EP219- TJ Maher Patthana Garden, Chats About His New Book "Grounded In The Garden"

In this weeks episode John chats with TJ Maher Patthana garden about his new book.
Join us as we chat with TJ , whose dual passions for art and gardening have culminated in his latest masterpiece of a book, "Grounded in the Garden."

This episode is a kaleidoscope of insights into how TJ's painterly eye has transformed his own space, where his adept use of colour and form creates a living canvas that is the beautiful Patthana Garden. With the spellbinding imagery of Jason Ingram and Clive Nichols featured in his book, TJ guides us through the nuances of crafting a garden that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is a sanctuary for the soul.

Gardening is more than just a pastime; it's a strategic endeavor, as TJ reveals with anecdotes of his own botanical choices that have shaped his garden's evolution. He peels back the layers of what it means to truly 'edit' a garden, sharing the wisdom behind the tough love approach needed to prune or transplant for the greater visual harmony. This segment blooms with practical advice on how to sustain a garden's allure throughout the seasons, with TJ's recommendations on long-flowering plants and eye-catching potted arrangements that every gardener can replicate for year-round delight.

As we delve deeper into the symbiotic dance between our gardens and Mother Nature, TJ unveils the profound impact our horticultural actions have on the wildlife with whom we share our spaces. The discussion blossoms into a discussion on the spiritual side of being in a garden or in nature and a call to embrace the wild over the manicured – a sentiment echoed by the wildlife that graces TJ's garden. This stirring conversation is a reminder of the precious balance we must maintain with nature and the lessons it imparts on living mindfully, celebrating the present, and finding peace in our personal patches of green.

You can find TJ and his and Simon's beautiful garden in Kiltegan Co.Wicklow to find out all the latest new contact Pathanna here.
Website: https://www.patthanagardenireland.com

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Until next week  
Happy gardening  
John 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

how's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 219 of master my garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is with a returning guest, but it's an exciting episode because I'm talking to tj marr from botanic garden and tj has just brought out his first book, grounded in the Garden, and, for any of you who haven't got your hands on it yet, it is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful gardening books I've seen. The photography in it, which is done by Jason Ingram and Clive Nichols, is photographs from the garden, but the color in them is phenomenal and that's one of TJ's strong points. The book itself is described as an artist's guide into creating a beautiful garden in harmony with nature. So it's a, yeah, beautiful book, one of the one of the most beautiful gardening books I've seen in terms of the photography inside in it. But there's also really good tips in it. Even though it's not set out to be a book of tips, it's, there's some really good tips in it, some nice tree recommendations for small gardens and so on. So it's a lovely, lovely book and delighted to have tg on to tell us all about it.

Speaker 1: 1:15

So, tg, you're very welcome to master my garden podcast. Thank you very much, john. We spoke before. As I said, it's a long time ago on the podcast it it was back in episode 25. I'm pretty sure it was the first or second open garden that I actually covered and there has been a bit of change since then in the garden. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I'm not sure if we had the new garden open at that stage. Should it have been the new tarp garden?

Speaker 1: 1:40

No, the concept was there and I think the initial kind of outline was there. The digger actually could have been in place at the time, so it was in that very initial stages and it has come on a long way since then. It's come a long way.

Speaker 2: 1:56

So it's three years old now, actually, and actually we're looking at it yesterday and it holds its own with the garden that we've had here for 26 years. They kind of look the same at this stage. It's amazing what, um, what you can do in three years, and how quickly plants grow, trees and shrubs, how quickly they grow.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Yeah, for sure, and I I haven't actually been physically in your new garden yet. I was in. I was in the first garden or the main garden. The pictures are phenomenal and obviously I see I see you online posting about it as well, but the one thing that struck me the day I was there was your use of color is phenomenal. You're the matching of different colors, the blending of different colors through the garden, even using really vibrant colors, but a lot of them seem to how would you put it? They don't hit you in the face. They're really gently, gently lead you through the garden.

Speaker 2: 2:47

So you definitely have an eye for color and I know that's one of your, one of your major teams yeah, well, I'm a painter, of course, an artist, so I've always you know, all my life I've been dealing with color. So to bring that into the garden was, it's very easy transition for me, yeah, it is about color. At the end of the day, when you're using plants and putting them together, it's a conversation about color. You know one color against another, so that was very easy for me. I suppose you know people talk about how I use color here all the time. I'm not particularly, I suppose I don't really focus on that. I use color, but of course I am you know, yeah, so it's natural for you.

Speaker 1: 3:22

I guess and yeah, it is yeah and that and that's, that's, I guess, what I was trying to say that when you're, when you're there and you see these bright colors, they're, they're still also very natural. So sometimes you can see these, you know, really vibrant flowers, and sometimes they can, they can stand out like a blaze, but yours always looks like it's supposed to be there, like it has always been there, if that makes sense, so very natural, natural use of color, I would say yeah, and yeah, I'm careful how I use color, of course.

