Ep. 12 How to Create a Middle Earth Themed Garden

Ep. 12 How to Create a Middle Earth Themed Garden

If have ever had the desire to create a Lord of the Rings themed garden or food forest - this is for you.  If you having, we just might inspire you to doing this very thing!  Imagine a space in your yard that reminded you of the Shire, Rivendell, or the gardens of healing in Gondor.  Yes, the knowledge of the lore of middle earth botany runs deep in this podcast episode, as does the knowledge of the plants in the Lord of the Rings.  If the Lord of the Rings were filmed in Florida, these are the food forest plants we think Tolkien would have used.  

Keep in mind, the principles taught here can be applied for any themed garden space...

... creating a food forest for women's health

... a tea or bamboo garden

... an all white garden

... a children's gnome or fairy garden

... or even a black light responsive garden

Designing themed food forests can be a creative way to experience abundance for the mind, body, and spirit.  Not to mention, your garden is practically like a canvas waiting for you to begin painting with the plants.   So, join us as we "nerd out" and create a middle earth themed food forest.

Link to the food forest designer website! 
https://permaculturefx.com/how-to-plant-a-food-forest-part-4-installing/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And uh welcome to the Obsessed with Plants podcast. I'm David. I'm Obsessed with Plants today. As you can tell, I'm a hobbit with my co-host here.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

My name is Chris. I go by Permaculture FX Online. Um, I might be Lord Elron today. And for those of you that have been following, I convinced David to do the Lord of the Rings Middle Earth episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

This was this was his idea. And then I was like, well, if we're gonna do it, we're gonna go all in. And so we'd already decided that I was gonna be Hobbit, you were gonna be an elf. And so yeah, that's just that's where we got.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

It may have taken a little help from his wife to convince him to be able to do it, but it it was like four or five hours of setup to get here. But I I think it worked. And David, you are you are in fact a very small hobbit right now. You're very, very small. So, topic today that we're gonna cover is if a Middle-earth or a hobbiton uh food forest was designed, what would it look like in Florida? Now, practically, you know, David and I both know because we're avid Lord of the Rings fans, that Tolkien was living in England and Wales and in Scotland. So he's gonna be living in USDA zones like three through eight. Now, the challenge is when Peter Jackson did the movies, they're filming in mostly New Zealand and in Australia.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

And so we're talking basically 9B with an occasional twist, they do get cold because of the mountains.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Um, so that's definitely a factor to consider. But 99% of the time, but the same with us, we get those cold snaps once or twice a year. So if you're looking at the movie fans, you're looking at a very similar climate to what we deal with. Right. But we're also gonna sprinkle in that original northern climate zones because you gotta share love with the northern climates.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, and honestly, like that is what Tolkien was creating his world in, is it was very reminiscent to that landscape. I had this really nerdy book for those that are also nerdy. It's The Plants of Middle Earth Botany and Subcreation by Dina Hazel. Um, phenomenal book because it gets into all of the plants that Tolkien actually mentions in the lore and in the histories of Middle Earth, uh, gives a little description for them and how they're used with great pictures and uh even some of the ones that were fake plants that he didn't actually, you know, didn't actually exist, he gets into where he created them from. So such a cool book. What we're kind of doing is going, okay, if Middle Earth existed in Florida and we wanted to create that fantasy wonder style garden, how would we design it as Middle Earth Lord of the Ringsy fans uh to create that special wonder place?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

And even if you aren't a huge Lord of the Rings fan, it's still it's it's a vibe. It's all about the coziness, you know, your your meadows with your wildflowers and all those things, um, with your, you know, your chickens, your sheep. Uh in my case, very large sheep. But you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

And I I think too, there's gonna be people that listen to this that are like, I don't really get the Lord of the Rings. I'm watching this because y'all think it's funny. But as far as application goes, think about a themed food forest. It doesn't have to be Lord of the Rings, it could be fairies and gnomes, sure. But you could do a women's garden, you could do a bamboo food forest, you can do a tea garden, you could do an all-black light responsive garden where all the plants glow at night under the black light, like the avatar movies. So those themed forests and those themed gardens can then be beneficial on a lot of different levels, both in the homestead or the farm, but also even from a business perspective, I think. I'm gonna take a sip here.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, I mean, we've definitely worked with people before that were focusing on having, you know, color-coordinated gardens, areas that are welcoming to their clients and that sort of thing. And so you can easily design those for yourself. And in this case, we're just we both love that cozy feeling of, you know, Lord of the Rings. And so why not uh include that in our environment as well?

