Yard To Table

The Flower Friend Who Designs Joyful Yards - Christina Koether!

• Trevor Crafts and Ellen Scherer Crafts • Season 1 • Episode 4

Share episode

Flower Friend and yard designer at Stonebrook House Christina Koether of Nomadica joins Ellen and Trevor at the table today! Christina is a florist, garden designer, advanced master gardener, and flower farmer, growing right in her own backyard in Weston, CT! She encourages us all to treat our back yards like mini-national parks focusing on biodiversity and using native pollinator-friendly plants AND she gives communities the tools to do this with her own Mini Meadow Grant program. Follow her on Instagram at @stateofnomadica for tips, inspiration and more!

People and things we talk about:

And to see what's happening with Ellen and Trevor at Stonebrook House follow @stonebrookhouse on Instagram today!

Questions? Ideas? Things you need to say? Message us!

Trevor:

Well, hello there, Ellen,

Ellen :

Well, hello there. Trevor,

Trevor:

if that is your real name, it is, it is, it's true. I do know it's your real name. It is.

Ellen :

It was almost Christine,

Trevor:

that's true. It was almost Christine, but that ended up being your middle name.

Ellen :

It did. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that because I like Ellen.

Trevor:

I also like Ellen. Who doesn't like Ellen, everybody

Ellen :

But I might have liked Christine. It's all about likes Ellen. perspective.

Trevor:

That's true. You know? It's funny. I was thinking that our last name and your last name now is Crafts.

Ellen :

Yes, it is, legally

Trevor:

legally via marriage, and it's that's a tricky name sometimes.

Ellen :

Now I thought that I was trading in for an easier name. When I took your name in marriage crafts, because my main name is Scherer, when I still use Scherer Crafts. Yeah, not so much. No. It's amazing how many people...

Trevor:

with a K, yeah. And if we were crafts with a we were craft with a K, we would (A) be very wealthy and (B) have an unlimited amount of macaroni and cheese,

Ellen :

which would make me very happy. That

Trevor:

That would be awesome

Ellen :

processed cheese product.

Trevor:

I do love macaroni and cheese,

Ellen :

kind of you know, not our jam in this podcast,

Trevor:

no, not at all. That's about the farthest away from this podcast as you could possibly get.

Ellen :

But if I tell people, spell it like arts and crafts, arts and crafts that helps. That's true sometimes.

Trevor:

Well, today we're going to spell y, a, r, d to table, yard to table, one more episode of yard to table.

Ellen :

And I gave a little spoiler with Christine, because it relates to our guest today.

Trevor:

Ah, Christine, it's a little bit of a, it's a, it's a, it's a foreshadowing. It is as it were,

Ellen :

it is. And I am super excited, because our guest today is really somebody we met in the beginning of our journey here at Stonebrook, and who has really been integral to sort of our process with our garden and helping us plan and I'll give you a little bit of her bio. If you wouldn't mind, I would take a bio. Okay, here we go.

Trevor:

I mean, I'm not going to take a bio. I'm going to do the podcast. Yeah, don't take a bio. I won't take it.

Ellen :

We're working right now. Okay? Our guest today is a florist, a garden designer, an advanced Master Gardener, very excited about that flower farmer growing right in her own backyard, and her company nomadica is based here in Western Connecticut, where everything she grows is grounded in supporting biodiversity and targeting a predominantly native, pollinator friendly plant mix in all her installations are important, which we know very well. She brings joyful imagination in the gardens that she designs from bespoke vegetable trellises made from clients found wood. Hint, hint, we know where those are to hanging. Gordon for the visitor to walk through. She is an exceptional floral artist that creates the most unique bouquets, arrangements and flower installations, and she uses primarily local growing plants and flowers, which is also amazing. So we welcome to the podcast today, our flower friend and an influential force in the gardens at Stonebrook. Christina Koether

Christina:

thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Ellen :

We are so excited to have you on

Christina:

Thanks, guys.

Trevor:

It's Christina, though,

Christina:

yes, but my mother was Christine,

Ellen :

I know, but that was the hint. Oh, it's

Trevor:

a hint. It's a good hint. It was a hint. It's

Christina:

a great hint, because my mother was Christine.

Ellen :

Oh, yeah,

Trevor:

I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah, I love that everywhere, everywhere.

Ellen :

That makes it special. And we literally met in our yard. Well, did we meet before that?

Christina:

I don't know. I was trying to remember. I don't know how we found each other.

Ellen :

Maybe we have most of our meetings in the yard, right? Yes, that's right,

Christina:

and they're beautiful gardens. Yeah.

Trevor:

I think our kids, you know, obviously, all of our kids go to school together, which is always a good connection point. But I think that, I think it was maybe like on Facebook or something, and you sort of, you're good on the on the Facebook, the Face libre, social media of it all. Yeah, we'll hunt and find people that are the the gems.

Ellen :

You know what? I think you're right because, well, I know, I know you're right because I'm amazing social media. But besides that,

Trevor:

I'm just happy that I'm right.

Ellen :

No, but I think it was, again, I'm not really trying to understand our community, and moving here, you're looking to all your local resources. And we have a couple local Facebook pages that are very hyper local to our area. And I remember, you know, you posting just some beautiful things. You know, originally from, you know, we want to talk a little bit about nomadic and sort of the evolution of your cup. Company, but the things that you were doing and the things that you were making, and I believe you had put out that you were starting to look at Garden installation and landscape design, and that's what it was. And I and I said, Oh, I gotta, I gotta call her. So that's where it began.

Christina:

Og garden,

Trevor:

we might be the OG, I think we might be the OG

Ellen :

one of the things that drew me in was that you have this statement on your website that Nomadica is based on the belief that the discovery and joy should be part of your everyday life. I love that. And you also say, I believe your yard is an extension of your home, and you should have spaces and moments that ground and inspire you? Yeah, exactly. Tell me. Tell us more about that.