Speaker 2: 3:54

So even strong colors, I'm careful how I place them against each other so they don't come across as being garish together. Which strong colors can. If you know, if you use primaries against each other, if you use red and yellow, for example, two primaries, and you put them side by side, they can be just very garish and loud. You know, yeah, so very carefully how I use color. And then, of course, I use color in very subtle ways as well and I love that. That you have to look very closely at the planting and it kind of reveals the nuances of color through different plants and I like that because it makes you engage with the planting more.

Speaker 1: 4:28

So you're talking about under-planting here, or little surprises. Is that what you're talking about there when you're saying?

Speaker 2: 4:36

Yeah, yeah, I mean from a distance you know some colours are going to pop. But then you know a closer revelation. You realise that maybe what appeared to be just three or four different plants would be six or seven. It's like one of something, very like it, you know, but to me that just makes the planting more complex and engaging as well, because you have to stop and look at the planting very closely, as opposed to just walk by because you think you've seen it at first glance you know, yeah, that makes sense and when, when you talk about colors, just to go back to it.

Speaker 1: 5:07

So it's quite natural for you because, well, I suppose you have the the artist eye and you know you're, you're used to working with colors and you're able to blend them and make them, make them seem natural.

Speaker 1: 5:19

But in your book, on on page 25, you mentioned the artist wheel and that's something obviously I've seen before, but I've never seen it in the context of a garden, which is which is really interesting.

Speaker 1: 5:30

But I think it could be useful for people. So for for for us who aren't, as you know, good with color, as as you are, there's, there's often times where we we pick something that looks nice and we we stand it beside and plant it beside something else that looks nice, but when the two of them are put together they don't look so good. But that artist's feel and how you described your planting in relation to that, could you just tell us a little bit about that again, because that really is a good way for somebody who doesn't have that eye, that you have to be able to maybe mix and match different color plants, different color flowers and get them to work well I mean, when I teach here, I always recommend to the students to buy themselves a color wheel, because it's just fantastic too just to look at how colors um sit together side by side.

Speaker 2: 6:23

So no, like any, any color that sits side by side in the color wheel is going to look right in the garden. It's as simple as that. Yeah, it's right on the color wheel beside whatever color is beside. It's good, that's going to translate to the garden and look beautiful in the garden. Yeah, and then of course, you can go opposite then on the color wheel, so like blue and orange, for example, would be opposite each other on the wheel.

Speaker 2: 6:43

So they're known as complementary colours or clashing colours, and I use colours like that as well in the garden. I deliberately use a pop of orange to kind of show the blueness of blue in a creative way. So they're kind of you know that's not necessarily easy planting to look at because it's quite, you know, clashing really. So complementary colors, using them like that, like purple against yellow, red and green, but you know, using colors beside each other around the wheel, they just automatically look right together. Yeah, so it's just a very useful tool for people if they're not, if they're not confident with color and I suppose it surprises me, john, that many people are not confident using colour. They're not confident using colour, especially using bolder colours where you deliberately pitch them against each other.

Speaker 2: 7:32

Pastels, of course, appeal to everybody because they're very, very easy to use. Pastels everybody loves pastels and they are. They're beautiful. And of course they're beautiful because what they have in common is they have white in common. So white through any color will give you a pastel version of that color because that is diluted with white. So when you put that to any color you're bringing down as much the strength of those colors so then they automatically look nice together because they're all soft versions.

Speaker 2: 8:01

They have white in common yeah you know, yeah, it's a fascinating topic. Colour, I mean, I'm obsessed with colour and fascinated by colour. They're rude as well, of course, how we use it in the home, in the workplace. You know all of that. If you think of fast food restaurants, you see their furniture is red and yellow and you know two primaries actually don't go together and they'll actually make you feel uncomfortable. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing settling about it or so, but of course it's fast food. They want you in and they want you out. They don't want you getting too cozy.

Speaker 1: 8:36

And that's just a simple example how, how, as was, industry and um can use color you know, yeah, brilliant, and you're saying in relation to the color wheels, so you recommend anyone that does your course, and we've mentioned your course a couple times on on Christmas gifts for gardeners, and so once colors are beside one another on the wheel, they're generally compatible, and you're occasionally using opposites to make one pop. So I guess what you're trying to do then you know, in terms of color and to so that people can can sort of start to use this themselves, you're generally, as much as possible, trying to work with colors that are beside one another on the wheel, but then occasionally, through a bed, you're looking to create these clashes that draw your eye to something. Is that, is that the kind of concept? Yeah, it would be.