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Absolutely. And then we, if you think about a lot of businesses or homes do this anyway, they do it with a theme of a color, you know, a color spectrum. So they're gonna do blues and whites and all of their flowers to coordinate with what is in the house. I've designed gardens for wedding venues before, and everything is white and you know, a pale blue was the branding of what they were doing. So for us, we're just being nerdy in the areas that we love and that we enjoy, and gonna kind of nerd out on this for, I mean, a little while. Hopefully. Quite a while, hopefully. Um, so the way that we're gonna tackle this is if you've ever done a permaculture design course or read into food forest, there's a lot of talk about the seven layers of a food forest or the four layers of a food forest. So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the seven layers of a food forest and we're gonna make it Tolkien style. So essentially, we'll take like the top story layer, the big overstory tree, and say, okay, here's what maybe Tolkien would have used, or what he did use in the actual lore, but here's what would work for us here in Florida in our middle-earth um themed garden. So you can translate this however you want to. For us, we're nerding out and gonna live in Rivendell and in the Shire, you're gonna be in the Shire, I'm sticking in Rivendell with my pointy little ears and kind of gonna nerd out on this. So, this is an encouragement, I feel like, for you to be able to feel the freedom to be creative, you know, and to enjoy the food forest journey a little bit, you know?

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

So the other thing I was gonna say is this can help with food forest burnout a lot. Like, I don't know about y'all, and and David, maybe you can speak to this. Yeah, food forest burnout is real. You just get tired, you get exhausted. And this is kind of a like change in pace, I feel like.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

And yeah, and especially like uh a lot of you know, uh Florida friends and family will know like this year we had all that cold and then the drought. And then, you know, if you get busy and you just look at your garden and it's like everything just looks brown or it's not growing as well, or I lost something, you know, it it can be a lot, and so it it ways of making it fun and exciting again. So bringing in your own hobbies, whether that's you know, movies or whether that's you know, uh books or anything like that, you can add ways that make it thematical that kind of spark other interests and just kind of combine the ways. And that's and that's kind of why we wanted to touch on this today.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

So awesome. So let's go ahead and dive in. Um first one you have um well, let's tackle story by story, like layer by layer. So let's do the top story first. So when we look at Tolkien's lore, the top story or those larger trees, because he's in England, is probably gonna be something along the lines of a grandfather red oak, a white oak, maybe uh a maple tree, a white maple tree. Um, so very, very simple hawthorn tree was very common in those days, um, especially for like protection, the Rowan tree. Um, now we don't grow really much of those. White oak and red oak don't really work here. Um, so probably our closest correlation to like a red oak or a white oak would be a live oak. But I think we can be a little more creative than just a plain old live oak. So when you look at your top story, what was your pick for the top story on your list?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

When prepping these, we were trying to make sure we had different answers, but we didn't want to tell each other. And I bragged about not picking something that he would pick. So we'll see how that goes. So I went with kind of a two for each, mainly because it was like a little bit more traditional, but also very much what the movies did. And so I my first pick was like Schumart oak. You don't see a lot of those, but they are native to Florida. And you're you're talking about big leaves, you get a little splash of color when they do fall, although we're in the Florida. Yeah, you get that red cue in the fall sometimes. And then also uh slash pines, because in the movie you'd have those big pine trees with all the branches, so you'd have the big canopy trees, the big slash pines, but you also have to go with some kind of oak because the big oaks in the Shire were ones that Bilbo planted from his uh journeys, the ones he found. Oh, nice. Like it's supposed to be like an acorn.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah, that's good. So mine were different, actually. So I was actually thinking, okay, on this one, I'm not gonna do the original party tree over top of Hobbitan. I want it because that got cut down in the books after um Saruman and Green of Worm Tongue, you know, ravaged the Shire. We're getting really nerdy here. So they replanted the tree. Sam Wise Gamge replanted the tree using one of the mallarn seeds um over top of the um the bag end. And so I was thinking, okay, what would like the trunk of a mallorn be? So I was like, I'm thinking like rainbow eucalyptus, because you get those weird funky colors, the really smooth bark. The other one I was thinking just because it's so crazy and like flamboyant is Royal Pointiana. Now I know that's only gonna be zone 10, 11, 12, but Royal Pointiana with the way those branches like spread out, I thought would be kind of cool, actually. So those are our top story good splash or couple picks. So layer number two is the understory trees. So we've got our really tall 30, 40 foot trees. Now we're designing the next layer down, something that's like maximum 15. 15, yeah, 12, 15, 17 feet, somewhere in there. So uh now in Tolkien's world, this would have been like apple or pear or pawpaw, maybe persimmon, you know, would have been some of the colder climate things that they would be um eating, you know, in in his lore. But in the Florida climate, most people are not doing pawpaw. They probably shouldn't be doing apple and pear for the most part.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Not that it's gonna fruit very much, but not very good. It doesn't taste very good either.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, not good. So if they're gonna be doing those understory trees, what were your picks for the understory trees?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Well, I was trying to think of like berries, because you know, you gotta go walk around your meadows and pick berries and just you know starting uh um you know absolutely devouring them. So I started with Cherry of the Rio Grande. Oh yeah. Um so you got your little little red berries and kind of kind of hedgy. You can hedge them a little bit. Um and then dwarf everberry and mulberry.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

