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Planthropology
Planthropology
117. Chaos Garden Gremlins, Necessary Context, and Practical Landscapes w/ Sean Patchett
Sean Patchett, known online as Garden Guy Muskoka, shares his multifaceted experience in horticulture, from landscape work to science communication, emphasizing the critical importance of context in gardening advice.
• Context is everything when sharing gardening information – advice must be tailored to location, climate, and specific situations
• The internet contains overwhelming amounts of gardening information, requiring critical evaluation and testing
• Working in landscapes requires a jack-of-all-trades approach – from plant care to construction skills
• Well-designed gardens must consider long-term maintenance and how plants will grow over time
• Master Gardeners organizations provide hyper-local gardening advice from trained volunteers
• Approaching gardening with humility allows for continued learning and growth
• Anecdotal evidence has value in horticulture when properly contextualized
• Making mistakes is an essential part of gardening – it's how we learn and improve
Follow Sean at @GardenGuyMuskoka on social media platforms and check out his podcast "Plants Always Win" wherever you listen to podcasts.
As always, thanks so much for listening! Subscribe, rate, and review Planthropology on your favorite podcast app. It helps the show keep growing and reaching more people! As a bonus, if you review Planthropology on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser and send me a screenshot of it, I'll send you an awesome sticker pack!
Planthropology is written, hosted, and produced by Vikram Baliga. Our theme song is "If You Want to Love Me, Babe, by the talented and award-winning composer, Nick Scout.
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What is up? Plant people it's time once more for the Plantthropology Podcast, the show where we dive into the lives and careers of some very cool plant people to figure out what they do, what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Vikram Baliga, your host and humble guide in this journey through the greenest of the sciences and, as always, my friends, I am so excited to be with you today. I have a guest today that really I've wanted to have on the show for a while, and he's also wanted to be on the show for a while, but then I kept taking like long breaks and that makes it hard right To like have people on the show.
Speaker 1:But you get the privilege of hearing now from my buddy, sean Patchett, who you can find online all over these here interwebs, as Garden Guy Muskoka and if you're one of my American friends and American listeners, muskoka is in Canada, so he's another Canadian. There have been a lot of Canadians on the show and I'm here for it. They've been really really quite wonderful. So Sean is a multi-talented horticulturist he does landscape work, he does cleanups and planting, he does propagation. He's a master gardener up in Ontario and he is a wonderful podcaster and science communicator, video creator.
Speaker 1:I hope you'll go right now, as you're listening to this, and follow him all the places Again Garden Guy Muskoka. That is spelled with some letters that are not in my brain right now, but I bet you can find it and you can click on it in the show notes. But we had a really good conversation about everything from some of the ins and outs of communicating science carefully, and I think that's something that's really important to discuss, especially today, that we're giving the appropriate context and we're looking at how we explain things well, and Sean does this really really effectively and he's also just such a cool guy, just such a nice guy. So I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. So, without any further ado, buckle up, let's get into it and get ready for episode 117 of the Plantar Apology podcast with my good friend, sean Patchett.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's already recording.
Speaker 1:That was fast. Oh, I like the pre-show garbage time.
Speaker 2:Fair enough. I don't know. That's when the organic jokes just come out.
Speaker 1:Maybe this will be organic because it's plants. This may be the actual opening, Hi Sean.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Plants. Always Win a show where two Ontario gardeners explore the wide world of horticulture, bust some myths and answer your plant and garden questions.
Speaker 1:I'm Sean, I'm Vikram and you're on the wrong show. Wait, nah, not again. It keeps happening to you. That's two in a row, man. I don't know what's going on. I'm just really into cross-pollination. Sean, I'm so excited to have you here today. I like getting to talk to cool people that are also my friends, and so this is exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's exciting for me too. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Awesome. This is not Plants Always Win, though We'll talk about that a lot and I'm excited that you're doing that show. That's so awesome. But this is again Plantthropology, and, as we do on Plantthropology, we talk about cool plant people and you are one of the cooler, know. Take a minute, introduce yourself, tell us about Sean. Where are you from, what do you do, what do you study or what did you study, and just anything that you would like us to know about.
Speaker 2:Oh, sure, my name is Sean. I'm a tourist and I enjoy long walks on the beach and yeah, no, coming from you. That's, that's quite the intro. I really appreciate that. Yeah, you also, by the way, are one of the cooler plant people I know, so I really appreciate being here. So my name is Sean. I studied horticulture time some time ago and time is relative, I don't know and I studied a CODA program, so that's a co-op diploma, apprenticeship, and I completed all that. And then I fell into the landscaping side of things because, as a young man with knowledge about plants, I was scooped up by some landscapers and it's just a trajectory I fell into, eventually started my own landscaping and design business, joined the Master Gardeners of Ontario, which is a nonprofit organization that you know, the Master Gardeners, but of probably Texas, yeah, and then recently started a podcast, plants Always Win, partially, I might say inspired a little bit by plan Always Win, partially, I might say, inspired a little bit by planthropology Spoilers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll be hearing from my lawyers. I'm just kidding. No, that's exciting. Yeah, and when did y'all start that? You're just a few episodes, a handful of episodes in.
Speaker 2:We have now launched 17 episodes. We breached that. 98% of podcasts that drop off after the first three. We started in December, but really we've been talking about it for a long time and before my amazing co-host that I have right now, aaron. Before that I had tried and tried by myself. It's a lot of work. It's a lot to get yourself up and motivate yourself. It's a lot easier to have a second person to help motivate you there. Yeah, we started early December of 2024.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool. Actually, that's not a bad place to just start a lot of our conversation, because I think I want to get the picture of what you do. You know who you are, all that, and a big part of what you do is science, communication and talking about plants online and just working in this plant community quite a bit, and your podcast is a big part of that, as well as your social media outlet. But just give us the rundown on the show. What made you y'all decide to want to do it? What kinds of topics do you talk about? What's the format? Yeah, just give us the elevator pitch, the elevator pitch.
