Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Leaves are crunching under my feet as I walk along the trail. Behind me, the Filoli house is receding into the distance, fading into the fields of tall, swaying grass that surround it.

I'm in the woods now, and this early in the morning, it's filled with the chatter of birds. Acorn woodpeckers announcing themselves, little brown sparrows hopping from branch to branch.

Whenever I walk this stretch of trail towards Reds Barn, I'm struck by the dappled sunlight, the curving shapes of the oaks all around me. It's almost like nature's sculpture garden. The trunks all have smooth organic lines. You can see around them and through in all directions.

To anyone who's spent time at Filoli, this trail may be a familiar friend. But today, I'm heading deeper into our natural lands and into a very different ecosystem, the redwoods.

This morning, I made sure to put on my big boots to hike the Spring Creek Trail, the ones I don't mind getting wet and tromping through ferns. This trail is all about water, after all, even when the creek bed is dry.

From Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California, I'm your host, Willa Brock, and this is another Morning in the Garden.

Or should I say, Morning on the Trail?

Wake up with me to the sounds of the rippling stream as we hike through the forest. Let's talk about the thought that goes into opening a new trail and the peace we can find under towering redwoods.

As I turn the corner, I hear the buzz of a tractor slowly getting louder and louder.

That is a serious piece of machinery. How's it going? Is this still a good time? Take a little break from your tractor lifestyle.

Natural Lands Manager Ian Walsh: Sure.

Brock: So Ian, will you introduce yourself a little bit and tell me what you do here at Filoli?

Walsh: So my name is Ian Walsh, I'm the Natural Lands and Trails Manager for Filoli. I've been here coming up on just about a year. I was hired as sort of this push in our 25-year plan to develop a trail system, develop and reopen these paths that were established by a group of volunteers back in the 80s, 90s, 2000s.

Brock: So we're walking along the beginning of the Spring Creek Trail, which starts out in pretty dense woods, and then it opens up. We just passed our first glimpse of Spring Creek.

The trail is covered in fallen bay leaves, and everything is super green from all the rain we've been getting, and because it's springtime, it's like fluorescent out here.

What is all this wood on the side of the path from?

Walsh: Most of this wood was placed here by volunteer groups or by myself.

Brock: It's kind of like a beaver has been through here.

Walsh: Two years ago, we got these really heavy storms around New Year's Day, and it really dammed up our spring creek with all this wood that came shooting down from up at our reservoir. And it got stopped up under the bridges and was impeding water, and it was just these giant clumps of dirt and debris, wood. So me and the volunteer groups would come out here and be climbing under the bridges, taking out all these logs and throwing them up onto the banks.

Brock: So getting this trail ready has been a big group effort.

Walsh: Absolutely. We had our service learning program that would come out here a couple different times. But most of the big clearing jobs was done by a group of women aged nine to 14.

Brock: Girl Scouts, right?

Walsh: Who came out here one afternoon and just kicked ass along the trail.

Brock: That's awesome.

Walsh: This is set to be this sort of crowning jewel of this natural land system that really hasn't been seen yet.

Brock: So you want to get it right?

Walsh: Yeah.

Brock: Can you tell me a little bit about this trail and about what you think is special?

Walsh: As far as Filoli goes, this trail is special because we're so known for this well-manicured gardens.
 And I think that this trail is sort of the opposite of that. It's taking a step back from this mansion and it's this appreciation for this natural land and this beauty and really this area that hasn't been touched all that much since it was logged back in the late 1800s.

Brock: Because the peninsula is just jam-packed with houses and businesses and we're using every inch of it. So it's special to have Filoli in the middle of this protected watershed because that's why, is because of the reservoirs, right?

Walsh: So William Bourn was the president of the water company way back when. And so he was really invested in this idea of being self-sufficient. I don't know if it was because he controlled so many other people's water, but he really liked this idea of being in control of his own water.

Brock: Yeah, I haven't thought of it that way, but he didn't want to be beholden, having to pay a water bill.

Walsh: He saw the value in maintaining control of your own supply.

Brock: Yeah, and that's a feature of this trail that you get to see is a little bit of the story of water through time. Obviously, it's this incredible creek, and then you get to see some of the infrastructure that Bourn was putting in as he tried to control his own water.

Walsh: Yeah.

Brock: Well, let's keep going a little bit. We're going to cross the first bridge, which is really where you get the first view of this creek through the redwoods. There's tiny little waterfalls. You look up at the redwoods, these tall bay trees that are leaning over the creek.

It's really calm.

I was out here the other day for a meeting, the best kind of meeting as a meeting in the forest. And I was waiting for someone, and I just lay down on the ground and looked up at the trees. It was amazing.

Do you find it meditative to work out here?

Walsh: I try not to take it for granted to be able to work in this area and to be exposed to this.

Brock: So here we can start seeing where the trail work has really started. We've got a new switchback that wasn't here before. Tell me about what the reasoning was behind making some changes to the trail.

Walsh: Prior to these trail edits, it was very steep in a lot of places. As it sort of eroded and parts got skinny or too narrow to traverse, it became a little, it became very clear that some edits needed to happen in order for it to maintain its durability and for it to be safe enough for people of all ages, types, to be able to traverse and get around.

Brock: So really it's about accessibility for all of our visitors?

Walsh: Absolutely.

Brock: I think one thing that I've learned to appreciate coming out here are the ferns, the way they come over the sides of the trail.

Walsh: Yeah, a constant reminder of flow, I think. So you're seeing all this greenery and as you hike this trail, especially if you come within the next six months to a year, you're going to see a lot of cleared earth, a lot of barren slopes, and that's slowly going to get filled in by these ferns and this greenery as it works its way back down over the bare earth.

Brock: So we've gained some elevation now. We're starting to look down on the creek, which is a very cool view. You can see the giant boulders along the sides of it.

Walsh: You can see the other side of the trail.

Brock: Oh my gosh. We see that there's more elevation to go. The cool thing about this trail is that it's a loop. So you walk along the creek all the way up to the Flume Overlook, and then you cross the creek and head on the other side. So if you were over there, I could wave to you.

The lovely thing about this trail right now, this season is the water, but it does go dry later, right?

Walsh: Yeah, I think that we've had a really good amount of rain this year, probably about three inches more than normal. And I think that that really bodes well. Last year, we got a good amount too, and the water stayed running until mid to late summer. And then even then, there was still water in it, which I have been told is not typical. It typically dries all the way out, but it's still flowing really well right now. And I think I could easily see it continuously flowing again this year until August.

Brock: What's your favorite part of this trail?

Walsh: I really like the new bridge. I think it's this very broad, low to the ground bridge that gives you this opportunity to, if you're a kid or even if you're not a kid, lay down, get close to the water, sort of interact with the space.

Brock: Let's do that when we go over there. I'm gonna make you lay down.

Okay, so we are at the, I say top of the trail, but it's not really the highest elevation, is it? It just feels like the emotional top of the trail. And it's cool up here because you can turn onto this little overlook path and get to my favorite part of the trail, which is the flume overlook.

Here you can lean over these wooden railings and look up and see this big wooden structure that William Bourn built to transfer the water from his pond, his reservoir, down back into the creek. And it does kind of look like a really fun slide. I do imagine what it would be like to slide down it, even though the landing would not be very fun.