Christina:

Sure. So I, I think a lot of people forget that the outside of their home is an extension of their everyday life, and there's so much missed opportunity for people in that it can be inspiring, it can be functional, it can be beautiful. It can be a source of income. It can feed your family. It can be a national park in your own backyard. So I My goal is to inspire people to be more curious, to start with being more curious about their backyard. Can you walk outside and identify what's out there? Do you know how everything is connected and the roles that they play, and then helping them understand how you might better use this space? One of my favorite clients, we took a bamboo forest, invasive bamboo, and turned it into an outdoor living room. And I think that's just like, like it wasn't even on their radar that this could be a space where they could sit and have time with their family. It was just a bamboo forest, right? So little things like that, just making people feel like they're connected to their outdoor space.

Trevor:

Can I? Can I go back for just a second, because I'm now curious, turning your backyard into a national park.

Christina:

Yeah, so say, what? Right? So Doug Tallamy, Dr Doug, Tallamy, he's an ethno botanist. No he's a bug guy. He's a doctor of bugs. What is that? Ornithologist? No, that would be birds. No,

Trevor:

not arachnophobic, no, because he's 100% not

Ellen :

no I cannot. That would be bad entomology. Entomologist,

Christina:

thank you, entomologist.

Trevor:

I consider myself a bit of an amature entomologist.

Ellen :

That was a brain block for all of us.

Christina:

Yeah. Dr Doug Tallamy is an entomologist at the University of Delaware. He's written a bunch of books, and he is sort of the leader of this movement of treating your backyard like a homegrown National Park. And he explains in his various lectures and his books the importance of treating your backyard like a national park, because privately, the land owned in this country is greater than the preserved land, and if we continue at the rate we're on, we've already lost two thirds of wildlife since 1970 and and the UN says in the next 20 years, we'll lose another 1 million species if we continue on at this rate. So he's trying to get and is successfully getting people to pay more attention to what you can do at home. So it's not just going to the parks. It's managing the invasives on your property. It's planting more natives. It's reducing your lawn space. It's stopping the spraying of herbicides and pesticides. And when you stop breaking down the ecosystem and support the food web, your your backyard comes alive, and you no longer have to treat for the pests, because things start to take care of themselves, which is really cool.

Trevor:

That's super cool. I mean, I think tell talk a little bit more, because you did start on, on, on native plants, you know. And we hear a lot here in Weston and Connecticut about, you know, invasives. So tell us a little bit more about why. Obviously, it sort of makes sense, you know, just like why native plants are good to have. But go a little bit further on that, because I think, you know, some of our listeners are definitely newer to gardening.

Christina:

So native plants are plants that originated here in our natural landscape, and they have co evolved with the insects and the birds and all of our nature to rely on each other. It's an interconnected web, and you take one piece out, and that web starts to fall apart. The main reason that they are so important is they facilitate the largest transfer of energy from the sun into protein. So you have the sun beaming down these beautiful native plants that tend. Then you have the caterpillars come in and eat the leaves, and now they're turning that energy, the sun energy into the protein, which. Is eaten by the birds and eaten by the gophers that annoy us in our garden. We

Trevor:

do have one, by the way. We have cool we had a cool man. Not cool. I'm

Ellen :

really happy that he's happy, but I'd also like him to move. Yeah, correct.

Christina:

Find him a new home. Gently, gently, happily, we'll just lure him away with tomatoes. Yes,

Trevor:

he's gotten plenty.

Christina:

but so it's without that, without the transfer of energy from the sun into the protein to support the food web, you have no birds, you have you have no caterpillars, you have no birds, then it just sort of all breaks apart, and we rely entirely on caterpillars and pollinators for 90% of the plants on this earth. So with

Ellen :

just think about that for a minute, right? 90% 90% incredible,

Trevor:

really incredible.

Christina:

Without them, we're not here. I'd like to stay around. Stick around, and it's going back

Ellen :

to what you're saying earlier about the species that have disappeared, and particularly with the birds. I mean, you know, we if you don't plant natives, if you're not thinking about this in terms of what's pollinator friendly, then it just, you know, the situation gets grimmer and grimmer, right? I mean, not to be scary, folks, but that's a that's why it's so important.

Christina:

right. And one of the big things is the nursery trade over the last few 100 years, meaning, well, and bringing cool and exotic things from all over the world has introduced and unleashed non native invasives into our environment. So we have lots of things in our garden that are fine, right? They're not native. Plants, like a hosta is not native, but it's not overtaking your woods and displacing things that feed our pollinators and the caterpillars. But then we have things like Japanese knotweed, which is one of my personal enemies, that it can just completely overtake an area so quickly you don't even realize it's happened. You walk out one day and it's not there, and the next day you walk out and you have a whole hedge of it so and they're displacing everything. And it does. It has not evolved with our insect population, so there's no It serves no purpose to our pollinators.

Ellen :

You have been such a source of education for me around, sort of, how do I identify these things that are not that are invasive, and that are not native, and that are thus not good for, you know? And there are things now I can't unsee. I think this is so important because, you know, like, let's talk about garlic mustard wheat. I mean, that is around in Connecticut in the spring, and New England, you start to see this come up, and it's got this little white flour on top. And yes, you can cook with it, and you can make mustard, you can make, you know, lots of things. And people do use it for multiple purposes, but, man, yeah, that, if you're not pulling it, it is everywhere. And then what is it? It does something to the soil, right?

Christina:

Its allopathic, which means it sends out a chemical into the ground that keeps other things from growing. So it's not only it's really great at reproducing itself with millions of seeds, but it's nasty to its neighbors,

Ellen :

right? And so I mean rude, it's just rude. And of course, I'm thinking of the trees that look so pretty in the fall, the ones that are burning the burning bush, which is like, that is a constant struggle. Yeah, they grow everywhere. They grow everywhere.

Trevor:

Or even, I mean, something like, like a porcelain berry vine. It's lovely, and the berries are very sweet and pretty, but, boy, that'll take over everything on you. And, you know, I mean, I just pulled a whole bunch out of a rose bush. And I didn't even know it was there, to your point. I didn't even realize, like, Oh no, this rose is just looking a little Oh no, wait, those aren't actually rose. That's Multi Floor, that's like, everything. That's like a mash up. Yeah, it's just like a remix of salad. This is not, this is not good at all.

