Ep 018 - Indoor Plants, NASA Plant Study and Green Walls featuring Dan Cusack from Housemates

In this episode Averill & Bernadette talk all things house plants with local legend Dan Cusack from Housemates.  Dan is the proprietor of Canberra based plant store Housemates, where they believe that every indoor plant is a member of your home.  Dan offers some great advice on indoor plants and this light hearted chat will inspire you to add some new housemates to your place!

Links for further information:

Housemates - Your online shop for all things indoor plants. 

Revive Landscapes, Canberra

NASA Plant Research Offers a Breath of Fresh Air 

Neem Oil Leaf Shine - The Plant Runner

Floriade 

Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show - Immerse Your Senses 

Wintering, The power of rest and retreat in difficult times by Katherine May 

Transcript

Before we start today, Seedy Chats would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the Ngunnawal and Ngamburi country, recognising their continued connection to this land. Traditional custodians of all our lands, from the water running through our creeks, the air we breathe in the mountains and the stars that shine brightly in the sky, we pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Hello and welcome. Welcome to Seedy Chats. Hello and welcome back. Welcome to Seedy Chats, the podcast where imperfect gardeners, Averill, that's me, and Bernadette. Hi, that's me. Chat about our favorite topics, gardening and life. So whether you're new to gardening, a seasoned pro or somewhere in between, join us on our journey to be mindful in gardening and life in general. So Averill. Yes, Bernadette. You know, I've put myself out there. Awesome. Out the front of my house, I've put a seed stand for the community, inspired by Stephanie Rose's regenerative gardening book. And also there's a produce stand in Hannah Maloney's book. And I thought I'm going to do this. I'm going to reach out. I'm going to be part of the community. I got went out to Revolve, the green shed, found an old set of drawers. Is that called Revolve now? No, it used to be called Revolve. I'm showing my age. Oh Jesus. You've COVID. It's um, it's called the green shed. That's a bit raspy, that cough. And have you had that long? No, that's just my regular cough. You don't have a regular cough, do you? Well, that's my regular clearing of my throat. Thank you, God. Went to the green shed, I painted it all up, I put a little chalkboard on there. I said, it's beautiful. I said, you can plant these seeds now, free seeds, happy gardening. Well, not only. has no one taken a single friggin' seat. But I heard some guy the other day, when I walked past he goes, free seats, what the fuck? He just kept walking, like I was the stupidest person in the world. Well, we all know, yeah. Anyway. We all know that wasn't you, that was his. Was he on his own? He was on the phone. It's like he was telling me on the phone how idiotic I was. Really? Do you know him? No, I could point him out. Name and shame. Anyway, no one's interested so far, which I guess means that we're lucky enough to live in a thriving little suburb where everyone's got what they need. They have all the seeds they need. No, I think someone will come past. Someone that you or Andrew send to make me feel better about myself. Hello, Seedy Chums, and welcome to this episode where we talk to a Canberra local, Dan from Housemates. And Dan was a very relaxed and lovely chap, wasn't he? He was, he was great, yeah. Our people, hey? Absolutely. Yeah, and we learned a good bit from Dan, which is always our ethos. And I feel less intimidated to go out there and get some more of the kind of plants that I want in my house, and I think that's something that he would love to hear as well. And I got to deliver it from him. What did you get? What did you pick? A ficus. Ficus. A fickle ficus. Ficus. A ficus. And a candy, oh, what was it? A candy floss phone. Ooh. So pretty. Ooh, you'll have to put a picture on that for our Seedy chums. Because... I think I've mentioned before in a previous episode where I'm not very good at keeping ferns alive for some reason. I think they're like humidity and low light. Low light. Yes, like dappled sun. I've got two that I've kept alive and they're all in my bathroom. So this candy one is in my living room and it's doing okay but it's over in a corner that there's less. Did you see it the other day? No. Oh, you didn't? Yeah right, it was kind of on the floor. It's a bit hard in your living room to notice one plant, April. Okay, jealousy will get you nowhere, Bernadette. For anyone that wants to find Dan, Dan has a website www.getplantsdelivered.com Dan's goal is to get more plants in homes and he wants to help people discover the joy of gardening and plants. He thinks that one of life's greatest pleasures can be getting your hands dirty in the garden. and he'll give you what you need to do that. So whether that's education, information, tools, pots, vegetables, beds, whatever you need, they're there to help and to get you gardening. And he's constantly updating his website. So his website is Get Plants Delivered. He's on social media, which is fantastic. We've had a few kind of great conversations with him on there. He has a newsletter that you can subscribe to and yeah, get on over there. Welcome Dan. Thank you, it's great to be here. Thanks for coming and joining Seedy Chats, we really appreciate it. Yeah, it's great to be here. Dan Dan, the house plants man. Oh no. Do you get that all the time? I've got to lean into it at this point, don't I? Yeah, you've got to go with it. Embrace it. I'm embracing it. We could beatbox it. We have been knowing to do a few. I'm here for it. Anyway. Tell us a bit about your... business, your garden, like I suppose, where do we start? I guess we start from, you're a Canberra local, aren't you? Born and bred Canberra. Yep. I can probably sum it up pretty quickly. So 12 years in the landscaping industry. So that's, not sure if you ladies knew, but yeah, so Revive Landscapes is my main business. So I've been doing landscape construction here for about 12 years. Yep. And that's going really well. I've got three staff working with me there and we're getting some really good projects. We work with landscape architects and we do sort of pretty high end construction. Beautiful. And I guess as a part of that, making dreams come true, try my best. No, we really, I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. It's really, really great stuff. And I've learned a lot along the way. And a few years ago, I started getting interest in green walls as well. So living walls. Yep. I saw a bit of a gap in the market for that. So I've done a few of those, but didn't really take off how I wanted to. They're quite expensive. And people kill them and then... Yeah. Where what I learned from the green walls is about So I started going to nurseries and seeing all these indoor