. And, you know, there's a lot of path. Yeah, I'm totally okay with being responsible for ensuring people's safety, like safe passage. Well, and I asked her, I said, for the record, do you want me to cut it because it's bothering somebody, or is it that the seeds are going to spread? And she said, yes, like the seeds are going to spread and they're going to grow in someone's garden.

I've never heard of rhubarb being invasive.

Yeah, it's not an aggressive I've had rhubarb seeds sprout in my garden because I don't usually cut the spikes, and it's so easy to remove them. That's not what the problem is. The problem is people letting other weeds go to seed and that spreading.

Yeah, I feel like rhubarb is something that's kind of hard to keep going. I wouldn't think, oh no, now I have rhubarb all in my garden. That's not really a seed I would worry about. So that's interesting.

And this has created a new kind of vibe in the garden. Like the other day, this old man was yelling at me about my rhubarb. He was telling me, oh, your rhubarb is in the way. Like, you need to cut it. You need to cut it out. And I went over and I looked and I was like, there's 2/3 of 2 leaves that are jutting into the path and they're on the ground having been stomped on. And so I go and I'm like, okay, what the fuck? Okay, fine. So I rip them up, I throw them into my garden. And then the man starts to tell me that I shouldn't have done that, that I should have harvested it and eaten it. You know, I was just trying to be like, well, I don't really like rhubarb and it's late in the season. So they're kind of like stringy. And then he tries to tell me like, they're not stringy. You just have to cook them well, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, what the fuck?

Oh my God.

What do you want me to do? Like, you take it. I don't care. Just take my fucking rhubarb.

Yeah. It sounds like you're really being persecuted over this rhubarb.

Yes.

Thank you.

I feel like, I feel like now there's this like overzealous police state that the new committee is legitimizing and empowering other people to yell, you know, about it.

Specifically about rhubarb.

Yeah, specifically about rhubarb.

It's an anti-rhubarb zealot police state.

They're being rhubophobic.

They are being rhubophobic. I think you should make a Facebook post.

So, Jeanette, you and I took trips recently, did we not?

Yes, I went to the UK and you were in Italy.

And so we're going to take you guys with us on a little journey to famous gardens that we visited during our travels.

We'll compare English and Italian gardens and decide what we want to incorporate into our own gardens today and what we'll leave in the past.

Stick around to the end because we'll also talk about some of the witches and ghosts that still reside in these picturesque landscapes.

Jonathan, let's visit an Italian garden.

I want everyone listening To close your eyes. We're leaving your backyard and stepping into the mid-1500s. You're standing on the steep terraces of Villa d'Este in Tivoli, just outside Rome. Having just walked these exact paths in the heat of late May, I can tell you that the very first thing that hits you isn't the sight of the garden. It's the sound. It's a low, constant vibrating roar. There are over 500 Fountains, cascades, and pools pouring millions of gallons of water down this hillside using nothing but gravity. It's a masterpiece of 16th century hydraulic engineering, a beautiful reminder of how effective liquid pressure is and the engineering knowledge and expertise that was needed to make this real lasting impact. As you walk down the mossy stone steps, the air temperature immediately drops. The atmosphere is incredibly heavy and damp. You can smell the sharp medicinal scent of crushed myrtle and the sweet, heavy perfume of citrus blossoms clinging to the humidity. You turn a corner and suddenly hear music. It's not a band, it's the Fontana dell'Organo. The water pressure forces air through massive pipes, playing a booming mechanical song all by itself. The entire hillside feels alive, vibrating with water, dripping with moss, and completely dripping in excess. It is wealthy, it is wet, and it is entirely overwhelming in the best way. Today, much of the garden is in disrepair. Old fountain sculptures sit there, waiting for the day when they can be restored to their former beauty. There's something serene about being in Villa d'Este after the fall of its heyday. There's a kind of Beauty in the sadness.

Can I open my eyes?

Oh yes, open your eyes, Janet.

Wow, I think I'm gonna save that as a guided meditation. That sounds amazing. What other gardens did you see while you were in Italy?

