GARDENFIT

- [Madeline] 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 "GardenFit"?

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.

- [Narrator] "GardenFit" is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[bright instrumental music] - Adam, the next person we're gonna visit I met by chance.

So I had gone to an art exhibition at the Berkshire Botanical Garden, and the first painting I saw just really made me smile.

It was so colorful and so inviting.

And the artist was standing right there, and I started to talk to him about his art.

His name is Jose Alvarez D.O.P.A.

Nature has totally influenced the way he creates, and I was so taken by the materials that he used.

There were feathers and sequins and porcupine quills, all kinds of elements from nature.

And all of it was put on a canvas of mica.

- Mica, like the flaky rock?

- Yeah, like the flaky rock.

I think we'll have to ask Jose how he kind of either shaves that rock, or what techniques he uses to literally make a canvas for his paintings.

- Wow, that sounds really interesting.

- It's exciting.

And then all these elements and other shapes that he puts on it and different types of paint kind of create this collage effect.

It's almost like looking at a wonderland.

And I just kept thinking about Jose and his work.

And I went back to him and I said, Jose, by any chance, do you garden?

- I feel like you have a sixth sense for gardeners.

- Somehow that happened right then, because he pulled out his cell phone, he whipped it out of his pocket and started to show me pictures of his garden that he created, a tropical two-acre garden in Fort Lauderdale.

And I wanted to put us in the mood to visit him in my little tropical garden.

His is gigantic.

I can't keep these plants out all the time like he can, but I just love the colors and the shapes of tropical plants.

The trees have come together in combinations like I would plant perennials.

The trees seem to intertwine in a special way, but even the variety of leaf color, all the leaves are colorful, just like his paintings.

And his art is like really walking through a magical garden.

- I cannot wait to see this art, and I love the lushness of the tropics, so.

- I think you'll really, you'll love seeing Jose.

[upbeat instrumental music] Adam, I cannot wait for you to meet Jose.

He's such a fabulous guy.

And see his garden.

Look at this.

- Whoa!

- Wow, the scale of it.

- It's like a full-on jungle.

- There he is, Jose!

- Madeline.

- Jose, let me introduce you to Adam Schersten.

This is Jose Alvarez D.O.P.A.

- Nice to meet you.

- Great to meet you.

- We're here!

- Yes, finally.

- And it's so wonderful to be here and see this garden that you have created.

I think for about 30 years you've been working on it?

- Yes.

- Yeah, so that's a minute.

- Yes.

- Yeah, what connected you to nature, Jose?

What was the beginning of the inspiration and the relationship that you have with nature?

- Well, I come from Venezuela.

It is a tropical country.

And the nature there is very exuberant.

And I just wanted to reproduce that excitement and that kind of flora.

I really was very much influenced by that.

- Isn't that great?

And the colors, I bet?

- Yes.

- Probably the big part of his life and his art.

And it's so welcoming.

And I'm looking, it just sort of makes you wanna walk through it.

- It's amazing, it looks like a sort of nursery gone wild.

[Jose and Madeline laugh] - It is like that.

So let's explore.

- Yeah, we shall.

- Into the jungle.

- Yes.

You'll see this is, like, the archway that I wanted to kind of welcome people.

Like touching at the top and making you through this kind of tunnels going in.

- And I love the way it looks.

Those chairs make you really want to come and sit here and enjoy the garden.

- [Jose] They were a way for my late husband and I to enjoy the garden late in the day.

It was the most magical hour of the day for us.

- [Madeline] How wonderful.

Isn't it nice to really relax in the garden and see the benefit of all your work and labor?

- [Jose] Yes, yeah.

- [Madeline] Jose, wow.

- [Adam] Wow.

- This is definitely a riot of color.

- Yes.

- [Madeline] It's fantastic.

- [Jose] Yes.

- So, how big were these plants when you first put them in?

- They're always quite small, unless I prune them and I utilize the piece that I have pruned and plant it again.

And that's how I propagate a lot of what you see here.

I like to have this continuity of texture and color.