stuff that I was loving and hadn't heard of and had never seen them Around Canberra. So that's essentially where housemates came from as a business idea To try and supply and deliver indoor plants to the Canberra market And is that because that's how you're accessing those plants in sort of your commercial aspect and you thought there's a real You know the consumer could benefit from this. I mean, it's true I think everyone will have something come to mind, a gardening center. But I'm sure there's, you know, that's not as convenient, especially if you've got people in inner Seedy living and things like that. So that's where you come in, right? Yeah, I mean, I can do all plants as well. So I guess the idea is developed as they do. So now the domain is getplantsdelivered.com and I think that better sums up what I'm trying to do now. Like it's not just indoors, I'm trying to do all plants. And as you said, that's how I've always received them as a landscaper. Like they've always been conveniently delivered when we need them. And I've kind of taken that for granted, I guess. And now I'm trying to offer that to everyone because if that's the barrier that stops them, like getting in the car, jumping in the Tesla and trying to put plants in there or something, like you're pretty limited with what you can do and it makes a mess, they get knocked over. But if I can take that hurdle away and deliver the plants to people's door, then hopefully that encourages them to garden. And we've talked about this with PlantRunner. I think he mentioned a statistic more productive if they've got green plants and things like that. There's lots of benefits to either having plants in the office or being able to see them from the office. And I'm sure those apply to having them in the home as well. You know, if someone does want to have some house plants in the house, where do they start? What should, how do they know what to pick from the website? Yeah, I'm trying to make sure I'm stocking stuff that's pretty tough because I have to look after it before I sell them. So I'm not trying to get stuff that needs a lot of care or, you know, and 23 degrees like under a light yeah the sun moon and stars are aligned for it to grow planting it on saucers you can get really deep into that stuff can't you but i think the reality is camera is pretty tricky because we have such range of temperature that we have to sort of make sure that plants indoors and out can be pretty tough unless you do literally want to get humidifiers and have them in like I've seen cabinets you can get that have lights and keep it at a temperature and the right humidity. And I'm just like, that's not for me. I think for 98% of people, that's not for them. Why I think they want some life. I mean, obviously I would do it. Like I literally have two humidifiers for my plants. We all sell them and I can see a place for them. But I think to answer your question, I'm trying to stock stuff that's easy. And I've got a blog post kind of ready to go that hopefully encourages people is trying to like empower and educate people and take away any reservations they have about gardening. Because I think you probably both know that it does take a while to feel confident, but like the beauty of gardening is like every day you learn something and you feel more empowered and more excited and you kind of want to share that. Yeah, and you do learn by your mistakes. So if you've learned those mistakes, that's what we find that we can share them. And then people, I mean, they probably still have to make their own mistakes, but it just, it is bringing down the barriers. My advice is start with 10 houseplants some of them you will make mistakes, and then other ones will go well, and then you just focus on them. I think plants die too, it's not the end of the world. Like it's a shame and we feel a bit upset, but like- That's okay. You just learn. Yeah, you just replace them, right? You just go out and replace them. So I purchased plants from you, and it was great because what I loved from your website was that you could go in and read about the plant. And it wasn't just about the label. If you go to a store, and you're buying your plant and it's just the label but you actually related is a lot better to me. Yeah, a lot of those labels can be quite generic too. Like they might have what a sentence on the back of a label. They've only got room for that, but they'll be the bare bones of the information. But I am so thanks for picking that up because that's something that I'm spending a bit of time and effort into have the information up there. So you can actually be on your couch. You can read through the information. You can feel like, yeah, I've actually got a spot that's going to get that light and I can water it once a week. I feel confident buying that plant. I haven't started sort of listing some really like harder to look after plants yet. But yeah, eventually that might be sort of a section that I'll have. But to be honest, probably not. Like if people want to do that, there's other places they can get plants. Cuttings from Everil. I'm not led by I'm not led by any more plants, although I do. Is he going to listen? Are you going to get in trouble? Well, you drop them off to his office. That's right. And he was actually for the office. And I was like. Hands off. No. I can't repeat what the receptionist said, but when I said that for Averill. She was like, oh yeah, that checks out. She was just like. For fuck's sake. Yeah, okay, thank you, yep. And there was something like that. I just laughed. So now this makes a lot of sense. The reaction was kind of like, are you serious, more plans? Well, it was funny because at the time, Craig's business partner wasn't there. I thought he would have been there. That's why I said to you to tell him, hands off. Yeah. But he does like plants because he's got some nice plants, you know, in there that he likes to take care of. And I did say that stat to him about it does improve productivity by 15 percent. He was like, really? Well, at a bare minimum, I've got three plants in the office, one struggling, two thriving. Well, we know why that one's struggling because we talked to PlantRunner about that. Oh, what is it? It's a peace lily. I think it's getting too much sun. Very dramatic. Oh, no. Wasn't there another reason? No, the other reason was you went on mat leave. Oh, yeah. And he said that some plants don't do well with male energy. Yeah, it's to do with vibes. The Peacelies are a good one to have around because they are a bit, I mean, they sell them as like the easier to care, but I don't find that they are. They're a little bit more dramatic. I've had a lot of success with mine here. When you find the right spot. It's under the stairs. So it's got sort of filtered sunlight, but it still gets a lot of sunlight. But I tell you what, it is my watering indicator. Yeah, that's okay. And it's all dramatic. They all need to be done. Yeah, I'm