GARDENFIT

- I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for decades and living with aches and pains, so I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems.

And after learning better ways to use my body in the garden, it dawned on me, what would be more exciting than to travel all over America, visiting a wide variety of gardens and helping their gardeners get Garden Fit.

In season one, for all our guest gardeners, gardening was their life.

For season two, we're going to visit artists who are also passionate gardeners.

And for this lucky group, I'm so thrilled and excited to welcome this season's Garden Fitness Professional, Adam Schersten.

Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden, that's our mission.

- [Announcer] Garden Fit is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[bright music] Adam, now we're gonna go visit Nicholas Varney.

And Nicholas Varney is the son of a very famous interior designer, Colton Varney.

- Must have made for an interesting childhood.

- I bet.

I think he's designed fabulous interiors all over the world, and interestingly enough, Nicholas decided to design jewelry, so it kind of would be fun to find out exactly why he picked jewelry.

- [Adam] For sure.

- [Madeline] But we're gonna visit him in his home, which I think he bought to build his own house for his young family because he loves being in nature.

- [Adam] Ah, that's the dream.

That sounds so nice.

- Isn't that nice?

- Yeah.

And I know, I mean, so much so that he keeps bees.

He literally built an apple orchard.

I think he probably must have grown up with loving apples.

- Yeah.

- And he has a pond that is his source of inspiration.

He just sits there every day.

- That's why we're here, isn't it?

- Yes, that is why we're here, clever, because that is my source of inspiration and I hope it'll be yours 'cause just sitting here just lowers the temperature and the world goes away.

- I see what you mean.

It is such a beautiful view.

- And I think for him, he seems to be so influenced by the sounds and shapes of nature and natural things, and in his jewelry, he does this combination of like woods and rocks with beautiful stones, but that bling is really secondary to the organic curves and shapes he makes.

He loves aquas and peach colors and so besides contrasting combinations of materials, he also has this big contrast in color so they're very colorful.

- Oh, this sounds interesting 'cause I'm not, you know, I'm not a huge jewelry guy.

This sounds unique.

This sounds really like something different.

- Yeah and I am a huge jewelry lover.

[laughing] I mean, I don't have to own it, I just wanna look at it and the first time I saw his jewelry, I really flipped.

I thought, again, it almost looked like they were living pieces.

- Wow, I can't wait to see.

- Yeah, very organic.

[gentle acoustic guitar music] We get to meet Nicholas now.

I'm so excited.

- Me too, I love this maple-lined drive.

- It's very welcoming.

- Yeah.

- Nicholas, it's so nice to see you.

- Wonderful to see you again.

- Nicholas, this is Adam.

- How are you, sir?

- Pleasure to meet you.

- Welcome to the Hudson Valley.

- Thank you, sir.

- Thank you.

We're so happy to be here.

- Oh, you got the best day.

- We did, it's so exciting to have this weather to see your whole world.

- Well, we've just had a ton of rain and the trees are as green as they've ever been, so.

- Perfect.

- Perfect timing, yeah.

- So I think our first question is, how did you get here?

- I was brought up next door on the farm next door.

- Wow.

- And we'd walk the road with the dogs often and I'd always look off this side of the road and this piece of property was one that I was well familiar with and one that I thought would serve as a beautiful canvas for the colors of the trees we planted.

The nature is amazing and teaches you lessons every day.

- It's so great, so can we walk around here?

- I'd love to show you around.

- Let's go - Follow you.

- Give us some lessons.

- Yeah, exactly.

- [Madeline] Oh, this looks like an exciting area.

- [Nicholas] It is indeed.

This is the beehives.

It's an apiary.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness, how many do you have there?

- We have 10 hives and you must have 10 hives to officially call it an apiary.

- Really?

- But we've so enjoyed the bees and it has been an incredible boon to the trees and to the blooms of the farm over the course of the year.

- Isn't that something, is that why you put them in, really to have that pollination?

- Absolutely, it is.

The apple trees here are situated on shaley soil and it's not the most productive soil, which helps because we have hard winters and that's a very positive thing for the apples, but the bees have extended the blooms for so long and we're getting so much more pollination on all of the trees, no matter what variety.

Anything that can be pollinated, these bees have a major hand in.

- Really, so have you gotten any honey from 10 beehives?

- Our first spring harvest, we got 300 pounds.