Overall, over a couple trips I made to Italy, I visited Villa d'Este, which is the one I just described, Villa Pamphili, which is in Rome. I've also visited the Rome Botanic Garden, and I plan on visiting a lot more. So that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, you're going there in the fall, so you're gonna be living in Italy and have the opportunity to visit a ton of gardens.

That's the announcement.

Semester abroad!

Yeah, in my 40s.

I think you might have mentioned it in the last episode. I'm kind of remembering.

Did I?

Yeah.

I can't remember.

Tell us, what are the kind of things that let you know you're in a specifically Italian garden?

Well, one of the major things that you notice is the use of umbrella pine. These are the really tall pine trees that look like they've been pruned at the top to kind of have this tuft, like a cloud of pine. This is like really, really typical in Italian gardens. You also have the use of Tuscan cypress, which are the visual of that meandering road through the Italian countryside with like these tall, narrow, slightly pointy cypress trees, you know, that line it like that. There's also a lot of use of that.

It kind of reminds me of an arborvitae.

Yeah, they're similar to the arborvitae, but the arborvitae is not a true cypress. It's— sometimes they call it a false cypress.

Oh, interesting. What else do you see to know that you're in an Italian garden?

The use of water is omnipresent. There's not just water, but the use of terracing to kind of harness the water is actually quite common.

Is that like levels?

Yeah.

And are they like patios?

A lot of gardens are using the landscape for creating different levels. You might come downstairs and there'll be like some ground that was built up with either like a stone wall or something like that. And then you'll have the plantings in each of the terrace. But also With that, like you're harnessing gravity for water. So then you're able to use, you know, the difference in elevation to funnel water down and to create water pressure for any kind of like waterworks that you may have.

Italy is very mountainous, so it kind of makes sense that they would have those specifically, whereas France and England, I think, are known more for flat gardens.

Yeah, exactly.

Let's do another visualization exercise.

Ooh, okay.

So close your eyes one more time unless you're driving. Riding a bike, or in a camera-on Zoom meeting. We're leaving behind the rigid stone terraces of Jonathan's Italian adventure. Picture yourself in the English countryside. You've been walking for a while now. The gravel crunches softly beneath your feet before giving way to an impossibly smooth lawn. It stretches on and on, a sea of green that seems almost too perfect to be real. The sky hangs low with thick gray clouds, threatening rain but never quite committing. You keep walking. Green to your left, green to your right. Enormous trees rise from the lawn, each one given enough space to be admired from every angle. You round another bend. Still lawn, still trees. In the distance, something finally catches your eye.

A tower?

Or perhaps ancient Roman ruins. At last, you think, something. You quicken your pace, crossing the endless lawn. The closer you get, the more stories begin writing themselves in your mind. Who lived here? What happened? Is there a hidden garden just beyond those walls? But when you arrive— Nothing. No grand hall. No secret rooms. No forgotten history waiting to be uncovered. Just a facade, a beautifully crafted illusion built for no purpose other than to look ancient, romantic, and intriguing from a distance. A folly. The garden has played its first trick on you. The path gently insists that you continue, never quite revealing where it's taking you. You begin to wonder if you've somehow wandered off course. Surely there should be some flower Isn't this supposed to be a garden? Instead, you're met with another sweeping vista of grass so expansive it feels theatrical. You notice how every curve of the path hides what's ahead. Every hedge blocks your view just enough to make you curious. The garden isn't showing you everything at once. It's making you work for it. Then a weathered iron gate appears ahead, almost asking to be overlooked. You reach out and push. The hinge squeaks softly, and suddenly everything changes. Waves of flowers spill through the perfectly curved beds, bursting with color after what feels like miles of restraint. Foxgloves sway in the breeze while bushels of fragrant lavender perfume the cool air. Every border feels abundant, almost wild at first glance, but only at first glance. Every stem has been considered, every curve was drawn with intention. Only now do you realize what the lawn was doing all along. It wasn't empty, it was building anticipation. Because in an English garden, sometimes the flowers aren't the first thing you're meant to see. They're the reward for putting up with so much restraint. Open your eyes.