like, oh, shit, I should go water. I'm sitting there like drinking my drink bottle in front of it. going, you look nasty. What about the one in my kitchen window the other day? That is struggling. I keep talking about this one plant. I talked about it to Dominic. I talked about it to someone else. Bernadette was there the other day and she was like, how about you just move the bloody thing? I was like, let's move it. Yeah. She put it like right next to the fireplace and she's like, maybe not. What is it? A piece of living. It's piece living. Yeah. It's probably getting too much sun. Yeah. It was burnt. I just, I just keep cutting the burnt leaves off and then it's drying. It's best. The little green ones come through and then they go yellow and I'm like cut you off. But so for everyone at home, if you do have a piece Lily and it's too yellow or really light green, is that, that for me is the sign that it's getting too much light, right? Light or fertilizer probably. So yeah. Or water? Yeah, look, it could be all the things, but it's stress. It's basically stress. Yeah. So you can sort of figure it out, I guess, by elimination. Like if it's dry, then yeah, it needs water, but yeah, potentially reposition. It might not be getting too little sun as well. getting photosynthesizing enough. And making sure you're cleaning the leaves as well, wiping down the leaves, so giving it the best chance at photosynthesis. That's right. And then if it's happy, you should be seeing nice, dark leaves and hopefully flowers. Flowers, they're great at throwing out some flowers, aren't they, the peace lilies? They are, they're quite a nice flower too, the big white flowers. Because there's some of them that I've noticed you'd never see a flower, so a snake plant. Yep. Or a mother-in-law's tongue. Like I have seen things on social media recently how to make that flower. You have the most impressive mother-in-law's tongue seen if yours isn't flowering. My mother-in-law will thank you for that. If yours isn't flowering I don't know what you've got to do yours looks so happy. It's pretty big as well isn't it like it's yeah. I've got one in the bathroom it gets no sun and the occasional trickle of water when I remember it. But it's still alive. Yeah it's still alive. They're pretty hardy. Not from the frost. Oh no you can't put them in the frost. Have you tried that? Yeah I put them all remember that little planter I've got out on the alfresco. I had a whole bunch like, oh, these are dying. I need to do I'm going to take them home and I put them out there and then the frost hit them. You see them down the coast in a landscape garden and they just look so kind of Miami, like, you know, like a Arizona plant that were taken to space because of the air purification qualities. I think I'm going to say yes. I have no idea. But I'm going to say yes. I think there is a study where they... There is NASA clean air study. And I looked it up last night and I said to Craig, your home of 1800 square feet which is 167 square meters NASA recommends 15 to 18 plants. Are you alright? I forgot that my watch was in my pocket and I thought I was being attacked. I thought it was a spider or something. I thought you were executed. I had an incident with a bug on Moth recently. I nearly crashed the car and killed the family. I had a spider abseil down from my mirror two days ago. Just abseil down, landed on the dash and luckily you walked towards the windscreen. But I had to like find someone to pull over and then I like had a mask laying around so I kept him with a mask And got him out the passenger door, but yeah that was I was just screaming to my husband I was crying, she's like, oh my god. And then I was like, now it's something, it's weird, it's stopping me, it's stopping me. And then we got home and it was this massive, bogone mop and I picked it up and it fought him. He's like, oh, it's legs are so strong. Yeah, who won? Like, yeah, but apparently first nations actually eat them. They're quite a good source of fat and protein, but it nearly took me down. Yeah, right. Prentice, you just interrupt my important stat on the net. It is again, it is. I was vibrating. Okay, NASA recommends 15 to 18 plants to purify your air in the room, which I thought was interesting. For a hundred and... 167 square meters. So you should be covered then. Yeah, in that one room. I mean, I said to Craig, when I took in the whole house, I was like, shit, I need about a hundred more plants. And he was like, I'm panicking on the floor. It sounds like you're looking for ways to justify more plants. I'm okay with that. You could always have one more plant. So yeah, so they're saying 10. Yeah 15 to 18. Yeah Is that like one tongue or if your thing's got like 15 tongues does that count as 15? That actual plant would be my yeah I could just tongue all over the place. Dear NASA, Bernadette Navarro here from Seedy Chats. Sorry to interrupt your space launch. Maybe we get maybe Elana NASA. Do they talk? No, I have some questions for Elan too about repopulating the world. Repopulating? You keep talking about that. She was like, he's got 11 children. I was like, I don't think he does. When you Google it, he's got nine. That was pretty close. Talking about the mother-in-law's tongue getting hit by frost. We are coming into winter. We're in a colder climate. I think a little bit. people don't understand that there are different things that we need to do for our indoor plants in spring, summer and winter. What are the kind of things that change now that we come into winter for our indoors? Yeah I guess to just paint a bigger picture I think I heard well obviously someone say once there's no such thing as an indoor plant and I think that was an important point because yeah like they're outdoor plants right so they're just plants that thrive in humid tropical Queensland yeah In Canberra frost, we get cold today, but we get down to minus fives and lower. So I think the general rule of thumb that I'm remembering with most plants, and again, that's why I list on the website, the temperature ranges, but most of them say about 15 degrees at the minimum. So yeah, it's okay to leave them outside in spring, but you gotta be careful because they can cop too much sun and burn. But as a general rule, you can probably leave them outside in autumn and spring if they're sort of sheltered a bit, and then make sure you bring them inside in winter, definitely. And the change, I guess, is gonna be on the air quality. So depending on your heating and cooling system. Yeah, that's a really good point because you can bring them inside and think, oh, They're protected. But actually, if you've got like a dehumidifying heater on constantly, that might change their watering requirements. Absolutely. I mean, look at this room when we came in here, it was pretty warm. And the other thing we do a little bit differently in winter too, so when, you know, we're not fertilising indoor plants in