Ellen :

We become a little bit of soil nerds, right? I mean, this is, like, part of the jam. We talked about this and, and I think our Nerd flower, yeah, flower nerds, yeah, soil nerds, we're good with all labels here, same Yeah, except, right? We accept all labels in this genre. But I think, you know, when you talk about invasives, the other part of that is also invasive insects. Yes, you know, the jumping worms. I didn't know what a jumping one was until our first season, and we're starting to, like, you know, get our hands in the soil. I'm like, that's an earthworm.

Christina:

That's a snake,

Ellen :

that's an earthworm on adrenaline. Like, what is happening right now? Right? And, of course, the lanternfly crisis that we're having right now, yes.

Christina:

So they come hand in hand, right? The lanternfly's host is one of our invasive species, the Tree of Heaven. So you have the Tree of Heaven, then you have the lantern fly. They're coexisting together very happily. And yeah, the lanternfly is here.

Trevor:

Why do they call it the Tree of Heaven? I think because... why is it called the lanternfly? These are nice names. Mean, why are we calling these things like an

Ellen :

Lantent fly is my jam in colors. It's black, white and red. It's gorgeous. Yes, it's beautiful until

Christina:

you they're beautiful until you see so many of them swarm and like, flying into you and hitting your face.

Ellen :

They're like, they're like, getting hit with a ping pong ball. Yeah, last

Trevor:

season, I was in New York around this time, and they were, and they were literally hanging off of everything

Ellen :

and our own neighborhood, you know, conver Beach, West, the death monger,

Trevor:

you know, let's call it the death monger.

Christina:

I bought a hand held vacuum, and I stocked there were some baby nymphs that hatched on a rose bush in my yard. Oh, no. And I they're they jump so you can't go to the mask. Yeah? So I went out, I bought a handheld vacuum, and I went out and sucked the little suckers right off. Which

Trevor:

Ghostbusters, right? Yeah. Well, light is green, the trap is clean.

Ellen :

I know you've said many times that you're not a real flower friend or gardener unless you're willing to get in the garden and squish bugs with your own hand. And squish bugs with your own hand. I've

Christina:

also been watching Game of Thrones recently, so I went from like knocking Japanese beetles off my flowers into soapy water, to just squishing them,

Ellen :

because that is also the work of an organic grower, right? No

Christina:

chemicals because you're there's no one pesticide that kills one bug, right, right? And if you start to question, if people who tell you otherwise, they're not telling you the truth, and you start to question, and then you realize they can't answer, and you're like, Okay, well, there's the answer, yeah. Like the organic tick spray, it's cedar oil that suffocates the tick. Well, why does it suffocate a tick and not other body? Right? Right? So it's important, if you are going to manage organically and without pesticides, you have to be willing to get your hands dirty or help

Trevor:

or orange in the case, yes, those things think and turn your fingers bright orange, and it would be much better if that orange came from either macaroni and cheese or, like, cheese puffs. Yeah, no. I mean, it was awful. It's awful

Ellen :

we're talking about flowers. My flower friend, you and I share a shared love of tulips and dahlias, zinnias. I think we can name it all right, but when in your growing, and I want you to talk a little bit about what you've done with your yard and your growing and what you've turned it into, and also what your favorite flowers are and what brings you joy in what you're growing in your yard?

Christina:

Yeah, absolutely so. Nomadica really started. My mother was a master gardener, and she passed away unexpectedly in a car accident, and in I had a business prior to that that I was importing goods made by women from around the world, amazing. And I was working really hard, selling things online. I was giving money back, supporting these women all around the world. I felt really good about it. My mother passed away, and our I've lost my garden buddy, so I went in search of garden buddies, and I did the Master Gardener Program. I did the advanced master gardener program. I did the floret flower class. I did classes at the New York Botanical Gardens. Stayed up at night and did things on my computer while my kids are sleeping. I turned I built a vegetable vegetable garden, which is now a Gordon because we've gone so far past one vegetable garden. I built a cutting garden, I built a mini meadow, I built a kitchen garden, I built more perennial beds, and I started to have such an influx of flowers. A friend was like, why don't you put a little flower stand out and see how it does? And so I got all excited, and I was ready to buy a big, fancy flower stand. She was like, no, no. Calm down. Put out a card table with a table cloth on it and see how it does. And then go from there. I was like, well, that's no fun,

Trevor:

agreed, by the way, because that's how I would do it. build a gigantic store on something I've never tried before,

Christina:

I still look at those original pictures. Such an ugly tablecloth. Why did I listen? Listen to her? Obviously, it would have worked. And I started selling flowers. And meanwhile, I'm getting notes in my mailbox saying, like, do you do garden design? Like, no, no, I'm very busy with my my business I started, and then one day it clicked, and I was like, What am I doing? I found so much joy in gardening and helping people see their backyards differently, being around other people who love flowers. Why am I struggling with this business? And so I shut it down. I I kept the name nomadic as the same name, and I just pivoted completely.

Ellen :

Which I love! I love it because you're chasing, yes, you're finding your joy, you know, you're in you're really listening to yourself and really thinking about, where am I finding this fulfillment? Right? So first of all, it's, you know, it's always, it's a lot to start a business in any way, shape or form, huge, huge. And then to say this business model isn't working for me. I'm really going to do it this way. That's a big pivot. It's very brave, very bold. I love that,

Christina:

which is funny, because that's the name bold nomad. Is the name of my LLC, and I make sense. Well, I started it not knowing what I wanted to do. I was like, I'm going to do something. Let's just name it. Bold nomads. I'll be bold. And that has carried through. So now I'm growing flowers for my flower stand. I offer subscription services in the spring and the fall with tulips, tulips and dahlias and all the good stuff.