Speaker 2: 9:26

So, for example, I don't call it a yellow border, but I have plants that are. I suppose they're based in the yellow palette, but then I will bring them. I won't use red at all on that border because that's two primary colours. But what I will do is I'll go towards red as a colour, so I'll introduce all the orange variations. Like when you mix, you know, like as a painter, mixing yellow paint with red paint, you're getting orange. You know, when you mix yellow back into orange, you're getting yellowy oranges. So I'm kind of warming up the yellows by introducing red, but I'm getting all my oranges.

Speaker 2: 10:02

But I won't necessarily actually bring red into the, into the planting brilliant, yeah, so I could actually put a little pop of blues through that, to pop against the orange if I wanted to, if I wanted a little bit of pop through it.

Speaker 1: 10:16

You know, and speaking about color in the garden and, as I said, that the the pictures, the photography are obviously from the garden and the color is phenomenal. As I say, probably the most beautiful gardening book I've looked at. So it really is. And year to year. So obviously the garden changes a lot during the year. So you're going through your different plants. At the moment, I'm sure, if this rain ever stops, you're hoping to get your first real big push of color with your tulips and then you're moving into your summer color and so on. But from one year to the next, are you choosing different color teams? Is there areas that you're completely changing on a yearly basis? Are you working predominantly with the same borders and just adding different things in?

Speaker 2: 11:07

I vary a little every year. Of course, the new talk garden is two years old, so that's kind of brand new to me how I'm using colour in that, and initially I was going to actually make that garden a yellow garden. Right, I had to give a yellow garden and people are terrified of yellow. I love yellow and there's so many opportunities in planting in yellow. You know there's so many plants coming, you know different kind of shades of yellow and of course you get into autumn. Then you've autumn, the autumn colour, which is all oranges and mussels and browns and golds. It would be a gorgeous thing. Then I like too many plants, so all kind of colours come into it. So I kind of keep all my yellows then and kind of one side of the planting, then the other side is all kind of pinks and purples and more blues and so, and then the inner garden is probably richer colors because I'm using more, more tropical planting as well and more tender planting, so I'm kind of using hotter colors in there and and and, year to year.

Speaker 1: 12:03

You're, you're, you're doing minor edits, but you're working're working with the general plants that are there and you're adding in a certain type of, for example, cosmos or, you know, annual stuff to bring that difference every year.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Yeah, I mean every year. I like to grow something different every year. So you know the excitement of growing something different. So I grow my cosmos. Yeah, cosmos dazzler. I really like, of course, the excitement of growing something different. So I grow my Cosmos. Yeah, cosmos Dazzler, I really like, of course. It's that lovely suise pink. Then I'll use that where I think it's going to look right in the planting, so it wouldn't be planted in the same place. Every year, I dig up all my plants in the autumn and I rejig them completely. Oh, you do. That's the thing as well.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Just make it a different composition of color and form and shapes and textures. So it changes all of the time in that sense, but the borders are never the same, never the same. And and I'm pretty sure back in our original episode it's it was yourself and it's something that has always stuck in my head, where you were speaking about the garden and what you said was that you make edits to the garden, almost like an artist or a you know writer. You're, you're making an edit here minor tweaks, minor changes. And then I saw those words referenced in the book an autumn, an autumn edit on the garden. So so that's essentially what you're doing you're working with the same plants and possibly rejigging them around.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Yeah, and new plants all the time, of course, but I am in the autumn, I do. I call it editing, I suppose preparing for the following year as well, taking out stuff that hasn't worked or putting in more stuff that did work. But then throughout, the year.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I'll actually edit as well. I mean, if a plant gets too tall, for example, I might just cut it down by half, even if it means losing the colour itself, you know, if it's just the shapes are wrong or it's getting into work, I suppose, as a composition all of the time, you know. So I'm not able to just cut a plant in half or Especially if the colour is wrong. John, when you're kind of imagining in the spring you're planting, you think I think that'll look right with that, but then maybe in reality sometimes just the color just don't don't quite go together, that you're kind of just not sitting right together, and what I'll do then is actually I'll actually take out and take all the flowers, cut all the flowers off completely of the plant.

Speaker 2: 14:21

That's just not looking right yeah you know it, it's kind of you have to be brave to do that. You know you're bursting a plant from a seed and then it suddenly comes into flower in August, right, and you realise actually it's not really working the way I thought it was. It takes a bit of bravery to cut all the flowers off or dig the plant up.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Yes, you have to be brave and ruthless.