Walsh: Looking at the flume, I think the big thing to think about here and sort of appreciate is that this structure has had constant water flow over it for over a hundred years, and it still looks as if it could have been built in the last couple of years.

Brock: It stood the test of time.

Walsh: Yeah, it's still sound, and it still does what it was built to do. It functions as a chute for the water leaving the reservoir.

Brock: Which season do you think is the most magical to be up in the woods like this?

Walsh: I think if you can get out here either after it started raining, but on a sunny day, or into spring when the creek is still flowing, but it's nice outside. I think those are the two times where everything just comes together and it sort of feels like you're in some sort of storybook.

Brock: Yeah. So we're on Ian's favorite bridge now, and we're going to lie down.

You're right. It's so low that you can put your head right over it. See all the water skimmers?

Walsh: [inaudible]

Brock: What's that? Oh my gosh. That's another magic thing about this trail is the California newt, this little brown salamander guy that has a bright orange belly. And they come out starting in the winter through spring. A lot of their tadpoles will hang out in the reservoir, the pond up at the top, and then they make their journey down the creek, really all the way down to the other side of the property because they're migrating. They're commuting.

Walsh: Yeah, they'll go as far as Canada Road.

Brock: That's why we have signs on the staff part of the property when we drive to the parking lot. They say, newt crossing.

Now this is hard because I don't want to get up. I don't want to get up.

So now we're really close to the water on the other side after we crossed. And this is the old bridge that the new bridge replaced.

Walsh: Yeah, as you begin to sort of climb out of the valley on the return side of the trail, on your left side, you'll see the remnants of what was the old Spring Creek Bridge.

Brock: It was crazy. These were the atmospheric river storms that came through in...

Walsh: 22, 23.

Brock: Lots and lots and lots of rain, lots of trees down, big impact on the Filoli property. I think our power was out a bunch as well. But what happened up here?

Walsh: The water level on Spring Creek rose by probably four or five feet.

Brock: Really?

Walsh: And just an enormous amount of sediment and logs and rocks and water came shooting down this valley.

Brock: And so it washed out the bridge?

Walsh: Yeah. The bridge was knocked off of its base and swept probably three to 400 feet down the valley. And it now sits perched on the rocks where it came to rest, full of sticks and debris and all these other things that were also swept down the creek.

Brock: This place we're standing right now would have been underwater?

Walsh: As you walk, you can sort of tell, just looking at where debris has landed and where the edges of the valley were carved out, you can start to get a sense of how high the water was getting as it was taking the turns of the creek.

Brock: It's funny, because part of my brain is like, oh, it looks dirty, we should clean it up. And then I'm like, this is nature. It's not something that you can curate.

Walsh: Yeah, I think this bridge especially is sort of this testament to, no matter how strong your infrastructure is, nature can win. And it's really just a matter of time until things get tested like that.

But I really, really like it, because I think it just serves this purpose of seeing both sides of water as firstly, a commodity that is so valuable, and we want to maintain, and that we want to control and be in control of. But then the other side of this as this uncontrollable force that you really don't have any chance of stopping.

Brock: Well, thanks for taking me up here, Ian.

Walsh: Yeah, absolutely. I'm super excited to get more people out on this trail. The best way to maintain a trail is just to use it.

Brock: June 8th, that's when this trail officially opens to the public. Please come out and use it.

Okay, now I have to backtrack a bit. I think I'm meeting Danae back at the last bridge.

Hey, Danae, thanks for meeting me on the trail today.

Programs Coordinator Danae Bravo: Yeah, I'm so excited to join you.

Brock: You've been on this trail a bunch in the past, haven't you?

Bravo: I have. I am the program coordinator, so I work a lot with our youth programs and we do bring them out on the trails a lot.

Brock: What are some favorite memories you have of kids on this trail?

Bravo: Fun memories, creating a lot of their first experiences out here, which is one of my favorite parts of my job, having them connect with nature in a way that maybe they have seen, but have never gotten the chance to get a little bit deeper and a little bit closer.

And then one of my favorite parts is to take them to see the creek. I feel like I connect a lot with the creek. It reminds me a lot of my ancestors. My family's from Peru, the Amazon, which, I don't know, I just feel extra connected to this creek. The sounds of the water just kind of almost bring me back home, even though I'm so far away.

I think that it does the same for the kids. It's so fun to bring them to this space and just let them explore. Maybe it's the first time running into a newt or the first time seeing any of the species that are in the creek, which is a whole ecosystem of its own.

Brock: Let's walk back over towards the creek and you can tell me about some of your favorite animals that live along this trail.

Bravo: Yeah, well, the newts are definitely one of my favorites.

Brock: Why?

Bravo: Well, they're adorable. I have this core memory of coming out here and we started looking down at the ground by the barn. Every little piece of dirt started to move and it was because we realized there was just newts everywhere. We had to be really careful where we were stepping and they were just coming out of every corner.

Brock: Wow.

Bravo: So as we're getting deeper into the trail, you can see that almost the whole ecosystem kind of changes. The area is a little bit cooler, so there's a lot more ferns.

Brock: Yeah, and it's moist.

Bravo: Yes.

Brock: And anyone who is driven to Filoli in the mornings, especially if you take the Edgewood exit, my favorite is when I pull off the freeway and I'm on my way to work and I see the fingers of fog coming down the mountain range. And those fingers are settling in canyons like this one. And that's where that fog and the redwoods are feeding each other.

Bravo: Yes, it makes me really interested to see what this area looks like at night. I had mentioned to you that the closer you are to the nighttime, the more living things that you can see when you're out on a trail. So like the earlier you go hike, the more chances that you'll see signs that something was there overnight as opposed to in the middle of the day when people have already been in that space.

Brock: That's why it's so lovely to get out on the trail in the morning like this.

Bravo: Oh my gosh.

Brock: Danae just pointed out a track in a little patch of mud!

Bravo: And there's that one too.

Brock: Oh my goodness. Wait, so what? Tell me, describe what you're looking at.

Bravo: So we're seeing a couple of different tracks. There's one that's really deep and really big.

Brock: If the track is that big, what kind of animal?

Bravo: It could be a mountain lion. There is this smaller one here.

Brock: Do you think it's the same animal? It's gotta be.They like tromped right through here.

Bravo: They so did.

Brock: So the mountain lions have also been appreciating the updated Spring Creek Trail.

And don't worry listeners, I have worked here for four years. I've never run into a mountain lion during our daylight hours. I think it's just like what you're saying Danae. You know, they were here overnight and now we get to see the evidence that they left behind.

…

Bravo: This is one of my favorite spots. I just feel like it's so meditative to just be in the presence of such like strong flowing water. And there's some beautiful rocks to sit at and take in all the beauty of this space.

One of my favorite things about nature is that you always have something to look at. You can always zoom in closer and closer and closer, and there's still gonna be something living in whatever it is you're looking at. You can look at a small spot of the creek and then keep looking closer and closer, and then you'll find something in there, whether it's like a super small organism or a fly buzzing by or a small plant.

Brock: Or a mountain lion print.

Bravo: Or a mountain lion print, or a fern. There's always something to look at.

Brock: You know, the concept of forest bathing.

Bravo: Oh yeah, yes, that's what I think about when I come out here. If I had to picture forest bathing in my mind, I would picture this exact spot that we're in right now.