And variations is very important, as you can see, to me.

- Yeah, I love the leaves.

They're so beautiful.

So, the maintenance on this, every year you cut them down?

- Yes, I uproot them and bring them back.

- That's a lot of work.

- Yes.

- It's a lot of cutting.

We don't have to talk about that, I think.

But they're really fabulous.

And it's sort of, again, envelops you in color.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

You can really see the understory this kind of mid-story.

And then the big trees in the back.

It's beautiful.

- And the variety of plants in here, Jose, the layering, the different colors of the leaves and sizes of each plant, it's really like your paintings.

- [Jose] Yes.

- [Madeline] Do you feel that the garden informs your art, or your art informs your garden?

- Oh, definitely.

There's a conversation between the two.

The garden definitely feeds me, and it brings me all the synergy that I translate into the work, and then the shapes that I come up with, then I bring them back into the garden.

The layering of shape, color, forms, rhythms within the garden is what creates the energy.

- It's really your painting.

- [Jose] Yes.

- You're painting with leaves and plants.

- [Jose] Whatever is there, use it to tell the story.

- And so, do you have favorite plants?

- I do.

I like alocasias very much.

- [Madeline] You have beautiful alocasias here.

I love the combination of colors.

- [Jose] Yes.

- [Adam] These are the big, giant leaves?

- [Jose] Mhm.

- They look like elephant ears.

- Yeah.

- And I think these coconuts, obviously they fall from some of the palm trees here.

- [Jose] Yes.

- [Madeline] And you place them there?

- Yes, this is my coconut nursery.

So I like to have the plants grow into a solid little plant before I transplant them into another area of the garden.

The recycling part of the garden is very important to me, to keep producing the rest of the garden as a material from the ones that were already planted.

- [Madeline] So, you just give them more territory?

- Yes.

- New territory?

Those are the biggest seeds I've ever seen.

Look at them.

- [Adam] And are they just still growing out of that coconut, or do you think some of them have roots already?

- I think they have roots already.

But I like them to be strong enough before I transplant them.

- Yeah, I love the ground cover.

- Yeah.

Does that help with the weeding?

It kind of knocks down all the other... - Yeah, I don't like to see bare soil like that.

So the ground covers, it kind of, it's this layering that I'm so fond of.

I feel that it's just like this unity within the whole garden.

- I like not seeing soil also.

We have that in common.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So I would like to show you our magical garden.

- Ooh, that sounds exciting.

- [Adam] Sounds fun, yeah.

- Of course, let's go.

- Let's go.

- Okay.

- Yes.

[gentle instrumental music] - Wow, Jose, this is definitely a magical garden.

It just looks almost like the Everglades.

I mean, all these plants are kind of growing together.

- I wanted to create a very primordial garden, looking very much like a jungle.

So creating the pond and all the trees around it and letting nature take over, directing it a little bit.

But it's that element of wildness that I really enjoyed in this particular area of the garden.

But it also has become like a habitat for a lot of the wildlife.

Before, when we move in here, there was lawn and nothing existed there.

It was just dead.

And now, as you can hear, it just is everywhere.

Bird, all kinds of wildlife, and I really, really love that.

- And the other thing that really impresses me is the verticality of this garden.

Because you really plant the trees, and, you know, they're the vines again, the different ferns that are growing on them.

And the fact that you have trees that grow together almost like people plant perennials, that they kind of are combination trees, it's really magical.

- Well, you have a good composition of all those different elements of a garden and of a space that you will see in the wild where there is no hierarchy, but, rather, it's just the history of this space as it grows and it transforms.

- It's pretty impressive how that tree is really leaning.

And you got it to really stay healthy?

- Well, that tree is the result of Hurricane Wilma, and it was a terrible moment for me and my garden.

It just look really, really damaged.

And I was almost ready to give up on it.

But six months later, it completely recovered.

And it taught me a huge lesson, which is that you work with it exactly as it is.

This is life happening in the garden.

And now I think it looks even better because it's just different.

- [Madeline] It is different, and you've saved the trees.