Wow, that was beautiful. That's really interesting because like I don't really know much about English gardens, I have to say, but I like the idea of the restraint. And it feels so like Anglo-Saxon to like control yourself and to restrain yourself. Only then, once you've proven capable of restraint, Then you're given the gift.

Yes.

Of like pleasure.

Yeah, it's very English to have to hold back, rein it in, keep it in, and then yeah, eventually there's an explosion.

And this is like a walled garden, I guess? That's what you arrive on, right, in the visualization? It's a walled garden?

Yeah, well, I was describing the grounds around Highclere Castle, which is like an estate garden.

Okay.

Different than maybe the cottage gardens We'll talk about. And there were a couple of places where I saw this type of garden. I also saw it in Shrewsbury, the Quarry and Dingle Garden, but it's just like a gated garden. It has walls around it and the walls are used as part of the landscape as well. You get the flowers growing up the wall.

Is the Quarry Garden built inside of a quarry?

Oh, Quarry Park was a quarry like a long, long time ago, but it turned into a park like hundreds of years ago.

Oh, right. Okay. That's cool.

The Dingle, which is like an amazing name for a park.

Just that name, like Dingle, the Dingle.

I met a friend at Quarry Park. He's from there and he showed us around and he's obviously British and loves the landscape with the trees. Like he thinks of that as the perfect garden. And it was so interesting because to me, I kept kind of running around being like, well, where does the garden start? Why aren't there flowers everywhere? Like, what are all these like lawns with trees? It was interesting that he appreciated that. And then we got into the Dingle, which was kind of a lot of freshly planted, anti-color annuals. It's a little disappointing when you can kind of see a gardener just stuck it in the ground and everything's in bloom and you're like, there's a lot of money going into this, which was, to me, didn't feel very English. I did do some research on the garden and the designers and the people in the community help keep it going. I also visited Oxford Botanic Garden.

Okay.

It has a lot of paths that lead you through borders and glasshouses and plants from around the world. That was Britain's oldest botanic garden founded in 1621.

Wow.

Yeah, it was really amazing to go to a garden that has been there for so long.

Did you end up going to Kew Gardens?

I did go to Kew Gardens in London, and that for me was like imperialism on show. I think the description would describe Kew Gardens as well. A lot of lawns with trees and bringing you up into a glass house. Like, they have the Victorian— they call them glass houses, which is great because I'm always debating if they're greenhouses or conservatories or what they're called.

Yeah.

You see these really old Victorian glass houses with all the plants they've, you know, stolen from different regions and countries.

Right.

Of course, only in London do I say it's stolen. Like, when we go to the Montreal Botanical Gardens or somewhere else and they have different plants, it's like, Scientific.

Borots.

And there is just such an interesting, like, vibe of celebrating colonialism but also apologizing for it. It's like, we know this is bad, but here it is.

This is specifically at the gardens?

Yeah, in Kew Gardens. Just the vibe of the whole place.

Oh, okay. Interesting.

When you look at it on, like, Google Maps, it looks like it's different things because it has a couple restaurants, obvs. It has the 5 glasshouses. It has paths that have specific plants. Like, there was a path that had a lot of tea plants.

Yeah.

And then I also went to Sudley Castle in Wychecombe.

Okay.

And they had a beautiful garden called the Queen's Garden, and they also had a Tudor Knot Garden, which was actually created in the '90s.

Okay, can you explain what that is? Tudor Knot Garden?

Tudor Knot Garden is a really specific garden that's just hedges that are kind of braided into each other.

Okay.

To look like a shape that's a Tudor knot. It's something that's supposed to be viewed from above out the window to see that kind of pattern with these little hedges.

Okay. So you can't like go into it, right? It's not like a maze or anything like that?

No, it's not a maze. It's smaller than that. Yeah, you wouldn't really— it looks like if you were tiny you might be able to go in, but they cross each other in a way where you can't just go in.