All those little jars that you see at the market, that's one pound, essentially.

So we have 300 jars of honey just from the first flush of- - How exciting, and you have a whole orchard of apples.

- Indeed, we do.

We've spent a lot of time choosing the right varieties of apples because different apples thrive in different areas of the United States and we've chosen varieties that have thrived typically in upstate New York, like a Northern Spy, which is an old style apple.

Using the indigenous fruits and vegetables, I think, is essential to sort of being present and in tune with your environment here.

- That's wonderful, and a greenhouse.

Do you garden year round?

- It's a passion.

You learn so much from the animals and so much from the trees and the interaction between the two, and I like to be able to do that 365 days a year and the greenhouse preserves the heat so that I can grow varieties that, in some cases, aren't indigenous, in some cases just on the border.

And we can still grow vegetables.

Kale does very well.

- Oh, great.

- Swiss chard.

There are some of the leafy vegetables that we like to use.

- All through the winter in the greenhouse.

- All through the winter.

We have cold frames in the front that allow us to have fresh green vegetables, essentially all winter long, which is imperative to that healthy diet.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

So another thing that I know he does is fish.

You told me that when we have met.

- I do indeed.

- So could we go to one of your ponds and kind of see that setting?

- I'd love to show you.

It's a constant evolution.

The stream shapes it the way it wants to, but let's go.

- Let's go.

- Cool.

[water gurgling] [gentle music] - [Madeline] Oh wow, look at this.

- This has been a- - So beautiful.

- [Madeline] So, what was here before?

- There wasn't much here before.

Water's such an important part of the design process, even just the reflection off of it, just so you can see the duality of the sky.

- Yeah, it's incredible.

- Both in the pond and in the sky.

- [Madeline] And the trees reflecting in there is so beautiful.

- Absolutely.

Well, the trees is the one thing only time can give you, so it was the first thing I put in.

- Really?

- Absolutely.

- Smart.

- But we didn't have a floor in the house at the time, but I was putting in all the trees.

- The trees.

- For this place to become the place that I wanted it to be, which was an inspirational place, it's a gift to me.

This is my psychologist.

Whatever, if I have an issue here, I sit out here and the running water behind us or the trees and the wind and the birds that are constantly flying by, they help sort out whatever I'm working through.

Life stems from water.

- Yeah, it does.

- And ideas stem from water, creativity, I think in many cases, this is lifeblood of everything we have here.

- It's so beautiful.

The water lilies are just opening now in the sun.

It's like they're happy faces are saying, "I'm so glad you're here."

- This is a positive energy environment and everything we put here is put here to create a positive energy.

- Isn't that wonderful?

- Yeah, I can feel it.

- Yeah, I can too.

We have the feeling of life here and now we have food for life.

Can we go see your vegetables?

- [Nicholas] I would love to show you that too.

- Go there.

- Awesome.

- [Nicholas] So, let me show you both the real jewel box.

- Ah, your vegetable garden?

- Absolutely.

- This is beautiful.

- Oh, wow.

This is fantastic.

- The fruits and vegetables that we all eat, when you have the luxury of walking outside your front door, picking the tomato off the branch or the pepper off the branch, or twisting your watermelon off the vine, to me there's nothing more luxurious than that.

- That's Fabulous.

- Wow.

- And the way this is set up, like the central tree is so outstanding and beautiful and the shapes and contrast to kind of the riot of nature.

- It's a mixture of a French and an English garden.

The French are always into geometry in their gardens.

If you look at them, they're very controlled, nature's manipulated, and English gardens are totally all over the place, much more wild.

The lesson I learned in this garden, this wonderful mixture and juxtaposition of order and chaos.

- Love that.

- And I try very hard to incorporate that in the jewelry too, where you have something, you have yin and yang, but yeah, this is Eden for me.

- It's a wonderful space.

- So cool.

- [Nicholas] I am mortified that the weeds are taking over.

I need to- - [Adam] I wasn't gonna say anything.

- [Madeline] Don't you like to weed?

- I was forced to weed as a child and it's not my favorite and truth be told, I do have some anxiety going out here in the mornings.

I just, my back bothers me when I do it for too long and I find myself having to get up and stretch out and it's more of an ordeal than I'd like it to be.

- Yeah, no, that makes sense.

And I've definitely got some ideas I can show you a little later when we're done.

- I need them desperately, please.