Speaker 2:Okay, the internet is full of garbage, no-transcript horticulture all of that stuff is context. Context is the most important thing. When you're trying to give people advice on the internet, may is the best time to prune your apples. Where in the bloody world are you Come on? Or it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. There's multiple ways of doing anything and unless you have some sort of HOA or municipal bylaw, you can do whatever you want, and I like to reinforce that.
Speaker 2:So it's sprouted out of a desire to combat misinformation and continue learning and, honestly, as an excuse to reach out to cool people and talk to them too, because, as you're well aware, we never stop learning right. We always want to keep. I'm more of a chaos gremlin when it comes to gardening. I'm a jack of all trades. I like a little bit of everything and I have just enough knowledge to make me dangerous, but not specific enough in any one particular field that I would consider myself an expert in any particular thing. But I like to talk to experts and see what they have to say, and all the good ones, like yourself, for example. It's going to be a fair degree of Wickham flattery today.
Speaker 1:I'm always down for that. That's my whole thing.
Speaker 2:It helps. That's how I got here, folks. Yeah, all the good ones bring, they use a certain terminology. That's not a definitive hard stance on any one thing, because it really does depend, and if you ask me a question about your garden or your plants or whatever, about my favorite food, anything my answer will almost always be it depends, followed by a series of questions or variables. And yeah, so that's what we do. We're focused on Ontario, but of course nature is international and borders are made up, and so of course, what we do touches on other regions as well. You can take some of the advice that we give and apply what is relevant to your particular situation or your environment. We try and do that at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think y'all do a great job of it and I don't. I really like. So it's funny because I'm like jotting down quotes You've had. There's a lot of great. I appreciate guests that do this. No, like the internet side of this and the social media side, because I've got so many great poll quotes and like gardens are international and borders are made up, would be a great.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's a great oh yeah, you can have that one for free. Hey, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:But you're right, like I think, even though you're in Ontario and I want to get into this in just a second some of the differences in gardening between, like where I live, where you live, but the things that you talk about, the concepts you cover, the specific situations that you get into, might be applicable in 100 places around the world or in different places at different times of the year, and I think that's such a cool opportunity that we have as educators. That has never really been a thing in the past. Right, this is the one of the first times in our human history that we have the opportunity to contextualize things so well for so many people. But on the other side of that, like you were talking about earlier, the internet's full of garbage of people that are. There's no context. Context is not real. I'm gonna stick this kiwi in a banana and we're gonna see what happens.
Speaker 2:I get there's yeah, and that's one very obvious side of the garbage internet. But there are some that like very well-meaning and I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt. There's a sweet older fellow from Australia and I do follow him because what he's saying is really cool and I like his passion. But when he says this is the best ground cover for your lawn, and I'm like again, you have to. I can't just take the assumption of what your accent is to deduce where you are in the world. It's not fair. I don't have that plant. That's a beautiful plant, but I can't have that. And now they're on YouTube, they're on TikTok, they're reaching an international audience.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I do think that's why context, at the end of the day, is everything. Context matters so much, like you're talking about and making sure that people really understand that, and I think it's dangerous too from a gardening standpoint. Dangerous is maybe overselling it just a little, but if people are trying to, I think the worst thing we can do as content creators, as educators, is be like this is the absolute best thing without knowing the context, because then people get discouraged. Right, they go out and they try their even if it's not a plant hack their well-intentioned piece of advice and it kills their tomatoes or it just doesn't work, and then it drives them off from this thing. That's very like empowering and fulfilling and I think we have to be really careful about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what? I'm gonna throw myself under the bus here for a second. I gave a little. This was three years ago, but I did this video on a good way to repel squirrels temporarily. It's just something that kind of pisses them off when you're planting bulbs in the fall.
Speaker 2:So if you plant bulbs and you use a product called hen manure, which is a pelletized, composted chicken poop, when they dig down into the soil to get to the bulb, for whatever reason, they seem to not like it. This isn't science, this is anecdotal evidence, and I said that In my experience. This works for me and I got so much hate from people saying chicken poop is dangerous, it carries these pathogens, it's going to nitrogen, burn your plants and I'm like, technically, all of that is true if we're talking about raw chicken poop. But that's the context, right. That's the subtlety, that's what they picked up on, that's what they didn't hear or did hear, and I'm still today getting hate messages from stuff like that. It encourages me to be a little bit more introspective with the things that I put out on the internet. I'm definitely a lot more cautious than I used to be. I dwindled down what I was putting out there. Tiktok is full of people very quick to give you their opinions and their anecdotes. And then Facebook is full of people willing to give you their facts. And I'm not going to say the facts, these are their facts. And that's good, yeah. And oh boy, it's a very dangerous place and once upon a time I used to have a bit more let's call it youthful arrogance where I still have it.
Speaker 2:But I used to think I would hear a question about lawn care or about gardening or whatever, and I would think, wow, what a lazy question, how silly, how stupid. Why don't you just go to the Internet? Why don't you just look it up yourself and find out? And then I started doing that. I started going to the internet and I started realizing, hey, maybe it's not a stupid question because the internet's saying you can do this or that or this. It's recommending these products, but they're not available in your country. So maybe these products and you can do whatever. And then you go to social media, where there are these forums, these garden groups, these well-meaning individuals, and you ask the same question and you'll get dozens, if not hundreds, of answers. And I realized at that moment wow, there really is no such thing as a dumb question. There are lazy questions sometimes, sure, but it's good to ask other people sometimes and not just rely on the internet sometimes and not just rely on the internet.
