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 Scherston.

Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden.

That's our mission.

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

[gentle upbeat music] [gentle upbeat music continues] [no audio] [gentle upbeat music] - Adam, we are going to meet Patrick Dougherty.

[air whooshing] He is an artist that I have followed for years, Adam.

He makes these amazing, huge structures out of willows, literally branches and sticks.

- Wow.

- Yeah, it's pretty special.

He calls them his stickworks, and he's done them all over the country.

In many botanical gardens, I think he's done installations all over the world.

To really talk about him I brought you to my stumpery.

- [Adam] And so, what exactly is a stumpery?

- So a stumpery is a garden where you take literally the roots of fallen trees and put them up to support plants, or woodland plants like ferns that grow through them that you kind of find growing on them.

It's just a type of garden.

- [Adam] This is, I've never seen anything like this.

- [Madeline] They're really, it's so intriguing.

- I love it, it actually makes a really neat effect.

- Yeah, I think it's pretty exciting.

Reminds me of Patrick.

The thing that's so exciting about what he does about his art is that he gathers wherever he's doing these big installations about 30 people, mostly volunteers, and he actually trains them how to twist these willow branches in a way that builds this structure.

So the structures have no nails, no metal, no glue.

They're just held up by these wisps.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- That sounds really interesting.

- It is really interesting.

The only thing is that they're really ephemeral.

The sun and the weather, you know, they start to truly decay and eventually disappear, not unlike these stumps.

- So Patrick puts all this work in knowing that it's only gonna last three, four years.

- Amazing, right?

- Wow.

And now, I think that's really brave as an artist to build something that you know you're gonna outlive, isn't gonna go into a gallery, can't be marketed.

- I think that's a great point.

I think that's one of the reasons everybody's so impressed with him.

I think it'll be interesting to hear him tell us why that works for him.

I also read the most amazing quote that he said, which is, "Whatever your mind thinks, your hands can do."

- That's quite profound and inspiring.

- So, to visit him, we're going to North Carolina and we're gonna get to go to his home.

And I can't wait for us to see what he actually has built around his house.

- I bet it will be wild.

- And then we're gonna get to see one of his big installations.

- Oh, fantastic.

- Yeah, I'm so excited.

- [Adam] Me too.

[air whooshing] [upbeat rhythmic music] - Well, Adam, this certainly looks like Patrick's place.

- [Adam] I mean, it looks like an artist lives here.

- It does, all those outbuildings and wonderful things that I'm sure he built himself.

- Yeah.

- And that split rail fence.

Oh my goodness.

- It's beautiful.

- It is.

- [Adam] You think anything's holding that together, or is it just balancing?

- I really don't know, we'll have to ask him.

- Hi.

- Hello, Patrick.

How are you?

- I'm pretty good.

- It's so nice to see you.

[upbeat rhythmic music continues] Patrick, Adam.

- Hi, thanks for coming.

- Hi, pleasure to meet you.

- We're here.

- Thanks for coming.

- Oh, we're so excited to be here.

It was just wonderful just walking up, we felt like we were at your home.

- [Adam] Really beautiful entry.

- Well, thank you.

- Yeah, it was wonderful.

And this, I mean, of course, we were so interested to see what you're doing with sticks in your own environment.

But this wonderful fence is just beautiful.

It's so architectural and I love the way you have it on angles.

- I try to use sticks in lots of different ways, you know?

- I bet you do.

- Prior to actually weaving things, I did a lot of uses of sticks to just enliven the area here.

- It's such a different scale.

Because, you know, being used to seeing your big stickworks and then a fence, it's just a different tonality, I guess.

- It's just more interesting to have a kind of an accordion shape than it is to just put a straight fence in there.

It physically helps it stand up a little bit, too.

- That makes sense.

- That's a good point, right?

It gives it some lateral stability.

- Overall stability.

I've really enjoyed trying to build things that are functional in a way, and to try to make something interesting that you could look at and would be appealing to people that come to visit.