And it has the word dwarf in it, and so it's the pun on the names. So I I feel that one. Sure, sure. I feel that one. Yeah. So I was thinking um lowquat tree because they're very evergreen. Um, and they do get a little bit of the fruiting going on. I was doing a lot of uh trees that are like a play on the names. So I would did Mystic Red uh mulberry and then gelato mulberry. I know the hobbits probably weren't making gelato, but they're foodies, and I just feel like if you're gonna be a foodie in Florida, you've got to have gelato or ice cream. So I was like, I think we're gonna do the gelato uh mulberry and the mystic red were my two um picks on the good choice on those on those trees. Lowquat would be fun because you get like the green tea, you know, from the leaves. You get the fruit, but I agree with you. Dwarf Everbearing Mulberry, that was a good pick because that's I mean, the word dwarf is in there, you know. So that's good one. So layer number three is our shrub layer. So in England, and I this brings me back to my Michigan days. So those of you that know me know that I grew up in Michigan. I spent most of my young adult life in Kansas City. And so we were big fans of like hascaps, which are kind of like an elongated blueberry. Um, gooseberries, like true gooseberries, not Cape Cod gooseberries that are a nightshade, but gooseberries that are like super tart, um yummy, very thorny, grow in the shade, currants, um, those would be a lot of the ones that would be in the shrub layer, um, as far as like Tolkien's concerned. Rose bushes, you know, rosy cotton, you know, would be our rose reference. So for you, what would your um your shrub layer choices be?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Well, I was trying not to pick something that you would go with. So I have a couple different ones. Nice. Um, well, for one, I was thinking like you gotta do tea. So I was thinking like a chamomile tea. What was that um one you were telling me about yesterday? Oh, yeah. There was a warm.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah, warm, a warm-friendly chamomile called Dyer's chamomile. Um, I got my seeds from Mama G, Melissa Golterman, at Mama G Farm. So she does sell the seeds. And I've been using that one this year, and it's huge. Like the um, I mean, you can see that, but the the flowers on them are massive compared to the little teeny tiny chamomile flowers. They're just really big. And so far, I mean, it's first of June, you know, and mine are still blooming like crazy for another few weeks, I think. So that was a that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

And then I also wanted to do because I had the issue for a lot of these. Um, sorry, we were on the wrong ones. Uh, then you got like uh toilet paper plant for like the good spikes. Yeah, toilet paper plant. If you didn't want to do toilet paper plant, you could also do blue salvia because that would be the same type of flower.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, and I I like how you chose the the toilet paper plant and the blue spur because those flower spikes look a lot like the salvias that you would have seen in the movies and the Hobbit movie and the Fellowship of the Ring. Um, and obviously, you know, looking like a lobelia. It's important to have Lobelia Saxville baggins, you know, in there. Uh, you know, so I that was that was a cool choice. So, what were yours again? Lobe um blue spur, toilet paper plant, and what was the other one?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

The the blue blue salvia because they look the same, but they're and dire's camomile.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

And then the comfort's chamomile. Nice. So mine, um, I actually wrote down the Savannah cherry, so it's very similar to your recommendation on the cherry of the Rio Grande. Um, and then because I want to do like um hobbity names, I wanted the farthing blueberry. So the self-farthing, get it?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, I mean, y'all, that's so great. Like, how great we were going this detail. One point for Kredler. I'm sitting I'm sitting here like trying to just pick generic plants. He's sitting here picking this specific one. This is not fair.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

