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 1] "GardenFit" is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[bright instrumental music] - [Madeline] Adam, we are going to New Orleans.

- Musician?

- Definitely a musician.

We're visiting Leslie Martin, and he's a jazz pianist.

- Oh, cool.

- [Madeline] Yeah, and just like you, he plays the piano.

He started when he was 14.

- [Adam] I like this guy.

- Yeah, and he actually did a gig by the time he was 15.

He travels the country, if not the world, with his band, with Squirrel Nut Zippers.

- [Adam] Wow.

- [Madeline] So that's pretty impressive.

- [Adam] That's very cool.

- [Madeline] Now, I know that you also play the piano in a band.

- [Adam] I do.

We're not traveling the world, but.. - [Madeline] Not yet.

- Right.

But it's really just a great group of friends, and we play for the love of hanging out and making music.

And we don't do jazz, we do covers of disco, rock and funk.

But it's a really great time.

- It is, 'cause I've actually come to some of your performances, and I've loved them.

And I think you're all absolutely great.

- It's true.

We have been known to sell out a few shows for friends and family.

- The other thing that's so nice about Leslie is that he really is a besotted gardener.

So much so that he bought an extra lot of land next to his so he could expand his garden.

He's been influenced by English style gardens, as well as Japanese style gardens, which is kind of an interesting combination.

- Yeah, no, I'm curious to see what someone does with an extra lot that they've bought for making a bigger garden instead of a bigger house.

- Yeah, I think we're gonna see that.

And the other thing that the two of you have in common is he loves trees.

He has planted over 150 trees, of which a large proportion are bald cypresses.

- Wow.

- Yeah, I think he's planted them around the perimeter of his garden.

- Oh, bald cypress are great.

- [Madeline] They are.

- I can't wait to see this.

- He loves to prune, and he actually has taught himself the Japanese technique of Niwaki pruning.

- Oh, cool.

I do, I have bonsai trees, so that's very similar.

I really would love to be able to do that one day when I've got more space, 'cause it's basically larger bonsai trees in the ground.

- I've never even tried that.

I'm really interested to see what that looks like... - It's really fun.

- And learn about that.

He also has a lot of interesting features in his garden.

As if he doesn't have a lot to do each day, he's built so many things on his property, and he's actually put in a waterfall, which is why I brought you here to our little waterfall.

- [Adam] Is this a natural spring?

- [Madeline] It's a natural pump.

- [Adam] Okay.

- Which I think I have in common with Leslie.

- Well, I guess real or fake, this is a really nice sound to have in your garden.

- I do enjoy just sitting here literally and listening.

The other thing that I think is really interesting is Leslie fills a lot of his new beds with plants that he digs from the wild ferns and ironwood plants that he loves to collect.

And so that's some of the ways he really populates the new gardens that he's creating.

It'll be wonderful to see all the features and plants that he has created for his garden.

And maybe he'll even play the piano for us.

- Maybe I can get him to teach me a thing or two.

- I bet he'd love that.

[upbeat bouncy music] Oh, look at this, Adam.

- [Adam] Wow.

- [Madeline] There's Leslie.

- Hey, Madeline.

- [Madeline] Leslie, so nice to see you.

- Welcome, thanks for coming out here.

- Thank you.

Leslie, this is Adam Schersten.

- Hey, Adam, nice to meet you.

- Leslie Martin.

- Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- We made it.

- Yes, yes, made it all the way out here.

- So tell us, what inspired you to garden?

- I started gardening with my parents when I was a young kid, and they always had the nicest garden in the neighborhood, so we had a lot of pride.

- [Madeline] So that was a high bar?

- Yes.

- So this guy, Adam, plays his piano four hours a day, works in his garden four hours a day.

And that's when he's not touring around the world.

So maybe tell us some of the things that inspired you to create this garden.

- So many things.

English cottage gardens.

Claude Monet's Giverney, for sure.

Japanese-style gardens, you name it.

- [Madeline] That's an amazing mix.

You're a busy chap.

- That is true.

I don't have many friends.

[Madeline & Adam laugh] - But you have-- - Your plants are your friends.