Speaker 1:I think a big part of doing that because I do see that a lot I see you could just Google it. Okay, it's social media for a reason, right, there's the social part of it that we're supposed to be doing and I've fallen into that too. I think that's it's easy to do when it's this is such a simple thing, but the things that are like simple and easy for me are not the same for everyone. Right, and like you're talking about, you Google something and it's okay. Here's 5,000 results. Good, so much of it is just how do you evaluate information? How do you find the right information? How do you critically parse through all of this stuff that's out there and make it make sense, but also make it, say, make sense in a way that's actually real, because lots of it makes sense that turned out not to be true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even right now, the internet and search engines are getting worse, or at least more troublesome, because if you go to Google and ask it a question, you have a full, articulate sentence right here. It will give you an AI generated answer based on information that it scrubbed. But AI currently, as of the time of this recording and my understanding of how it works. I could be wrong here, I'm talking out of my butt, but AI is a sentence filler. It will automatically fill that sentence. It makes sense and you can read it, but it might not be accurate, it might not be real, it doesn't fact check, it doesn't search for you, and so it's an AI generated. Here's probably the answer you're looking for, which is a dangerous thing sometimes.
Speaker 1:For sure, and to like circle this conversation back just a little bit, I think that's actually a good time to talk about some of the differences. We find right, because it's as we record this, it's April 9th, okay, and where I live, in Texas, we had a big cold snap. This big.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's couch that in for Texas.
Speaker 1:It was cold. We got down in the 20s Fahrenheit. We got some snow on Saturday, which is not super unusual for us for April. But it doesn't happen a ton. Right, it happens, it just doesn't happen a ton. But a lot of people got real gung-ho and went out and planted tomatoes and stuff and that turned out to not be great, but for you in Ontario you were just telling me you got a foot of snow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we had fall spring twice where the weather was beautiful, and for us, fall spring in terms of Celsius. I do apologize to your American listeners. I'm familiar with Celsius. If it's above zero degrees Celsius is when snow melts, and if the sun hits it it melts faster. We had a few days where it was above almost 10 degrees Celsius and I'm out there in a t-shirt Like it's so lovely, and then it goes back to negative 10, which is pretty cold. I'm not in my full snowsuit regalia or anything like that. We had almost no snow left and then two days ago we had about a foot of snow overnight. Wow, just on the yeah.
Speaker 2:The two week forecast shows somewhere between 10 and negative 10. It's just going to be fluctuating quite a bit and there's a lot of people out there who are saying, oh, I just want to, I'm sick of winter, I want to get out there. I'm like it's still April. This isn't new to us. This isn't new around here. I understand depression, the excitement about going out in the spring. I get that. We're still in early April.
Speaker 1:It's normal, yeah, and that's it. But that really, I think, drives home some of this conversation too, of if someone watched my video, right, if I've made a video today, if I went out and made a video today and said, hey, we're past the danger of freezes, even if I couch that in Lubbock Texas, we're probably past the danger of freezes, probably fine to go plant your tomatoes and peppers and whatever. I'm still not real confident in that. But someone in the northeastern United States or in Canada or someone may watch that and only here go plant your.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's, yeah, and along with that there's so, yeah, I'm, I in Canada, I'm exposed to a lot of American gardeners because my my algorithm feeds me plant people and I appreciate that so much. But the people out there making garden content, or the people out there who don't have winter right now, and and I get that jealousy, I do, I feel it, but I know where I live and I know my own limitations. And the other part of that is is we can get into products, for example, the USDA hardiness zone versus Canadian hardiness zones. The vast majority of our products are labeled with the USDA hardiness zone anyways, and yet you've got Canadian gardeners who are talking about the Canadian hardiness zone.
Speaker 2:I'm like it doesn't apply to even Canadian average Joe, everyday people, because what they buy at the garden center is still USDA. And so trying to yeah, I don't know how else to say context is the most important thing. If you're out there getting or giving any gardening advice, ask the questions, and if somebody asks the question, don't be insulted that, oh, I forgot. Yeah, that's also. I should have mentioned that. That's very important, yep.
Speaker 1:Yep, and that's and I think that's a great reminder thinking of as educators, because we are in different contexts, right, and I think we're all teaching something. We're all giving information, whether it's good information, bad information. I think everyone out there needs to understand that you may be making a silly video yelling about bananas, whatever right, whatever it is, people are taking that information and digesting it and working it into their worldview and all of that stuff. And that is such a weird thing to think about as an educator, as a content creator, that like, oh no, people actually care what I think, or maybe they're mad about what I think, or whatever.
Speaker 1:I have a question. I think you've answered this in some ways, but I want to ask it maybe a little bit differently, as someone who started in the landscape field, who has a variety of experiences and a variety of industry sort of ends to horticulture. What made you want to tackle this whole thing that we do? Are you also a glutton for punishment, like me? What made you make that transition from I'm someone who works in the industry, in the field, planting plants, doing the thing to? I really want to tell people about this too.
Speaker 2:It was a little bit of spite and anger. If I'm being totally honest with you here, I'll confess my sins. Seeing people give bad advice so confidently made me angry. And like I worked for a couple of landscaping companies and I'd go to a garden center and I'd hear a customer talk to one of the garden center employees and they're trying to upsell this plant and this product and blah, blah, blah. And I'd go to a garden center and I'd hear a customer talk to one of the garden center employees and they're trying to upsell this plant and this product and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like that's not what they asked, that's not good, that's not and I don't know.