Brock: You look up and the light is hitting the green leaves like just perfectly right now. It feels like we're in a cathedral almost. I think the cool thing about being down at the creek level on this trail is that you do get that extra height on the trees. Like these trees are not technically as tall as they feel to us right now. They're just higher up on the slope.

Bravo: Yeah.

Brock: And we're all the way down at the bottom. And so you're looking just up and up and up and up.

Ahh.

Bravo: Oh, there's that one.

Brock: So what's this?

Bravo: This is a wildflower. This one, I believe it's called a woodland forget-me-not.

Brock: We're crouching on the trail to get a good look.

Bravo: So cute and tiny. I love the color of it. It's like a beautiful periwinkle. I think to me it's really beautiful that amongst all the greenery, nature still finds a way to decorate itself. And it can be really small. Like it doesn't have to be a ginormous flower, which in contrast to the gardens, gardens are very show-stopping and like that's what you're there for, to see the big blooms. Whereas here you can find like a tiny bloom. If you zoom into this flower, it's still just as stunning as anything you could find in the garden.

Brock: And yet it's such a small part of this scene that we're in right now. Now I'm using my Danae eyes, my zoom eyes now. Is that what you tell the kids?

Bravo: Yeah, because it's true. Another really fun thing that we do with them is like flip logs. You have to always flip it away from you because things live under logs. And kind of a fun way to always find something on the trail that's exciting for the kids. Like oftentimes you'll find lots of little bugs or critters.

Look at this cool one.

Brock: What is that?

We're crouching down again because we're looking at a wildflower that is hanging over. Like it's just so heavy. It has to lay its head down.

Bravo: I wonder what it is. I don't know what it's called.

Brock: It looks different.

Bravo: It does.

Brock: It looks like a little bell, really, really delicate petals. And then Danae's kind of holding it up with her hand. And I can see that there's little fine hairs inside. It's a pinkish brownish color.

Bravo: A fairy lantern.

Brock: A fairy lantern! It's exactly what it looks like. Well, our path is being lit by fairy lanterns here.

Bravo: That's amazing.

When we have kids, we have them sometimes make a fairy house or a bug house, which we do usually in the garden. But we always tell them like, oh, like, there might be a fairy or a bug that might have walked by. So keep an eye out if you see that anything moved in your house, which is really cool. There's fairy lanterns, so maybe there is real fairies around here.

Brock: Honestly, I believe it. And it's fun for adults to believe in fairies a little bit sometimes, too.

We're now hiking up and out of the creek canyon.That transition is so cool, where you go from the sound of water to the sound of wind rustling in the leaves and the birds.

I just, I for some reason like always stop here, and there's something about the wall of green, and then so many, would you say they were woodland forget-me-nots? So many of the tiny little blue wildflowers on either side of the trail, just like a carpet. And then you get to walk right through the middle.

Bravo: Bays, this is like all lined with bays, which if you've ever walked by bay trees, they're very fragrant sometimes. Not all the time, but if you pull a leaf, you can almost always smell kind of that oil that's on them.

Brock: Let's pull a leaf. Here, here's one that fell recently.

Bravo: Oh, oh my gosh. It smells so good.

Brock: It's so, I don't know how to describe it, like spicy, tangy, sweet.

Bravo: Kind of citrusy scent. To me, it reminds me of California. I don't know. I feel like anywhere that you hike, you can almost always see a bay tree.

Brock: Or you're crunching the leaves underfoot. And so the scent is around you and you don't even really realize it.

Bravo: For me, it's like it just takes you.

Brock: Summer camp.

Bravo: Yeah.

Brock: Like outdoor ed, you know, sleeping in the woods and this is the smell.

So do you have any closing thoughts on the trail? What does this place mean to you?

Bravo: Well, to me, it's a really special place because it's been a place that people haven't been to, a different space of Filoli that people may not have seen before or in a long time. We are very excited for when people get to come out and start using it.

Brock: Because right now it's just you and me, which is lovely in its own way, but how much more special will it be when we run into more people on this trail?

Bravo: Yeah, it's gonna be so much fun. And I think it's-- look at that!

Brock: Oh, it's the wildflower that Danae was looking for this whole time. This is like a little gift to us as we end our time today. Let's look at it.

Bravo: Okay, so it's this tiny little pink one. Looks a little bit like the woodland forget me not, but it's a lot pinker. And the leaves are a little bit pointier. It has like these little yellow tipped stems in the center of it.

Brock: Why were you looking forward to seeing it?

Bravo: It's just so pretty. I had seen it over the weekend and I thought it was beautiful.

Brock: It looks like it's floating almost because it has five like big leaves under it and then it's on such a tiny.

Bravo: Delicate little stem.

Brock: Yeah, it's the fairies.

Bravo: The fairies!

Brock: Well, thank you so much for showing me your version of the trail, Danae.

Bravo: Yeah, of course. It's been a pleasure. I'll see you later.

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Brock: As usual, we'll end the show today with questions for our garden guides.

I'm going to head back to Filoli's formal garden to see if I can track down some of our horticulturists just to answer a couple of questions.

Jia and Rachel, can I bother you for a second with a quick garden guide question?

Horticulturist Jia Nocon: Yes.

Brock: It says, “Is there a fruit tree fence in the works? I noticed several young trees bent and tied to each other in the vegetable garden. Fascinating.” This is from Susan.

Nocon: Hi, Susan. This is Jia. I'm one of the production horticulturists here at Filoli.

And yes, there is going to be a mini espalier in the works along the vegetable garden entrance. It is an espalier technique, but because it's much shorter, they call it a step-over, cause you could step over.

Yeah, the artichokes are there temporarily as a placeholder, but the step-over apple trees, the specifically Jonathan varieties, we planted them last year. And so they're still getting a little bit bigger so that we could train them.

Brock: So each tree is being trained to basically create a little loop.

Nocon: A loop, like a waddle in a way. Yeah, totally. To go with all the hoops that are going on around the garden that delineate the borders of certain beds. Yeah, and hopefully in the next couple years, they will bear fruit. I think some of them are starting to bear fruit, which we don't want them to do because it's too early. We want to get them trained first so that their trunk and their branches are strong enough to support that fruit load.

Brock: Thank you guys so much for letting me interrupt you this morning. Great question, Susan, and I can't wait to see the step-over espalier come to life.

Okay, off to the Sunken Garden next.

Hey Taylor, how are you? I am finding you here in the Sunken Garden because I have a question that people ask all the time that I wanted to ask you on the record. A question we always get is – “Which is the oldest bonsai in our collection?”

Horticulturist Taylor Thorson: The oldest one would be our trident maple. Yes.

Brock: Can we go look at it?

We're standing at the Sunken Garden, but we're just going to pop up on to what's called the Dining Room Terrace by the corner of the House. It's got a huge red oak overlooking it, and this is where our many bonsai are currently being displayed.

And as we're walking over, I'll mention, too, that we work with the Kusumura Bonsai Club to maintain the trees, so they do a ton of work on this collection, because I know it's a lot of maintenance, huh?

Thorson: Oh, absolutely. I am so grateful for them because it is such a specialized skill set, and having their expertise, I'm like, thank you, thank you.

But yes, we are here at our Trident Maple, in all her glory. We are looking at a fairly upright tree. It is just leafing out. It has its new leaves here. And it has a nice flared base going up into some knobby, outward branching and upwards to the top, it gets a little more gnarly.