- [Jose] Yeah, it's like a great metaphor for life in my garden.

- [Madeline] Isn't that great?

- I feel like I'm learning some truth about houseplants.

I've seen a lot of these in pots back home, but they're here and they're 20 feet tall and just have a whole different life to them.

- Well, they have room for their roots here.

[group laughs] Lots of room.

Where are we going now?

- So we shall go to the heart of the garden now.

- Ooh!

- Let me show you.

[birds chirp] - Jose, this pandanus.

This is like a fun tree house.

It's just, like, amazing.

How big was this when you first planted it?

- It was actually a small little plant.

And we planted it here as soon as we move in.

And this is the result after 36 years.

- It's spectacular.

- Are you sure this is safe to be under?

[group laughs] - Well, this canopy, it's very, you know, it's like a shelter.

I call it the the heart of the garden because it was, like, almost like the first plant that we put in here.

- Oh, that's lovely.

And is this how it, you know, spreads?

I mean, it puts its roots down?

- Yeah, you can see here, it just start bringing the roots down and then until it touches the ground and they need anchors.

It has a little, you know, a few, little spines there, but, and that's how it, the plant, knows it can keep growing and holding the weight of the branches above.

- It's fantastic.

- Yeah, but I think it's just so spectacular.

- And I think the way the leaves intertwine, I mean, it's like a roof of leaves.

It's just beautiful.

- [Adam] Think you'd be safe in a rainstorm in here.

- [Madeline] Yeah, you would.

- It's like natural basketry here.

The weaving of the roots and the way that the branches just spread out, I just find it very sculptural.

- I think this would be a super place for a picnic.

- Yes.

- We should have lunch here.

[Jose chuckles] - [Adam] That's not a bad idea.

- [Jose] Yes, yes.

- It makes you smile, like your whole garden, Jose.

It's really such a special environment.

And it's so happy.

- Yeah, I'm so, I'm so pleased that you're enjoying it, because it's really, it was done in that spirit, you know?

Just beautiful place to be in.

- All of your plants just have this, like, immense size to them.

And before, when we were in that color garden, you had mentioned all the pruning and taking those clippings and putting them back in.

And I'm sure that has got to be putting a toll on the body.

And we maybe have some things that we could talk about?

- It does, indeed.

And yes, and I would like you to show me how to work with some of that muscle strain.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So maybe we go somewhere where there's a little more room and we can discuss.

- Yes, let's do that.

- We'll follow you.

- Awesome.

- [Adam] Jose, tell me what's bothering you.

- Well, I've been having problems with my shoulder every time I try to lift my arm.

I feel, like, a pinch here, a pain.

- Pretty common, right?

- It's very, very common.

And there's really, like, three things to think about when you're using your arm and trying to raise it, 'cause there's not a lot of space in here.

So once an injury starts happening and you get a pinch, it swells up and then it pinches again and it stays swollen.

And we really, what I want to teach you is how to keep that clearance around so that you can move in a way where that swelling can start to go down instead of get pinched and re-aggravated every time you use your arm.

So the three things are, one is the height of your chest.

So if we're in a hunched position and you use your arms, you're gonna cause problems.

So height of chest, okay?

The next is rotation of the arm.

And I notice when you raise your arm, the elbows are out like this.

But yeah, if you turn them and you raise the arm, you'll have a little less of a chance of really pinching.

And then, the last one is the height of the shoulder blade.

And we wanna make sure that the shoulder blade doesn't rise with the arm as you come up.

So you've got three things.

You've got your height of your chest.

You've got your rotation of your arm.

Good.

And then you've got the height of your shoulder blades.

So you raise the arm and you really let the shoulder blade move out of the way from underneath.

And so a way that you can work on these three things with a little bit of help is, like, with a tree or any, a wall or any sort of kind of vertical space where you don't have to hold the weight of your arm out.

You can let something else do it.

You can just use the edge of this tree to kind of walk your arm up, get it up nice and high beyond where it would bother you by using the height of your chest, using the rotation of your arm, and the activation of your shoulder blade.