- So, maybe before we kind of get a nice look around, tell us how you got so involved with sticks.

- Well, you know, it promoted to be in such a situation as the woods, and we played as children in the woods and gathered things up, made forts.

And so, here you are as an adult and you kind of cast back to your childhood beginnings when you're thinking about trying to find a material to work with as an artist.

- Right.

- I had no idea that there were all kinds of cultures that used sticks.

There's a lot of building style, particularly in Indigenous people.

And so when you're looking for ideas, it's easy to go to "National Geographic" from 1920 and you can see how sticks were really used.

- Yeah.

- But your stickworks have gone into a whole other atmosphere.

Such a special place.

I'm excited because I know we're gonna see one of his installations later.

- Walking in, I had the same vibes of, like, wow, childhood.

I grew up in Vermont and these just looked like the perfect woods to be running around and playing in and building forts.

- That really is right.

- So do you have more things to show us?

- I would love to show you.

Come on.

- Okay.

Oh, this is very interesting.

- Oh, thank you.

- I love the raised beds.

- [Patrick] In my universe, there's two things: sticks and stones.

- [Madeline] I got that now.

- It makes a good way of bordering a garden.

You can put these stones in.

They're put in there deep.

- Dig them in?

- Yeah, you have to dig a trench and install the stone and pack the dirt against it, and then backfill the bed.

- Wow.

- I like that you have your annuals in this time of year.

It's like a showcase for your plants.

- So these stones are really actually twice the size of what we're looking at?

- That's exactly right.

- Wow.

- And we've just dug them right behind us.

And if you see a hole around, that's where we've been taking stone out of there and using it in various ways.

- But I think it's a great effect because you really can put in fresh soil and really create a perfect bed to showcase your different plants, like you say, throughout the season.

And I love all of the moss and lichens that are on the stone.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

- [Madeline] It makes its own design, it's beautiful, Patrick.

- [Patrick] Well, thank you.

- [Madeline] May we see some more?

- Yeah, come on.

[birds chirping] - Well now, we're starting to see stone walls.

- [Adam] They're beautiful - And they even get higher.

[laughs] Not to mention this beautiful gateway that you've done, of course with sticks, in new patterns.

Patrick, it's gorgeous.

- Well, it's kind of a transition from one part of your yard to another.

- I love that idea.

[gentle music] [water rippling] Oh wow, oh, what a beautiful pond.

So did you actually make this pond?

- [Patrick] I dug it right here.

- Of course you did.

- By hand or by machine?

- By hand, yeah.

We had a slight hole here.

Then I started excavating.

And there's a rock shelf over there.

So that was its limits.

And then this was as far as I could dig.

Then I let the geology of the whole place make the shape and- - It's fabulous.

So is it lined?

- [Patrick] Yeah, I put a liner in it and made a little shelf and then put these stones on the shelf.

The liner comes up behind the stone.

So that you had this sense of- - I love that.

- You know, natural pond, you know?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I think that's fantastic.

And the stones look so beautiful as a border anyway.

It's wonderful.

- And as time goes on, you know, you get moss and so forth on it, which makes it look really- - Really great.

And of course, another wall.

- [Patrick] Yeah.

[Madeline laughs] - [Madeline] You probably made that wall also, right?

- I did make it.

We had to have some really big stones for that wall.

- Yes, I see that.

- It's substantial.

- So is it a dry wall?

- [Patrick] Yes, it is a dry wall.

- [Adam] What do you mean by dry wall?

- You don't have any mortar in it.

And, you know, that it needs to be a little bit bigger on the bottom.

The stones need to collapse to the interior.

So if you take a big stone, you kind of put it on a bit of a slant going towards the interior.

- [Adam] And you hoisted that huge one up?

- We'd taken a, make an inclined plane, put some rollers under it, put a come along on the other side and crank it up.

- Wow.

- Oh my goodness.