Speaker 2: 14:39

Yeah, you have to be ruthless, but by doing that you're leaving the rest of the composition and that's putting together. You know the rest of it will pull together. I find myself sometimes, john, in the garden, especially years ago, less so. Now I'm much more ruthless because we're up to the public and everything. But I'd be kind of nearly waiting for a plant to finish flowering, and the minute I know that I'm wanting it to finish flowering, then I know it's wrong, it's not working. So I'm waiting for it to finish. So now that life's too short, I can't wait to just chop it off and enjoy what's left, and that's the creative part of gardening.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Yeah, well, you know and that's something I guess that a lot of people listening who are home gardeners don't have open gardens and they're they're not. Some of them don't have the flair for the color that you have, but they're also, I suppose, getting their plants, propagating or buying them and they're putting them in and they're they're kind of stuck to that once it goes in and they're they're afraid to move it or they don't want to move it. Or I bought it but if it's not working, take it out. That's kind of your philosophy on it, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:54

And I see and I know from the students here I mean, people plant, you know, they plant something in the garden or they inherit a plant and they're terrified to touch it, even if they don't like it. You know, for example, I dug up salvias that got through the winter and I was thinking, well, I'll leave them or take them out. But they got very old and woody and I said no, I just pull them up and start with a younger plant, it'll look better, you know. So, yeah, you have to just make these decisions all of the time. You know and imagining all the time what it's going to look like in a few months time. That's really, as was the creative part you're constantly thinking of ahead. So, when this plant goes over, what's going to take its place? You know, an area in the garden looks lovely in april, that's, that's very nice. But what's it going to look like in august and september? The same area. So that's important for me, that I'm thinking all the time like that.

Speaker 1: 16:44

So there's a plant in the background ready to take its place or plant it very close by, and that's something we should all be striving for, you know, in our home gardens is that I often mention on the podcast where if somebody has built a new bed and they've gone to their local garden centre or nursery and they've picked up all their plants, you could nearly know by the plants that are planted in that bed what month it was planted in, because they've gone in on that day and everything has looked great and we've filled the bed and it looks brilliant. But you need to think of it long term. As you said, this is going to be stopped flowering in six weeks' time. What's coming behind that? And then, what's coming behind that? Exactly what's coming behind that again?

Speaker 2: 17:27

exactly and especially in a smaller garden. Or, you know, a lot of people have small gardens now that the small space works for as long as possible, as long as possible, and that's something, you know, I was very conscious of before we got the new tork garden. Like the inner garden, here is a small little garden, a third of an an acre so I thought I got into plants, specific plants that just flower for a very, very long time, so stairwell plants come into that as well, of course. And then I brought all of that next door. I have lists of that in the book, lists of plants like that, plants that I would kind of lean towards or go to, you know, to give me impact for the greatest amount of time.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Yeah, for sure, and one of the things that I remember and I see the pictures in the book again reminding me of it one of the most fascinating things is your pot display in the inner garden. It always looks brilliant and a bit like what you're talking about there earlier on, where you can get a surprise. Something draws you to a color, something draws you to a color draws you to an area. You go have a look, but when you get there there's three different plants of the same color. It's the same with your pot display. Your pot display is really clever and I forget what month I was there in, but there was great color anyway.

Speaker 1: 18:42

And I see the pictures in the book again. They're different plants from what I remember, but the impact is the same. So you're using kind of staging of different size pots, lots of different planting, and it looks it looks really good as well. So what's your kind of philosophy there? Obviously you're staging with different sizes, but you obviously have a longer term plan to have that display looking good all year round yeah, I mean different size pots, different size plants, because we start here now with the tulips.

Speaker 2: 19:12

They're just about to pop, because when they're gone over, and so I weigh those tulips actually and, um, just start introducing summer color, and that can go right the way into autumn. I mean any plant is a candidate for a pot really. So anything could turn up in my pot display, depending on finding a nursery or whatever it is that I go too many of or go something deliberately for. I mean anything could be in the pot display. But but I suppose, john as well, I mean the pot display really it's like a border.

Speaker 2: 19:41

When you put all those pots together, it's the same thing as creating a border. All the different composition of colour and shape and form and all of that it's the same thing. Except each plant is in its own little pot and I suppose the beauty of that is that much easier than in the border. If something isn't quite working where it is, you can take away the pot of whatever colour it is and maybe even move it over into the pot to spin another section where it works better, or take it out completely and take a few of them out and create a whole new composition of colour somewhere else, or take the pot out and introduce them into the borders. So there's great flexibility in using pots like that and people like them here. So I kind of continue it. There are a lot of work, I have to say, though.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Pots are a lot of work. They're know a lot. Pots are a lot of work. They're a lot of work.