like, this is sort of a dormant period for our indoors, right? So we might be watering a bit less, they're doing a bit less, they're almost in a little mini hibernation, aren't they? Some of them. Yeah. I guess like you know deciduous trees or even evergreen trees they slow down their growth in winter So I guess as a general gardening rule of thumb, we're kind of fertilizing in autumn and spring typically During the growth period so it's probably an easy way just to remember that I guess if you're fertilizing outside Probably be thinking about fertilizing inside as well And then just let them chill out a bit over winter reduce the watering so you don't flood them Yes, they're not going to be absorbing as much Use water through transpiration Is that when you see the leaves where they have like a little bit of water on the tips? Yeah, they sweat. Oh, you've heard that? Yeah, I did. No one's been able to answer that. Yeah, they're not crying. Yeah, we thought they might be crying because they missed my female energy, but it's just transpiration. Yeah, tears of joy. If you get into it further, there's like the, I guess the veins in the plant. It's either xylem and phlegm or phloem and phlegm or something, but there's two words that basically talk about the way that the sugars move throughout the plant. through the leaves. So anyway probably getting into too much there but basically in winter it needs to slow down. No I love the nerd alert because I was even yeah I was looking into why does frost damage plants and essentially when the height when hydrogen enters the molecule when it's freezing the molecule gets bigger and it breaks the cell walls okay and then that's why it goes all floppy and melts because that's compromised but look I'm sure there are appreciate this little deep dive. Yeah I'm sure from memory there is also a study where they've done I think was it a David Attenborough in the Amazon where they've I think they were testing Gore-Tex and they put it around leaves and when they were perspiring there was moisture in there and it showed then how Gore-Tex as clothing, it was breathable. Oh. Yeah, so it didn't, so you know when we perspire, Gore-Tex like it's kind of breathing, it's not making us wet underneath. I glisten. In theory. So they just said like human test subjects aren't good enough, we need to find some trees in the rainforest. They were testing it wasn't actual, it was like, yeah, like a plastic form of gore-tex or, and yeah, I'll have to look that up because it was in another career because I used to sell wound care and that was to do with wound dressings. How the top of a wound dressing because it was all to moist wound care and it would breed. So the top of the dressing would let moisture out, but nothing in. And that all came from that study. And it was all to do with plants. Interesting. Amazing. And that's why they brought plants to space. That's why they'd done that study, that NASA study seemingly, because it was a they had trialed keeping the air pure and when they were up there how they were going to prevent the astronauts from breathing in like things like formaldehyde and weird shit that was in the air. I'm interested in this study. It's an awesome study. Yeah Bring it up. I'm definitely fascinated about that. Yeah, it's a real and because It might help you move some mother-in-law tongues There was a random one that would be classed a weed in Australia, but I've got one in a pot at home and I'm thinking, I wonder if I can bring it inside. It's ivy. Oh yeah, definitely. They used ivy a lot. I've got lots of ivy. Do you? Like a lot of those ones with the variegated leaves and the types of ivy. Oh yeah, right, like the devil's, devil's ivy. Is that what it's called, devil's ivy or? That's the common name. The variegated one is commonly a bit of an indoor classic and I think it's pretty tough. So yeah. You see, I would think of an English ivy, that grows up the side, or I suppose like, or there's a Boston one that grows like in a magnificent color in autumn or like really red. Or is it, yeah. I've got a really old ugly shed, so I just planted some Boston ivy next to it. Yeah, to cover it. It looks beautiful right now. Yeah. So I think a lot of people are interested in having those houseplants or having like that green wall that you talk about. Even I'm a little bit intimidated by a green wall. Is it that hard? Is it about how you set it up? Like what are the kind of tips? which is a portable green more system. I've got two of them in my hallway, basically my entry, but they basically hold about 50 plants each, but they're a standalone unit and the key is irrigation, right? So I actually find these easy to look after than all my other plants, to be honest. Because you're not having to manually. Yeah, so it's about good preparation with soil choice, the right plants. And then this unit holds about 70 liters of water at the bottom and then has a pump and it just reticulates the water to the top through. So I turn it on for about an hour a week and that's it but I literally turn a PowerPoint on, turn it off and I've watered 100 plants. So visually it's on your wall in the hall. Does that have to be plugged in anywhere? Like do you have a PowerPoint, sorry visual here, a PowerPoint that has to be attached to? Yes that's all you need though so you just need a PowerPoint or is it done into the wall and it's all? No so it's literally just like a little pond pump if you can picture that with a lead. So you just need to plug that lead in somewhere you produce some lighting, you probably get even better growth, but you actually don't want too much growth because you have to maintain it more. So a future, one of my sort of revenue streams I hope pulls off one day is I'd love to see them everywhere. I can see them doing really well in office buildings, in cafes, in restaurants. It's such a flex. If someone walks in and sees that you just go. It is a bit of a flex. It's just so cool. It's also fun. It's just like, I like having sort of quirky things around. It's a bit quirky. It's a bit unpredictable. You don't expect to walk into a... house and see a hundred plants on a wall. And it's kind of like a bit of a sculpture as creative. Yeah it's replacing a bit of an Irish. Yeah, yeah. So but they are really straightforward and I mean I've been doing it for a few years so again I've just it's about the plant choice so I do have a lot of peace lilies, pepperonias, ferns, some do better than others. I've basically learned over the years I've been doing it what does and doesn't work and I still am learning because I'm still pushing it a bit. Yes, that's a great product for people as in someone else has done the hard yards if you are wanting to start something like that, don't go out there and pick the 10 plants and get disappointed they're gonna die. That's a really great place to start. And you talked a little bit about soil preparation. So what do you do there? Well, I