I almost I almost started the podcast by like speaking Elvish or greeting you, Megalvan. Sweet-eyed melon.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

I really hope that there's not a single person who's seen Lord of the Rings who watches this. If anybody'd be funny, it's gonna be funny if there's not a single Tolkien fan in this.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

If anybody's played Lord of the Rings um online, the old version from like the early 2000s, they're like Megal Vonin, like all the NPCs. Sorry, I just completely like made myself ridiculous. Bunny trails. So my my first one was South Farthing or the Farthing blueberry, um, which is not self-pollinating. So technically, you would need to do something like emerald or bloxy or snow crisp to go along with the farthing um blueberry. And the but I did want that.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

For the uh those other ones that aren't, you still get better pollination, anyways, with that cross-pollination.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

So yeah, and blueberries, you know, in my opinion, they're not incredible in Florida. I feel like they're good, they're gonna be better in the pine hammocks. Um, so like when you're doing the slash pine, you know, as your top story tree, blueberry would be an excellent choice, like underneath of that. But for a lot of people in Florida, like soil is very alkaline. So blueberries are better done in the pot. Otherwise, if you're not growing them in a pot, uh very large pot, like wine barrel size, you're gonna have to be amending your soil with something acidic like um elemental sulfur or something a couple times a year, or using like holy tone to keep that soil acidic.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

But our sands just don't hold it regardless without the constant vigoration. So if you don't have a natural way of adding that in, just just add just get big decorative pots. You have your your trees here, and then you have your shrubs, and then you can have some decorative stuff mixed in. It ain't that big a deal. As long as you're getting watered, I just do them like that. It's the easiest.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, that makes sense. That's good. So let's talk about layer number four. This is the herbaceous layer. So layer number one was our top story, two is our understory, three is our shrub layer. So on our herbaceous layer, this is the much lower to the ground. Um, so we're thinking like about a foot, two foot, two and a half feet tall, maybe a little bit taller. You can go three feet on these, but more herbaceous style plants. So in Tolkien's world, so this would have been things like strawberries or uh linen berries were very common, like in Scandinavia, to do like the linionberry preserves over top of like reindeer uh meat meatballs or whatever was really common for them. Uh cranberries were uh very, very common. Uh the ground cover raspberries or alpine strawberries, that would have been the most common as far as Tolkien's lore. But we're not really doing a lot of strawberries, specifically perennially. We're not doing strawberries as a perennial in Florida. We're definitely not doing linen berries, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

But you can, but it you really have to treat it more as like, oh, you're planting that during the winter, like you would like a decorative flower from like a Home Depot or Lowe's, yeah. Where you plant it and you're there to enjoy it for like three or four weeks, and then after that it's you know kind of done. If you're willing to put in the work for it, it's fine, but I'm too lazy for that.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

I am too strawberries are a lot of work here in Florida.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

They're just they get blight.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

They're a lot. So, what's your uh herbaceous layer ones? What did you choose?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

I guess my chemomal should have been in this one. That's right. And then uh I did uh Mexican sunflower, but not the big one, the rotunda folia, which is more you know small. Oh, yeah, the orange one color, a little bit of chop and drop.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yeah, it's a little bit on the high side, but that's a really good one, especially because when I'm thinking about the Peter Jackson movies, you see a lot of like Cosmos and Sulfur Cosmos and Xinnias that they planted because they wanted those annuals really fast. So that does make a lot of sense on that layer. Yeah, yeah, that's good. So is that the one only one you had, or do you have multiple?

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Yeah, because the chemomial was the same same mindset, but I had them on the wrong order. Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

So my herbaceous layer, I did two of them. I did one as the Darros because I like, you know, the Darros and the Lord of the Rings in Middle Earth. So Darro's blueberry, and then I had to do philodendron elven magic because we're going with the I know that thinks I I had to have elven magic. So we have the elven magic philodendron, um, which was kind of a North Florida Alabama um cultivar, but it can be grown herbaceously down here in Central Florida. You're judging me so hardcore, but I'm maybe I'm so excited about this. Like I want all the names. Just the puns. Uh, you didn't tell me we did the puns. I just the when I was in Kansas City, I had this like um, what do you call it? A hosta in fern garden. And I had so many just hostas that only were for the names. Like I had guacamole because I even then I had the obsession with avocados, and I had elven fire, I had elven magic, elven ears, I had all these like elven names from my hosta garden things that make gardeners.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