- What fun.

- Human ingenuity.

- I love that, I love that you do everything by hand.

It's so special.

- Well, it's for fun.

- It is for fun, it is fun.

And I love also the way you've used, really, these bigger branches, they're not small sticks anymore, as a design feature and also as a pike.

- It kind of mitigates the sound a bit.

It was a bit of a harsh sound when just the water fell so hard.

So, just breaking up the sound a little bit with- - I think that's charming.

- That's really smart.

- And also just adds a level of mystery to the waterfall.

- Oh, I love it, I love the whole.

So, do you come here often?

- Well, my wife and I sit out here every evening.

- Really?

- Yeah, it's so nice when the sun goes behind the trees.

It's got a nice bit of shade here in late afternoon.

- It must beautiful.

- It's really nice.

- And that sound.

- And the sound.

- The sound of water.

Oh, it's absolutely gorgeous.

- [Adam] Hypnotic.

- Patrick, really, what a special space.

- We have to live beauty, you know?

[laughs] - Nice, oh, I love that idea.

- Yeah, if your property doesn't have a pond, you can just make one.

- Just dig one.

- More little treasures along the way?

- Oh yeah, come on.

- Okay.

[gentle upbeat music] So Pat, this is such a lovely moss path.

And I love that you have a wall of bamboo.

Are you passionate about bamboo?

- I'm passionate about bamboo.

And you know, I wanted a path for pleasure.

And the idea that you would have this wall that worked alongside of you.

The big problem is that bamboo escapes so easily.

- Yeah, containing it.

- [Patrick] I trenched out, built a form, poured it full of concrete.

Has to be about two feet deep.

- Oh my goodness.

- Wow.

- Then that has controlled this bamboo and it's really turned into a decent bamboo patch.

- I love it.

- Is this another by-hand project?

- Well, I used a trencher to trench out.

- Oh, thank goodness, he's human.

- Don't worry, there was plenty of hand work.

- Patrick, this is like a fairytale vegetable garden.

It's round, I love that shape.

Did you decide to do that, I mean from the get go?

- Yeah, I wanted a nice round thing out here.

Could see it from outer space, you know.

- A landing spot.

- Yeah.

- [Madeline] And the crowns on top are really fantastic.

What type of wood is that?

- That's cedar, and when the tree dies, that leaves this stump in the ground for years.

- Wow.

- Maybe centuries.

- It's really fun.

Makes you wanna go in, especially this gate.

So this stick gate is, again, just wonderful.

So may we open it and check out the veggies?

- Sure, come on, let's look.

- [Madeline] I see you're growing a lot of herbs.

- [Patrick] Yeah, this basil is- - [Madeline] This basil is almost as high as corn.

- [Patrick] This is pesto here.

- [Adam] You can smell it coming.

- It is, it's delicious.

It's a wonderful assortment of things in this round space.

I must say that when Adam and I were walking up to your house, we saw a shed that had wonderful sticks being set on the front of it in patterns.

Could we go see that?

We'd love to know how you did that.

- Yeah, let's go look at it.

- Okay.

[gentle upbeat music] Well, this shed really caught our eye.

I mean, it's just so beautiful.

- It's incredible.

- [Madeline] Isn't it?

- If you have extra sticks in your yard that you don't want- - [Madeline] This is what you do with it?

- This would be a perfect project.

You need a substructure of either sticks- - I was just gonna ask you that.

- Or wood.

- So there's something behind this, obviously.

- Yeah, and then you have applique, whatever length sticks you want on top of it.

- The pattern is so great.

And you nailed these on though.

- These are nailed on, yeah.

If you had a nail gun it would be a lot easier.

- I bet, this is a lot of nails.

And then the finishing touch is some more raised beds.

This is so beautiful.

- [Adam] Yeah, don't tell me these are dug down a foot too.

- No, no, these are just, but they're, you know, you have to gauge the height versus the depth in order not to fall over.