It's crazy how when you visit these gardens, you realize like gardens were really a way that people funneled excess. The idea of having a shrub which its sole purpose is for it to create a design that you can see from above. Yeah. You know, on like such a large scale, you need so much for that. Like you need to not only like the maintenance, but you need the land, you need like the money. I mean, like—

Oh, for sure. And these large estates and castles are kind of filled with those things. And those come directly from the French garden, the epitome of excess and—

Right.

Versailles, which was like the symbol of excess before the Revolution, the ability to just do things for the sake of the design and the art and spending money just to spend money. Yeah, that influenced English gardening and things like the Tudor Knot Gardens.

And what would you say, like, the principles of English gardening are? Like, what guides it?

When you think of an English garden, you have the overall structure So the framework of where the hedges are, walls, if there's trees and paths, and it creates a lot of order. But then you have a lot of planting, specifically in the flower garden areas, which you get layers of trees and shrubs, perennials, climbers, ground cover, and it's really full.

Like pockets of full and dense plantings.

Yeah.

Set amongst a larger, more empty landscape, or what I consider empty, but which is just lawn. Yeah.

If you're going into the depths of the flower garden, it's more like there's a structure of a path to take. It's pointing towards a specific thing you should be looking at. It could be a folly, which are those fake architectural things, or—

Like a tower. A trompe d'œil. Is that what it's like? It's a trick of the eye.

Yeah, that's an art term as well for like optical illusion type things. Trompe l'œil.

A trompe d'œil. I don't know what you— how you would say it.

I think I'd call it trompe l'œil. Trompe l'œil.

I don't know, sounds like a disease.

It's excess, but it's like we decided the excess goes here. And I see that a lot in gardens, you know, that we, we have or we see around in, in the US or in even North America. But English gardens also are supposed to be experienced by walking through them, so they have a lot of curved pathways, little rooms, gates, little hidden features. That's where the whimsical garden kind of comes from, where you turn a corner and something's different, or you just have a little hidden place to sit with a tree over it, but you didn't see that when you first walked in. And as you walk through, you kind of experience more and more. And that can be at any size. I think People can pull that off, and people have pulled that off in smaller gardens or in massive estate gardens.

Mm-hmm.

They also have the goal of having a more natural, lived-in feel. They spend a lot of time and money making these things, and most of the landscapes and gardens are meant to feel like they've always been there, and that's just the natural habitat, you know, big lawns with huge trees. I would say, except the Tudor knot garden, it's supposed to have this feel that it's been tended over generations and has a little bit of an effortless feeling, even though it's been really thoroughly planned.

And it's not effortless at all, right?

Exactly.

It's probably pretty— it's probably pretty effortful. You probably need a whole staff of gardeners to upkeep.

Their goal was for it to appear effortless and relaxed. even though everything was very thoughtfully planned.

It would be cool for you to talk a little bit about who created these garden rules and how did they become quintessentially British?

It all kind of started in the Victorian era with a couple specific designers and their philosophies, and these philosophies are things we still use today. The big name I think you will hear is Capability Brown.

I remember that from my history of landscape architecture class.

I would figure you would because he's just like one of those big names. And he kind of developed that natural-looking English landscape style. He worked with big estates and made like hundreds of gardens, big mansions surrounded by the woodlands, dotted with like trees and contoured ground, the lawn kind of look. He also kind of spearheaded the architectural features like the follies and temples, bridges, And he would just get rich people to invest like millions of pounds. And he would tell them, this is something that will develop and mature in centuries, not just, wow, here's your garden.

I guess like you believe so much in this idea of inheritance, you can think on like a century timescale to be like, oh, my great-grandson, Sir Edward Norton, will inherit this. I don't know.

Yeah, exactly.

All I could think of was Edward Norton.

He's British, right?

I can't even imagine what it's like for me to retire. I know.