overcomplicated this in my early days. I actually had a blend made up specifically for green walls from Martin's fertilizers and they use vermiculite and coir and all this stuff. And I just, look, it still worked, but I've worked with people that have created and installed massive green walls. And they said, no, just go get the stuff from. as long as you get a premium mix, it's got everything you need. So now I just use Martin's premium potting mix and it works absolutely fine. So an indoor potting mix. Well, even just a premium potting mix. Just a premium potting mix. And it's not a case of that when it's in that structure that it's too heavy or? No, no, it's fine. I mean, the plant runner stuff is really good. I've had a lot of good feedback from their potting mixes that they sell. So I'm sure that that's got everything you need if you wanna take it a level further, but I honestly do think we can overcomplicate potting mix. Yeah. So, yeah. And the same with potting mixes. So what do you put like a little feed in the water? So that is actually, I had a fungus net issue. Yes. I'm talking like I had those yellow sticky things all around the lounge room. He had one more, one green wall. One yellow wall. Not far off that, but what I found was I actually tipped neem oil straight, like a little weak amount of neem oil straight into the reservoir of water. And that pumped through and fixed it. Cause I'm a big believer in neem, cause I use the Plant Runners leaf shine, but I spray that on the top of my toilet. You need everything. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I do name everything. I love naming. It's good. I think that's a soil drench. I found that was the only way it really worked. Because that is a great tip. And you see, I never would have done that. I would have been too afraid to do that. Oh, really? I was a bit nervous. Like a couple of times I tried spraying the foliage and just chipping away at it with yellow sticky signs. Did you get to a point where you're like, yeah, if I get one more nap in my cup of coffee, I swear to God. It was not comfortable for me. They're annoying. They're like the STI of Pantworld. I can't get rid of it, just keep going back. It's terrible. That could be a marketing one. I haven't even found this. You heard it here first. You might start your own line. And what about feed? Are you feeding the plants any sort of liquid fertilizer? Plant runner would be very upset to say that I, not enough. Like I'm a very busy person so I don't really have a strict regime or anything. But if I do, I do use their fertilizer. You know what you need? You need to invent an automatic little dosing pump after your little pond pump. that's got his thing there and then you just click it in and then it just takes a bit into it. So there are those um... Was that a thing? Fertigation units? Should I have trademarked this? No, sorry Bernadette. We're giving away all the secrets today. Someone else thought of this? Actually you know what? Bernadette does this on me all the time. Can you give more examples? I say things to her and she'd be like, mm-hmm and she, it's nearly like she's ignoring me right? And then on the 10th time she goes, you know what we should do? We should do... X, Y and Z and I'm like and then she looked at me and go oh you said that to me before. I've been trying to tell you this for 10 weeks. It's all coming back to me now it's like a Celine Dion moment. The best piece of advice my grandmother ever gave me was with your husband just making all you have to do is make him think like it was his idea. I think I'm your husband. We met with friends the other day and they are like we are each other's wife. They work so much together. They have families and we were sitting across and going, oh my God, we're the same. It comes across really nicely though on the podcast, you can tell. Yeah, like, yeah, it works to a point. That's my idea, Brody Dash. That's like a couple as well though, isn't it? Just have your beef. And my last question about the plant wall was, do you move it at different times of the year with the sun or anything like that? No, so I think I've just got mine set up in the lounge room where to be honest, it doesn't get as much light as it would like, but it does get sort of dappled light. But so basically to go back to just with the fertilizing, called a fertigation, you just drip feed. So as the water pumps in, it drips the amount of fertilizer you want. So then it gets absorbed as a liquid fertilizer. Yeah, right. but yeah, at home, I just do the plant runner stuff as far as into a watering can. But no, these units, they are pretty heavy by the time you add 50 plants and seven liters of water. So they're probably, oh, they probably are a couple hundred kilos, I guess. So you can easily pull it apart by emptying the water, emptying the plants, but I just try and find a spot. It's essentially like, it is a green wall, but it's independent of the wall because you don't want to mess with the jit rock. You can do waterproofing. That's what I'm thinking. Like, do you put all your electrical behind the wall? Like I have a vision of- So sorry, I probably haven't explained it, very well. It's a steel unit. Yes. So if you imagine a standalone steel unit, yes. And then you put a backing sheet on it. Yep. And then you've got the plants in front of that and the water just drips down through the plants. Can you hear the water? Yep. I like that. Yeah. I love that. That's sensory, additional sensory experience. You just have to go to the toilet all the time. Well, because it waters from the top down. Put one in the bathroom, Averill. Might encourage some things. Water's from the top down, so basically when you start to hear the dripping, you know that the water's kind of going all the way through. Ah. And then does the unit sit at the bottom? Oh my, is that yours? Yeah. Oh my god, that looks like something from the Melbourne Flower Show. But I've, so I can have a hundred of those, like there's two there. They're about 1200 mil wide. Oh, look at that. So you can't, so it's all enclosed. Good news, Andrew, I've just spent some more money. How cool is that? So yeah, I've got two of them there just because it fills the space nicely. But you could easily do one or actually at Floriade a couple of years ago, I was going to do about 20 of them in a row in the food court, but then that Floriade got canceled, I think, which was a shame. Are you gonna do it this year in Floriade? We're actually gonna do some display gardens this year at Floriade. Oh! Can we ask you a question about that because we did reach out to them and we've heard crickets. I think I have a crickets now and I'll put it in later. Amazing. Um. Did you just email them and say you were interested in? When did you do it like? So I've tried in the past few years ago when I was on the board with the landscape association, didn't get anywhere, so don't be offended. Full credit goes to my buddy, Jared