Speaker 2: 20:24

They're probably essential in a small garden to to, to give you that flexibility of having color for a long period of time yeah, and especially, I suppose, especially when you know we have hard landscaping outside your back door, where maybe it's half a yard or whatever it is, there's often not a lot of opportunities to plant, especially in small, small town gardens. There's often a lot of concrete, a lot of opportunities to plant, especially in small town gardens. There's often a lot of concrete or a lot of everything. So they are a lovely opportunity to introduce colour very close to the house, by the doors and everything. So that's lovely. And then stage them. You can tier them and, of course, take a pot away as it goes over and introduce a different pot and background ready to take its place. And, yeah, it's a nice way to garden, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 21:06

The book, then. So you mentioned, before we started recording, that you always wanted to to have a book, so tell us about the. That that's the origin of it, the garden. The garden, then, is the inspiration for it, so you'll tell us about the book. Tough process I.

Speaker 2: 21:23

I hear a lot of people saying write the book, so tell us about it it was an unusual process for me because I'm not used to putting words together or even technical on a computer, so like it was literally like learning something completely new for me, but it was a lovely process. I really, really enjoyed it. People for years, people used to say to me because what's? Because of Facebook and Instagram, my photographs, should we make a book or a calendar or something? Yeah, so I had the idea that it would be lovely to bring those photographs together and, as well as, of course, I wanted to write about gardening, what I know and share all of that. But more than that, I wanted to share, I suppose, how I felt personally in the garden through my musings, which are more spiritual musings, and then I also wanted to share my love of nature.

Speaker 2: 22:14

That was a big driving force, I have to say, for writing this book. Yeah, I just thought, before I leave this planet, I want to just show people the beauty of of nature and that's like. The environment is in huge trouble at the moment and I find that I find that very, very distressing, I have to say, compared to the landscape that I would have grown up in as a child or a teenager, I find it very distressing to look at our landscape and see how it's treated at the moment. So I just wanted to show the beauty of creatures and plants to people and speak up for the environment and get them to see that it's in trouble. And then, of course, as gardeners, what can we do? We have role.

Speaker 2: 22:57

We have a role to do, to play in that yeah, so another driving force in writing the book and then, as I said as well, to write personally and my kind of, I suppose, like spiritual reflections really of as well. I'm very connected to, to, to nature. You know I've always been very deeply connected to nature and just watching it and just what I have learned personally from just watching that and how I bring that into my own life yeah, and you mentioned you know.

Speaker 1: 23:26

It says an artist's guide to creating a beautiful garden in harmony with nature and within your own garden. Like, what does that mean in terms of how are you creating the harmony with nature? I see in your book there's lots of beautiful photographs, you know, of the butterflies. I remember while I was there there was a robin close by who apparently was, you know, sort of a regular to a regular to to where we were sitting that that evening. Um, so there's there's, there's harmony there. So tell us about that and what that means here I suppose it's.

Speaker 2: 23:59

It means that I'm gardening with, I suppose, mindfulness or consciousness of of how I'm affecting the garden, whatever I do, whatever I do, you know so. Even you know we don't use chemicals here. So but if I was to like, I know the effects of that, you know. So it's a consciousness.

Speaker 2: 24:17

I remember once years ago, like many years ago, using slug pellets, I got desperate in the winter, like the one we've just had. The slugs have been having a lovely time and I just sprinkled some around in certain areas, you know. And then the following year we had no frogs in the pond, no frogs. And I suppose, in a very simple way, it just showed me the effect that everything is connected. You can't do one thing without a consequence. There's consequences to everything. So whether I use slug pellets or I don't use them, or whatever I do in the garden has a consequence. And I suppose then, being conscious that everything that I do, because it has consequence, that I tread lightly in the garden, aware that you know this is home to so many creatures and I get to live in the house and go shopping and bring shopping in from outside. But the creatures who wear their young here and they live.

Speaker 2: 25:15

We have a jackdaw here and they all look the same jackdaws in prose, you think they're all flying around the landscape all the time. But we have one here with white feathers. We call him Splash, the exact same spot, sitting in the corner of the house every morning and he only goes around the garden, the field next door and the village green opposite. So if he didn't have those little splashes of white, I just think he's just a crow that has passed by or something. But he lives here, this is his home.

Speaker 2: 25:44

So I'm very conscious that whatever I do is going to affect these creatures, whether I spray for green fly or not, or there's a knock on effect of everything and I don't think I don't think we hold ourselves responsible I suppose really, john for things we do and the effect that has in the environment. Yeah, so I feel very strongly for that. Looking at the greater landscape at the moment, because it's quite shocking our Irish landscape what it looks like Growing up now I think it looks normal, but that's not normal to me as growing up as a kid. So that was a real driving force in writing the book as well, just to show the beauty of hedgerows and trees and a little bit of wildness as well. I talk about that in the book that we really have to come out of this obsession we have with neatness and geometry and our need to control and tidy. You know, yeah, you know and embrace some wildness a little bit. And untidiness.