- Right.

- So these are like big teeth.

They go down in there and they've got a bit in the root there.

- Well, the calendulas look beautiful in them.

- Yeah, and the manual labor is quite obvious.

It's been going on around here.

So I'm sure you have some ache or pain or something I can help you with.

- Well this year, I tore my Achilles tendon, and it's been giving me a bit of trouble.

So, I've been having some physical therapy, but I need some other advice.

- Yeah, okay, I've got an idea for how we can demonstrate what you have maybe lost from that Achilles injury.

And if, for people that don't know, an Achilles tendon runs up the back of your shin in the back of your ankle.

And what it does is it allows the shin to tip forward and come over the toes.

And so, by using a nice vertical board or wall, you can test your ankle dorsiflexion, which is the ankle allowing that to come forward, by just starting with your toe on the board, tapping with your knee, moving backwards a little bit, and see if you can tap again.

And it's really important to keep that foot all the way planted on the ground.

You can't let the heel pop up.

Yeah, exactly, that's kind of cheating.

You can see that the angle of the ankle doesn't really have to do the same thing.

And really, what we're looking for is- - Wow.

- Can't really get that.

- That's it.

- Your result is really measuring that distance from your toe to the- - So if you pass your toe, Adam, is that full flexibility of the heel?

- Yeah, you definitely wanna be able to come over your toes, for sure.

- So that's the goal.

- Oh yeah.

- Okay.

- So Madeline, why don't you jump in here first.

- Okay.

- Patrick, you can watch as she, I'll hold the board.

And just start with your toe on there, and just go ahead and tap.

Good, and then we move back an inch, maybe inch and a half, depending on how comfortable this feels.

But when it goes, it goes fast, so- - [Madeline] I can feel like I'm sort of getting to the- - [Adam] Yeah, getting to the end.

- You almost get to a point where you can't do it and then you gotta go back.

- Yeah, exactly.

- I would say that's it for me.

- Yeah, that's good though.

This is nice, especially if you can keep that weight in your heel, right?

If you feel that weight really gravitating towards the toe, you're kind of even cheating within your own skin.

Also, doing this in shoes is going to kind of skew the results 'cause a lot of shoes have a elevated heel, which is already gonna cheat you a good half inch or so.

So when you're ready, Patrick, you can jump in here.

- He's cheating already.

- Take a look.

- I'm gonna cheat already, look at this.

- Here we go, nice tap.

Reaching, good.

- Oh, that's aggressive.

- Yeah, so he's met his match.

You can see that heel starting to pop up.

And you definitely have a good elevation in that shoe.

Let's come forward a little more.

- [Madeline] That's impressive.

- So remember that score, that's your left leg.

There you go, yeah, put a little mark.

Oh yeah, so the left is definitely the one you hurt.

- [Patrick] Yeah, it is.

- Yeah, yeah, you can really see a big difference.

And so, what you wanna do in order to really come back from that injury is really try and get it back to something similar to the right.

'Cause it's probably safe to assume that it was similar to that right before.

- Right, I would say so, yeah.

- I imagine the PT has you doing some calf stretches.

- That's exactly right.

Mainly on the stairs, you know, where you're kind lowering yourself below the stair level and then back up as high as you can with your leg stiff.

- Oh, cool, so they're actually doing some calf raises as well as the stretch.

- Yeah.

- Cool, so what I'm gonna show you, actually, is a different way to stretch that joint, because I really like a stretch position where the body can feel the end range of motion.

Not something where the heels hang off and they're just- - You don't know.

- Yeah, 'cause the body is going to hold on to some protective contraction to really protect itself from any stupid things that we might decide to do.

- Oh yeah.

- Like lifting rocks.

- Exactly, so one of my favorite things is this calf stretch.

I'm gonna put these up for you guys, I'm gonna demo for you.

And we wanna get ourselves wedged up against a wall, wedging your feet up into that dorsiflex position, and just kind of lean back.