I mean, if you're willing to walk around the neighborhood in full elven garb, then you know, you feel like you're willing.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

I did have to do that today, by the way. So just so y'all know, I needed some of those little cuties and tangerines. So I had to walk to my neighbors, and she was like, Oh wow. And I was like, um filming a podcast. And she's like, it was beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Walking, walking, just walk into the distance is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Oh, no shame, no shame. Okay, that's our layer four is herbaceous layer. Um, layer number five are root crops. And I mean, the obvious one for Tolkien is potatoes. Tater's precious. So it's you know, and we're not doing a lot of potatoes in Florida. We can, you know, obviously the sweet potatoes can be.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah. Potatoes. Agreed. But we're but we're in the south. So, like you as soon as you get to the equator, the amount of starch root crops, honestly, there's not really a whole lot of diversity up north when you compare it to you've got, you know, so my choice. Sweet potatoes. And my personal favorite just for the bad Florida soils, Tiny 64, is a great choice.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

And people can get that if they need it at uh Cody Cove Nursery is the best place to get it.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

There's a couple other people that have them, but yeah, Cody Cove's has been the most reliable.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

And I think he's the one that introduced that cultivar to Florida, isn't he? Yeah. Josh Jameson, absolutely brilliant dude. I mean, well worth the visit.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Everything he does is like land race stuff where he's selecting out specifically for Florida soils. Um that's just why I like that. There's a few Japanese varieties that are like purple that do pretty good too. Yep. Um and then if you want to go like true yams, um, so Diascoria Elata, I think is the one that I like. Um, just because you get that big meaty root tuber that would, you know, feed you for days.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah, that makes sense. And mine I did African potato mint, so it grows kind of as a ground cover. It's very nutty. Um, it's kind of got this like water chestnut meats a potato. I like it in like potatoes a gratin style, is how I prepare mine when I cook it. And honestly, they're a good ground cover too. Really good ground cover. Um cassava is another one, but that one is a little bit harder for some people because they wait too long to harvest it and it gets very fibrous, very stringy. You have to cook it forever in order to get all of the cyanides out of it.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

You really do need to set an alarm or something. Yeah. Like this many days out, you need to be harvesting it.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

What I ended up doing on my phone is I just tell Siri to remind me in X amount of weeks because I can never remember when to harvest my dang cassava. It's so frustrating. I think I went for three years before I actually tried my first stupid cassava because I kept waiting too long. I'm like, I'm I literally tried to use an axe on one because I couldn't get it open.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

The cycle, because you just propagate them via cuttings and you just take the cutting and jam it into the ground, and that's where it grows all the like tubers out. And for me, my cycle has been oh, I grow it, oh, I forgot about it, oh, I cut it, I stick it in the ground to reset it. Oh, I forgot about it.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yep, it's it's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

I don't think I've ever actually harvested the roots because I keep forgetting.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

So, but it does make a really good like potato fry. It's a very nutty, um it's almost like carnival fries to me. Like it's a really it's good.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah, because you can get them in the supermarket now, like frozen, pretty reliably. Yeah. So, like, I mean, they're not as good in the supermarket, but yeah, you know, if you just want to try it, it's an easy one.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

And then I think uh for mine is a Florida native. That actually grows as a weed. King's foil. It's a weed. I would say Florida Bentany because Florida Batany gets that nice little tuber. You know, it's got worms in its tubes. And so I like the little tubers because you can pickle them, you can eat them fresh, dip them in a little bit of salt. I think they're really yummy. And it literally is a weed. I mean, it's not going to be as healing as King's foil, but it is very, very yummy. Yeah, it's but it's still pretty dang good. So those are some pretty good recommendations for our potatoes. Potatoes. Boil them, mash them, stick them in a stew. So layer number five, that was it. So layer number six is ground covers. This is a fun one because Tolkien gets into this one really hardcore. So he does a lot of nasturtiums, zinnias, salvia, sage time. When you look at the the set design um that they did for Hobbiton, is it's it's a lot, a lot of ground covers, a lot of spreaders. So this is a really fun one for folks to get super nerdy, super creative. Yeah, they do. And they're and you know, things we can do, the Cosmos or Xenia. Uh, we just got to plant a little bit, wait a month. Plant a little bit, wait a month. They don't last for like eight months like they do in northern climate. So, what are your ground covers and spreaders? What are your favorites?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Obviously, I had to go with a type of pumpkin first because in the movies you see the hobbits carrying around these absolutely massive pumpkins.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