- You mentioned something earlier that really, I think, struck us, which is the seasonality of what you harvest.

Is that something that's important to you?

- Well, what's very important to me is the anticipation of it all.

- How nice.

- I think one of the things that we lack in everyday culture these days when you can go to the supermarket and buy a cherry from Chile or buy a cherry from wherever it might be, at all times, is we lose the anticipation of what nature gives you in its own time.

- Right.

- And now we just, we get it whenever we want, whenever.

- Yeah, like nobody anticipates that moment when the cherry, that first bite of a spring cherry 'cause I had one in February.

- Yeah.

- I love that.

- Yeah, anticipation can sometimes be just as good as the indulgence itself.

- Even tasting it, yeah.

- And this area, this specific area of the world, Dutchess County, New York, has, I think we have the best corn on the planet.

- [Madeline] We do have good corn.

- It's fabulous, and it's the one thing you can't get full time all the time.

So, August for corn, June for cherries, and watermelon, as long as you can keep 'em going.

- [laughing] What fun.

- So, can I take you over and show you the house I grew up in?

- Love to see that.

- That sounds great.

- Let's go, we'll follow you.

You must have wonderful memories of growing up here.

- Absolutely.

One of the great advantages of having a garden is it's a perfect backstop for a baseball.

[all laughing] - I love that.

- So my brother and I would play, one of us would pitch, one of us would hit, and I have great memories of this specific field.

- Oh, how nice.

- Oh, that's awesome.

Well, before we go inside, how about we take a minute and I'll give you a couple pointers on weeding.

- I would love that, I need it.

My back will thank you forever.

- Definitely, I can help you make it a much more enjoyable experience.

So when you were showing me how your weeding strategy in the vegetable garden, it looked a lot like this.

You were kind of in a half squat, you're bent down, you're picking weeds and it's really not surprising that you can't maintain that position for very long.

You gotta get up, you gotta stretch the legs, so I'm gonna suggest moving into one of my favorite positions, which is a half kneel.

So just come all the way down to the ground, because from here you can feel so much less stress on the body, less stress on the back, as you would then, yeah, exactly, go about the business of weeding.

And you could even switch knees as maybe one side gets tired, weeded from here, or even both knees.

- It's more comfortable.

- I like that.

Is it just as good to be on both knees?

- I think so, I mean this, you don't have as much of a tripod if you gotta reach farther, but as you do when you got a leg forward, but certainly this is just as relaxing.

You're down there.

Your back doesn't have to hold you up in the same way.

Your legs don't have to hold you up.

- It's a much more confident position at the end.

- Yeah, and you can do it for much longer.

- For a longer time.

- Yeah.

- And scout about.

- Yeah.

And it leads you right into a position that is gonna really help you treat the kind of nagging or ongoing back pain, and that is from this position, if we start to introduce the idea of pelvic tilt.

So if we look at Madeline, she can move from a posterior to an anterior or a backwards tilt, to a forwards tilt.

- A great stretch.

- Yeah, and you can really feel as you move towards that backwards tilt, that stretch really turn on, right?

- Yeah, you can.

- Down in the thigh.

This is tightness in the hip flexor that is actually causing the lower back to work extra as you walk around all day long.

Because you can imagine if this is tight, it's gonna pull the pelvis forward into that position where the stretch disappears, and that tips the platform that your spine comes up from into this angled position so the spine that has to arch to keep you upright, and when we tilt that pelvis to a more neutral platform, the spine can stay relaxed and stacked up the way it should.

So you can just tip into that neutral position.

Exactly, just like that, and then hold it and just practice holding that and breathing into the stretch that you feel.

- How long would you practice this, this tilt, in a normal day?

- So I might, I mean, I might do this for two, three minutes once or twice a day.

And you could work this into weeding when you're out in the garden, you could be picking weeds and every time you come back up, come into that neutral tilt.

- Will I see- - Engagement stretch.

- An improvement quickly or is it something it's gonna take a lot of time?

- I mean, it depends on like the true root cause of the low back pain, but this is so, so common and I am very confident that within a week to 10 days, you're gonna be feeling a major difference in how that back feels.

- That sounds so fantastic.

- No, it's great.

It starts to work right away.

- Just being conscious of it, like you being able to identify what position you are and what your balance is, is very exciting.

- Yeah, people don't really think about pelvic tilt at all, or that it's influenced by the front of the thigh and that your lower back pain might be coming from- - A whole other place.