And by either moving this backwards or forward, depending on how much mobility you already have, we're trying to get into a position where you've got a light stretch.

So nothing too crazy.

I don't want you straining to be there.

I want you to be able to relax.

So for me, I might even have to move it back a little bit more.

- Just to get a little more stretch?

- Exactly, just to prop those feet up a little higher.

- Got that?

- Oh yeah, that looks good and easy.

- That does look.

- Absolutely, it doesn't get much easier than this.

Just stand here and do nothing.

So, why don't you guys hop in there and see.

You let me know.

- You wanna take that one?

- We'll be like in spacecraft.

- We will be.

- Exactly.

Beam me up.

And so for you, you may end up feeling that stretch on the left side more than the right, which is maybe really what we're after.

What I really love about this stretch is that you can't go any farther.

And so your body knows that there's nothing that can happen that can surprise it into a further stretch that may end up in injury.

So when you're doing your exercise at the PT office where you're hanging off of a stair or you're doing it at home, it's great.

You go down and then you're getting that full range of motion as you come up nice and tall.

This is a little different, it's just a stretch.

It's not a strengthening exercise.

But it allows you to really consciously relax into this stretched position.

The body can't be surprised.

It's not gonna hang onto any protective contraction.

And you can really just focus on relaxing into this and allowing that calf to lengthen, which is really what attaches to that Achilles tendon, which is, you know, that's the contractile tissue that you really wanna retrain to lengthen and to strengthen.

- It feels good.

- It's great, and you can spend, you know, five, six, seven, 10 minutes here.

You're really not gonna do yourself any harm, especially if you're not straining to be there.

We don't wanna be in a strained position.

We wanna be in a place that we can, again, consciously relax into.

So, another strengthening exercise to add to what you're doing with your PT is this one here.

So if you guys step off, all we're gonna do is now functionally use that calf and that Achilles tendon.

And we do it by just putting one foot forward and now just softening the knee and bringing it over.

It's kind of like the test, but this time, you're gonna bring your whole body out over as well.

When we were doing the test, you might have just been stabbing that knee forward.

Now we wanna familiarize the body with taking that weight into an ankle that is actively dorsiflexed.

And if we switch to the other side, you'll probably find on that right side for you, Patrick- - [Madeline] It's even easier.

- It just feels easy, feels natural.

And maybe the left just feels a little more timid and that's really what you want to chisel away at.

And by really working that left foot, keeping the heel down, you can watch how your knee tracks over, but just easily reintroducing the idea of taking weight into that foot when it is dorsiflex.

Not when it's nice and straight.

Any foot can take that, right?

It's when it's here that it really starts to get a little wonky, or when you start to move a little weird.

- I think that, you know, so many people, gardeners certainly, are walking around property or visiting other gardens or you know, people who just like to walk in parks, really don't realize how much, I never thought about, how much you use your ankle.

So, I would love to now maybe walk around your very long stickworks.

- [Patrick] Yeah, come on.

- Let's do that.

- Awesome, I can't wait to see this up close.

[upbeat music] - Wow.

- Oh, wow.

- This is fantastic.

- That's incredible.

- [Patrick] Oh, thanks for coming and looking at it.

- Oh my goodness.

- You kidding?

- [Madeline] So what do you call this?

- Well, this sculpture's called "Fly Away Home."

And you can see it has been flying away.

A lot of fly away on it.

- [Madeline] It does, but it looks fabulous, doesn't it?

So organic.

- We ordered the material from Canada.

It came on a big truck.

- Oh my goodness.

- And so, it was an adventure just getting it off the truck.

- I bet.

- Getting it stacked up here so we could work.

- How many pounds?

- [Patrick] I'd say at least 30,000 pounds.

- Oh, that's quite a lot to get off a truck, I think.

And how many people helped you construct this installation?

- We had about four or five people at any one time working.

And so, that ends up to be about 50 people over the three weeks.