Ellen :

There's nothing better than seeing the tulips in January that you're growing like in your basement, in your greenhouse, like when they're starting to come up before our tulips have popped up. I'm like, I can't wait to get to the texting you or I'm stopping by the flower stand to get like, you know, a bouquet. It's just such joy in the winter time when things are dull and gray, which we also like to, by the way, but

Christina:

I don't know. There's something about local tulips in with snow covered ground. And to be able to go out into my little eight by six greenhouse and be surrounded by 1000 tulips, it changes winter experience in the Northeast. Oh, I love it. Yeah, it's wonderful. And,

Trevor:

you know, we have very different scale yards between us, but I think one of the things that you've done so well is to really maximize your space. So for people that are out there looking to do some yard to table gardening, be it flowers, be it vegetables, be it whatever that brings them that same joy. What are some tips that you have in terms of maximizing your space? Yeah,

Christina:

you can do a lot in a small space, whether it's a patio with pots and putting a couple tomato plants and some flowers out there to just going for it like find a little space of grass that isn't serving a purpose. Like, for example, I had a sloped section of my yard. What are you doing on a sloped section of grass? Turn that into something else. You can do anything from dig it up and dig out the grass to just laying down cardboard or laying down layers of mulch. Maybe you plant a little mini meadow, and you bring in the monarchs and all the bumblebees, make it something beautiful. Maybe you do a little veggie garden, or maybe you do both. Maybe you inter plant them, and you have it all work together, and you have a food garden.

Trevor:

Interplanting, this is something that I think you helped us to understand more about companion plants, if you're doing real yard to table gardening, all of the ideas that you have, for the most part, if you're just starting it, they're coming from commercial farms. They're coming from nurseries, where you see rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of the same thing, but we have almost none of that at Stonebrook. We have almost no just like, here's the one bed that has just this or that. There's a couple things, but, but it's not like, it's not like, All right, here's our section that is all zucchinis, and here's our section that is all this other thing. It's, it is very, is very interconnected. So talk a little bit more about companion plants, what to put together, give and why and why? Yeah,

Christina:

There's a lot of nuance to it, and a lot of it comes from trial and error and observing things in the garden. But there are some basic things, like, tomatoes don't like to be next to peppers, and if you do put them near peppers, you have to put like, a buffer zone, because they're both heavy feeders. And if they're both trying to feed heavily, one will be like, Okay, it's your turn. You can have the soil, and they won't do well. And the tomatoes will take over beans or nitrogen fixers, if you're going to grow anything, grow some bush beans, because they will take care of themselves, so easy. But I guess plants ultimately are kind of like people. We like they like friends, right? So maybe something that like, even with perennials, milkweed, if you grow it by itself, all the little caterpillars are exposed, but if you plant it, intermingle and they fall over. If you plant it intermingled with a native grass, like switch grass, they sort of hold each other up trees, like a cluster of trees, like your white pines out here, they're happy all together, holding each other through the roots, and they lean on each other when they blow in the wind. It's the same thing with vegetable gardening, the plants that need the pollinators, like the cucumbers, they if they don't have adequate pollination, like every day a bum will be visiting that flower. You're gonna get that weird, funky cucumber, yeah, with a point, and it looks kind of like disjointed so it likes to be planted with borage or. Sterns that bring in the wonderful pollinators. And then there's also things like, if you plant basil and onions next to your tomatoes, it's supposed to make the tomatoes taste better. Now, have I ever had a bad tomato from my garden? Probably not, but I don't know. I like the nuance of those little things like that.

Trevor:

The groundhog isn't complaining the ground about the tomato.

Ellen :

He is very happy. He's happy that the happy, yeah, he's happy that the onions are there and the basils, because the tomatoes taste fantastic.

Christina:

You can also maybe we should plant some things he doesn't like. You can use plants to deter critters. So anything in the allium family, and maybe we'll put some Allium we'll make a fort of them all around.

Ellen :

We are planning more Allium next year, because I just love the way that's also, again, that's a wonderful place. You know, those banners of color that start to come in when everything is, you know, is still a little brown, is still very brown. I should say, what are your most popular flowers that people come to the flower stand for? I mean,

Christina:

I'm a tulip obsessed, crazy person,

Ellen :

and that infection has reached me. Yeah, by the way, yeah,

Christina:

you know the Hortus bulbum in Amsterdam, it has all the historic collection of tulips, and that's like, if I can just sneak away.

Trevor:

You just said to Ellen, let's go.

Christina:

I did. I did that was code because you're here

Trevor:

A flower place, somewhere overseas, in Europe.

Ellen :

I'm texting you

Trevor:

I'll see you guys in a month.

Christina:

I wasn't discreet enough.

Ellen :

It worked for me.

Christina:

So people, I mean, people know me for my tulips. I'm not growing the standard things. I'm going the craziest things I can find. But people, they love a Dahlia, and the summer, I have found that a lot of people grow the summer flowers, like the zinnias and the sunflowers, and those are more common, so those are a little harder to sell, which I think is interesting, but those early winter tulips and people are blue and gray. Yeah, they they love everything.

Ellen :

There Joy. It's joy. It makes people happy. It gets them to the places, you know. And we're talking about local, and I know you're part of the Connecticut flower collective, and we talk a lot about why local is important, but particularly with cut flowers, when people can say, I'll just go to a grocery store and I'll get a bouquet. Tell us a little bit about that.

Christina:

Absolutely. So the Connecticut flower collective, first of all, is a wholesaler of locally grown flowers from here in Connecticut. It's a fabulous organization. It brings lots of Flower Growers together and makes it makes the most premium product available to florist. They also have open shopping days for the public, so you don't have to be a business to shop at their collective. So if you can follow them on Instagram, then you can see when that they make, when they make their flowers available to the public. I am part of the collective in the sense that I do not sell my flowers to them. I use almost every stem I grow, but I do when I need to gap fill what I'm not able to grow. Always source from the collective, because I do not. You know, of course, I have purchased imported flowers, right? Most people, even though they try really hard to be the best. You can't be 100% all the time. And I still make the best decisions I can when I do buy imported flowers. But the imported flowers are coming from Latin America, and, of course, overseas and Holland and they have been overnighted, likely twice, once to Miami, and then again up to New York, and they're sprayed with, who knows what. They're not regulated. They're not regulated at all. So they can be interesting, you want, right? Okay? And then sometimes, when they come through customs, they get fumigated. So they're inspected, and if some, if one of the inspectors sees something, they fumigate the whole lot from that grower. Oh, wow.