- Yeah, a whole other area.

We're always focused on the part that hurts rather than the part that might be causing it.

- Yeah.

- And so we can really take this up a notch by propping up this back foot, so I'm just gonna throw this under here.

- Sure.

- Do it a little bit higher.

- [Nicholas] That's definitely a deeper stretch.

- Yeah, and so now you're stretching one of the quad muscles that crosses both the hip and the knee and this is a really great postural muscle to target because as we come up into this standing position, it'll make it that much easier to find that neutral position as opposed to that forward tilt that forces that lower back to work.

- Yeah, you can feel the stretch even more with my leg up so far.

- Yeah.

All right, so if you're ready, let me take these out.

Oh, there you go.

- There you go.

- And I want you just to try and find that pelvic tilt now that we're standing.

It might be a little bit harder, it might be a little more subtle.

- No, now that you put my foot on that flower pot, you can really identify the muscles and what you need to do to hit, to get balanced again.

- Yeah, and so I want all of us to really just take a minute to try and find neutral.

We don't wanna swing to the opposite end of the pendulum.

We kind of want to be somewhere in the middle in that balanced, neutral place, but now take a few steps and feel the difference in muscle activation through the legs, how that lower back feels, how it can stay relaxed instead of, if you move back into that more kind of normal feeling place where the pelvis is forward and that lower back is- - This is much more powerful.

- [Madeline] Yeah, you feel grounded.

- You feel completely engaged with the earth.

- Yeah.

- It's a big change.

Just being conscious of it.

- I love that feeling.

- Yeah, and your brain is gonna latch onto that feeling- - It already has.

- Subconsciously here and it's gonna want to integrate it.

It knows, it can feel that that is a better position to be in, and so as you start to loosen these muscles up, it's gonna just integrate into your daily life.

And that little tiny subtle difference is gonna make powerful, huge change.

- Well, I mean, we've been talking about balance, basically all day, balance of nature, balance of the body, and I think from the artistic standpoint of all of it, balance is the most essential.

I'm a jeweler, but more an artist in mentality.

I always try to take these lessons of balance, like the physical balance, the garden balance, and apply it to my medium.

- So can we see the jewelry?

- Let's go.

- Come on.

- Yeah, awesome.

- So Nicholas, how did you decide to become a jewelry designer?

- It really wasn't a choice.

It was an experience that I had through my parents who were both artists.

From the day I was born, I came home to these extraordinary rooms full of color.

- Like this room?

- Exactly like this room.

This is a room that, this is our family living room.

But where color becomes really interesting is when it's talking to other colors, it's a relationship, it'll change.

- [Madeline] These earrings look almost organic like you grew it.

- Connecting to organic material is everything.

It's a completely different energy.

It's a completely, to me, it's a positivity bomb.

It just makes you feel human.

I'm gonna bring your attention to this piece right here.

This is eggshells from our chickens in the backyard.

- Wait a minute.

- [Adam] Wow.

- These are eggshells from your chickens?

- This is originally a Vietnamese technique from Hanoi.

They would use it on pottery very often, so I have a lot of the geometry here, but I've surrounded it by the most organic materials that I could, creating that, once again, balance that doesn't seem to make sense.

- Can I try that on?

- Of course you can.

- [Madeline] Okay, so I cannot get over the idea of putting eggshells with diamonds.

- That is really cool.

- I'm sorry.

That is beyond cool.

- I love this look and texture of that.

- It's just wonderful to hear you talk about the passion you have for your jewelry.

The pieces are just magnificent.

They're really precious.

- I appreciate that, but I think going outside and doing what we did today and what so many of your viewers do by just going for walks around their neighborhood and seeing what's out there, you can't help but bring it home, dream about it, wake up, and if you choose to execute that, you choose to execute that.

It's always wonderful when you do.

- Maybe you can make more jewelry makers out there.

I hope they wanna make, we need some help, but it's such a beautiful voice.

Jewelry is a language.

- It is, it's wonderful.

- [Nicholas] I've got one more place I want to take you to.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, I wanna show you my office now.

This is really the place the creations are done and it's done with a lot of the colors that I see in the fields around us.

As you can see on the table at the moment, we've got a bunch of flowers, we have some vegetables from the garden with leafy greens.

- The colors are amazing.

- This tone is so beautiful, Nicholas.