Speaker 1: 26:39

You're talking about being conscious of the actions that you're taking and the knock-on effects of that. Absolutely Interestingly, your inner garden and your talk garden. At the time you had just opened an opening through it when I was there and there was a lot of hawthorn in that I remember. But I see in the pictures now looking from the meadow back towards the inner garden across the talk garden, that you've retained that hawthorn hedge and I know there was other plants in there as well. But there's one amazing picture of the hawthorn in full flower and I forget even what the front of it was, but there's a brilliant garden scene at the front. But the white of the white of the white thorn caught my eye really well in that.

Speaker 2: 27:24

Yeah, a few people have commented on that photograph. Actually, a lot of people have commented on that photograph.

Speaker 1: 27:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:30

It's a very simple photograph but I really wanted to put it in because it's our native whole thorn, it's our native hedgerow that around the country has been chopped and hacked and everything but a beautiful garden tree. Yeah, you know, I had somebody in the garden last year and she asked me what's that beautiful tree? I said that's our native hawthorn. She's a little bit disappointed to hear that. You know, these are our native plants and they're beautiful plants. Yeah, I want to go off topic. One thing I wanted to do in the book show people the beauty of our native plants and not just call them weeds or you know, as well as talking about colour and design and pot displays and all that was to, you know, to bring people back to loving wild plants and wild places.

Speaker 1: 28:14

I want to go and take a really step backwards here and go on a bit of a tangent. You mentioned about your jackdaw with the white stripes on it. Yeah, this week. So where I live, just about 100 meters away, there's a big grove of trees on my neighbor's farm and there is a huge amount of crows in there, and I've noticed it before, but I I've particularly noticed in the last couple of weeks crows are just super intelligent and this is this is really going on a tangent now, but bear with me for a second. So they're building their nests at the moment, obviously. So really working in a team.

Speaker 1: 28:50

I cut my beach hedges a couple of months ago and I, as I cut the top of it, I didn't take the cuttings off, I just leave them on the top of it. But I didn't take the cuttings off, I just leave them on the top of it. But again, they were working in teams. So one would land on top of the hedge, flick out the beach cutting and as it lands, like literally it lands for a second and bang the next guy is away with it. But they were working in groups of four and five and constantly just helping one another and working together and it's amazing to see it. It is, it is amazing to see it.

Speaker 2: 29:21

And it's teamwork, you know. But even talking about my jacked up here, we call him Splash with the splashes of white, but he's up there and he has his partner sits beside him every morning. That's a relationship. These are two, you know, that's a relationship. And animals have their relationships, like like humans do with each other, so like whether it's all those crows and there's a hierarchy of who's boss and all of that of course they do. So you know, we forget that with animals, they have emotion, they have feeling, they have all of that. Of course, and I say that in the last part of the book they all have a right to be here by the very fact that they exist, because we share this planet, which is one species on this planet. So I'm very conscious of that. In the garden, that, and I have to say it's quite tricky, like you know, what do you do with lily beetles then? And slobes? Do you what you know? What do you do like?

Speaker 1: 30:09

and especially at the moment. What do you do with slobes? Because they have never been as as plentiful as they are at the moment I went out in the garden the other night.

Speaker 2: 30:17

We have a fox here so I feed him at night. So I was getting torched to go out and feed him and I was walking out the lawn there was hundreds of slugs on the lawn. I thought, oh dear God, you know, and they've eaten all the daffodil flowers. This year there's not a daffodil in the meadow Because we have had a very wild winter. There's no frosts, and so they're probably breeding through the winter. I think we're going to have a slug infestated spring. But that's the challenge of gardening as well, of course. These are the challenges. How do you garden and not deal with all of these creatures who maybe are damaging our plants? Only a small amount of slugs actually damage live plants. Most of them are actually feeding on decaying matter and creating our topsoil, and people forget that, of course.

Speaker 1: 31:03

Yeah, yeah so that's the you know gardening in harmony with nature. You mentioned the spiritual side of gardening and I remember when, when we spoke the last time, you mentioned the name patana and what that means. So maybe just tell us a bit about that, that you know the spiritual side of gardening for you, and you mentioned just a few minutes ago how you feel when you're in the garden.

Speaker 2: 31:23

So yeah, it was another. It was another element to the book that I really wanted to introduce. I didn't want to just write another gardening book. I wanted to base it here on the gardens but had to be personal to me, as most of how I garden, john, you know, and how I felt in the garden I just feel like, well, all through my life, since I was a kid I suppose, I've always turned to nature when I feel not in trouble, but when I'm searching for something or a deeper access to something in me, I've always gone to nature. It always shows me a different way of being, a different way of thinking, know, so I was talking.