Speaker 2:Eventually I took to the Internet and yeah, I see a lot of it besides five minute crafts, besides stuff like that. I wanted to share knowledge in a way that doesn't shame people for not having that knowledge and I try really hard, but sometimes people get offended, no matter what you do. And yeah, I think that there is a tie, a relationship that should be addressed right now in the world of gardening and horticulture at large, which is anecdotal evidence which, in my opinion, has a place in science, because our anecdotes are our experiences. We are all a product of our own experiences, our observations. What happens to us, what happens to me, might be very different than what happens to my neighbor. We could be, we could have almost a completely identical property but for whatever reason, my garden flourishes and theirs doesn't, or the other way around, or the deer go to their garden but they don't come to mine. That sort of contrast of our experiences has a place in science, has a place in the education world, and I think right now there's a lot of that.
Speaker 2:I believe iNaturalist is doing a big citizen science thing. That's mostly for identification. But there are other avenues that are I don't know how to hokey pokey that I don't want to make fun of anyone. I'm doing this right Like I'm stepping on my own toes here, throwing myself under the bus. But there are some avenues in gardening. When you talk about lunar cycles and stuff like that and I'm like, oh, that's cool, and I agree that the moon exists and I agree that the reflection of light off the moon probably has some sort of bearing on the environment, whether that's insects or plants or whatever. I don't think that the lunar cycle has to do with the growth of my tomatoes, but maybe it doesn't, as a passive example of anecdotal things.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I think the anecdote and there's a saying that a couple of podcasts I listen to say that the plural of anecdote is not data. Saying that a couple of podcasts I listened to say that the plural of anecdote is not data and I agree with that. However, I also agree that the foundational part of scientific inquiry is experience and questions and observation. Right, that is where we start.
Speaker 1:People started doing science because they looked up at the sky and they saw that the moon explodes every day or it goes away, or it's dark, dark sometimes, or today it's not here, and this plant grows and it flowers on this day over here, but it doesn't flower on this day over here. And then we start to ask why. And we have to have that initiation of curiosity to get anywhere in science, like it is integral to the scientific process. And there are some things out there that are very like woo, like all day talk about the oh, what do they call it? Electro horticulture, stuff like that all day. And it's not because the idea is absolutely insane, because there are insane sounding ideas that turn out to be true.
Speaker 1:It's because someone has had this idea in the past and then they tested it and it didn't work, and because someone has had this idea in the past and then they tested it and it didn't work, and because of that, at least in the context that it was tested, I can sometimes pretty confidently say, yeah, okay, like you're saying, I understand the thought, like I understand the framework you're coming from, but let me show you where it's been done and why it doesn't work. And maybe here are better alternatives. And I think we as science people, as science communicators, as knowledgeable garden creators, have a really fine line to tread of making sure we're not diluting our message and making sure we're telling the truth but also not being jerks about it. There's a good and bad way to do it.
Speaker 2:No, that's such an important factor. Oh my goodness. So one of the most infamous pieces of plant media that circulates, it has its waves, it comes and it goes and you know it and it keeps coming back is the NASA houseplant air filtration thing, and that was the history behind it. Essentially, they don't really filter the air, they don't really remove toxins. There's an argument to be made about VOCs, whatever, but that's also not how the experiment worked and it was a misinterpretation that led to an article and then it was a quote of that article and then it just became a wild game of telephone reporting to a point of content creators now, who just perpetuates this.
Speaker 2:It's widely known fact that plants filter the air. For you, I'm like, you can crack a window an inch and get better air filtration in your house. It's. Having 10,000 plants in your house is not feasible. You will, it's. But yeah, that's trying to talk about those things without being a jerk. It's tough sometimes when you're as passionate about these things and people who are just perpetuating these lies and they don't know, they didn't look it up, they don't bother to look it up, or maybe they do know, so they're either ignorant or willfully ignorant and it's interesting because those things are very different, right From the intent standpoint.
Speaker 1:like I can excuse ignorance, like I can there's, if we wanted to talk about all the things I don't know, like how much time you got, we can fill an ocean, right you?
Speaker 2:don't know what you don't know. Yeah, exactly, there's so much out there that you'll never know, because you can't think about it in order to ask the questions, to learn about it. You don't know the things that you don't know.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and then? But then when we do, then we do start to get glimpses of oh, maybe I've been wrong the humility sometimes of having to take a step back. You'd be like, no, I was wrong about this, I didn't understand this, but now I do. And I think, once we do understand, at that point we have a responsibility to adjust our frameworks, to adjust our way of thinking, to make sure that we're finding out and then telling the truth, and move from a place of passive ignorance or unintentional ignorance to knowledge and wisdom and appropriate use of information, instead of just I am going to dig in my heels and this is the hill I will die on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think if I were to be able to de-stigmatize a word, it would be ignorance. I will admit to you and I will admit to anyone who is willing to listen, I am an ignorant white man. That's not a bad thing, that is, I don't know a lot of things, I'm not exposed to a lot of other cultures and a lot of other sciences, and that doesn't have to be so negative. There doesn't have to be this stigma associated with it. I'm ignorant and very curious and enthusiastic and I think that they can go hand in hand and then reflect a degree of positivity in the world of science and nature and environmentalism. That doesn't have to be so depressing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome and that's such a good way to look at it. I think that's a great time to take a quick break and think through that and digest that a little bit, and then, when we come back, I want to talk about some of the practical experience you have, too, and some of the landscape work you do and how you approach that, again being in a very cold climate, and then also the work and the time you've spent with the master gardeners. We'll hit that after the break, but let's go get a drink of water and I'll say some random words to the people for a minute. Sounds good. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1:So, sean, in your day-to-day whatever that, whatever real job, day job, whatever you want to call it you do landscape work and you actually like put plants in the ground and get outside and get your hands dirty, which is something that I feel is so valuable in this field, and I just want to learn more about that. Talk about the kind of work you do, what kind of landscapes you like to work in, how does that look?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so currently, I'll say I started my own landscaping business Time is relative a couple of years ago, but before that I was doing residential landscaping for a number of years as well, and so it's mostly people's properties and it's nowadays it's just a couple of cottages and I have my consistent list of amazing, wonderful clients and I tend to their properties outdoors. So I do a lot of lawn and garden maintenance. I plant their gardens, I buy their plants for them, I tend to their lawns if they even have a lawn and then I do their winter stuff as well shoveling roofs and whatnot. That's not fun, but it's part of the job, part of it. I would love to do a little bit more design work, but that would entail a bit of a career shift in that I just don't have time, and so I would need to hire people to do the job that I'm currently doing for these wonderful clients that I don't want to give up. They're amazing human beings.