But it's very interesting. It does go with that estates and inheritance and generations and titles that you pass down. The idea of gardening for your great-great-grandchildren and investing in that long-term way is so interesting because I don't think today any of us are really in that situation. But if we do have any listeners that have large estates that they're gardening, please let us know. We'd like to stay there. So, Capability Brown, his work was often mistaken as like natural landscape. People would think, and people still do when they visit, think like, oh, this is just what it was always like naturally. And that's kind of the look he was going for.

So, it was a success in the end.

There's also Gertrude Jekyll. These are all kind of Victorian-era gardeners. And she's written a lot of books on the colors of flowers and how to design with that. long planting style where you do flower borders and plant many of the same flower going down rather than clusters. There's a lot of books that people still read and look at today from her. And William Robinson, so he went to Versailles, ran home, and was like, I need to write a book on how to actually garden, because he hated it so much.

Yeah, I'm with him.

His style was to create your own private wilderness, but controlled, of course. When I'm talking about British garden style, I'm kind of conflating 2 different things. There's like the estate landscape with the big lawns and then the secret little gardens behind a gate, and then there's like the cottage garden, these little gardens that have roses and overflowing clematis vines and lavender. The cottage garden style is within those big estates, but they're just in little particular spaces. That's sort of what the British garden was trying to achieve. So what about the Italian garden, Jonathan? What do you think they were going for?

Well, from my understanding, a lot of the style in the Italian garden, like let's say from the Renaissance going forward, was inspired by descriptions of ancient Roman gardens. So a lot of the landscape architects at the time would be studying these books to try and understand how the gardens were organized and the kind of aesthetics that were dominant at the time.

So they were already going for like a vintage vibe.

Yeah. And even so much as, you know, incorporating statues of Roman gods or goddesses. So they kind of went all in.

When we go into these historic gardens, finding out that they're modeling it off of something even more historic is so interesting how we can say like fetishize history.

And also grottos. There's a lot of use of grottos in the Italian landscape garden.

And tell us a little bit, what's a grotto? I'm only thinking of the one at the Playboy Mansion.

I don't know what that is. But okay, a grotto is like a small cave. It's like a little hole in a cave. In a lot of Italian gardens, you might see a statue being kind of tucked into a grotto, or even the grotto being used for water. You might have like a waterfall going in front of a grotto, and you're meant to kind of discover the fact There's like a grotto behind it that you can sometimes even like walk into and see the waterfall from behind.

And were these using things that were already there or were they creating it more or less?

I think it was a mix of both. Oftentimes they did create the grottos. I think that they would have incorporated natural ones as well. It was in a way mimicking nature. There's no mistake about that. View is really important. So a lot of Italian towns, a lot of estates are built up on hills, and so they want to take advantage of the view, the bucolic landscape or a mountain in the distance.

So everything's kind of set up so when you wander around the garden, you'll have these amazing views. And I think in English garden design, and it might be this way in Italian, you can tell me, it's like getting you to wander around so you stumble upon this amazing view, like getting you to kind of turn the corner and gasp because you see like the countryside or, you know, rolling hills. Not just showing it right away.

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, in my opinion, that's the key to a well-designed garden in general.

Yeah.

You don't want the person to be able to see the entire garden as soon as they step into it. These gardens were designed really as like a space for contemplation. Also, like amusement played a big part in it. There's a bit of playfulness even with the water organ in Villa d'Este. They're using water to be able to play music. It's entertaining, it's amusing, it's awe-inspiring, especially at the time. And then there was like this usurping of it by really rich families like the Medici family, which was a really big, powerful merchant family in Renaissance Italy.

Oh yeah, I've watched the TV show.

Families like the Medici family used it to demonstrate their power and their grandeur.

Grandeur?

Yeah. What did I say? Grandeur.

Grandeur.

Grandeur?

Grandeur.

But there's no G later in the word.

I don't know.

Condare. I don't know. To demonstrate their power and their grandeur.

It sounds almost a little interactive, like there's things to do when you go out to the garden.

Oh, that's an interesting point.