Ellen :

That is so interesting, because I was just reading this about organic food, same thing. So if you're buying non local organic food, it may have been organic at the time that it was grown by the grower, but if it comes over and it's it's going to get fumigated. Because that's part of the job, right? Of customs to make sure that things are don't have, or we're not bringing lantern flies in, lantern flies, right? So, local, yeah, but So, and it's, you know, and it's same thing with, yeah, so that's very interesting that you say that because I was just reading this about because I'm like, Oh my gosh, I never thought about that. You know, you think you're buying organic, and it's labeled organic, but there's some there could be part of a process that changes that,

Christina:

Thats something you can't un-hear.

Ellen :

Yes, right? You're welcome. Yeah, we do this for each other.

Christina:

Now I'm gonna ruin the grocery store trips for my husband too. But, I mean, it makes you think twice, right? You go. But I don't want to touch those flowers and I don't want to smell those. Flowers. And I'll tell you what the number of flowers I've handled that have nothing on them. Once you know what that really feels like. And you handle a flower that has been imported, you can feel it on your hands, and that is a creepy and disgusting feeling.

Ellen :

And they Well, it is gross

Christina:

wow. I mean, it's like, what is that? It's like 10, like, if you walked into an abandoned building and ran your hand across a desk, like, that layer of of, like film, that's what it leaves on your hands.

Ellen :

Well, to avoid that disgusting experience, in addition, I mean, the local flowers, they last longer, right? Oh, absolutely, in a vase. I mean, you know, you're changing your water, and you're but you can keep, I mean, how long would you say, like a bouquet of organic tulips last compared to, I mean, locally, as long,

Christina:

Twice as long, if not longer. Sometimes they've not, even if they're overnighted, right? They're still angry from think about you after an overnighted, an overnight flight. Oh, my God, happy either, and they had no water. You were served water, right?

Ellen :

I think it's true in talking about starting being bold and saying, I want to grow flowers. For that novice gardener, flower explorer, what's a good variety to try? What would you be your advice for someone who wanted to just to grow something that was a flower,

Christina:

I would first consider protection from deer,

Ellen :

That is a very important point right in the northeast and right? other places.

Christina:

Yes, if you have protection from deer, I think the least expensive way to get going is to try something like sunflowers or zinnias. You can buy a packet of seeds for $5 and and grow some beautiful, fairly easy things. That said, if you want to further your connection with your space, I think cone flowers are such a beautiful addition. Echinacea purpuria is the pink cone flower, and it brings in the butterflies, it brings in the bumblebees, and then it brings in the charms of goldfinch. The goldfinches come in, and they sit on the seed heads, and they wave back and forth, and they pluck the seeds out. And as they're doing that, they're spreading the seeds all around the plant. And then you have more plants next year. They're one of my favorite natives, and that you start to see, like the interconnectedness of nature in your backyard.

Ellen :

I have a whole section that I want to put bee balm and cone flowers in along the road making notes.

Christina:

And that's a wonderful combination, because the bee balm is in the mint family, and deer typically don't like it.

Ellen :

There's really, I mean, that's a really important point, right? Because we say deer resistant most of the time, right? Because, oh, man, you never know, no.

Trevor:

And a lot of times it's, you know, it's like, well, you could plant lavender because they don't like lavender,

Christina:

but lavender doesn't grow well here.

Trevor:

And you would need a a field of lavender to actually make them not be interested.

Ellen :

Trevor, could you talk about our deer protection methods that you put in the garden this year?

Trevor:

Oh, yeah, no, I was just gonna say we, we added in some orbit, automatic Motion Detecting sprayers, which also may get moved slightly for this Bucha. Oh, wait, Groundhog,

Ellen :

wood, Chuck, yes, right, yeah,

Trevor:

he's, I think he's figured out the place where these don't see him, don't see him truly. I really do. I really think that's the truth. They're smart because I moved the one and it it, he's not in there anymore, and the other one's being blocked by the cold frame. And so I think he's found, like the blind spot in the cameras where he's not getting zinged with water. But it's a great I mean, it's, it's

Ellen :

because we're esthetically snobby and we wanted, we didn't want what Christina would recommend for every putty who wants to plant a garden, which is lots of fencing, fencing around it

Trevor:

, which is also a great way to go. I've had friends who were up in upstate New York in accord. He put in a seven foot deer fence, and the deer literally jumped over the fence. Yeah. All of this is about lock your car so that somebody doesn't just casually go in and grab stuff, if they will, if the deer want to get it's the same principle, if deer want to go in and they want to eat, they're going to here at Stone Brook, we have some sort of advanced stone work that sort of helps our garden to protect it with some walls and things like that that are already sort of were built in and baked when we Got here. But I think a lot of it is finding those natural deterrents. You know, electric fencing is basically useless, because they can just, you know, go right through it and unsightly, and it's unsightly.

Christina:

You took that down.

Trevor:

Yeah, that was the first, that was the first thing you inherited, that we did inherit.

Christina:

We did. We did hear it. That was not your decision.

Ellen :

It took a while for us to learn, you know, what we needed and what we did.

Trevor:

But yeah, we got rid of that,

Christina:

and you're really good about spraying. Well, we are. We win the award for that my clients, yeah.

Trevor:

So the other thing that we do definitely is deer fence and liquid liquid fence. Yeah, liquid fence. I buy it in the in the concentrate in whenever Amazon's having a sale, I'll buy another five gallon jug of this stuff, and it smells awful.

Christina:

Have you read the ingredients?

Trevor:

Oh, yeah, pretty it's pretty disgusting, rotten eggs and pee and all sorts of fish, gross garbage. Not long ago, we did have in the backyard. We had seven bucks at once, which also beautiful. It was beautiful, gorgeous. They also do cause some damage themselves, rubbing up against things. I think we lost a peach tree because of them. Those, those fine young gentlemen, the spraying has to happen, not just on a regular schedule, but on a weather based schedule. So you have to make sure that you're, you're spraying. If it rains, you spray again, correct? And that sucks. Sometimes, if it's raining a lot, because then you're spraying, which happens three times a week, yes, four times a week. We haven't really had the same kind of deer problems since we've been spraying, since we put the orbits in, and the orbits are a new a new addition, these automatic sprayers. But I think I personally have had several baths from the dusk to dawn, automatic Spillers, because you just, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna go and get a oh, I need to get some.