Speaker 2:I'm at a point where I can cater my own clientele now. It's wonderful In order to have time. I'd have to hire people in order to have time to do more essentially, but yeah, that's my day job. In the winter, I've been working with one of my clients in particular doing construction and renovation, picking up skills because they used to do construction on yeah, and so he said he would rather hire me as his second set of hands than just hire a crew to do all this stuff. And I'm like I don't mind it, you keep me busy in the winter. It's wonderful, and I'll be sad whenever that project gets done. Yeah, I've got at least one more winter of work, though. We're good.
Speaker 1:I think that's really interesting and I think that actually hits on a key point. Just talking about this industry means, I think, when people hear landscaper, they think a very I don't know exactly specific thing. Like you are same Gamgee, trimming hedges and rings of power.
Speaker 1:That's on my off time. Yeah, everyone needs a hobby, but in my experience, as someone who's done it too, it's never just. It's such a diverse job, it's never just one thing and you almost have to end up being like a jack of all trades. You end up having to do a little bit of construction work. You do irrigation work, you do landscaping or you do like plant care. You do planting and plant removal and tree pruning and you put up holiday lighting and you shovel roofs, and it's never just one thing. And I think that's really important for folks wanting to get into this industry to understand a little bit like there are firms where it's all I'm going to do is do design work or I'm going to do this one thing, and that's true. But especially people like working for themselves in this field, you need to learn and it's a cool opportunity to learn do a ton of different.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I will say this. There are a number of contractors that do exactly what you just said One thing, and I get that. And a lot of people have this mentality of if you're going to do something, do one thing really well. And I hate it. And the reason why I hate it besides the fact that I'm a little ADHD hobby gremlin that does too many things for his own good and can't complete a hobby I just do a lot of things. Typically, when those people do that one thing really well, they don't think about the other things. And let me give you an example. When I worked for a larger company before I did my own thing, there was a landscape designer from a city a couple hours away. They designed the landscape for this.
Speaker 1:Well, hey there, welcome to the mid-roll. How are you today? How are your houseplants? I hope they're well. Give them a nice little pat on the leaf from me and tell them I said hi. Thanks for listening to this episode and I hope you've enjoyed it so far as much as I've enjoyed recording it and talking to Sean and editing it. It's fun, by the way. As an aside, you need to listen back to these and be like, oh wow, what a great conversation, and this is definitely one of those. But thank you so much for being a part of plant anthropology. Thanks to the Texas Tech Department of Plant and Soil Science and the Davis College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources for allowing me to do what I do and for being a part of this process all these years. Thanks to Sean for being on the show, but most of all, again, thank you for being a part of it.
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Speaker 1:All right, we're back. So, sean, in your day-to-day whatever that, whatever real job, day job, whatever you want to call it you do landscape work and you actually like put plants in the ground and get outside and get your hands dirty, which is something that I feel is so valuable in this field, and I just want to learn more about that. Talk about the kind of work you do, what kind of landscapes you like to work in, how does that look? Yeah?
Speaker 2:So currently, I'll say I started my own landscaping business Time is relative A couple of years ago, but before that I was doing residential landscaping for a number of years ago, but before that I was doing residential landscaping for a number of years as well, and so it's mostly people's properties and it's nowadays it's just a couple of cottages, and I have my consistent list of amazing, wonderful clients and I tend to their properties outdoors.
Speaker 2:So I do a lot of lawn and garden maintenance. I plant their gardens, I buy their plants for them, I tend to their lawns if they even have a lawn and then I do their winter stuff as well shoveling roofs and whatnot. That's not fun, but it's part of the job, part of it. I would love to do a little bit more design work, but that would entail a bit of a career shift in that I just don't have time, and so I would need to hire people to do the job that I'm currently doing for these wonderful clients that I don't want to give up. They're amazing human beings. I'm at a point where I can cater my own clientele now it's wonderful In order to have time.
Speaker 1:I'd have to hire people in order to have time to do more no-transcript Because I think when people hear landscaper they think a very I don't know exactly specific thing. Like you are same Gamgee, trimming hedges and rings of power.
Speaker 2:That's on my off time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Everyone needs a hobby, but in my experience, as someone who's done it too, it's never just. It's such a diverse job, it's never just one thing and you almost have to end up being like a jack of all trades. You end up having to do a little bit of construction work. You do irrigation work, you do landscaping or you do like plant care, you do planting and plant removal and tree pruning and you put up holiday lighting and you shovel roofs, and it's never just one thing. And I think that's really important for folks wanting to get into this industry to understand a little bit like there are firms where it's all I'm going to do is do design work or I'm going to do this one thing, and that's true. But especially people like working for themselves in this field, you need to learn and it's a cool opportunity to learn do a ton of different stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I will say this. There are a number of contractors that do exactly what you just said One thing, and I get that. And a lot of people have this mentality of if you're going to do something, do one thing really well. And I hate it. And the reason why I hate it besides the fact that I'm a little ADHD hobby gremlin that does too many things for his own good and can't complete a hobby I just do a lot of things. Typically, when those people do that one thing really well, they don't think about the other things. And let me give you an example.