I could see that even being a goal today in a garden, having a reason to sit somewhere.

I mean, I think there are some needs that are really universal. And the need for amusement, the need for contemplation. It's not surprising that a lot of these garden styles incorporated that.

There's such like privilege even today with being able to garden and having garden space. I think of Martha Stewart, Meghan Markle, and the garden that you can go out and use it as food, I think is somewhat popular with the big families. I'm trying to think like, what's our equivalent of the Medici family?

There's a resurgence of kitchen gardens.

For sure. And Michelin-star chefs having their own garden next to their restaurant is really popular.

That's true.

So being able to grow fresh food is such a wealth flex, and it even is a wealth flex for us to be able to talk about growing our own food, even though we don't feel wealthy, especially you because you're unemployed. No, you're not unemployed.

Yeah, so if these gardens were people, On a dating app, what would I pass and what would I smash?

First, I think we should browse French Landscape Design's dating profile.

If a French garden is anything like a French guy, I'm definitely not going to date a French garden.

I think the biggest one you think of for the style of French gardening is Versailles.

Yeah, for sure.

The French parterre was developed in the 16th century and really popularized at Versailles.

What is meant by the French parterre?

So, the— yeah, the parterre was— parterre? What did you say?

Well, I said parterre.

Parterre? The parterre was kind of these very controlled landscapes that were mostly supposed to be viewed from above, like out the window from your estate. They had a very formal aesthetic, very geometric, symmetrical. Think like tamed topiaries. There's the planting style of the apple trees where they go along these horizontal fences to kind of train them.

And they're in like straight lines. Yeah.

Patterns made of like the boxwood hedges, kind of like that Tudor knot garden, which makes sense because Anne Boleyn had lived in France and brought a lot of that style back to England. And geometric designs of the gravel or sand paths is how you can think of a French garden and the French influence on other gardens.

Okay, so French gardens are guided by symmetry and geometric shapes and like by extension, I guess, meticulous maintenance. It's like a control over nature kind of thing. Italian gardens, I think they emphasize beauty and comfort and integration with the surrounding landscape.

Before we say what we hate, I want to talk about what we want to implement in our own gardens from all this discussion of Italian, English, and French design.

For me, it's like water features. So coming back from Villa d'Este, I realized like I need to work more with water. And obviously, like, I don't have water coming off of a hill. I live in the city. But I think in the city there's space to incorporate rainwater. I would love to be able to harvest more rain and to funnel it in the garden to make it you know, an integral part of the garden.

And are you thinking of like the visual aesthetic of it as well, or are you just thinking like, I want to store rainwater?

Yeah, I mean, like, I, I do worry about mosquitoes is the only thing.

Oh yeah.

You know, I would have to consider that part.

I use those dunks, mosquito dunks, which are like the nematode discs, but we don't have so many mosquitoes here that I don't know if they do anything or not. And those are safe for birds and they're safe to like drink the water still.

Oh really? Yeah, it's just releasing those, um, nematodes that get like the fungus gnats Yeah, but like, do you want to— you want to drink water? You want to drink water that has nematodes floating in it?

No, I don't.

There's probably already that stuff in our water.

I don't want you to think you'd be, you know, spoiling the water or your plants.

Yeah, right.

If you put nematodes in.

What I'm dreaming about is to have the path in my garden to be raised a bit, and maybe it would actually involve sinking the actual garden slightly, and that when there's When there's rain, the rain comes off of the roof and it kind of funnels around the stepping stones so that when it's like really rainy or when it's after the rain, that it turns into a stream that you're kind of like walking over or walking through. And then I would have certain areas of the garden that are a little bit lower level that would accumulate some of the water, be able to absorb it. And I would have to put plants that thrive in really moist environments. But then also maybe having some element of like moving water somewhere else in the garden that would be useful for birds and any kind of like amphibians, which I don't even know like how you can bring amphibians into the city, what kind of role they would take. But I guess like the squirrels would also benefit from it.

They'll take little showers. It sounds like you're describing a rain garden. Is that what you're kind of thinking of and looking at?