And from here, yeah, now that you've got a good grip, the tree's gonna hold your arm up, and you can kind of move through some of these body positions and really get good at that external rotation.

You can see how that really scoops that scapula into a new position.

We wanna stay out of here.

We can practice now maybe a little up and down from the shoulder blade.

Yep.

And you can see that, maybe as you come up you get a little bit of pinch.

And we wanna stay down to let that shoulder blade move out of the way from the bottom.

And then all the while making sure that we're staying tall through that.

So these three things, your chest height, which is really gonna flatten the middle of your back; the rotation of the arm and the height of that shoulder blade are the three things to keep in mind as you go to try and raise that arm.

And so by using this, you can really help retrain those muscles to turn on as you're moving the arm without that pain and without that re-injury.

You can think about, each time it pinches, you really re-injuring and restarting the swelling and the healing process.

And so Madeline and I have done a lot of work with this.

And she can show you that by raising that arm with some rotation, keeping that shoulder-- - I never raise my shoulder now.

I mean, I love that position.

Kind of the stretch, even.

I don't know if that's right to say it, but I like that feeling.

- Certainly, things are moving that aren't normally moving when you put that rotation in there.

And it's real easy.

And as a demonstration to really turn those palms up.

But it's also important to remember that we have a wrist that we can use to turn against the arm.

We don't have to always turn the arm and the wrist together.

And that's where retraining how you move...

Practice from here, turn your arms out, and then turn your wrist back in on top.

Yeah, and so you can see it's really just kind of, bone positioning is gonna eliminate that pinch.

And if you can just at least maintain, you know, overthinking using your arm for a week or two, that swelling may go down, and you can then be a little less strict on yourself.

And then if it ever comes up again, you've got these, you know, three things to consider to help you get that healing process started again, so the swelling can go down.

The real-world application can be these loppers that you're using to trim the trees.

Natural tendency is gonna be for those elbows to be out, but with control, and so using those muscles that we've just been practicing with here, well, let's watch Madeline first.

Elbows may wanna be out as you open.

- And my shoulders, right?

They feel funny.

- Shoulders coming right up, exactly.

And so we think of our three things.

We get our height in the chest.

Exactly.

We get the rotation in the arms.

And then as we use the arms, we try not to let those shoulders rise too much.

And really let the shoulder blade move from the bottom.

- Give it a try, Jose.

- So we go high in the chest, good.

So we get some activation here.

And keeping those arms turned out.

Exactly.

Yeah, and then maybe, yeah, turn it up like that.

Yeah, it'll be a little less heavy to, exactly.

- Those are heavy loppers.

- Yes, they're big.

And you can really, you could even use this in the studio.

When you're working on a big piece of artwork and you've gotta reach up towards the top, think of these three things.

Get some height, get some rotation, and then try and keep this space open and let that shoulder blade move out of the way from underneath as you're working overhead.

- Yeah.

Well, I will pay attention to that.

And since we're talking about painting and art, I would like to show you my studio and how my garden inspires my work and vice versa.

- How exciting.

Let's go to the studio.

- Sounds great.

- Jose, when you started doing art, what did you start doing first?

- I was first a performance artist, and I was doing a performance where I was using crystals as the emblem of the performance.

I called that the colors performance, and it has a whole history.

And I did that for many years.

And then I felt that I have done everything I could with it, and I wanted to transition from performative work to two-dimensional work.

I just didn't know how.

And then, talking with a geologist friend of mine that I said, I would like to use some kind of crystal that could be flat, he said, "I think what you need is mica."

So he sent it to me, and it was just some pieces.

And when I split it, I said, this is it.

When I saw that kind of reflective quality of it and the shimmer, I said, it becomes almost like a spiritual object.

That's how my crystal paintings started to develop, and it became a whole body of work.

- [Madeline] So, what do you call this painting?

- [Jose] This is called "Between the Sun and the Moon, Love is Forever."

- You didn't stay with this either?

You wanted to progress into some other art form?

- It came organically that, after I started working with this, other material came into my studio and it was more, not as corrugated, but flat.