Speaker 2: 31:59

There's a section in the book I talk about embracing our mud in the pond and I talk about the lotus flower and the water lily. That you know. The water lily and it's amazing to watch in the pond coming up out of the water and the dark, dark mud and it flows on the top, you know. But without that it's a beautiful, beautiful flower, you know. But without the mud and everything underneath there could be no water lily. And I just think, you know, in our own lives we all have our pasts and we all have things we have to deal with. I mean, everybody I know has stuff going on their lives and we can forget that. We're still, you know, we can embrace all of that within us, any kind of challenges or whatever we want to call them in our lives and they're part of us and embrace that, but it doesn't make us less or anything like that. Maybe we're actually more because of that and we can wear that and that's who we are and our beauty is all of that. It's the sadness, it's the happiness, it's all our past and and that's what makes us beautiful actually, you know.

Speaker 2: 32:55

So I wanted to. I wanted to, of course, with people that. You know. Life is challenging. It's hard to be a human being, person and feeling. It's hard. You know, in social media, the world we live in makes it quite difficult, I think, because people compare themselves and think they should be such and such or whatever. You know. So, yeah, but I always find that I'm very real when I'm with plants. I just see, even the jackdaw, for example. Back at the jackdaw again, just how they live their lives together. You know, he's not really caught up in his past or his childhood or whatever, and he's not really worried about his old age either. Yeah, yeah, so, and like… they live in the moment, you know. Yeah, yeah, so, and like they live in the moment you know. That's another lesson to take that from them, because we get very caught up in our minds worrying about things and stressing about things, and most of most of the things we worry about, they never come true in the first place. So we, you know, we live a lot in our minds.

Speaker 1: 33:50

That's why I think garden to plan that's probably you know, and the modern world is becoming more and there's more stresses on people and more things to do and more deadlines to meet, more places to be and all of this and all of that speed, speed of speed of action, speed of mind, you know causes all these problems that people have and these feelings that people have.

Speaker 1: 34:16

But if you go into the garden or into nature doesn't have to be the garden, it doesn't matter who you are or what you're bringing in. You'll, you'll leave the same way, so you sort of you sort of eventually will settle down into the, I suppose, the the ticking clock of nature and that'll calm you down. So, reading a good book at the moment, non-garden related, and going off on another tangent here, it's it's bear grill's book, the adventure, so and and he has a line in it where he's had obviously barack obama and all these people out in the wild, but he said the wild and nature is a great equalizer of everybody, and I think it's it's kind of true and it kind of it's along the lines of what you're saying yeah, I understand that actually.

Speaker 2: 35:05

Yeah, it makes everyone equal. You know, yeah, the ego is taking away. Really is what's? That's a simple way to say it the ego is taking away. You know, you're neutral with everything.

Speaker 2: 35:16

Yeah, I just feel that in the garden, that I'm just another, I'm just another thing living here, you know, and I can, I've done that. I've sat in this seat in the garden all the butterflies, watching everything, and there can be all kind of nonsense going around in my head. You know, and I suppose that's what I mean really, how I learn, I suppose, all these creatures, I can come up in that nonsense yeah they talk about sparrows as well, about this chirping to be done right.

Speaker 2: 35:41

You know I said sparrow hawk comes and you know there's a panic for a brief second.

Speaker 1: 35:45

But yeah, it's let go very quickly they don't hold on to it for the next week. Yeah, yeah, they don't worry about it for the week once he's.

Speaker 2: 35:53

So I think there's a lot we can learn from animals, especially in nature. There's something we can learn, so I've woven that into the book as well.

Speaker 1: 36:01

Yeah, brilliant. So it has those elements obviously the beautiful photography, the spiritual aspect of it, the in harmony with nature aspect of it. And you said you didn't want to write another gardening book. I think were your words, but there's also some very good, useful stuff. It like I mentioned the color wheel, but also you you talk about you know 10 trees for a small garden and they're, they're really, it's a really good list. And there's 10 trees and shrubs for autumn color. Again, you know really good practical ones. So there is a practical element to it as well.

Speaker 2: 36:37

Oh, absolutely, which really comes true yeah, I mean the book first and foremost is a practical book. I just didn't want it to be only practical. Yeah, so I do have lists of plants brought in, color and stuff and they're all based here in the garden, because I have a chapter in color how to use color in the garden. That's a whole chapter. And then I have a pot display chapter, creating borders.

Speaker 1: 36:57

All of that, yeah, yeah, for sure, it's just to make it.

Speaker 2: 37:00

I just want to be more personal for me. So I introduced the course of spiritual and it's all based here in the garden. So even though there's I mean, a lot of my own photographs are in it, there's four other photographers in it Jason Ingram, clive Nichols, two English photographers and then there's two Irish photographers all the photographs are from here in the garden and even even um Kieran Neary he's the wildlife photographer, you know, and it was so fussy, like if you took a photograph, say, of a, of a frog, it had to be here in the garden, even though he did the most gorgeous photograph of a frog.