- That's right.

- Yeah, exactly.

Where would you like us to start?

- Let's start with my little shade garden here.

- Okay.

Oh, how lovely.

So, Leslie, what was here before, 20 years ago?

- The only thing that was really here was this big pine tree and nothing else.

Just this fence.

Probably three years old, I'd say.

And I was trying to create a, I wanted a nice shade bed in my yard, and this is my attempt.

Of course, I have some creeping rosemary on the edge.

It's not a shade plant at all, but the microclimate with the sun coming in.

- I can't believe you're growing rosemary like this.

Such a treat.

It's like morning coffee, [chuckles] it's lovely.

- To create more shade, I put 10 sweet bay magnolias.

And that's to create a denser shade.

- So they'll make a big canopy eventually.

- Yeah, they're growing slowly under the shade, but they're gonna make a nice canopy.

And it's really important to have a lot of different plant combinations and texture combinations.

- [Madeline] But it's all green.

- You could have any color you want as long as it's green, as Henry Ford would say.

My favorite texture combinations is the blue juncus grass, tractor seat plants, cast iron plants.

Back there is irises, asparagus, ferns, just to name a few.

- I love how much is going on in here.

I mean, usually shade gardens I feel like are limited to just a couple of different species, but this is like... - [Madeline] It's wonderful.

- [Adam] Diverse.

Did you lug the rock in too?

- Yeah, I did.

Luckily it's volcanic rock, so it's pretty light.

- It's an amazing combination of plants.

But I do see one bit of flower.

- Yeah, right around the edge, I planted a giant rudbeckia, and it has to be a world record.

If somebody could call the Guinness Book of World Records and get 'em over here.

It's every bit of seven foot tall.

- Wow, that's tall.

I love the little features of driftwood in between.

So, where do you get that?

- Well, the Mississippi River is a couple of blocks away, so we do a lot of driftwood picking on my days off.

- When you're not working.

- [Leslie] That's right.

- Yeah, what fun.

They're really wonderful combination of sort of the wood and the green playing off each other.

It's really wonderful.

So this is all about combining really different shapes and different colors of green.

- Most definitely.

- It's beautiful.

It's wonderful.

So let's, can we move on?

- Yes, yes.

- Great.

Well, in this bed, the first thing you can't help but notice is this wonderful tree.

Can you tell us about this?

- Beautiful Japanese magnolia that I've been pruning over the years.

It's starting to come into shape.

Probably twice a year, I give it a nice hard pruning.

Yes.

- And then once you give it, I see that you can see, look, all the little places you've pruned.

It doesn't stop it from flowering.

- Well, I try to prune it earlier in the year after it finished flowering to give it a whole year to recover, so I'm careful mostly.

- Yeah, the timing is key.

- It is.

- But really, that effect of the visible trunk out to these little pads, it looks beautiful.

- [Madeline] It does.

- [Leslie] Thank you.

- It's really charming, and it looks so balanced.

It looks happy holding itself up there.

- Beautiful tree, perfect size for this space.

- And let's walk down and look at these trees.

- Well, here's a persimmon tree.

See the fruit on it right now?

- Oh, yes.

- Oh, yeah.

- [Madeline] That's exciting.

- [Leslie] Yeah.

- [Madeline] So, you get a lot of fruit from your garden?

- That's right.

I have some edibles dotted in here and there.

I have an eastern red cedar back there.

That's a native.

Make a little Christmas tree and nice winter interest.

- Wow.

- These are azalea?

- Yep, three azaleas there.

Some Japanese yew, foxtail ferns, some Louisiana irises here.

It's weeping love grass here.

- It's weeping love grass?

- Yep.

- Is it unhappy?

Did it lose its love?

- I'm not sure, but they use it for golf course rough, so golfers are unhappy when they get their balls stuck in there.

- [laughs] I bet!

And I love that tree.

- Yep, that's a Japanese plum.

Have several of those dotted around the garden.

- Do you get plums also, up that tree?

- I do, I get the Japanese plums, yes.

- Did you also prune that to have that, those kind of, I call them shelves.