Brock: How tall is it? Two feet tall, maybe?

Thorson: Yeah, maybe two and a half.

Brock: And it looks like a real tree, except in miniature.

Thorson: I know. Isn't that the amazing part of Bonsai?

Brock: So this is our oldest tree, but how old exactly?

Thorson: That is up for debate. Dating trees is very difficult, and then you add on the special situation of a Bonsai. I mean, they're pruned and taken care of to purposely look smaller and more mature.

The information, when this was originally, when it was donated to Filoli, it was around 200 to 300 years old. Yes, I know - that's very exciting.

Now, talking to the Kusumara Bonsai Club, they don't think it is quite that old, but it's definitely above 150.

Brock: Any which way, it's impressive! What's the story of this tree?

Thorson: So I have heard that this was from the Dr. Rosenau estate, and he had this tree in his personal collection, and he passed. And this tree was actually forgotten on property for maybe like 50 years, and it survived just off of this little trickling drip situation.

And then it was later found by the family and donated to Filoli, and so it was in rough shape, but it was alive, and it survived many years with just a little bit of water. And then we got it, the Kusumura Club, they rehabilitated it, and now it's looking really good, and it's impressive what it's gone through.

Brock: So we have about 50 trees in our collection. Many of the highlights of the collection are on display right now through the rest of May. So come out and check out the miniature trees.

Do you have your own question for Filoli's gardeners? Ask away. Just DM us on Instagram or submit your question at filoli.org/podcast.

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Thank you for spending this morning on the trail with me at Filoli. Don't forget to leave a review or share with a friend if you enjoyed.

In two weeks, ramble through the roses with me as they fill the garden with riotous color and scent. We'll be talking about waterwise solutions for your home garden and some of the changes Filoli is making to ensure a sustainable future for this place we love.

Until then, take advantage of the warmer weather and get out on the trail. Maybe you'll even be inspired to lie down and just breathe under the redwoods.

Willa Brock: [00:00:00] It's heating up already this morning. One of those days that you can tell even from the early hours is going to be glorious. I'm walking through the grass of the Bowling Green, which is a favorite spot of mine to lounge in the sun, but today I'm headed for the archway at the far end. A couple steps up and through the brick wall and suddenly I'm in a different world.

It's cool and shady and I'm surrounded by flowering trees. Tall spindly camellias and red rhododendron dropping their pink blooms on the path, clouds of floating white dogwoods, and below them, ferns and redwood sorrel and colorful clusters of azaleas. This is the Woodland or Wild Garden. It occupies the border between the formal walled garden and the oak forest beyond.

You can feel the transition as you walk. It's still curated and cared for, but coast live oaks arch [00:01:00] overhead with their rough twisting branches and birds flooding through the bright green leaves. It can be so easy to forget to look up, when you have these eye level blooms demanding your attention. Sometimes it's only once a tree has fallen that we realize the part it was playing and creating this magic. 

From Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California, I'm your host, Willa Brock, and this is another Morning in the Garden. Come with me to observe the space left by a fallen giant, as we welcome in new sunshine while grappling with goodbye to a tree that was here before everything else.

Let's talk about what preservation means when it comes to living plants. And the hard decisions that fall upon the people who have watched them grow over decades.

I don't have far to go to find Jim Salyards, [00:02:00] our director of horticulture. I'm just going to pop right out the gate here at the top of the Woodland garden. And I think that's where he is. 

Hey, Jim. 

Jim Salyards: Hey, Willa. 

Willa Brock: How's it going? 

Jim Salyards: I'm good. Beautiful day in the garden. 

Willa Brock: I haven't been here in like five days and everything's new.

This used to be the shadiest part of the walled garden and now we're standing here in the sun. Tell me about what happened. 

Jim Salyards: Two and a half weeks ago now on a rainy Friday, this giant oak, one of the bigger oaks in the garden just fell over. Just uprooted and completely out of nowhere. 

Willa Brock: Was it a wind thing? Was it because of the rain? 

Jim Salyards: There were some breezes that day but nothing, no. No, something, for some reason the roots gave way on the north side and the whole thing just toppled over. And it went from kind of this lower section down near the walled garden shop where everyone knows about the beautiful blue hydrangeas in the summer, fall, and then to [00:03:00] the very top of the canopy just, just brushing the steps up to the wedding place. 

Willa Brock: Wow. 

Jim Salyards: Huge tree, only took out a few bricks in the brick wall, did not touch the red Verona marble fountain or anything in the Wedding Place. So many camellias were damaged or completely taken out, but all in all we were very fortunate. 

Willa Brock: And this tree was here already when the Bourns started creating the garden in the 1920s? 

Jim Salyards: That's right. We have photos from early days when this part of the garden was being constructed and that tree is clearly, clearly there. 

Willa Brock: Wow. Was it a sapling in the 20s? 

Jim Salyards: It looked like, it's a very rough photo, a very kind of blurry photo, but it looks like maybe it had a six inch diameter compared to the three and a half foot diameter, four foot diameter that it ultimately had.

Willa Brock: Yeah. So a hundred years later, it had just grown into one of the giants of this garden. And so what's, what's your take on this? I mean, you've seen, I'm sure your fair amount of evolution in this garden. What's your [00:04:00] outlook?

Jim Salyards: Around the world in a different gardens there are different philosophies about how trees in particular should be kept so that they remain beautiful and manageable and you address their removal before there's a catastrophic event or before it's more costly to remove them when they become behemoths. So there's a balance between having a beautiful stately old tree and and having something that is too hard to manage. 

Willa Brock: Right. And when you're thinking about kind of the aesthetics of the garden and a big change like this where a tree is gone and suddenly an area that was shady is sunny, do you see it as an opportunity to evolve the garden in a new way?

Jim Salyards: Yes, but very potentially, although in all of our conversations about making the garden more sustainable where we can, this is one area that, that, the feel for this section of the garden is [00:05:00] woodland-y, densely, canopied with flowering trees, with an understory of shrubs. And so this is a part of the garden that we want to preserve that original intent and keep it, you know, heavy camellias, heavy azaleas, ferns, all that sort of stuff. So we do not plan to change this section of the garden but to use the opportunity of the tree going to maybe look at some of the camellias that have gotten too tall and spindly and either renovate them or start over.

So it's really helping us to flex our succession planning muscles and, and be thinking about that and, and making those changes which we're looking at throughout the garden. 

Willa Brock: Do you have emotions when a tree comes down like this as someone who's, you know, been caring for this place for so long?

Jim Salyards: Often, yes, but there's kind of a different relationship with coast live oaks these days because we are losing many of them to sudden oak death and [00:06:00] because, you know, there, there definitely are trees in and around the garden that are less healthy. I think that a lot of us have kind of taken our attachment back a little.

Willa Brock: You're guarding your heart. 

Jim Salyards: Yeah. Exactly. So, it's something that's, you know, not expected, but it's not as disheartening as losing something, you know, more special. 

Willa Brock: Yeah. It's lovely standing here right now, actually, with a little bit of sun, but then you see the, the camellia right up against the canopy of the oaks. It's, it's a really nice contrast. 

Jim Salyards: Yeah, this part of the garden is special. And we'll, we'll see what happens. We're gonna next get into kind of mapping out what's here, what we'll potentially be removing because of damage. I mean, some things are already completely stumped from the tree hitting it.