- That's a striped German.

It's also called a hillbilly in some places.

And you've got this wonderful rich yellow that can be accented by opal in many instances.

You can pull some of the tones out of that and find the right gemstone.

- I didn't even know that's what opal looks like.

- In the rock, that is.

- Wow.

- Opal's often rainwater that's petrified between levels of sand and you get wonderful tones outside of just the silica that gives it that play of color.

- [Madeline] Right, oh, how wonderful.

- But you get play of color in a tomato too, and you get play of color in an apple.

- Look at that.

- And these are two tones.

You generally don't see in the jewelry world the strawberry tone along with something that's maybe more celadon green leaning into a beige neutral.

- Is that why you use some of these other materials to get those tones?

- It's the only place I can find a natural example of a very specific tone that I want out of the ordinary parlance of how jewelry is created and those colors change.

Let me show you one thing.

This is sugilite from Namibia, but you get this incredible rich purple.

Now, you can borrow that here, potentially.

- Oh, that's fabulous.

- They come alive, and this is what the stone's gonna look like when it's polished.

But ultimately I'm a student and I sit at the table with the dahlias and I'm trying to learn from these tones because nature never has one singular tone.

If it's a blade of grass or a tree, you've always got the lighter shades of green at the top, darker underneath, and the flowers will do the same thing.

You've got this rich dark here, a little bit lighter magenta there with just flecks of celadon and white and I try to create a different language by borrowing tones, and the easiest way for me to do that is to, number one, learn from them, and number two, go out and find these rocks because you never know, and you learn every year, what the earth will give you.

These eggs, for instance, these are from the hen house.

This is essentially the language that we're working with.

- [Madeline] Right.

- I mean, you can see- - Look at that.

- You can see the resemblance.

- You can see the tones.

- Wow.

- [Nicholas] And if you want pop it with this a little bit- - Which you have.

- That's what we've done.

Get the purple of the quahog, and then you can also pull some of that orange, that light orange out in the cassis pearl.

- Wow.

- Isn't that fantastic?

I'm just dying to see the other side of that ring.

- This one?

Oh.

[all laughing] This is a favorite.

- Nicholas, This ring I think is just breathtaking.

The combination of colors and materials, it just is beautiful.

- This is very much a summertime ring.

We finished this ring maybe two weeks ago.

This was happening while the design process was happening.

It's all, all these colors in it are drawn from things that have happened on the farm in the last say month and a half.

- How fantastic.

- Wow.

I feel like I can even see variation in that central gemstone.

- You absolutely can.

- Look at that.

- [Nicholas] You can see it's a leafy green.

- Oh, definitely.

- And it's brown around it, which references very much the woods, and then here are the flowers underneath.

All of these are my colors.

They're the colors that if I was a painter, would be on my easel.

- Yeah.

- But fortunately, I can go out, take them from the garden and find them in the ground.

And ignoring those multitudes of hues that speak differently with others is my great joy in life.

- Yeah, I can tell.

So what about that amazing piece.

- Yeah.

- That.

- I'm glad you mentioned this.

- Yeah that looks spectacular.

- This is- - A lot of hues going on there.

- This is fire opal and diamond.

It's a rather formal piece of jewelry.

- Oh wow, this is quite heavy.

Look at the shapes.

- [Nicholas] And you see the lighter tones.

- You call this fire?

- [Nicholas] The lighter tones are in there.

- Look at that.

- Yeah.

- [Nicholas] And you can put it on the tomato as well.

- Wow.

- Oh my, look at that.

- Wow.

- [Madeline] This is how I feel your pieces, they're living.

- What I'm trying to emphasize in the pieces is life.

- Well, we thank you so much for letting us into your world and sharing so much with us, Nicholas.

- I loved having you here, and thank you so much for putting my body back together.

- My pleasure.

- I was struggling and we're in a better place.

- Yeah, I hope it works out for you.

- I've learned so much talking to you too about how important it is to keep things simple when you create.

Simplicity is often the hardest thing- - Absolutely.

- To achieve because of all the subtleties in it.

- Well, I think I can speak for both of us by saying we are never gonna look at color the same way, and we really will look for the balance that nature brings in terms of color and how you incorporate that.

We'll never forget this experience.

- [Announcer] Get Garden Fit with us.

[upbeat music] [gentle music] Garden set is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[bright music] [gentle music]