from Land Culture, another landscaper. He's come out in a really wholesome way. He's engaging landscape designer students. So he's going to engage CIT students and then get a landscape contractor to sort of team up. I think it's gonna be a really great experience because basically this, design students are gonna have their first real world experience of designing and installing a five by five mini garden. So I think there's gonna be five plots and basically Jarrod's gonna get sort of myself and four other, or three other landscapers, him and he's gonna do a garden, I'm gonna do a garden and three other people will do a garden. That's really exciting and this is kind of exciting news for our listeners because I don't, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think Florillard's had those mini, this is a Melbourne flower show, S approach. Isn't exciting. Yes. inspiring part of the show for me in Melbourne was seeing all the gardens, all the ideas. And they're not, some of them aren't very complicated and you go home and you're like, I can do some of that. Yeah, very relatable. They call them achievable gardens, don't they? I think they're small ones. But no, you're right. I love going every year if I can. And my favourite part of Floriad last year was a little section where they had it raised with some cork and steel from memory. And it was a native garden. Do you remember that? It was a tiny little section. But I stood there for ages. I just thought, oh look, they've brought the soil in, they've raised it up. I mean, it wasn't like Melbourne. But I was so impressed with that and I related to that going, I could do that in that area. So that is very exciting that they're doing it in Flouriehead. Yeah, well, I mean, this probably leans more into where I'm hoping the future of Housemates goes because I'm hoping I can inspire people that they can do it themselves. Because while we're building gardens with my landscaping company, I can only do like 10 or 12 a year because they take like three or four weeks, right? They're big projects. Big projects. I've looked at some of them, yeah. Yeah, so I'm really hoping Thank you, I'm hoping that I can build another business that can encourage people to do it themselves and that way we can do hundreds of gardens a year or at least have some input on many gardens. And you don't need much space. That's what I really took away from those achievable gardens is honestly, you could do amazing things on a balcony. Yep, I think they had it. Did you see that? I actually missed it, but did you see the balcony ones as well this year? They just had little bits of like wood displaying, we could just build it yourself. Yeah. It was just, and then there was a chair sitting inside the little alcove and a mirror hanging on the back and all the plants around it was spectacular. But that inspires people to, yeah. Like it was, there was, there was nothing to it. I mean, I wouldn't be building it. I'd be like, Craig, but they're genuinely for anyone that, um, yeah. Could throw their hand to it. It was so easy. So simple. Yeah. So I am hoping that, um, I don't know if it's officially happening yet. I think it's like 80% there. Um, but I really do hope it does. because what a great opportunity to showcase some gardens and inspire some people. Because once you go to Mifkes, you wish everyone had been there, I think. You're probably the same as me, right? Oh, we can't wait to get back. I know, it's such a good event. And it's an interesting, but what's different is that the Floriat is on at a very different time of the year, right? So you're going to be seeing gardens and things. So that's the other things I think that people, I find this challenging. How do I make my garden interesting at all times of the year? Even just some of the permaculture principles I was reading recently in one of the books was talking about having a deciduous tree that blocks the Sun From heating up the house in summer and then drops its leaves and lets the Sun in that's right in winter And even just things like that I'd never really considered Yeah, when you're planning you can have things that sort of wind down and then things that ramp up at different times of the year But that's a pretty interest because it's an interesting time of the year to have a lot of interest isn't it? Besides bulbs. Yeah, I think a part of the brief with these gardens is they've said they want to keep it on the tulip Floriard brief and Jarrah was like, that's okay, we'll put some tulips in, that's fine. But I think there's something beautiful too in the seasonality of, you know, Canberra climate. So you don't necessarily have to have something of interest year round, I don't think. I mean, for me, I'm currently finally landscaping my front yard and I'm gonna put in, I think there's about eight great myrtles in my front yard because they have beautiful bark. So even that'll be exposed and kind of sculptural in winter. And then in spring, they've got the flowers. and somewhere they've got flowers and they've got autumn colour. So I'm actually really excited to watch that tree evolve over the next few years. And a crepe myrtle is something very Cambrian about a crepe myrtle. Yeah, it's a classic Cambria tree. Yeah, yeah. They do so well. And they're so generous and prolific when they do. Yeah. And they're really good value. Oh, yeah. You know, like for a tree that gives you so much, I found that because we had to put in about six where we had landscaped like a little area. And yeah, they were it was you could go out and buy them. and not be, you know, completely broke. Yeah, so I'm looking to deliver trees too. I've just taken delivery about 50 at my yard. I've got to figure out how to photograph them and upload them, but back to the whole delivery convenience thing, like I want people to enjoy trees. I love trees, but you can't get them home easily. And I know they probably do offer delivery, but it's just something that I want to have online so people can read up on the tree and the size and how they look seasonality and then say they want three and I'll drop them off. And how would you know, how would you start by picking, had help with a design when we had our place done and we picked the three ornamental plums out the front which give me more plums than my actual plum. Are they edible? Yeah, I eat them. I've been feeding them to Charlotte. Still alive. Maybe they weren't ornamental plums. Oh maybe. I think they say ornamental just because I think they've been grown in a way to... to put the emphasis on the structure of the, and whatnot, as opposed to actually the size of the fruit. They are little. Yeah, they be little. They call them inedible, I think, because they're trying to say that they're not. I think I, I maximize. Nothing's inedible if you try hard. Um. But how do you start with it? Like picking a tree is a big, that is an analysis by paralysis, for me. It's gonna be there forever, it's gonna