But there'll be some, some fun changes and but it's, you know, the increased sunlight is going to allow us to bring in some plants that are kind of already represented in this area, but have been struggling. So I think, you know, I think in the [00:07:00] next two, three, five years this will really see a nice refresh and a lot more vibrancy.

Willa Brock: Yeah. So do you think that it being roughly a hundred years since this garden was created, that's why this is a moment, it's an inflection point for a lot of the trees and plants? 

Jim Salyards: Yeah, yeah. You know, we've already started, you know, we, we had the hornbeam trees, the carpinus, where we had lost one and we took the other out.

You know, some of these decisions are also based on you know, pairs and allees. 

Willa Brock: Preserving the symmetry? 

Jim Salyards: Right. The design is more important in many places than the individual plants. And so to, you know, this, what's, what's so special about this garden is how it was laid out and how it was designed. And we want to preserve that. And so sometimes that's going to mean that we take out plants that look like they're fine and healthy, but we want to, to maintain that that allee or design feature that's in the garden. 

Willa Brock: Are there any other trees that you kind of have your eye on and that will make a big [00:08:00] impact when they go?

Jim Salyards: We were planning for the replacement of the Hinoki false cypress. So those --

Willa Brock: At the back of the house?

Jim Salyards: The back of the house. I mean, right now we're addressing it by bringing them down and bringing them a little bit more in, in scale for that area. But we are actively trying to propagate and bring it, bring on new plants.

Willa Brock: Is there anything that when you started at Filoli 30 years ago, felt like an integral part of the garden that is now gone and has changed and evolved? 

Jim Salyards: You know, because this, this landscape is, is pretty healthy and temperate things grow fast. So there were trees that were, you know, foot in diameter that were only planted 20 years before. But they just weren't working for spaces. And so those, those have come out. So lots, lots of change, but you know, it keeps it fresh and fun and new. 

And hopefully it helps our visitors to learn that it's important to love plants but you can only get so attached to them, you know, it's just like all living beings. They, [00:09:00] they have a timeline and you just need to use the, whatever happens to a plant as an opportunity to either improve the space for that same plant, you know, bringing that same type of plant in or trying something new, experimenting. 

Willa Brock: That's beautiful. 

Jim Salyards: Change is the only thing that's constant and you're going to be seeing a lot of that here in the next five, 10 years.

Willa Brock: Will you walk with me this way? I just want to ask you about what the garden is up to right now. All sorts of new flower friends today. 

What is that? 

Jim Salyards: That's the Rainbow Loveliness Dianthus. 

Willa Brock: What is a Dianthus?

Jim Salyards: Dianthus is carnation family. So these frilly, five petaled, pink and purple and white dianthus have been here for four years now. They come up in the spring and they just perfume this whole area. 

Willa Brock: We're standing in the walled garden by the pollinator beds, which in peak summer are just like bursting with different types of blooms and buzzing bees and butterflies. 

They're so silly looking. I didn't know they had a scent. I love them.[00:10:00] 

Jim Salyards: Hopefully long story short, Christopher Lloyd was kind of the originator of the modern cottage garden in England at Great Dixter house. And when we were starting to create these beds and turn them into cottage garden beds, I wanted to find a Dianthus for it. And this was his favorite Dianthus, so not even knowing that it was going to have this intoxicating perfume when I got it.

Willa Brock: It's kind of lemony. 

Jim Salyards: Yeah, yeah, spice, yeah, more lemony than spicy, yeah, you're right. 

Willa Brock: And what else is exciting in the garden right now, in the next week or so? 

Jim Salyards: You know, we're past the bulb season, but spring is definitely springing. These pollinator beds will fill in, the sunken garden will fill in, a lot of the beds that have spring annuals will be looking great into mid May.

Willa Brock: It looked like we were getting the first couple roses. 

Jim Salyards: And roses. Yeah, roses have started. We, we traditionally have said Mother's Day is the peak. It could be a little earlier this year. It just depends on how warm the weather is [00:11:00] in the next month or so. 

Willa Brock: Ah, I love rose season. I'm so excited.

So next I'm meeting up with Alex Fernandez, Filoli's Chief Operating Officer, and I'm meeting him towards the front of the house right next to a tree that he planted years and years ago. But I'm getting a little bit sidetracked because I just ran into Evangeline on our visitor experience team here at the Sunken Garden.

Evangeline, what are you looking at right now? 

Evangeline Lazalde: So currently right now by the Sunken Garden, I'm looking at a duck. It's sitting so perfectly by the Sunken Garden, just grooming itself. 

Willa Brock: That's a cute one too. It's got a little green head.

Evangeline Lazalde: If I were a duck, this would be where I would want to be sitting too.

Willa Brock: Thank you for showing me this. I would have walked right by.

I've dallied a little too long with this duck. So I'm now hustling around the corner and I see Alex waiting for me by the row of London Plane trees. 

Hi!

Alex Fernandez: What's the deal? 

Willa Brock: Well, [00:12:00] you are a new voice for the podcast. So why don't you start with who you are and how long you've worked for Filoli? 

Alex Fernandez: I have been, it'll be, 30 years on August 1st. I started in 1994 as the assistant garden superintendent. So that was the position that I moved out here actually to California from Michigan for that position. Never heard of Filoli, never even really knew about it, but I came here once for the interview. I said, yep, I'm going there. I don't care what they offer me. I'm there. So--

Willa Brock: What a leap of faith. 

Alex Fernandez: So yeah, I've been lucky to kind of grow, grow as Filoli's grown. 

Willa Brock: Out of all the people, you're the right person to talk to about watching the legacy of this place and seeing it change over the years. And I'm just curious, how does it feel different than when you started 30 years ago?

Alex Fernandez: Well, it's different in so many ways. I mean, you know, from the garden, certainly, but even just the organization, it's a completely different place. To see what it's become now with 400,000 people visiting, events, and just so much going on. It's, it's actually pretty amazing to see. 

Willa Brock: Your job has gotten more and more complicated.

Alex Fernandez: [00:13:00] Exactly. The garden itself is interesting because the  -- you know, you spoke to Jim, director of horticulture -- certainly the big events get the press. So, you know, this tree fell or let's develop the new ballroom terrace patio. But really those of us who've been here a while and are here every day, it's really so much more about the subtle parts of the garden. I mean, the garden just grows every day, changes every single day. And those are the things actually that, that I like the most. I mean, I like walking through the garden, have that perspective where-- you see that tree behind you? I was here when that tree was planted. 

Willa Brock: We're looking at the oak tree to the left of the front courtyard here.

Alex Fernandez: So just to see things that are now are just an impressive part of the garden, I remember planting that or being part of that or remembering what was there before when that original tree that was there, which was monstrous, actually broke apart. And then we replanted one. Now you see that. To really see that regrowth, understanding the garden.

You know, it goes through phases. It grows, it dies, you replant, and then [00:14:00] before you know it, it's right back there again. 

Willa Brock: It really puts it in perspective when you're standing next to a tree that's now, what, 40 feet tall that you planted? 

Alex Fernandez: Exactly. Makes me feel kind of old, but yeah. 

Willa Brock: So, I did talk to Jim about that tree that came down in the walled garden. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about how it will change the feel of the garden moving forward. 