Ellen :

We're cooking. I mean, that happens a lot of dinner time for the garden. And the one thinks it's darker than it is, correct?

Trevor:

Because it's just then you like, start screaming, because you get like,

Ellen :

you know, and when you're working with your landscape design clients, what are they looking to do most?

Christina:

you know, I've seen a lot of different things over the years. I've had clients who already know what they want. They want to build a meadow, they want to have a vegetable garden or a cutting garden, but a majority of the time, I would say people just know that it's unused space, that it feels they walk out and it just feels like open nothingness. And how do you change the open nothingness to of mowed lawn into something that's buzzing for both you and for the pollinators. So I mentioned earlier that the one client who just had the bamboo forest, I wasn't even there to talk about the bamboo forest. I was there to talk about something else, and it's just I see myself as someone who comes in and learns about who you are, who's in your family? How do you use the space now and then, I like to say, Well, would you like to use it this way, or would you like to use it that way? And what are your favorite colors? And are you afraid of bees? And all the little, all the little things, right? If you're afraid of the bees, I'm gonna put the meadow way back over there, but we're still gonna have a little mini meadow, right? So it's just really about learning what people how they use the space now and then, opening their eyes to how they really could use it, and the important role that they can play in bringing function back to the land, as opposed to just a mode mono crop of grass,

Ellen :

and that's really such a passion for you, this whole idea of transforming the space and and the mini meadows, and why that's important. And obviously what I love is you started the mini meadow grant program like in 2023 right? Where this was about getting people to use parts of their unused lawns in a way that was helpful to the environment, creating these like mini national forests, right? And park space and their own lawns, you went, what inspired you to start right? It's one thing to do it for clients, but it's another to put it out in the world for others to do and provide them with the tools and resources to do it.

Christina:

You know, it happened sort of serendipitously, in the sense that I had a client and a friend call me and she said, Oh, you want to do this pollinator pathway garden on our street? All the neighbors have gotten together. Do you know where I can buy plants? She's mentioned a couple local nurseries. And I was like, why don't I just get you the plants? And so it sort of happened in that way, where she was her neighborhood, the Lindbergh pollinators, they created a 20 by 20 foot strip of grass and turned it into a little mini meadow. And it's actually really sweet. It's right behind the fence of an older couple. And when we were installing the mini meadow, they came out and just sat and like watched the whole neighborhood come together and build the mini meadow. So that was really wonderful. And then, you know, that happened, and I thought, Gosh, that was such a wonderful way to bring everyone together. And this movement is afoot, and I want to be a part of it in more than just doing it for people here in Weston. How do I you. How do I make it possible for people who think that it's not possible, right? I give them the tools, the money and the inspiration to just go do it. And I've written grants in the past, and I have found them like, it's very motivating to just have somebody believe in you and say, Here's the money. Go do it. Yeah, bye. Like, go do it, right? And I thought, if I could do that with, you know,$500 and do that for somebody else, it's wonderful for them, it's inspiring for other people. And I don't know, it just feels good to do it, yeah, for sure. I love that. It was win, win,

Ellen :

I love that. And that's, that's a key part of you, and your business is that, whole, you know, thread, which I love, of giving back and doing and and it creates just ripples of good energy and positive impact on the planet. I mean, that's how you can't get much better than that.

Trevor:

I think the cool thing is, it's not, it's also not just local.

Christina:

It's a national, great national, yeah. So last year, the winner, so I opened it up, not really having any idea how many people would apply. And of course, there's, like, the people I'm like, Oh, I know her, like, really,

Trevor:

Ellen, looking for money. Again.

Ellen :

I did not apply. I shared the link.

Christina:

It was open to everybody, and I, you know, this year I'm going to have to have a set criteria, because once everyone applied, I had schools, I had parks, I had private landowners. And I thought, Well, gosh, I didn't really specify. How do I pick between a school and a private landowner? So I gathered some like minded people to help me. I weeded through, I don't remember the number, but it was over 200 or 300 that's amazing, which is pretty decent for its first year. That's incredible. That's amazing. First formal year, and we ended up picking a woman, a family, with land that is on the true monarch migration route as they leave Mexico. It's like the first stop, oh, wow, in Texas. Oh, that's incredible. She wanted to do milkweed garden for the monarchs. Yeah. That felt like, oh, it's literally, I look, I got out the maps, and I was like, double checking to make sure this is where they fly, of course, right? The due diligence on your end, yeah, and it's right there,

Ellen :

you mentioned pollinator pathway. So for those who wouldn't don't know what that is, can you talk about what a pollinator pathway is?

Christina:

Yes. So it takes the understanding that we need to have spaces that are safe for our pollinators and have them connected. It's wonderful if you hear on your 11 acres or pollinator friendly, but if they can't fly anywhere, it's an island, right? You know your own. You're your own little Madagascar.

Trevor:

We should change it to Madagascar, Stonebrook should just be Madagascar.

Christina:

Stonebrook of Madagascar,

Ellen :

but it's a connection, right?

Christina:

It's a connection. So it's a it was actually it's a 501, c3, started by a woman in Wilton, and it's a commitment that you as a homeowner make to reduce your lawn space. Plant native plants stop spraying herbicides and pesticides. And what's the fourth one? Mow less frequently, right? So things can flower for the beads bees. So it's really just a commitment. It's a grassroots movement. And you sign up. You sign up.

Ellen :

It's a honor system. You say, I'm gonna, this is these principles I believe in. I'm gonna sign up. And then you get added to a map of of people that are pollen to the pollinator friendly pathway, right?

Christina:

It has spread everywhere. I mean, it's been very successful. And there are, like, little chapters in different towns, and you can go and get information, and it's a resource, and there are people who can help you. So it's a wonderful organization. It's a

Ellen :

way that people you know find a community of others, yes, that you know share your same desires and beliefs around gardening and planting and natives and all that kind of stuff. It's a good way to connect,

Christina:

and it's a wonderful way to learn. Yeah, right, if you don't, if you're feeling like you don't know what to do, you can go find a pollinator pathway group in your town and volunteer with them and go learn, and someone else will start. And I think

Trevor:

that's we say this a lot. Yeah, it's, it's so interesting when you really start figuring out your neighbors, the other yards in your community, and what people are doing. And it really is a great connector, more so than what you do for a living, or, you know, sometimes even having kids, it's like, it's all it's something that we all have such a great passion for, and it's something that is so inclusive. I think for everybody that is a novice, there's never a point where it's like, well, you don't know what you're doing, so I'm not gonna, not gonna let you in.