What's, is there a technical name for how you prune them?

- Clouds would be.

- Clouds.

- You know, the Japanese term cloud pruning, I guess some people would call it.

- So you end up having one stalk and then letting it kind of spread a little and cut, pruning it and then having another?

- Yep, ramification, getting the pads set in place.

- Now, you said that this is an English-inspired garden?

- Well, right here I have an English-inspired feature.

- [Madeline] Oh, yes, you do.

- [Adam] Oh, I noticed that on the way in.

- [Madeline] This Jasmine has a circle in it.

- [Leslie] Yeah, I needed a way for the outside world to see in, and what better way than a little English cottage garden cut out hole?

- That's a very traditional English feature.

You walk through all these different hedges and alleys, and they, a lot of them have these big circles cut out in them so you can peek.

- Yes, this is one of the few places in the garden with symmetry, with the two Japanese plums framing this central axis that goes all the way to the bench back there, a nice inviting place to sit.

- I think that's a wonderful design feature that you've done that.

Really, for someone who hasn't studied landscape design, it's very impressive that you came up with this whole access idea.

And even this path starts you off thinking, I'm gonna look down here.

- Thank you.

I've studied a lot of English gardens, and I know all about the long views.

- Isn't that great?

It's just charming.

- Well, would you all like to continue on?

I created this natural area for my little daughter, little baby Ginny.

- Oh, how sweet, let's do that.

How old is your daughter?

- She's 2 1/2 now.

- Oh, she is little.

- Yes.

- [Adam] Oh, I love this little trailhead sign.

- [Madeline] "Ginny's Trail."

We're lucky we came the right day, it's open.

- That's right, it's a little trailhead I made for Ginny's trail.

It's a penny to get in or $0.10 for a lifetime membership.

- Oh, that's [laughs] - Kind of you to leave some extra pennies for those of us that might have forgotten our cash.

- Well worth it.

- [Madeline] It certainly is well worth it, and I love all the handmade signs.

- [Adam] Yeah.

- [Madeline] It's just charming.

- All right, should we continue on?

- Yes.

This is such a charming little garden.

It looks like a meadow.

- Yeah, so my little mini wildflower meadow that I'm creating.

- What a lovely thing to be able to have your daughter come out and learn to garden right here in your backyard with you.

That's just fantastic.

- Yeah, we love to come out here and walk through the woods.

- And she has her own garden.

And look at that fence.

Seems like you probably made that too.

- That's right, some more driftwood picking.

And a little gate, a little folly there.

- Isn't that great?

You get that at the riverbank also?

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- [Adam] And, Madeline, look, there's a little Woodland trail.

- [Madeline] That's so sweet.

- [Adam] You can walk in the cypress.

- So let's talk about the cypress trees, because they seem to be bordering most of your property.

When did you get so many cypress trees?

- I bought 'em probably 10 or 15 years ago for $0.25 apiece.

And they were no more than a foot tall.

A lot of patience.

I have 78 of them growing in the yard right now.

- [Madeline] Wow, that's impressive.

- 78!

- Yeah, that's right.

- Each one being, like, trimmed by you.

- [Leslie] Yeah, trying to keep 'em up.

- [Adam] Wow.

- [Madeline] They're really wonderful.

And they certainly make a nice border to the garden.

Really helps separate you from the city.

- Being in the middle of the city, it's a nice green backdrop.

- Wonderful.

- All right, should we continue along?

- Let's do that.

- Open up this gate.

All right.

[gentle music] This way, yeah.

[bright gentle music] - Leslie, this raised area.

Your whole garden is flat.

This isn't.

What did you do?

- Well, I had to get rid of dirt.

I had a problem area with the drainage, so I took all the dirt and created a hill.

And it left a perfect opportunity to do this little water feature here, little waterfall.

- I love that.

- [Leslie] Collect the rainwater that falls in the yard and turn it into a nice little waterfall.

- And then you brought in these amazing rocks?

- Yeah, that was a quite a job.

It took weeks to place all these with a couple of my friends, and I think some of them are still my friends.