Alex Fernandez: Yeah, we've lost a lot of older oak trees over the years, and these are oak trees that weren't necessarily specifically planted in the garden. They were left in the garden. You know, so the garden was built around them.

So it's interesting because sometimes you're like, why would they plant that there? It doesn't seem like it fits. Well, they didn't plant it there. It was already there. It was probably a 40 foot tree or so. And they said, it's a great tree. Let's leave it. So then the garden kind of evolved around it.

I mean that particular one, it's interesting. So I actually, in my morning walk, I came through this morning and the sunlight in that area now in the morning is amazing. Whereas before it was still beautiful before, but it was really dense. It was really shady. So it's certainly changed it. But quite frankly in another [00:15:00] year when you walk through that you won't even know a tree was there, and the garden evolves. 

It's always a shock to see this huge beautiful oak tree on the ground. But I guess maybe just the experience of being here a long time, you see that it can change and actually the garden might actually improve in that area. I've always liked that regrowth period. It's always been kind of fun to visualize what it's going to be in the next 50 years. 

Willa Brock: It's a moment of possibility. 

And you have a pretty unique perspective on this place as well, because you live on site. I'm really curious, because you've lived here for a long time and you've raised your family here. How does that change your relationship to this place? 

Alex Fernandez: Oh, it's hard to say, because it's all I've known. Essentially, when I was a young man student at Michigan State University. I read about this position at Filoli. Never heard about it and also came with a house on the property. I said, Oh, that sounds kind of cool. And my, at that point, fiancé and I moved in. We did the big drive, rented the U Haul, drove across country and landed at the house that I've been in over 29 years, almost 30 years now, and we were lucky enough to have our, [00:16:00] wedding back by our house, which was amazing.

And our wonderful son, Lorenzo Fernandez, grew up at Filoli and that this is what he knew growing up. And I mean, you just get such an intimate knowledge of the property. I don't know the dates, but I think I, I may have lived here longer than the Bourns had at this point, but. 

Willa Brock: Oh, definitely. Yeah. They were only here for what? Like 20 years, I think. 

Alex Fernandez: So-- but just knowing the property, it's, it's just integrated into my, my life. 

Willa Brock: And who you are. 

Alex Fernandez: It's been amazing. 

Willa Brock: Yeah. I mean, you really probably have a sense of it as a living place when you've seen it through all its seasons and phases and moods.

Alex Fernandez: Again, it's, it's when you live in a place like anyone in your house, it's, it's the subtle things. It's the wildlife. It's, you know, the birds in the morning. It's just all those little things that you just really start to appreciate. Yeah. 

Willa Brock: So this is the podcast Morning in the Garden. I'm wondering what are your favorite things about the morning in Filoli's garden?

Alex Fernandez: Well, my favorite thing would, would be my commute in. It's pretty amazing because I can choose what, what that looks like based, [00:17:00] based on the season. I mean, this time of year, my favorite is always the trail coming in from, from the back with the pedicularis blooming, the wildflowers blooming on the trail.

First thing in the morning is, is pretty amazing. As, as spring progresses, I usually end up walking up by the daffodil field. And in the summertime, you start going through the roses. So I change my route based on the season. 

Willa Brock: As you should! 

And what about the aspect of this being a historic garden? I'm really fascinated with this question of what is our obligation as the people caring for it today, a hundred years after it was conceived and, you know, how do you make decisions for what today is that the people who created it could never have guessed? 

Alex Fernandez: Yeah, I mean that that's a challenge in the garden because as I said gardens change every single day. And if your job is to preserve that-- What is it you're preserving? When are you preserving? What's that period you're looking at?

It's a little different than the house. Yes, the house changes, collections change, but it's a fairly static [00:18:00] component. So --

Willa Brock: How much can you can preserve a living garden? 

Alex Fernandez: What I always go back to --we ... we discuss, I wouldn't say argue. We discuss a lot about what is the original design intent? What are the bones of the garden? You know, the. The hedges, the structural components, the, how was the sunken garden laid out? So those, those bones, that structure is what I always kind of go back to is that's what we want to preserve. Now within the bones of the garden, that's where the creativity comes in.

You know, Mrs. Roth changed things every year. So why can't we change things every year? As long as you keep the bones, you keep that design intent in place. To me, that's what I always kind of go back to in my mind. 

Willa Brock: Yeah. And what is on your mind when you're thinking about the next hundred years of Filoli?

Alex Fernandez: Well I mean, for me, it's huge in that just completing our site master plan, which really --now my focus is the next 25 years to set us up for the next 100. Yeah. And, and to me, it's much more about the entire property. 

You know, [00:19:00] Filoli started as really well known for the garden, and it was this little jewel of a garden. Then the house became more prominent and now it's more of the experiences. And then we opened up some nature trails. 

And so really the next, the next hundred years, I mean, I see, you know -- in a hundred years, I hope that, you know, people are hiking the trails up in the redwoods higher. You just have, once you enter Filoli, basically you come in and you can spend the day in the orchards if you want, you can just go in the redwoods if you want, you can just have this, this unique experience. 

And it's not just a single path through the garden. It's a whole new experience. It's going to take a while to get there. But it's going to be exciting. And really, I just love to see people access and have fun in the space.

Willa Brock: Completely. I'm on board for that vision. I can't wait to come back in 50 years. 

To close the show today. I've got a couple questions for our garden guides. 

Hey Andrew, how's it going? I'm looking for [00:20:00] Taylor. Have you seen her? 

Andrew Bellouin: Taylor is trapping right now. 

Willa Brock: Oh my god, perfect! That's what I want to ask her about.

Hi Taylor! I heard you are actively trapping as we speak. 

Taylor Thorson: Yeah, this is the madness.

Willa Brock: Well, thank you for being one of our garden guides for this episode of the podcast.

This is an important question for me because it comes from an important person, my mother. She is a wonderful gardener but has been trying to grow wisteria vine over the porch of the house I grew up in for years and it has never quite worked. So let me read her question. This is coming from Enid Brock of Santa Cruz, California.

Taylor Thorson: Amazing. Amazing. 

Willa Brock: Dear host of Filoli's Morning in the Garden podcast. Whenever I visit Filoli during wisteria season, I'm always torn between joy at seeing those century old vines adorning the house and sorrow that somehow I can't seem to achieve anything close to that in my own garden. Why not? Gophers! [00:21:00] 

She's wondering, how does your team protect Filoli's gorgeous wisteria from the gnawing teeth of gophers, voles, and other nibbling creatures? She's tried metal baskets. She's tried chicken wire necklaces, et cetera. So Taylor, can you share your wisdom? 

Taylor Thorson: I will try, but I want her to feel okay with her progress because this is I feel like an age-old battle. Since there have been gardens, there have been gophers who want to invade.

So, I mean, luckily, we have the advantage of maturity, right? So, I mean, I mean, We don't have to worry about gophers taking down a century old, but really to keep them away, what we have been doing is trapping. And I haven't really seen a way to avoid that. Yeah. I wish we could, but that's like, you know, our reality.

We use mostly a two [00:22:00] pronged pincher trap, but really, I think it's being very attentive. So finding those mounds, finding their runs and repeatedly coming back to trap. And unfortunately our gophers, they do not hibernate. They are year-round. They do quiet down in the winter and you'll see them come back in spring and summer, but they're really, they're, they're always there. 