Ellen :

This is the first year we had squash borers and with the weather and with the weather, beautiful hydrangeas this year. Yeah, yeah. Gorgeous. Not much snow,

Trevor:

not much snow, lots of rain. Beautiful hydrangeas at the same time, because we had a very mild winter, the Chipmunks are bananas and mice. Mice are bananas. So I thought earlier in the season. Uh, getting a good handle on this space. I gotta tell you, we are really starting to dial this in. Oh, man. And then here comes the wood Chuck. You know, it's always something new. It's always why you need a community so you don't totally like you were the only one.

Ellen :

Yes, and you hire somebody that's also that can help you went in the areas that you don't know so well. I don't know so well. I don't want to miss an opportunity to talk about your floral work, because it's so I just find your approach to creating floral arrangements and installations is just so joyful and creative and beautiful. And you know, I love it. You know, in creating floral arrangements, I know you have some principles that you follow, but what is it that you that you love about it, and what guides you when you're creating things, whether it's an installation, and what are some of the of your favorite installations that you've done?

Christina:

Well, that event that you had here was so beautiful, with all the fall colors and delicious local food too,

Ellen :

yeah, our Westport farmers market, friends, that's right, yeah,

Christina:

that was wonderful. I when I approach, I don't know, it's hard to explain. It's almost like, I think, for other people, what meditating is like, I sort of disappear in my thoughts, and I like to just go and cut and find anything that I think is beautiful, and it almost always if I bring I go out into the garden and walk around, and you start to learn what the right phases are for cutting and what's what's happening now with the hydrangeas or the dahlias or the or the Echinacea or the philectrums, and you Just pick what is speaking to you and come in. And it almost always works. I think there's probably been a handful of times where I'd rip it apart and start over. But the way I approach it is, I want it to be reflective of the spaces that I create as a designer. I want it to feel like you're in the garden. So it's a very loose garden style arrangement that I that I create for clients. When I make bouquets, it's the same way installations I love, of course, who doesn't love a secret garden feel so everything also is sort of inspired by like that childish wonderment of disappearing into a secret garden. I did my favorite installation, of course, is the garden of friend. I did for my mother. On Mother's Day, I went to a flower workshop in Mexico with a lot of the leading floral designers in the US, and was so inspired by the culture, the cultural tradition of the ofrenda. And I thought, Oh, what a wonderful idea to make a garden ofrenda. So I took, I have this wrought iron fence that is created by a local artist. It's all from found pieces of iron that he welded together. And it looks very abstract, but if you actually step back, it's the profile of a dragon, and it culminates where it ends, right at the mouth of the flower stand, and then goes through an arbor into the garden. So that became, there's a shelf there that became the garden of friend to my mother, with just flowers everywhere

Ellen :

and the beautiful you had. That's when you put out the stone heads with the flowers. I mean, the greens coming out of it? No, it was just so impactful and beautiful. And what an honor to your mom. That was just, yeah, no. Thank you for sharing it with all of us. And I think that's the part of the artistry and the beauty of what flowers can do and the messages flowers mean something. Each flower has a meaning. There's there's been much written about that, right? But I and I think it's the visceral meaning, the visceral feeling that we have in seeing them, how it makes us feel, and those experiences that you create, when you when you make things, is so special.

Christina:

Thank you. And also, I think as you get closer to how like the rhythms, I call it a roller coaster, the roller coaster of the seasons. Yes, when you're in tune with the roller coaster of the of the seasons, whether it's food or flowers or just the environment, when the hummingbirds come and leave, and when you see a flower installation or an arrangement, whether you realize it or not, it feels right. If it's local and seasonal, that's such a great point, right? It feels correct. That's right. Feels

Ellen :

comfortable. It fits your home. It fits the season. Yes, one of the thing is going back to being a bold nomad. I mean, you know, it's about you're encouraging people to get outside and cut that branch that has the beautiful leaves on it, and to make something from that, I know that's definitely been a lesson you've given me like just to go outside of your backyard and see what you have, because there's so much growing out there. And then we all are intimidated. I don't want to hurt the plan,

Christina:

general rule of thumb, never take more than a third right?

Ellen :

Very important,

Christina:

don't cut it to the ground.

Ellen :

Well, I know where you're going to go with this one.

Trevor:

I'm going to change the subject.

Ellen :

I think I know where you're going.

Christina:

Too many flowers for you. Trevor,

Trevor:

I love a flower. I It's a subject. Ellen just did a beautiful amaranth, Zinnia Bucha that was just nice, crazy and awesome at the same time. It was wacky.

Ellen :

I loved it wacky.

Trevor:

It was so much fun. Yeah, but there is space in our podcast. Here we go, because it's yard to table for other conversations about chickens.

Christina:

Oh, chicken.

Trevor:

That's right,

Ellen :

the ongoing chicken conundrum,

Trevor:

we don't have chickens. Our neighbor does.

Ellen :

Christina has chickens.

Trevor:

A lot of the people that we know you need chickens, chickens. So now, because you are our first guest that has chickens, yeah, I want to talk about chicken. Of course you do, because I really want some chickens and some gorgeous rainbow eggs, and so does our child. So you get to go to Amsterdam and I get chickens. Well, okay, all right, chickens.