get big. What if the roots pick up the sidewall? What if I don't like it? Yeah, yeah, so where would you start with that? So that's a challenge that I'm currently trying to solve. And I think what I'll be doing is on the website, I'll have, so what you'll see if you go to somewhere like the Fleming's website, they'll have them grouped into different areas. So there's small trees, medium trees, large trees, narrow trees. That's probably the four main areas, I guess. you just need to assess the area and see if you've got overhead power lines. Like actually had a consult this morning and they lost two very mature trees. And I was saying, that's all right, this is an opportunity for us to put something new in there. If we limit it to sort of five to eight meters and straight away, I know there's a few species that can fit into that area. So you're kind of in Canberra climate, you're kind of limited, which is kind of good because I'm the same as you Bernadette. I get a bit overwhelmed and I'm like, there's so many different things here, what do I choose? And another reason why I haven't done the landscape in my front is because I got caught well like this decision paralysis of I could do olive trees, ornamental pears and then you just have to make a decision. And I suppose you have to I mean there's some of them that can give back to you so do you want like an edible? Is production an important piece of advice? Yeah because like I know where I am and my olives are going really well, are going gangbusters and I never thought that I would have my own olives. That's amazing Averill, I'm yet to see an olive. I know, they're still on the tree for an adage. The last few years they've just composted off the tree into the ground. Maybe that's why it's doing so well, it's feeding itself. But yeah, I suppose that's another one that you can also bring in, how important are edible trees. And I think that's a really good point about you, say how you lost those two mature trees. We had a horticulturist on last week, Cheryl, and she said, just if you don't like it, move it. Yeah. I mean the bigger they get, the harder it is to move. Yeah, but if you're gonna do it now as the time of year as we come into winter, but on the edibles, I'm glad you raised that because that's something I'm really passionate about as well. So yeah, for me at home, I'm gonna do olives along my fence line and my brother's front yard I put for Joe's in. Beautiful, yeah. And there's some beautiful plants you can put in that will supply fruit as well. Yeah, even citrus. I saw that you've got like a nice supply of citrus. I think citrus are a great one to have. Absolutely. lemons a little, I mean they probably come back down again but yeah if you can look at your circular life and what you use. Production is very important for me like that and actually it was the nicest surprise when those ornamental plums did actually produce those little plums. I was like this is what a gift. We just picked them for height and skinniness. I guess we're in that skinny category. Yeah no it makes sense there. I saw that. Yeah but I hadn't thought like olives and stuff like that. Yeah I'm so I'm so impressed. You can get so much out of little spaces. I think people really underestimate what you can grow and get at home. Yeah and I used um like non-fruiting olives on my front deck because I didn't want them to drop the fruit and have the birds and stuff so there's generally like same as your plums out here you can normally get the ornamental variety as well. Yeah um because people say that sorry people say that about vines like your grapevine. I'm gonna do that too. Where they're like oh you don't want the grapes dropping. Yes. and air-tracking and I'd be like, why not? Yeah, I've heard that too. Because you kind of need, you still need birds to come in to be part of your biodiversity, like that little microclimate. Like I'd be bringing those birds in to get rid of your snails and to feed more on those. I guess it depends on the area. Like you don't want them pooping on your deck, right? Yes. That is super annoying. So, yes, that's exactly right. So above my front entry, I am eventually gonna do a steel pergola with, ornamental grapevine because I don't want grapes dropping when you walk into the front door with groceries and you're stepping on grapes. And you're slipping. I do want the foliage. And your eggs go flying. But isn't the foliage so beautiful? Especially this time of year when the ornamental grapevines change color and the leaves fall. Yes. And we are so blessed in Canberra that we get this beautiful autumn where you get all that experience. And it's really for me too as a gardener it's really that summer's done. take a bit of a step back. So it is that wonderful reminder that, hey, you get a little bit of a reprieve now and when the plants relax a bit, you relax a bit. And then, you know, before you know it, spring will be here and you'll be starting it all over again. I'm just looking up a book, Wintering by Catherine May. I just finished listening to this great book and she basically talks about the importance of slowing down in winter for like, essentially our mental health and how, you know, we should actually lean into winter because I'm someone that does probably suffer a bit in winter with the shorter days and colder weather. wet in landscaping, it's always really challenging as a landscaper in winter to be productive. Because if we get rain, like we did on the weekend, the site turns to mud and you just like hit your head against the wall. You wouldn't want to live in Ireland. Oh, I actually spoke to a friend about that. I'm like, oh. I don't know how they do it, honestly. Like they must just have to. I think they drink a lot of Guinness. Yes, you're probably right. Makes sense now. But this book, yeah, I highly recommend it. And I deliberately listen to it as we're coming into winter to try and sort of get my headspace right. like it is a good time to kind of slow down, take stock of what you've got going on in your life or in the garden and then reset for spring when you can be reinvigorated and kind of hit it again. Dan, do you have a first gardening memory? I've listened to a lot of episodes. So I did pre think about this one. It's kind of random. I, when I thought of first gardening memory for me, it was when I was renting in my early twenties and I went down a bit of a YouTube hole and I ended up looking at worms. And that led into compost, which led into veggie gardening. But I guess the first gardening memory was composting. home in Oxley and my mum lived in Chisholm and I used to every week take her, we used to start collecting compost scraps and every week I would quite proudly take it to my mum's house and put it in a compost bin and turn it around. It was a really nice way to see my mum and hang out but also that was kind of my introduction to the cycle of composting and soil and growing veggies and that's kind of