Speaker 2:When I worked for a larger company before I did my own thing, there was a landscape designer from a city a couple hours away. They designed the landscape for this luxury cottage and then somebody else ordered all the plants from this other place and plants came in and they were not in great condition. It went through a telephone chain and the plants that we ended up with were not the best. I wouldn't have picked them. And then we have them spaced out in such a weird way and put them in such weird locations, and then what they really didn't think about which is dig on designers specifically is they don't think about the maintenance and they don't think about what it looks like after it's installed. One month, one year, two years, 10 years down the line, what is that landscape going to do? Because it's going to grow, it's going to change. It's going to grow, it's going to change, it's going to evolve. How much effort do you want to put in to maintain that sort of thing? When you plant like large commercial properties like that?
Speaker 2:I call it commercial style gardening. I should say with here's one big garden with a bunch of one shrub, just a bunch of them, all of the space in between. That means you can't have any other plant or the design is ruined. So so anything else that infiltrates that space is a weed and all the space that you leave in between the plants is space for weeds. There's no ground cover Half the time. These designers don't incorporate mulch or maintenance into these designs. It really does lend itself to the success of your work. If you are a little bit skilled and across the board with all these different things, I can repair an irrigation system. That's not my forte. I'd much rather contract that out, but I can. If I have to, I can build a fence Again. I'd much rather be in the gardens. But if my clients say, hey, fix my fence for me, sure, yeah, I can do that. So yeah, yeah, being a little jack of all trades, it really does help.
Speaker 1:And it feeds. So too, and you made a really good point of if you're going to do design work, if you're going to be on that part of it, gosh, it helps to have done the actual work.
Speaker 2:Or at least stop and look at the property. If they get a landscape, like an aerial view of the landscape, they don't know where the hills and valleys, they don't know what's surrounding the property, they just have an overview of the house or the structure or whatever and they don't realize oh, this is South and there are trees to the South, so really you have no direct sunlight. Why are you planting these plants or whatever? Yeah, yeah, it helps to have some experience and to keep those things in mind. Like how am I supposed to get from the driveway to the backyard when you landscaped and you blocked every path back there? How am I supposed to get back there with a wheelbarrow? Or say I want to rent a skid steer and do some larger landscaping for a day, or something like that I can't get there.
Speaker 1:That's bringing back flashbacks. So when I was interned with this landscaper here locally and we were working on this house that was built into the side of a hill a little bit. So it was interesting because the front the first floor patio and the second floor balcony were both at ground level because it essentially was like into the side of the hill. So the ground came up and around the back of the house so you could walk out your back, his back door and there was like a garden area, or you could walk out the back door on the second floor and you were just up on the hill, but it was still also at ground level. So it's really interesting. It's cool property.
Speaker 1:But the homeowner wanted a water feature that started up on the second floor and flowed down like waterfall to the first floor. And super cool, we can do it, that's going to be great. But we realized pretty quick or my boss realized pretty quick that oh, we can't run a skid steer up there. So we mixed concrete or masonry different types of material, we use concrete and a few other things and carried it up the hill in five gallon buckets to build the stream bed that float. I still think about that job a lot, because there's a lot of. Is this possible? Absolutely yes, absolutely yes, we can do it. Is this going to be just like getting punched in the face? To do Also yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a similar one. It's not concrete and cement, that's. Oh, that's I can only imagine. And then I'm also envisioning the maintenance and upkeep with that and then trying to rebuild. Or maybe you want to take it down and do something else. Oh, that sounds awful. But I had this one client I no longer have because, gosh, it was so frustrating.
Speaker 2:They, their gardens, required approximately 27 to 32 cubic yards of mulch if you wanted to remulch it, and they're scattered and they have big, uneven stone steps. They have 62 of them to get from the top to the bottom to the boathouse 62 large, uneven, not flagstone. We're talking sometimes 12 inches, sometimes 8, sometimes 14. The depth and the. Yeah, it was like handmade but so poorly thought out. So I had to wheelbarrow 27 yards, plus two extra later, 27 yards of ugly red mulch, very fluorescent red, like a charmander, like it was so red, and it went.
Speaker 2:I had to wheelbarrow by hand and after you go down these stairs awkwardly, you then have to go up the hill into the actual garden itself. So then I went I was going down and back up it would take me 20 minutes per wheelbarrow for the lower parts and I'm like it was mind blowing. They also, yeah, so in terms of design and maintenance, they did not think about that. And the other thing is that they had these big beautiful retaining walls also made out of large stones boulders you would say. Most normal people would probably say they didn't like that. In the cracks of these boulders was moss, and so they had me use a trowel to hand scrape because they didn't want to spray the moss, hand scrape the moss off the rocks. I eventually also had to use I'm not joking was a barbecue scraper because, yeah, in terms of design and maintenance, this was unbelievable.
Speaker 1:That's a tough one, yeah, and some of it goes back to like people don't know. Sometimes they don't know what they don't know and they think this is what this should look like, this is what I want it to look like, and they get set on it. But to segue a little bit, that's one of the reasons that organizations like the Master Gardener Association and community horticulture and education associations and organizations are so important, because it may be that like if that homeowner or if certain people knew oh, maybe this is not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:Maybe having moss here is like a net benefit ecologically or whatever. Maybe you didn't have to spend days scraping rocks with a trowel and a grill tool. So let's talk a little bit about your work and your time in the Master Gardeners, Because you've I think that's more recent. I joined.
Speaker 2:I'm getting my five-year pin this year actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, technically, I joined in the pandemic, I joined 2020 and that was regardless of the pandemic. I actually started looking into like hort societies and gardening groups and all that because where we lived, I just life happens we moved a couple of times. I didn't know anybody. I was looking to socialize with some garden communities and I ended up stumbling upon the Master Gardeners of Ontario and I thought it was like a club. I thought it was like a knitting club or something. I didn't realize what it was and the more I got to learn, I'm like oh, this is really cool.