Christina:

And you didn't want chickens? No, when I first met my husband, he was like, let's get chickens. I said, over my dead body, smart idea. We've so many comments over my dead body, and for years, I was like, Absolutely not. You travel all the time. Who's going to take care of them? They're disgusting. And then the pandemic hit, and I thought, I'm getting chickens. So I ordered the chickens, and I told called him, and I said, just so you know, I got the chickens. He was like, what? Challenge accepted? Challenge accepted. I raise you. All right. He was like, I didn't really want chickens. I was like, well, it's too late, because I bought all my Yeah. So we started with four, and that quickly went to eight, which quickly went to 12, and each time we upgraded the coop situation. So that's what

Trevor:

I want to talk about. I want to talk about, yeah, you know, you hear a lot of different things. If you're on the on the interweb,

Ellen :

she's so excited, yeah, you hear a lot You can't see it on the podcast, but he's holding his hand up to me, like,

Trevor:

let me just get all up in this business.

Ellen :

Yeah, claim your time. You're gonna love it.

Trevor:

Because it's, you know, like, like, a lot of things, it's like, there's very wide ranges of of, you know, opinions online. They're dirty, they're hard to keep, they're challenging, they're easy. So give us a little bit of how you started the coop that you built because you have gorgeous eggs and they're absolutely delicious,

Ellen :

And by the way, everything that she designs is, like, esthetically pleasing, so you're not talking like, you know, this is an ugly coupe, agreed?

Christina:

Yeah. So that's the thing is, because I did it in stages without really planning, like you're in a good position, because you can talk to someone like me, two in the morning order more chickens. I if I so, I have right now, predators are the biggest issue, right? So I was not messing I'm not messing around. I'm not dealing with predators taking my chicken. So I'm going to do this. I'm going to keep them safe. So this so this is, I have basically a huge rectangle that is wrapped with hardware cloth, and it has a roof. There's no way anything is getting in or getting out. And that is the biggest thing, if giving them a safe space to be

Trevor:

and you have the snipers around the edge.

Christina:

No, I can see it from my bedroom window, yeah, my bed and look at the chicken coop.

Ellen :

It is important to have the coop close to the house, right, yeah, that's what I've heard.

Christina:

Yeah, no, I want to be able to see it. I can see it from where I have my coffee. I can see it from my bed, okay, and they're far enough away that I planted mint the whole way around to help with the smell, because that was a big concern of mine. Oh, right, yeah. So I can smell them when it rains, but the mint helps a lot, and you can feed them the mint, which,

Trevor:

yeah, of course. I mean, I think this is the thing a lot of people don't realize, yeah, chickens is how much they will eat of your food waste.

Christina:

Yes, I my compost situation has completely just sort of halted in the sense that the food, I don't all of our food scraps, as long as it's healthy food, which most of it is, we all have kids here.

Trevor:

Jolly Ranchers are not.

Christina:

Waffle has a lot of syrup. I'm not giving it to the chicken. That's right, that's right, yeah. So they get all of the like, even just my if there's nothing better than, like, picking a cucumber, cutting off the ends to make pickles, putting it in a bowl for the chickens, taking that out, giving it, to dump it in their bowl for the chickens, collecting some eggs coming in, and, like, just the back and forth of like, giving and receiving, and giving and receiving. And it's, it's pretty cool. So I think you would have really liked it.

Trevor:

can't wait, yeah, so really

Ellen :

selling it, that's all I gotta say.

Trevor:

You get to go to Amsterdam. I'm gonna keep going back to that, by the way, it's a good answer. And how often do you feed them? How? I mean outside of, yeah, just talked about, what's the schedule?

Christina:

Schedules like to check on them. I check. On them every day, right? Sure, I didn't. There are some days and I'm like, Oh, I think I forgot. But ideally, you check on them every day and, you know, they eat. They have, I have two big food containers, so you refill it every couple of days, clean water. That's kind of like a hamster, yeah, like a hamster. But the cleaning of the coop,

Ellen :

the cleaning of the coop,

Christina:

cleaning of the coop is not fun, yeah?

Ellen :

Full disclosure,

Christina:

somebody helps me with that.

Ellen :

That sounds better.

Christina:

Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, but I'll I have gotten down on my hands and knees and the chicken coop. Many a time to, like, grab an egg from underneath. You gotta do what you gotta do, and then I stand up. I'm like, oh,

Ellen :

I need a shower ASAP.

Trevor:

Here's the thing. I think this is a very funny conversation overall. And as our listeners get to know us better and better, you know, Ellen has been, as you were, very anti, anti chicken. But just the other day we we were at a lovely event that Easton put on, oh yeah, neighboring town, just all the farms in Easton were sort of doing an open Farm Day, which was lovely, and saw a bunch of friends, a bunch of people that we knew and and got some great, some great produce from other places. And there was a petting zoo, and there was sheep, very adorable pigs. Oh, pigs. Now I have a weakness for pigs. Let me tell you. Ellen was like, Riley, should we get pigs? Oh, my God, thinking, hold on, I'm back here at chicken land. I'm trying to think about, like, maybe we could start small with, like, a couple, and she's already at stakes, which

Ellen :

I it was another good another good sell. You know, she's like, I litter box trained my pig, right? I was like, Well, okay. Oh, my friend, well, this has just been a joy to talk to you. You know about all of the things that you're doing, and we love learning from you, and

Trevor:

we appreciate you so much, and all the help that you give us, knowledge that you have imparted upon us is is always amazing. Yeah,

Ellen :

so we we look forward to more time in the yard, and thank you again for joining us on yard to table today, and for all you do,

Trevor:

you're the best.

Christina:

Thank you guys. It's always a good day when I get to come to Stonebrook, such a beautiful place.

Trevor:

Thank you. Love me some Christina. I mean, how can you not? How can you not? How can you not?

Ellen :

I think it's the gamut of what she knows combined with her creativity, right, and the execution that I just always learn something every time I talk to her. And so I've already thought of about 1000 questions I wish I had asked so that maybe there's a part two in our future.

Trevor:

I'm sure there is one that's specifically about chickens or pigs or pigs. That's right, no livestock.

Ellen :

But for you, our listeners, don't worry. Everything that we talked about today, we will reference in the show notes links to nomadic as website and to references all the cool stuff we talked about, all the cool stuff we talked about. Thanks for being with us and having a seat at our table.

Trevor:

Yard to table is a production of Macrocosm Entertainment. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and for tips and more information, follow us on Instagram@stonebrookhouse

People on this episode

Head Shot

Ellen Scherer Crafts

Host
Head Shot

Trevor Crafts

Host