[group laughs] - Might have lost a few.

- I think.

- A lot to ask.

And then your little driftwood snake?

- [Leslie] Yeah, I needed a little danger, a couple of dangerous elements in there.

- Makes another appearance.

- And then, again, it seems like you have surrounded this feature with so many of the plants you love and some new ones.

So, what is that plant?

- Well, we have the yaupon holly.

This is a weeping variety here.

- [Madeline] Wow.

- The only plant in North America I read that has caffeine in it.

- [Madeline] Really?

- Can make a tea out of it.

- [Madeline] Oh, wow, have you tried that?

- Not yet.

- And then all of these other plants that grow around it, including your rosemary.

- Rosemary, elephant ears that I dug up out of the wild.

- [Madeline] Really?

- [Leslie] Just love it up there, yeah.

- Well, that's an economical way to enhance the garden.

- That's right, that's right.

You get things out of nature, especially if you own the land.

- [Madeline] You seem to do that a lot.

- I do, I do.

I have a little storage area.

- [Madeline] Isn't that great?

- Secret spots.

- [Madeline] Keep things that you love.

- Yes.

- [Madeline] And then put in a bridge.

- [Leslie] That's a, I didn't wanna separate the yard, so this is a bridge strong enough to hold a car if it needs to drive over it, yes.

- [Adam] Nice overbuild.

- [Leslie] That's right.

- [Adam] Yeah.

- Well, especially if you take, like, you know, a big car if you're moving soil again.

- [Leslie] If you need to, it's there.

- Really, I mean, the sound is so refreshing that I almost wanna, like, jump in there.

- It does, it really beckons you.

And the cypresses look so beautiful here.

- Thank you.

- They're really charming up on top of that knoll.

- Little Ginny loves the water.

She loves to dip her feet in it.

- Does she?

That's so sweet.

So, is there another part of your garden that we haven't seen?

- Yeah, would you all like to all take a look at my Japanese garden?

- Oh, yes, please.

- At least a Cajun interpretation of one.

[Adam chuckles] [gentle piano music] This way, guys.

- Whoa!

- Oh, wow!

A Japanese garden.

- Love this!

- In the middle of New Orleans.

- I love these guys.

- So, what brought you to be inspired to put this garden in?

- Well, I was trying to make a nice vignette to look at through my back door when I woke up in the morning and drank my cup of coffee.

- How perfect.

- Yes.

- And did you always, like, enjoy Japanese gardens?

Have you traveled to see them?

- Yeah, through my travels with music, I always take time to visit Japanese gardens.

And I love the style, I love the scale.

- [Madeline] The scale is wonderful.

- [Adam] Yeah.

- [Madeline] And the pruning.

- The Japanese Niwaki style trees.

I don't have the patience to do real bonsai, so I keep mine in the ground.

- [Madeline] We leave that to Adam.

- Yeah, I've got three bonsai trees at home.

- He loves to do that.

But these are beautiful.

And even with the maples, the Japanese maples, the way they're pruned, it's so special.

- [Leslie] Yeah, I'm trying-- - [Madeline] They seem very healthy-looking.

- [Leslie] They love this shady protected area.

- Right, and rocks, these rocks are enormous.

- [Adam] Yeah, these must have been here, right?

I mean, they're-- - Actually, I had to sculpt them from scratch 'cause they would have been too big to bring in, yes.

- You sculpted the rocks?

- [Leslie] Yes, I made those out of concrete and some other secret ingredients.

- [Adam] So they're, like, flat on the bottom?

- [Leslie] Pretty much, yes.

- Whoa!

- Oh, that's amazing.

They look so authentic.

- Thank you.

- That's really amazing.

And I love the little path going through it.

- [Adam] Yeah.

- And it leads you right up to that amazing, I guess, bamboo screen, is that what you call it?

- Pergola, screen, yes.

- [Madeline] So, did you buy that?

- [Leslie] I actually built that too.

- He built that too.

- Wow.

- And I cut the curve at the top with a skill saw.

I was trying to cut a straight line, actually, but... [Madeline laughs] - [Adam] But it looks better like that, yeah.