Speaker 2:I think you guys might need to do a little better with your public outreach because I had never heard of you before, but otherwise, that's fantastic. This is fantastic. I love this and my experience is there was an interview, a meeting with the then super coordinator for the Muskoka group. So in Ontario, the Master Gardeners of Ontario there was 26 different divisions because Ontario is pretty big, and now I think there's 25. I think one group folded because of a lack of membership. It happens, it's right now. If I'm being honest with you. It's an older population that are within the Master Gardeners and there's a movement and a trend right now to try to recruit younger.
Speaker 2:So, I had a meeting with the coordinator for the Muskoka group, my local group. I actually happen to reside in the middle of three different groups and I had to pick one. And I just happened to pick the Muskoka group because it's my brand online cottage country, and I did a quiz and it was a multiple choice quiz Just assess your base level of knowledge, because you have to have some degree of knowledge if you want to actually join and be a member. And after that I like, I like I passed. The only question that I got wrong was something to do with termites and and I was like, hey, this question, I actually didn't get the question wrong. The question was wrong, it was fun.
Speaker 2:It happens it does. And so I joined and I was considered a master gardener in training, and that's a two year period where you're supposed to complete their, their curriculum, which is like an education program. You have to have a certain number of credits within a certain group of topics and whatnot, and you have to commit to doing volunteer hours. It's a nonprofit organization and that's something that a lot of people don't seem to understand is it's not a cult, it's not a ranking, it's not a degree of education that you achieve although there is an educational component. It's an organization. So when I say I'm a master gardener, what I actually say is I am a member of the master gardeners, and I try and emphasize that whenever people say it, because I'm like, like I'm not a rank master, I don't. I have more than 10,000 hours, sure, but I'm not a master, I don't consider myself an expert. I had equivalency credits because, dog, I studied plants for a while, and so I shared some of those equivalency credits and said Do I really need to pay to take these courses that I've already done? Is this okay? And they said You're good, you're good, you're golden. And so I became a member, I've completed my education, I finished my two year master gardener and training time frame and now I just go around, do talks and lectures and just share knowledge and share experience. Teach people without shame to try and bring people into gardening. Mostly what I'm doing, if I'm honest with you, is teaching people about the master gardeners, which is ironic. I was recruited to go out and recruit people and now?
Speaker 2:So the Master Gardeners what are? They is a nonprofit that started to answer questions that farmers and other agricultural people were too busy to answer and they were being inundated with these questions. It was founded over 30 years ago, or at least the one in Ontario was 30 something years ago. I don't want to give a specific number because then I'd have to fact check myself. And back in the day, their education was paid for, it was subsidized and you would go to school, you get an education, you join this nonprofit organization and when people ask questions about their gardens, you ask them and they are hyper local and they will give you local advice for local gardeners.
Speaker 2:And that context again, that context is very important. And there's a Huntsville in Texas, I believe, a Huntsville. Yeah, I work in Huntsville, I don't work in Huntsville, texas, and so we get those sorts of questions all the time about people who. There's an Ontario in California, it's like a town of Ontario or something like that, but I'm talking about the province of Canada. So we get questions all the time of people asking about this and that. And it's up to us to do a bit of Sherlock Holmes detective troubleshooting to find out what the real question is, because quite often people are like, hey, how come my tomato is not growing and it really has to do with their soil, or maybe it doesn't, or maybe you should set up a security camera because you've actually got a raccoon who who knows? And it's up to us to follow this, this troubleshooting. And that's where I really loved the master gardeners, because I am a problem solver, I'm a jack-of-all-trades troubleshooter. That is what I love doing. That is my passion when I go to gardens is I like to figure it out, I love to solve the problem and yeah, that's what the Master Gardeners does.
Speaker 2:And this year there was a call out for the board of directors, because it's a cycle where the board kind of flips and whatnot, and there was a big need and so I volunteered.
Speaker 2:I said listen, I don't think I'm qualified to take on the role of president that you were asking about. But if there is a need, and they said, oh yeah, we need, we do need someone in marketing and partnerships, and so I'm like, oh hey, that's yeah, just go out and network, go talk to people, go shake hands, go make partners. Heck, yeah, that's what I'm doing today, that's what I'm talking to my buddy. I think reaching out to people and making connections and networking is so very important. And, yeah, I became the board of directors director of partnerships, and we're doing a little bit of restructuring this year the Master Gardeners of Ontario, specifically in regards to the roles and responsibilities, the descriptions, the manual, the, our mandates and whatnot, these sorts of things that haven't been updated in decades. This year we're doing a big restructuring, I should say. And so I haven't done anything as far as being on the board of directors. I'm just, I'm there, but I haven't done anything yet.
Speaker 2:So I don't want to toot my own horn here I got. I'm still new.
Speaker 1:That's cool, though, and I think that's great and like for people listening, across the world. There are Master Gardener associations in a number of countries, definitely all over the United States, probably all over Canada, and you can find, like you're saying, hyper-local information, and that's so useful, like I get a lot locally. I get a lot of phone calls and emails of like how do I do this or that, or what's wrong with my tomato, and all that, but my time is limited, right, there's just the one of me, so a lot of times I'll send those folks to the master gardeners. I'm like hey, I think they could help you a lot more than I can in this. They've got more time and there's a wide breadth of knowledge and gardening experience, so it's really such a good resource for just anyone who wants to garden, anyone who wants to grow plants, to take advantage of and it's free right.
Speaker 2:You just ask them a question and it is their mandate to give you the best advice that they can. I would say, take everything with a grain of salt, especially if you are asking them advice on social media. So the Master Gardeners of Ontario has an official Facebook page, but if you ask a question on that Facebook page, you are going to get hundreds of responses and there's no way to say this person is a member and this person isn't. So you're getting average Joe homeowners who call themselves masters because they think they don't realize that it's an organization. They're like I've been gardening for 40 years. I'm a master, hold on Anyways.