Well, it's no lie that that has influenced a lot. I mean, in Montreal, you see they're building a lot of new rain gardens. And even when they're rebuilding the sidewalks, they have built in the tree squares, they actually have them like more depressed into the ground and the water is guided through those. So like even those are like, I guess, kind of mini rain gardens.

Oh, interesting.

For me, it's also just, I think it's a beautiful thing to use rainwater and to not let it go into the sewer. Yeah, like for me, I would just enjoy using it. It's a resource that would otherwise be wasted. But yeah, it's a— it would be a rain garden.

I like that idea, especially here where it rains for so long. Having something that only kind of comes alive during the rain, so something I kind of look forward to, would be fun.

How about you? What are the things that you love of English gardens that you would want incorporated at home.

Nathan built this rock waterfall. It trickles down the rocks really quietly, and it's very hidden in what I'm realizing now is a kind of British style. You walk out the back door, you go through some stone steps over the lawn to the gate that you have to open, and the gate has this cypress tree over it that kind of hides everything that's in the back garden. And you walk in and to see the water feature and this beautiful water fountain, you look, you have to look right. So it's kind of like something you have to discover. And there's actually lavender growing in front of it. There's a big lemon balm in front of it. There's a small pink pussy willow tree in front of it. So it is very like hidden.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's something I, now that I'm realizing, I want to be more intentional with the idea of how people move around the garden and find those hidden things. Ideally, if we remove our front lawn, which we want to do, and then having all that space to plan something out, it would be cool to have an intentional idea of how you move around the garden versus just looking at it from the sidewalk.

I just thought of a maze where the mail person, the mail carrier has to walk through this hedge maze in order to discover your front door and your mailbox.

Low-key, he kind of already does because we have so many like plants growing over the sidewalk. If we were at that community garden, they would have kicked us out. And then he kind of goes through our side yard to get to the other house. So he does kind of travel through a little journey to give us our junk mail. I also really like the idea from Gertrude Jekyll of how she plants horizontal flower borders with like multiple plantings of the same flower. I would like to know a lot more about how these wild gardens are planted to look wild, but also you do have to plan ahead because just planting things doesn't work. The key I'm trying to unlock is how do I know where to plant everything and what goes in front and in the middle and in the back? And the more I've looked into these landscape designers like William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, I'm realizing— I mean, William Robinson said like you have to plant it all and see how it does, see how big it is, see how small it is. You have to kind of learn as you go. Even for these famous Victorian designers, there's no like exact math to do to plant things. Whereas I feel like French, it's like you plant it like this and like this and this here. But with these wild English gardens, you know, you do have to plan them out, but you also have to see how things grow, what grows well, and not being afraid to like pull things up, move them.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is like you also have to then be okay with having to dig things up and move them. them if it doesn't work.

Yeah, that's important. But then you feel like, oh my God, I'm moving everything.

I actually— I did that once. At one point I had dug up a lot of my plants and rearranged them. Wow.

Yeah.

It was like 3 years into my garden. I realized that I wanted to have things grouped together more. Yeah, things were kind of like spread out, and then I think I was starting to realize that it looks a lot better when you have groupings of plants. So then I took a lot of stuff out and I regrouped Yeah, I think moving things is important.

And then if I really want that quintessential British landscape, I need to plant a huge oak tree in the middle of my lawn.

Okay, so what don't you like about a British garden that you wouldn't want to incorporate?

I definitely would pass on all the grass. I like a lot of grass at the dog park, which for the dogs to run around, I definitely will always need the patch of grass for them to use as their bathroom. But I don't personally like strolling through the gardens with just trees and grass, and I thought it was so interesting that my friend did, and he specifically mentioned how much he liked it. And I was like, wow, people have such varied tastes. I always just thought, you know, people want to see the flowers, people want to see a beautiful rose bush, people want to see a cool stream or water feature. So it's— it was so interesting, but I personally would not swipe right. on a big lawn with trees dotted around.