- [Madeline] Didn't quite work.

- [Adam] A man of many talents.

- [Madeline] But that is a big project.

- I grow the bamboo here onsite, so that was easy.

- [Madeline] How nice.

So this requires a great deal of pruning.

- Yes, and all over the garden.

I mean, there's so much going on.

And between that and the piano, I'm sure your hands are saying somethin'.

- Yeah, going from pruning all day to the stage, it sometimes does a number on these hands.

I'd love to talk about it with you.

- Yeah, that'd be great.

- Let's walk this way.

- Tell me more about your hands and what's bothering you.

- Yeah, just after trimming trees all day and playing music all night, sometimes I get a little tender right here in this area, my thumb.

- Yeah, that's a very common area to get, you know, that kind of overuse, repetitive stress.

And, in fact, there's some really great trigger points in here that you can find and really start to release some of that tight muscle tissue.

So if you just grab your hand with your other hand, feel around for little areas of increased sensitivity, maybe feels like a piece of al dente macaroni in there.

- I can feel, it's like a little bump.

- Well done.

- Exactly.

And once you find that, you just kind of press on it gently to the point of pain.

Nothing, like, too excruciating.

We wanna be able to kind of relax into this.

I like to say the muscle fibers kind of run in this direction, so if you use a cross fiber exploration pattern, that's a kind of a nice way to to really find those.

And yeah, just kind of pressing into them.

It's a little tight.

I like to move the muscle under some pressure.

But this muscle is so thick, and the area is so small that it gets a little hard to do that.

But another nice method, because, unfortunately, you have to use the thumb of the other hand.

And if both hands are bothering you...

But I hope you don't mind.

I picked these up from your water feature earlier.

- I was about to say, I had three rocks missing.

[group laughs] - Well, you can have one back.

And you could use something like this nice smooth rock or a little round bouncy ball, with your hand on a table and just kind of get your weight over and just use the rock.

- Hot rock massage.

- Exactly.

- That feels very soothing.

- Yeah, it actually feels really nice.

The coverage is much nicer than your own thumb.

And yeah, we're just looking to basically do the same thing.

Find those areas of sensitivity, give it a little bit of a massage.

You could even go double duty if both sides are bothering you and just kind of clasp it between both and massage.

- That's good, yeah.

That's good.

- Feel better?

- Oh, yeah, better already.

- Perfect.

Well, we got two more steps because we wanna massage, we wanna stretch, and then we wanna kind of activate some of the opposing muscles.

So the next thing we'll do is stretch.

And so you can lose the rock for a second.

And if you can imagine, when we use our thumbs, they're kinda often crossing the palm like this.

So we really wanna go the opposite direction.

So really pulling the thumb back, but then also maybe even giving it a little bit of rotation out.

Because, as you can imagine, also, when we come in and across the the palm, the thumb is rotating, like, this way.

So we wanna rotate it the opposite way.

Yeah, as you reach.

From under.

Yeah.

And then just pull it.

- So you're pulling it outwards?

- Okay, I got you.

Like this.

- And then, yeah, exactly.

- That's a nice stretch.

It feels like a good stretch.

- Mhm, and you got lots of different, like, tweaks to do to this.

You can pull straight back, you can rotate.

You could also pull down, pulling it down towards your own forearm.

These are all great ways to stretch that muscle out because, again, it's really only ever going this direction.

And we're just doing that over and over again, which brings us to the last and not least portion of the treatment, which is kind of activating those opposing muscles.

So, why don't you use this one?

- Okay.

- Use this.

- This goes on your thumb?

- Yep, the biggest hole that's there in the middle goes in the thumb.

You could use a rubber band if you don't have one of these.

These are kind of funky, though.

And it gives you an opportunity to really strengthen the finger extensors.

We do a lot of flexing of the fingers .We don't really ever extend open.

And this is just a way to really start to balance out some of those joints that are really strong in one direction but really don't get much use in the other direction.

- This takes effort.

- Yeah, it does.

- This is like a push up of the palm.

- Exactly, or the back of the hand.

