Get In My Garden

On this episode, we meet Bert Wahlen, CEO of Smartplant, a company empowering and capturing the next generation of plant lovers. They just launched their new app after years of research and expanding on their mission. They are using demographics data to transform the garden industry from a confusing, overwhelming, a sometimes stale and unwelcoming industry, into a fun and approachable one, in the language that millennials understand, data and technology. SmartPlant is increasing connection between people and their plants and empowering the next generation of plant hobbyists so that the next generation of consumers will be engaged in gardening.

Today we meet a local backyard homesteader who shares his wisdom with us from over 10 years of natural farming in downtown Albuquerque. Sam Lopez has created an amazing and flourishing oasis in this desert city. In our chat, we cover a lot of ground such as keeping laying hens and rabbits in your back yard, raised bed gardens, composting systems, a special kind of beehive called the Warre Hive, his no-till farming practices that support the soil food web, methods he uses to make compost that keep the ecosystem balanced, water catchment and sustainability practices that relate to the home and garden, as well as how this lifestyle and philosophy affects his kids and family. Sam is a natural podcaster and he will tell us all about these things. I also toured his urban homestead and took videos which will be available on instagram @getinmygarden.

Today Jennifer Lauruol will tell us about the ecologically-minded area of Lancaster England where she lives and some of the community and research programs they have there around sustainability and food security.

She talks about how she markets herself as an edible landscape designer, helping to restore spaces with native plants using permaculture concepts and getting people interested in healthier garden spaces.

She goes into how she is able to get suburbanites to come around to the idea of native plants in their yards, and about ways she incorporates these plants to make a statement in the landscape, as well as some of the terminology she prefers to use when communicating with people unfamiliar with permaculture principles.

Jennifer shares some great book recommendation and mentions very interesting landscape designers who have inspired her or paved the way to where we are now in the movement. Listen to the whole episode, because Jennifer gives some great recommendations sprinkled throughout the interview.

In the last section, we talk about animal life, keystone species of plants and animals, and understanding each piece of the ecosystem by observation to uncover what nature is telling us in our specific ecosystem.

Jennifer discusses going beyond permaculture with an indigenous approach to communication with plants and fungi which places humans directly into the natural environment with so much reverence and connection.

You can reach out to Jennifer after the interview, her cantact info is available at the end.

You are listening to Episode 72 of the Get In My Garden Podcast.

Woniya was runner up on the survivalist show Alone, Season 6, where she survived two and a half months in the far northern region of Canada.

Today she shares her ideas for how to foster the right mindset and have a high chance to surviving in any environmental conditions, some simple practices we can all use to open our senses to our environments and how to connect with our landscape wherever we are located.

Then Woniya talks about her experiences teaching people about ancestral skills and all the awesome programs she has created through her business, Buckskin Revolution.

You can follow her work and learn more about her by searching Buckskin Revolution on social media and online.

You can follow this podcast @getinmygarden on Instagram, and subscribe to the show wherever you listen from, if you’d like to receive new episodes. Also, please leave positive reviews if you want to support the show!

Next up we will have more natural farming stories and learning from Elton Ray James and Kyle Perry.

Episode #54, Integrated Pest Management and Career Opportunities in Entomology with Amanda Skidmore by Aaron Moskowitz, Interviewing the brightest minds in Mycology, Soil Science, Natural and Agricultural Ecology, Technology and EcoBusinesses.