- In three weeks?

- In three weeks, you know, your sponsors get very tired of you.

After a while, you keep calling them up, "Could we have some more sticks?"

No, we have plenty of sticks.

- That's fantastic.

So maybe we should go inside and see what it feels like and learn the process- - I would love to show you.

- Of how you actually construct these.

- Come on, let's go in.

[upbeat music continues] - Oh, I love this.

What is your process like?

How do you get started?

- Well, I have, it's a kind of a three-part process.

One, I lay the footprint of it out on the ground.

I drilled a series of holes around the whole perimeter and stuck really bigger sticks down in there.

We have a scaffolding that's set around the outside as an exoskeleton.

We tie this up to this exoskeleton to hold it for a minute.

The second phase is where we're doing a kind of aesthetic.

And so, you're using lots of drawing techniques and putting sticks in.

- And no nails, no glue, no wire?

- No, we're using this infuriating tendency to tangle.

[Madeline laughs] You have this stick, wants to stick in everything.

If you drag it along the ground in the woods, you see what I mean.

So if I take a stick and stick it through the wall like this, I can keep pulling until I've buried that in.

Take this in and drive it back down in there.

And if you do that thousands and thousands of times, you start getting a beautiful structure.

- Oh, it's beautiful.

So, people must love this in their neighborhood.

- They really do.

Part of it is the neighbors came and worked on it.

- Right.

- And so that gives a vested interest into it.

And everyone has a really exploratory time here.

- And how long do these last?

- You get about two good years, is what we say.

You get one great year and one pretty good year.

- Really, that's all?

- And this is into the second year and it's doing very well.

A normal day, there might be 100 kids in here playing around.

We had this funny thing, this kid came up to me and said, "Grandpa, can't you move?

I'm trying to look at this thing."

[everyone laughing] - That's so sweet.

So could we try, do you wanna try?

- Oh, I would love it.

- I would love to.

- Maybe Adam should go first.

- Take any one of these, Adam.

And maybe this big one here would be a great one.

Stab it in here somewhere and try to hold this thing back.

That looks like- - This one here?

- Yeah, I'd stick it down in the meat so that you catch it up down there.

That's exactly right.

And now you gotta bend it.

- I'm gonna maybe go for here.

- That's exactly right.

Yeah, there you go.

- There.

- That looks fantastic.

- Well, not only do we need some on the doors, but you can see we need some outlining lines.

Maybe right in here would be a great place to put a couple of them.

- So I put in the top first?

- [Patrick] Yeah, you can put end in or the other.

And then you're gonna take and flex, flex it back in there.

That's exactly right.

- There.

- That's a good stick.

- There you go.

- And here's another one.

Yeah, see that?

And you could just pull it down and you can flex it back out and then drive it in.

That's exactly right.

- Oh, that looks great.

- Why weren't y'all here when I started this thing?

- [Madeline] I know, we have to volunteer now.

- Yes, seriously.

- That's exactly right.

You're gonna be the next on the list.

- I must say, I could work on this forever.

I don't know about you, Adam, but- - [Adam] Yeah, I know, it's one of those, like- - At some point we have to go home.

- Yeah, we're gonna have to fly away home.

- Isn't there an extended stay here?

You don't have to go.

- Let's make that an extended stay.

- Now that we've gotten to know each other.

- Okay, yeah, let's do it.

Here you go.

- [Adam] I'm ready to keep working.

- [Madeline] I am too.

Okay, I wanna build up this little area here.

- [Patrick] Yeah, yeah.

Y'all are naturals.

- [Madeline] Yeah, it's such a beautiful way.

And it's really so artistic, Pat.

- [Patrick] Oh, thank you, it's just a different way of using sticks.

- [Madeline] It's definitely your way.

- [Patrick] That's my way.

- [Narrator] Get Garden Fit with us.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music fades] [bright music] Garden fit is made possible in part by Monrovia.

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