And you know, this might also translate nicely to the piano when you're really trying to cover those long distances, strengthening the hand to really open up, because, you know, yeah, like banging octaves in the left hand and carry in a baseline, this may really help stretch out that hand and strengthen it to go the long haul.

- Okay.

- Then if we want to bring this into the world of gardening directly, I've got a pair of clippers here.

And as we use clippers, we often kind of put this into the thumb.

We wrap the fingers around the other handle, and we're kind of squeezing from both sides.

And this is where that thumb can really get overused.

And another strategy that you might try is kind of getting that clipper down into the palm.

You gotta kind of have to have long fingers, but if you can get to a place where you're just squeezing with your fingers and not really overusing this little digit, then you're really gonna save yourself a lot of hassle, 'cause all of these muscles in the forearm are used for squeezing those fingers.

They're much bigger, more robust.

Down here is a much more delicate joint.

So if you can cut it out of the, no pun intended, cut it out of the equation, then you're gonna save that stress.

So if you're getting into something and you know you're gonna squeeze really hard, don't do it from both sides.

Get the clipper in position.

Reposition the hand so that you can really just squeeze with those four fingers.

- Oh, that's fabulous.

- [Adam] You want to give it a try?

- Makes sense.

So we'll put it all the way here, this way.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

- Oh, look, you've got that.

- And then with some practice you can, yeah, just paddle your fingers, get that thing to close without using that thumb so much.

- Makes sense.

- You sort of have to retrain the way you hold your clippers, I guess, to do that.

- But it's just a moment of conscious thought.

Yeah, you wanna give it a try?

- Yeah.

That's sort of the space.

- That looks about right, yeah.

- Oh, that seems to give me a lot more leverage.

Like if you had, you know, twigs and branches that were a little thicker than a, let's say, a flower, this seems like it'd be much easier to clip like this.

- Yes.

- Yeah, anytime you're facing, like, some real squeeze or resistance, see if you can cut the thumb out of it.

And that might really preserve the joint for all of these hundreds of trees I see that are beautifully trimmed.

- That makes a lot of sense.

I can't wait to try it out tomorrow.

I have a lot of trees to trim tomorrow.

- And I know if we turn around, 'cause I saw this walking here, you have a lovely garden of pots.

- Some succulents.

This is mostly by my wife's doing, Kate, who's a librarian in the city, and she does the container garden.

- [Madeline] How lovely.

So, what's next?

- We should celebrate.

I have my next-door neighbor, Vic, that boiled up some crabs for us.

He brought his guitar, and he's gonna play some music for y'all.

- Oh, man.

- Oh, that'll be such a treat.

- That would be great.

- Well, I think we should go celebrate.

- [Leslie] Let's do it.

- Cool.

[upbeat jazz music] [upbeat jazz music continues] - [Leslie] Oh, we got good crab and shrimp there.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness, that looks divine.

- [Leslie] Here it comes, y'all.

- [Vic] That's par for the course.

- [Adam] That looks like a feast.

- [Madeline] I'm so excited.

I've never had this before.

What do you do first?

- Well, I think I'm gonna start with the shrimp.

[indistinct speaking] - Shrimp, okay.

- You can drink this juice here, which is quite [indistinct].

- Oh, did you taste it?

- [Vic] You guys get goodies.

- The claws.

- The corn is really mega spicy.

- This is really good.

It's the best boil I think I've ever had.

- Today.

[group chuckles] [upbeat jazz music] [upbeat jazz music continues] [upbeat jazz music continues] [upbeat jazz music continues] - Whoa!

- Bravo!

- So great.

- That's great.

- Leslie, it was such a pleasure spending the day with you.

We just loved being with you.

Your garden is magnificent.

It is a masterpiece.

And we just can't wait to come back and see how you're doing.

- Oh, it was a dream come true.

Thanks for all the attention you put on me and my garden.

- Okay, guys, one more time?

- [Adam] Yes.

Ready when you are.

- [Leslie] One more time.

[upbeat jazz music] - [Narrator] Get "GardenFit" with us.

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

[bright instrumental music] [cheerful tune]