Willa Brock: And it's, you're not putting the traps by the, the vine that you want to protect. You're putting it where the gophers are living. 

Taylor Thorson: Where the gophers are living. And honestly, the best way to look at it is not necessarily the, the individual plant you want to protect, but I mean, gophers, they can have a range, their runs can go, you know, hundreds of feet.

So really you want to look at your whole garden. So where they're popping up in one area. The next day they could be at your little baby wisteria. So, yeah, I would just trap your [00:23:00] whole garden, really. And it would help your other plants as well. Sure. It's not a fun thing to do. No. But it is a part of keeping the garden looking happy.

Willa Brock: I'm on my way to see if I can find Gillian, but I have to take a small detour because the double delight rose is blooming. 

Oh my goodness. This was my grandmother's favorite rose, so I can never walk past it without smelling it. 

Okay, I have found Gillian here in the walled garden. Gillian, what were you up to before I grabbed you?

Gillian Johnson: Well, I, we were planting the pollinator beds. Oh, yeah. And we've been planting a lot of fun stuff. Planting some buddleias to attract butterflies. And we're planting a fun thing called cuphea, which is also known as like a Mexican cigar plant. I've never planted it before, but it looks really cool. Also apparently attracts hummingbirds and things like that.

Willa Brock: Well, so we're standing here in the [00:24:00] pollinator beds and I'm sure you're excited to attract all the amazing pollinators, but we do sometimes have problems with pests, as I know a lot of home gardeners do, too. 

We have a garden guide question from Jess, and they ask, What are your pest management tips and how can we translate these to home gardening? Spring blooms are rewarding, but this is quickly eclipsed by powdery mildew on roses, whiteflies on salvia, and thrips. 

I don't know what, what is a thrip? 

Gillian Johnson: So, thrips are actually, that's a good one to talk about, because thrips are a very common garden pest, especially here at Filoli. And thrips are a winged insect, they're very, very small, they breed in the soil, the larvae come out of the soil, fly up, and then what they do is they feed on the chlorophyll of the plant, so they have these little piercing, sucking mouth parts that suck the juice out of the plant, for like layman's terms and what happens is this leads to this sort of ugly stippling and like almost [00:25:00] silvery, silvery looking foliage.

It's super noticeable on some of our older rhododendrons here because they keep their leaves year after year. Like they're evergreen. 

Actually, what's exciting is like what we started doing to control the thrips. And I think it's helping is we have bought in these things called predator nematodes.

Willa Brock: That sounds intense. 

Gillian Johnson: Yeah, so a nematode is a, another little, little guy, a little creature that lives in the soil. They're kind of like worms, but they're much, much, much smaller. There's all kinds of problem child nematodes, but there is a predatory nematode that preys on thrip larvae in the soil. 

Willa Brock: So it's like getting a cat to go after the mice. And I'm thinking of that because you're holding Beans. 

Gillian Johnson: Yeah, exactly. You buy them, you put them in the fridge, you, and they're, they're like microscopic. You don't, you can't see them. They are very, very small. And then you spread them out into your soil and they will prey on the thrip larvae. [00:26:00] Yeah.

Willa Brock: How often do you look up at the trees in the walled garden? Cause I have been thinking about that with this tree that came down. Now it's. It's inviting me to look up and pay more attention to these oaks. 

Gillian Johnson: That's a good reminder. I try to look up as much as I can. Cause you know, as gardeners, I feel like we're, we're all sometimes rather hunchbacked and gremlin-y, you know, grubbing around in the dirt.

And yeah, we need to stretch our backs and look up at the sky and the trees more. 

Willa Brock: Do you have a burning question for our horticulturalists? You could be featured on the next episode of Morning in the Garden. Just DM us on Instagram, email learning at filoli.org, or check out the podcast page on the Filoli website.

Thank you for spending another morning in the garden with me at Filoli. Don't forget to leave a review or share with a friend if you enjoyed it.

In two weeks, we're breaking out of the garden and onto the trail. Join me on a morning hike along our Spring Creek Loop, which will open to the [00:27:00] public this summer.

We'll be soaking in the sounds of the stream as we explore the unique ecosystem created by towering coastal redwoods. Until then, keep reveling in these springtime blooms, but spare a glance for the graceful branches of the trees above. You'll certainly miss them when they're gone.

Willa Brock: [00:00:00] The sun is finally shining after what feels like months of rain, and as I walk through the wrought iron gate into Filoli's walled garden, I hear the sound of a burbling fountain, and I see bright blue sky that gives way to clouds of cascading cherry blossoms. 

Sometimes, when I'm walking in a garden like this all alone in the morning, I'm reminded that this was once a very personal space, designed not for the public, but for a few specific people, to suit their tastes and what made them happy.

This morning, I feel almost like I'm walking in the footsteps of Agnes Bourn, who, along with her husband William, created this garden for their own enjoyment. Agnes was in her 50s when Filoli was built, so she knew what she liked, and she spent years dreaming up this garden. There's nowhere I sense her presence as strongly as at the Sundial, which is where I'm stopping right now.

It anchors [00:01:00] the walled garden at the intersection of two paths. And today is surrounded by pots of white and red tulips. An inscription on its dial reads, Time began in a garden. We have a photo of Agnes, standing proudly next to the sundial, resting her elbow on top and squinting into the sun. Around her, her garden grows lush and tall, and I wonder what it would have looked like in color, instead of the black and white that's all we're left with a hundred years later.

From Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California. I'm your host, Interpretation Manager Willa Brock, and this is another Morning in the Garden. Come with me to frolic among the peonies and wisteria as we explore the human stories behind these blooms.

Let's talk about the ways people have shaped this garden over the years and what might turn someone, maybe you, into a plant person. [00:02:00] 

To kick off today, I get to go talk with someone who knows a lot about the stories of Filoli's garden and its plants. John Chau, Filoli's plant curator. In classic April fashion, it's actually still a little chilly in there.

But the sun is shining and I'm walking up towards the south end of the garden to meet John at the tree peony bed. 

John Chau: Hello! 

Willa Brock: How's it going?

John Chau: Good, good. 

Willa Brock: Ah, okay. So, plant curator is, I feel like, pretty cool sounding, but people might not know exactly what it is that you do. 

John Chau: Here at Filoli. Uh, we have two big collections, the museum collections and the living collection.

Willa Brock: It's funny, because you have your counterpart, Kevin, as the curator of the house, and you guys each have a collection you're working with. It just looks a little different. 

John Chau: Yes, exactly. 

Willa Brock: What does your day to day look like? 

John Chau: I spend a lot of time out in the garden, um, checking on what is happening with the plants there.

Because you have to see them to be up to date. And then, once I'm done taking those sorts [00:03:00] of notes in the field, I can go back to the computer and update our database. 

Willa Brock: Right. And the rest of the horticulture team relies on those records to make decisions and ordering new things, planting, stuff like that.

John Chau: Yes, I work very closely with everyone else in horticulture to help with planning for the garden. 

Willa Brock: So will you just give maybe a little introduction to this part of the garden and our collection? 

John Chau: So there are many species of peonies all around the world. There are native ones actually in California.

Willa Brock: There are? Native California peonies. 