what led me to where I am today. And your mum still helps you? Yeah she does. Yeah so now the tides have turned. Like I know some of your guests have talked about how it was in their family. I didn't really have that as such. I think if anything, I probably sort of introduced it more into my mum. I guess. But yeah, my mum helped me recently at the markets and she's at the tunnel sometimes sort of pruning up some plants. And so- Yeah, that's good on your mum. Yeah, she's the best. Shout out to Dan's mum. Absolutely. Good work. Yeah. And you also teach at CIT, is that right? Yeah, I do. Are you still doing that? I am, yeah. So I started this year. study today to get my I'm doing my training assessment at the same time so I'm a qualified teacher yeah but yeah I've started teaching in the Department of Horticulture and Flouristry. How boring is training and assessment? Yeah the teachers great. But just the actual doing it like the actual content? It's hard when you're already like pretty tired but I am getting some really good stuff out of it. Sounds good to me. You know someone that just wants to get out there and do it I'd be like let's yeah why do you have to Write that down and don't people just do that? I went to a female founders festival this week and I opened my little book and we went there and opened my little book and bought it by different coloured markers and she's going, oh Jesus. Oh, that's how I fuck sage. We're good teams, that's what works. Do you find many women coming into the horticultural industry in your classes? Yeah, I think, I mean, at the moment I'm teaching the parks and gardens class and it's really cool actually. It's the librarian from CIT, he's one of the females in the class. The other, I mean, I've got a small class, the other eight are men. And I look around at the other landscapers, I guess, in other classes and it is predominantly males, but there certainly is females in the industry in landscaping in Canberra. And I hope there's more. I definitely think there's, yeah, And if anyone's listening to this and considering how they're going to turn gardening into career, they'd definitely look up landscapers. They'd be able to walk into a job tomorrow. Maybe one of the barriers is that people worry about the physical component of the job. Would you say that that's a concern? We'll figure it out. Like there's ways around that. We use a lot of machinery to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Like no one likes working harder than they need to. So I think that's more on the employer. We're all lazy. Yeah, we try and work smarter. But look, yes, there's no way. Like obviously construction in any realm has a lot of physicality about it. So there's going to be an element of that, but that's not to say that it can't be done by anyone. So yeah, certainly consider it. Yeah. And is there anything that you wanted to talk about today or get across or have a platform for before we wrap up? You two are both pretty heavy in the community garden scheme, aren't you? We do, that's how we met. We're still community garden. Our eyes met across a garlic plot. Very cute. And connected. More likely everyone was probably like... eating something and be like, Bernadette was trying to avoid me in the garden. I'm like, oh, hello, hello. Yeah. She's like a person, a person I don't want to communicate. I took my AirPods out for 10 minutes and I'm like, here we go. Here we go. It was a short chat by the second. I guess I just asked that because like one of my. Another dream is to create some sort of community garden here in Canberra, but potentially it could, many ways it could go, but it could run for profit. So we could do it so that they're sort of wicking beds that produce that can be sold to restaurants and stuff like that. For that to work, I've applied for grants. It's not getting anywhere yet, but I'm happy to persist. Yep. And we need- I think with grants you have to, right? You do. And it's a skill. Absolutely. I'm trying to learn. It's hard, right? with you and we've seen, we have, we know the potential and especially I, that whole concept of being self-sufficient doesn't resonate with me. I'm always about being community sufficient. Yes, I'm really saying that and that resonated with me. I thought that's a great way to put it. Yeah and that's really important and it gets people interacting and helps, you know, mental health and everything that goes with that. Everyone loves the chat, even you Bernadette, go on. I mean I do, Because in the beginning, Bernadette went, I just don't get the fucking community thing. Like why, I was like, so many times I was like, why, but why is community important? It's good to be challenged. And the more I would say to Bernadette, well, imagine, you know, you may not grow your citrus really well, but you might have Bob across the road that can, but you grow plums. And you can't grow everything that you're going to eat. That's the reality. I mean, I grow a good deal of it, but I still. And it's pretty much perfect, we know that. Well, just the ones I pose. Did you see, have you had a chance to see her email sign off. Did you notice that? I think I missed it. It's like a trophy. Oh yeah, no it says, you know, host. podcast host and grand chef in Gallipoli. Yeah, grand chef. She was like, well, I put it in there. I was like, absolutely. Yeah, definitely do it. Yeah. Yeah, so that's a goal that I have and I'm thinking pretty big. So like, I actually wanna go quite large with it to make it work. And I'm definitely not naive enough to know that it's gonna take a lot of work. But that is something that sort of urban agriculture is something very interesting for me. And I feel like Canberra is a place that it could work. What did you learn today, Brenda? Probably I learned that I want a green wall. I was gonna say I want a green wall. But I guess too, just about, I just feel like a lot of these plants and everything aren't as, like, not to be as intimidated, I guess, is what I'm taking away. I'm so glad that's what you took away. Yeah. Because that is literally the message I'm trying to get out there with housemates. Yeah. So that's great. Landed, message received. Fantastic. Thank you so much for having a chat with us. Thanks, Dan. We had a great time. Thank you. Really appreciate your time. Please enjoy the tea. Yes, thank you. I really, really appreciate being on. So thank you both very, very much. It's lovely to finally meet you. How was that with Dan? It was really relaxed. It was like old friends chatting, if you ask me. So I really enjoyed that. He's just a really nice person. Really nice if you are looking at getting some plants to support someone local that is doing good things for our community. That's right, yeah. And improving your air in your home. You can gift a plant to... Beautiful plants for gifting and you can learn all about them. Family and friends, and then you're hooked. And you're fucked. Well, all that, though.