So some of them they come in all shapes and sizes.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

You really just have to find, and it's more of a category at this point rather than you know, so some are like gourd shapes, some are huge pumpkins. So we just find who you're buying from and you can base it.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Can I have a nerdy introduction? Yeah, you can have a nerdy introduction because you did say you gotta pay attention who you're buying from. So Kelly and Ryan from Seed the Stars. Yep. I wanna say they have a Bull Roar pumpkin, which Bull Roar is a place in Middle Earth. It's also one of the server names in Lord of the Rings online. Not that I play Lord of the Rings online, still after like 15 years. Um, but it is one of the server names is bullroar. So you could do the bull roar pumpkin. Uh is that the one that that they're growing? Bull something. Bulldog, bull roar. We're gonna go with bull roar.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

It's pretty it's pretty big. All right, so that's a good one. Not native, but it is herbaceous. You can use it for you know, tease, a little bit of respiratory, you know, loosen it up. And in the shade, it it will take over in the shade. Um but if you don't have anything that's growing under oak trees, that Bayesian grass, and it has cute little blue flowers. Doesn't flower very often, but it does kind of look like salvias a little bit. So just keeping that.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

That's good. That is really good. You got any more on that one? No, that's the two I thought of. Okay, this one I nerded out on. I did it.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

I figured you were gonna do that. I did a few more on this one.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

So on this one, my first one is we actually in Florida, we call it Swamp Hobbit. Um, it's the Florida Anise. So it grows in wet soils, has like red flowers. So I think Swamp Hobbit, because it is a hobbit, that one's gotta be in there. Uh, number two for me was the native fairy hibiscus. So it's a red hibiscus that kind of hangs downward. It's only gonna be about like a dime size flower, but it's fairly long blooming. It does spread a little bit. Um, hardy, like 9B to 11. Um, I have grown it in 9A, but sometimes it does freeze out. Um, I have four. And then my third one, pretty much lobelia, any any of them, because lobelia sacks full baggins in the movies and in the books. Um, in Florida, we have 13 different varieties of lobelia, including cardinal flower, which is fun. Um, and so a lot of the nurseries have those native, you know, lobelias that you can go for. Um, and then my last one um is actually called or oh, do I have two? I have two. Okay, I have telepteries L Rondi, because we have to do El Rond. So we have Telepteries El Rondi, which is actually a maiden hair fern um that was named after Lord Elrond in Lord of the Rings, because the gentleman who found it from like southern Alabama, North Florida, um, was obsessed with Lord of the Rings. So he did name it um El Rondi or El Rondi. Um, and then I did find out the last couple weeks, bro. Get this. There is a Rivendell white clover. Of course there is.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Of course there is, of course there is.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Like, how great is that? I have not grown it in my little bit of research about this. I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. It's in the white Dutch clover family, so it should do really well here, theoretically, because we can do like a white clover, a girana clover, Dutch clover. So the Ribbandel is in the same vein as the Dutch clover or girana. So I think it would do really well. That's now officially on my shopping list. So that's mine. Um, so that is it's the end of the sixth layer. Yep. We have one more layer.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Vines.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

So vining layer. So vining layer, um, this and food forests, they often grow up the trunk of the trees into the branches of the understory. It can be grown, I don't know, along fences. You can do vines as a ground cover. Pretty much anything you don't mind supporting. Oh, totally, totally. Now, in the in the books and in the movies, we do see um like a lot of chlemitis that's growing up and over some of the hobbit um houses. We see in the distance some of the hardy kiwi. Uh, we see shassandra berry, which all of those are very cold climate, you know, up into zone four, um, the shassandra berry hardy kiwi, especially. Um, so Tolkien's kind of work in that area um is very, very different than what we're gonna be able to grow here. So, when you thought about your vining ones, what were some of your um choices for vines in this middle earth food?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