That's fair.

After learning more about this, I feel like keeping my lawn and maintaining it would be some sort of like Victorian exercise in restraint.

For me, what I would definitely not want is topiary and the extreme pruning that is needed. Like I said, my garden is really wild.

But I want to see A 3D elephant in your backyard pruned from some cypress tree or whatever they use to make those.

No, no, no, no.

So, Jonathan, if you had to let one of these garden styles ruin your life for 6 months, who are you dating?

Hmm. Okay, well, the Italian Renaissance boy is a bit of a control freak. He is the type of person that would track your location, but then he buys you really nice curated things.

Versus the English garden boy overly curates his life, but then seems real chill and organic.

Right.

And that's the worst when it's like they act like they don't care, but are really specific about Oh my God, I forgot my specific hair product. You messed up my shirt. This was a $100 ripped-up t-shirt. He's secretly manipulative, and you can't change anything in his life.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. He has extreme colonial guilt, right?

Yes. He's a total Kew Gardens imperialist. Stole plants from around the world. Oh, you know what it is? He's appropriating things from different cultures.

Right.

So, he like has some Chinese symbols tattooed or wearing, you know, slippers from Japan or—

Right.

Saying namaste after yoga.

So, I think I would go with the Italian Renaissance boy.

Mm-hmm.

I could forego a bit of my self-determination for some nice gifts right now.

Mm.

Plus, I think I'm, I'm a romantic at heart. And so I would like all those bells and whistles being pulled out, like the epic fountains and sculptures and just being surrounded by objects and an ambiance So is this a Libra or a Virgo?

This is definitely a Libra, or maybe a Taurus.

Yes. And I think Virgo, because Virgos are like neat freaks, right? So I feel like that would maybe be the English garden.

I think— oh, this is interesting. Libras love symmetry and balance, and they love art and fashion and romance. So I feel like maybe the Libra is a little more of the Okay, yeah. And then Taurus is an earth sign, and they love the tangible physical luxury and comforts, in tune with the senses, all 5, not just visual, but how things smell and feel. And I feel like you would really get along with that kind of Taurus energy. I think for an English garden, Capricorn might be the most English garden style sign there is. They love structure, so having that base plan of like your paths and where the gardens are gonna be carefully planned out. They're really hardworking, and they really like that kind of historical aspect of it, planting for future generations and referencing the past and that kind of classic aesthetic, I think. And Capricorn's an earth sign, so I feel like if we're giving gardens a zodiac sign, Earth signs definitely work.

Right, of course.

So Capricorn's the English garden, maybe Virgo's the French garden, and Taurus is the Italian garden?

You're the expert on this, so I'm just gonna take your word for it, Jeanette. I feel like you went real deep into that.

We didn't even plan for that, but then I was like, wait a minute, each garden does kind of have a zodiac sign that it would go with when you personify it. So you're going with the Italian Renaissance tourist.

Tourist, yeah.

Italian Renaissance tourist. Um, I think that's exactly what you need because the British garden boy is a little too polite, a little too rule follower.

I don't want that.

Yeah, and you don't want like a fake person who's pretending to be, you know, simple and minimalist, but then when you get to know them, their parents come from like rich corporate empire and they're sending that monthly allowance that allows him to kind of wear beat-up luxury clothes and pay for his Aesop hand soap.

Yeah.

And they really pay for his lifestyle while he lives like in a nice apartment downtown but works as like a part-time florist.

Well said, Jeanette.

It's such a red flag. And we all know, like, we're all thinking of people.

Yeah, I've met those people. Um, it sounds like we had some really good explorations since the last time we recorded.

Yeah, I love that our vacations turned into garden tours turned into podcast content. Perfect.

It's the only way to live now.

It was fun to learn about Italian gardens and kind of reflect on my time looking at all these English gardens.

Yeah.

And I wonder if when you're in Italy, you'll look at gardens a little differently or a little more closely.

Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to going back to Italy and visiting all the gardens. Maybe part of the program, I don't know.

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