Speaker 1:No, that's no, that's good advice, just in general, like it. Just with the internet, like we talked about at the top of the episode, make sure you test everything right, make sure that you are double checking all the advice you get, like advice that I give you if I make sure I'm not lying to you. I'm not going to do it on purpose, but I'm wrong, just so much. Just so much. And I want to make sure that I had a student call me out in class a couple of days ago because I don't remember what I said but, it was something that was like close and I just got the wires crossed in my head and I said it wrong.
Speaker 1:And after class he came up and he was like hey, like I don't want to be rude, I'm like no, like you're absolutely right, and I think that's always a good opportunity to like make sure that you are holding the people you get information from accountable. So it gives, I think, people a good tool to begin if critically evaluate things. Like you go to a good organization, you start from a good place and then you really apply it to your life, apply it to your specific circumstances and take what's meaningful and kind of leave the rest.
Speaker 2:In some cases, I think the mark of a good teacher and communicator and educator is the ability to take those challenges, because quite often I'll have people say what about this? I just don't know. I'm not scared to say I don't know. It's been so long. I don't know. What about this plant. I've never heard the name of that plant before. I don't know. But I'll look into it for you, not a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the people who get offended if you challenge what they just said, that is a major red flag and unfortunately I can't properly hear anything else that they have to say after that. I, we went to, I was at a conference last year around this time last year and somebody said something just sacrilegious. It was just so outrageous. It was like a quote, it was a misquote from some statistics and I was like I can't. That's so wrong. Why would you phrase it like that? I know what you're saying. What you're saying is technically true, but the way that you framed it was so inappropriate and it gives the wrong impression that I can't trust anything else that you have to say after that. You what you had just said earlier as well.
Speaker 2:Test things for yourself. Try, get your hands dirty, make messes, miss, frizzle it up in the garden magic school bus was very inspirational, and that's what I do on tiktok now is I stopped giving people advice and I started showing people my experiments, because I like messing around with plants, I like having fun, I like seeing what works, what doesn't work. I don't have the answers all the time, and sometimes the internet doesn't either, so let's just try it, just see if it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's I think that's a healthy way to I don't know engage with being a content creator, being an educator and being someone who puts that out there, because, again, we have to approach everything with humility and with teachability. And just again it goes back just don't be a jerk as we wrap up here, because I just looked up and we're over an hour already, which is awesome, and I again, it's fun to get lost in these conversations sometimes. If you had a piece of advice to throw at our listeners, something to take home whether that is the best way to shovel snow off a roof, or garden advice, or whatever it is what would that be? What do you want to leave with the planthropology people?
Speaker 2:You're going to make mistakes, and that's okay, that's encouraged. You don't know everything. You'll never know everything, and that's not something to be daunting or overwhelming. It's inspiring, it's. I don't want to know everything, because then everything would be boring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, Really good. No, I don't think about that a lot. It's easy I made a mistake and just to hate yourself for it, but it's part of the process. That's how we learn, we're humans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do expect a new, an entirely new merch lineup, just based on quotes from this.
Speaker 1:You know I've got a bunch. I've got them all jotted down here. I'll work on it. Sean, where do we find you?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. As I mentioned more than once here is, I'm one of the co-hosts of Plants Always Win, a podcast like this one. Go listen to it, subscribe. As Vikram says, I wear a size five review. I do appreciate that. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok. At Garden Guy Muskoka we are. Our podcast also has other socials, so Plants Always Win or Plants Always Win podcast. Unfortunately, we got to a point where usernames are hard to secure across the board, so if you go to plantsalwayswincom, you'll find links to all the socials and whatnot.
Speaker 2:I'm not as active on Instagram as I used to be. It's just because it never picked up traction and so I was never encouraged to continue, but I would love to do a little bit more there. Stay tuned. Actually, this summer, aaron and I are hoping to turn our podcast into a more active YouTube series talking about mostly our own experiences, what we're doing in the gardening, why, what worked, what didn't work. I don't want to tell you what to do. It's a two-way conversation. I want to share my experiences and answer questions, but we're really trying to not go down that very easy rabbit hole of telling I'm giving people unsolicited advice. Yeah, that's where you can find us, I think. I don't think there's anything else, I'll find it, oh, okay, oh, you can add me on Pokemon Go.
Speaker 1:Pokemon Go. I need to start playing. Yeah, it's fun times, sean. I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:It is always fun to chat with you and I appreciate your insight and just your approach to a lot of things, from education to gardening to content creation just everything you do. I like the energy and the I don't know attitude you bring to it. So thanks for being you, thanks for doing this. This was a lot of fun and we will talk again soon. Thank you for having me Make mistakes, be imperfect. It's how we learn and it's how we get better at things. Thanks so much, sean, for your insight and your wisdom and your time and just for being such a cool dude and such a good friend. Thanks to you for listening to Plantthropology and making this possible. You know that I do this for you and you know that I love you and it's just been such a pleasure over the past six years to do Plantthropology. Thanks one more time to the Texas Tech Department of Plant and Soil Science and the Davis College for supporting the show.
Speaker 1:Plant Anthropology is written, directed, hosted whatever other things happen to make a podcast happen by me. Our intro and outro music is by the award-winning composer, nicholas Scout, and the mid-roll music that plays behind whatever weird stuff I'm saying to you is by my buddy, rui, and his fabulous lo-fi dad beats. Keep being kind to one another. If you have not been kind to one another, this is probably a really good time to start. I'm just gonna say Keep being really cool. Plant people, be safe, be good and I will talk to you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