Speaker 2: 37:35

I don't know. It has to be at this. Nobody would know the difference, of course.

Speaker 2: 37:40

But I wanted that personalised, it had to be here in the garden. If a butterfly, it had to be the butterfly here in the garden. So he came and did his photo shoots here of some of the wildlife. Yeah, but of course you have wildlife there, but I think Even the colour wheel the colour wheel a friend of mine I should have painted, of course, because I'm a painter. I just didn't have time last last year to paint coloring so a friend of mine painted it. I want again, I didn't want some stock image of anything.

Speaker 1: 38:08

Everything is personal to the book yeah, and I think, to be honest with you I've said it a couple of times, but that definitely comes true that you know the imagery, the, the photography is phenomenal and obviously there are pictures that are taken from the garden, so that means the garden is phenomenal, but the. You can see the artistry, the color that you're talking about in every photograph, even down to the simple one of the, the hawthorn in the background, which I I had even forgot that it was tulips in the front, but that is a brilliant photograph. So the book is out now, but I know you have other things on the go as well. So the garden was always open on a Sunday, I think, from April to September or October, but you've added some days now, so tell us about that.

Speaker 2: 38:57

We're going to open every Friday and Sunday this year Brilliant, so two days a week. So that's exciting. So we're going to open first Friday of April, so every Friday and every Sunday from April to the end of September, from midday to 5 pm. So we'll welcome the public in and we'll talk about all kinds of things wildlife and weeds and what's not a weed and get into all kind of things and just and just share the beauty of nature with people. You know, pot displays and wildlife and all of us.

Speaker 1: 39:25

Yeah, brilliant, and I'll put the. I'll put the link in the show notes as as the word like it's kilti. It's what's the address. It's kilti in county wicklow. Yeah, kilti in county Wicklow, so people will find it anywhere.

Speaker 2: 39:39

We have a sign outside, but if you Google it it'll give you the directions and all of that.

Speaker 1: 39:43

And recently you're starting your course quite soon.

Speaker 2: 39:48

Yeah, the first class is over, the March class is over, so we're kind of full for this year. So during the summer now I'll start taking names, people coming in. We'll leave their names for next year's course and I'll reach out to them in November and see if they still want to do the course and at that stage I'll fill up the classes for next year.

Speaker 1: 40:06

Yeah, so that's a course that's taken over one month, so from March through to September.

Speaker 2: 40:15

October, march to November, and it's one class per month, so it's one four-hour class every month. Of course, the garden is completely different every month. Yeah, different jobs and different things for me to teach?

Speaker 1: 40:29

Yeah, for sure, and so that's in person, and so I'd be sure you're covering everything from propagation to Absolutely everything you know the mixing of colours and so on.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Everything that happens here between March and November.

Speaker 1: 40:40

Yeah, brilliant.

Speaker 2: 40:40

And the book itself.

Speaker 1: 40:41

Then where can people find that? I'm sure it's in all the usual places.

Speaker 2: 40:47

It's in all the main bookshops. It is, it is on Amazon and the online stores as well, and, of course, it's here in the garden.

Speaker 1: 40:55

I have it here as well, you can get signed copies. I's here in the garden. I have it here as well. You can get signed copies, I guess, from the garden directly can?

Speaker 2: 40:59

I've been posting it out the last few weeks so all over the world it's been fantastic, literally all over the world.

Speaker 1: 41:04

Yeah, brilliant, exciting times. Yeah, uh, without a doubt, as I said at the start, it is one of the one of the most beautiful gardening books I've ever held.

Speaker 1: 41:15

It's the. The photography is phenomenal and the use of color is phenomenal and you know it definitely comes true. So it's it's, um, yeah, a brilliant, brilliant book and people should get their hands on it. So, tj, it's been really great to have you back on the podcast a few years since our last conversation. Best of luck with the new book and thank you very much for coming on. Master my garden podcast. Thank you so much, son, it was a pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 1: 41:39

So that's been this week's episode. A huge thanks to tj for coming on. As I said and I'm not just saying it because tj was on the call it is a phenomenal book in terms of the photography and the color use in it and really you should, you should get a look at it and definitely, if you can at all, get down to patana during this year, or even a couple of times. As he said, from month to month the garden can be quite different, so it's worth getting getting down to have a look. On a couple of occasions I'd have to get down myself to see the new torque garden or. It's not new anymore, but I haven't been in a while, so it'll be new to me. So, yeah, really, really great chat and really book, and that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening. Until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.