I was saying I went with a native uh Florida native coral honeysuckle. They make cute little flowers good for humming uh hummingbirds and butterflies, especially. Um not enough of that around. You'll see it occasionally, but yeah. It's one of those that's like it's native, but it's not doing well spreading, so it's a good one to bring in. Yeah, and then you could do just passion fruit too.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Oh, of course. And those flowers are so tropical and mythical, you know, kind of looking. Um yeah, I think the ones that I did, one of them I wanted a name that sounded more like elvish, like either uh quenya or sindarin, you know. So I went with one called gyneostema, which to me it just sounded so great. So I did gynose. I did gyne stemma um as one of my choices. So this is a vining plant, really, really good for uh it's almost like the ginseng of Florida, I guess you could say. So it's good for stress, for energy levels, for building up that internal fire kind of thing. Good immune system and cancer fighter, uh, immune system booster and cancer fighter. Um, muscatine grapes, because I feel like that's just so lush and so rich. Southern home just feels a little bit more hobbity um to me.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

And there's a lot of new, like not new varieties, but like becoming more popular that are. I've seen a lot more varieties nowadays, which is good.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah, I did try a new one that I got from FoodforestNursery.com that was the noble variety, and that one has done well for me. And so is Carlos was another one that did well. Um, the other two that I was thinking of were more like flowers, wonder, and I was looking at some pictures of the Shire. And when I was looking at it, the big sky like always sticks out to me, you know, when they're traveling. And so I was thinking the blue sky vine. Um, sometimes it's called Bengal Clock Vine, the Thunderburgia Grande Flora. Uh, and then the other one is a native to Florida, the blue sky, but it's looks similar to a morning glory, very small um blue sky. And so that one is more 9B to like zone 11, but it's on the endangered list. So I think it's a really good one to be um to be planting. I did see they have it at Green Isle Gardens in Groveland. Um but it's very, very nice. We have some friends, Chris and Christy with Wild Garden Co. Um, they are growing it and they're in the Eustace Umatilla kind of area, and theirs is doing great, and that's like 9A um area. So I think that's a really easy one. Well, did you have any more that popped into your head as we were kind of going through? Or does that uh about sum it up, Mr. Frodo?

SPEAKER_01 30:16

I mean, you kind of hit up more than I was uh you went way more in depth than you made it sound.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

He was just like I'm a bigger nerd.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, but like I'm always always doing Lord of the Rings stuff, and then he's like, Oh, yeah, I just come up with a few good plants, and then I'm like, okay, they were great, and then he just comes in with every single plant, every single one is a name. I cheated.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

I have a zones. No, I didn't cheat. There's no Florida ones in there. I will say that. That's stupid.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

I was trying to do native.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Now, again, you know, for people listening, it doesn't have to be Lord of the Rings.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

No, you know, the the our goal with this is not to convince you to be doing an Asian Zen garden with like bamboos and maple looking plants or doing, you know, there's so many options. There's a lot of great themes, it's just a way to make it fun, interesting, different.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

I was thinking the other day, like even the um one of the people we mentioned in a short the other day was the Yelang Yulang project. And so one of the things that they're passionate about doing is doing sacred plant gardens. And so that's kind of their niche that really nobody else is doing that stuff. They're doing hyssop and sage and olive leaf and all of these plants used in Judaism or Christianity or you know, the other great religions of the world. They're like selecting these plants that we can grow here. And what a great niche to be in. So I think for me, this brings joy to my heart. But I think for you, think about what brings you joy. Is it color? Is it a theme for women's health, you know, or whatever it is? Because we ain't gonna be crushing watermelons with our thighs for women's health month. That is like the trend last month, which is like, yeah, ain't gonna happen. But I will tell you how to grow a women's health garden. That's gonna plug right there. There you go. Yeah. So hopefully this was fun for you. It was a lot of fun for us. It was a lot of fun for us. So if you would just take a moment, hype it up, do the like, subscribes. It just helps us get the content into the hands of people that need it the most. And if you could just leave a comment for us, tell us if this was something that you enjoyed or something that you would like to see a little less of. This is either gonna be our best episode ever or possibly the worst. There's gonna be five people that watch it.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

So, beloved, if you're one of the five, let us know. Because yeah, if people love this kind of thing, we'll do more of it. I love this set. This is kind of what I've always wanted to do. And so, like being able to talk Chris into doing that, you know, this is like if every time we had this set, I'd be fine doing this every time. Maybe not looking up at you all the time because it's getting a little bit yeah, you're very small.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

You are indeed very small. Well, this was a lot of fun. Thanks again, guys, and we'll see you in the next one.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Later.