When I started splitting it, it was really thin.

And then I started creating a different type of canvas, which is this type of canvas here.

And it became like a very flat surface.

- [Adam] Oh, wow.

- Where I felt that it was very easy to work on it.

And then I started painting on that and collaging on that.

I've been inspired by all these natural elements.

And as you can see, very much looks like an interstellar garden.

- [Madeline] That is such a beautiful garden.

I mean, really, it's the Jose garden.

- Yes.

- Really.

But the colors are spectacular.

- Yeah, well, I need the piece to invite you in, to bring you into the work and let you get lost within it, just like I want that feeling in my garden to be as well.

Invite you in, and you'll start kind of meandering within it.

I want you to do the same thing within the work.

- So, Jose, could you show us how you actually paint on that mica canvas?

- I can actually show you some of the techniques that I use in the work.

Adam, would you mind giving me a hand?

- [Adam] Absolutely.

- Bring it down.

Walk around the table.

Come this way.

And then bring it down, like this.

- Oh, that's so beautiful.

- Wow.

- There are different techniques that I use, but I'm gonna show you now the way in which I approach the feather work.

And I usually start with a palette, predetermined if I need to, and I start just getting the feathers ready and go around in a circle to create the particular color that I need.

For instance, I have some already done here.

- [Adam] Wow.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness.

- So you have pieces where I combine a specific color palette.

- [Adam] Oh, it's beautiful.

- See, and then I have other ones.

And depending on the kind of work that I need and the kind of impact that I want, they become part of the work.

- That is just gorgeous.

- See, so.

- [Madeline] Look at that.

- [Adam] Wow.

- It all depends on how the composition is going.

- [Madeline] Right.

- And what I need.

And, and yeah.

- Oh, look at that.

- Wow.

- Like that.

- And the inside of that circle is painted.

- Yeah, yeah, in colored pencil, gouache and acrylic.

And that's pretty much how I work with the feathers.

I create the feather constructions first, and then as I start working, then I start establishing the palette of the piece, and then I start combining depending on what I want.

- And placing them.

Jose, besides the feathers, what other natural materials do you use?

- Well, let me show you here.

I also use the porcupine quills.

I show you.

- Porcupine quills?

- Porcupine quills, yeah, you can see here I size them, and then-- - [Adam] Wow.

- I use them in the work like this.

- [Adam] I love that you have them all pre-made, and you just, like, sit and work on those, and then they come into-- - [Jose] Yeah.

- [Adam] And you can just drop on incredible amounts of detail.

- And so, what about the variety of paints that you use?

It's almost like you collage paint.

- Sometimes it's collage.

Sometimes it's painted on top of the mica.

Sometimes it's adding additive, like, in here, I'm using acrylic, and then I just add a regular additive to give it a different type of viscosity.

- Yeah, like this stuff here, it looks like it's almost been poured on.

- [Madeline] Right.

- They all have different type of treatment depending on what I need.

This is a little lighter.

So then I can just work my way to here.

- And is that what gives it the relief, that kind of textural look?

- It depends on the type of additive that I use.

And then I just color like this all throughout the piece.

It's the amount of time invested that I think is the energy that you can view the work with, and that the viewer feels in this period in which it was made.

- Yeah, that's so beautiful.

I know the first time I saw his painting, it made me smile.

- Yes, yes, that was wonderful.

- But it was wonderful.

It was, like, meant to be.

- Yes.

- We had such a fantastic time going through your garden, Jose.

Being in your world and seeing your art, I mean, what a treat.

- Thank you both for having come to my space and to see the garden and to see the studio.

And I just feel so privileged.

This is a garden that my husband and I, James Randi, and I, created for each other, and I just feel so privileged that I'm able to share it with you and your viewers.

- How wonderful.

- Thank you so much.

Such a pleasure.

[indistinct speaking] - [Narrator] Get "GardenFit" with us.

[upbeat instrumental music] [upbeat instrumental music continues] [upbeat tune] "GardenFit" is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[bright instrumental music] [cheerful tune]