John Chau: They're not so showy, but they're very cute. So all of our, like, the more commonly cultivated peonies are from Asia. There are herbaceous ones, which are probably the most common ones. Every year they have new growth from their underground roots. They don't leave any woody stems above ground over the winter. But then there are, uh, tree peonies, or woody peonies, [00:04:00] that have woody stems that persist throughout the year. year after year. 

Willa Brock: So it's not that they look like trees because they're not very tall. 

John Chau: Yeah, it's not that they look like trees, it's that they're woody. 

Willa Brock: The other thing that always strikes me about these tree peonies is how gigantic the blooms are.

John Chau: Yeah, yeah, so peonies are known for their really large, almost dinner plate size blooms. A lot of them are, um, double, meaning they have more petals, so they're very full, like, um, Pom pom. 

Willa Brock: Yes totally like a pom pom, I see it. And we're looking right now at the bed, there are a ton of different plants. 

John Chau: Over a hundred plants in this bed, and about forty named cultivars.

Willa Brock: Okay. Here at the tree peony bed is the location for a really interesting human story that we have in Filoli's history, which is the relationship between the Domoto family and their [00:05:00] nursery in the East Bay with both families that lived at Filoli over the years. So I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit about the Domotos and how we see their legacy still here in the garden today.

John Chau: Yeah, so one of the special things about our tree peony collection is that we have hybrid peonies that were created by Toichi Domoto, who did a lot of plant breeding. He was a Japanese American nursery owner. His parents immigrated from Japan, and his father and uncle were the first in his family to start a nursery in the United States.

And the Domoto family and their nursery was very important in importing a lot of new plants to American horticulture. 

Willa Brock: Like what? 

John Chau: Camellias, azaleas, Japanese maples, a lot of plants that were big in Japanese horticulture, [00:06:00] but had not yet become popular here in the U. S. 

Willa Brock: So this is timescale, we're talking early 1900s?

John Chau: Early 1900s. 

Willa Brock: And you just wouldn't have seen those plants in California gardens yet. 

John Chau: Right. Yep. And, um, yes. And they were some of the first people to import those plants to the U. S. So, as far as we know, yeah, both the Bourns and the Roths purchased plants from the Domoto Nursery. They were a huge nursery.

So, uh, Likely, uh, some of our old wisteria, um, are from the Domoto Nursery. 

Willa Brock: The hundred year wisteria on the house? Wow! Okay. 

John Chau: Um, and then during the Roth era, Roth really loved camellias, which the Domoto Nursery had a lot of. Also the Japanese maples in the woodland garden. Yes. A lot of our azaleas, like the Ward's Ruby.

Willa Brock: the bright, bright red azalea that you'll see actually blooming right now in the wild garden. 

John Chau: Yeah, and tree [00:07:00] peonies. As Toichi Domoto was getting older, I don't think anyone in his family was going to take over the nursery. So around In 1990, he wanted to donate, uh, his tree peonies to a garden in the Bay Area where people could appreciate them, uh, and he decided on donating them here to Filoli.

Willa Brock: And so, tell me about his, the hybrids that we call the, the Domoto hybrids here in this, in this area. 

John Chau: To get a new plant variety, to hybridize a plant, what you would do is find, uh, Two parent plants, a dad and mom with qualities that you like - flower, color size, the vigor of the plant.

Willa Brock: It's like having a baby and being like, I hope he gets the dad's green eyes and the mom's cute nose or something. 

John Chau: Exactly. So you would take the pollen from the dad. and put it onto the future seed pod of the mom. You know, the genetics of the two parents [00:08:00] would combine to form the seed inside. Then you would plant those seeds, probably have to wait at least 10 years for that new plant to grow up and flower.

Willa Brock: Okay. Wow. 

John Chau: And you would probably be planting hundreds if not thousands of these seeds to get them all to grow up so you could choose which is the best one. 

Willa Brock: So this is like a long term science experiment. 

John Chau: Yes. It requires a lot of time and land to plant all those seeds because, you know, out of hundreds There might be a dozen that you actually like and want to propagate.

Willa Brock: So this is why Toichi had like a unique opportunity to do this, because he had the land, he had the nursery, and he had the knowledge as a floriculturalist of what might happen. parent plants that would make something new and amazing. 

John Chau: Right, exactly. 

Willa Brock: Do we have any that are blooming right now? Let's go look at what is at this.

I just, I also love the names of all [00:09:00] the tree panties. 

John Chau: Yeah. So this one, you'll notice like a lot of ours have names related to Greek mythology. 

Willa Brock: Yes, I did notice that. 

John Chau: So that was from a Greek American artist and plant breeder. 

Willa Brock: That's the way you really tie your own story to a plant, is by naming it something that means something to you.

My other favorite. Which I think the kids always appreciate, is the Black Panther tree peony. 

John Chau: So at the very south end of the tree peony bed, we have a couple different named varieties that Toichi Domoto made. Uh, some are just about to flower, like this Princess Chiffon. 

Willa Brock: Princess Chiffon. What was he thinking when he named it that, I wonder?

I guess Chiffon has a very specific feel to it. Maybe it's about the feel of the petals. It has these big, full, pink flowers. Right now it's still in bud form, and you can see, like, the green is slowly receding and the pink is [00:10:00] coming out. 

John Chau: There's also this one, Royal Robe. Royal Robe. A slightly deeper shade of pink, like a pink purple. 

Willa Brock: If you had to guess, or maybe you know, what was he looking for when he created these hybrids? What do you think he was solving for with his combo? 

John Chau: Colored large flowers. And we can see here how these plants, their flowers are very upright, like they have strong stems and their flowers are going to face up. So a lot of their flowers are so big and heavy, they actually And then you can't really see the flower.

Willa Brock: I've totally had that experience because I wanted to take pictures of it, but I've been like, well, I have to fully lie underneath this plant to get a picture. 

John Chau: So I think these strong stems with top facing flowers are another quality that you might have been looking for.

And you know, a lot of, uh, peonies are also fragrant. 

Willa Brock: I did not know that. 

John Chau: So when you come see them. Give them [00:11:00] a whiff. Okay. If they're close to the path. Yeah. 

Willa Brock: Do you have a favorite that has a fragrance? 

John Chau: There's some that are peach colored that have a really nice fragrance. 

Willa Brock: Okay. My last question is just if there's plants that you feel especially connected to in this garden because of a story for them or because they just touch you in some way.

John Chau: Uh, one plant that I really like and I connect with is, are the lilacs here by the ULA. So, you know, lilacs aren't that common in California. Again, like the tree peonies, they like a colder climate. But they grow well here at Filoli because it is a little colder here in this mountain valley where we are located. And they are beautifully scented plants.

And I remember the first time I had really seen a lilac was when I was in school in Los Angeles, where I grew up. And my [00:12:00] English teacher, he lived in the mountains above Los Angeles, and he brought us like some sprigs of lilac or something. During one class. 

Willa Brock: How old were you?

John Chau: I was probably like in ninth grade or so. But he brought them because we were reading this poem by Walt Whitman called When Last the Lilac Bloomed about the death of Abraham Lincoln. 

Willa Brock: What a good teacher. I wonder if you could go back and tell John that's holding a lilac, ninth grade John, like you're gonna be a plant curator. 

John Chau: Yeah, I think he would have been very happy.

Willa Brock: John heads back to his plant records and I head through the walled garden towards the garden terraces at the back of the house. I'm meeting Haley O'Connor and Andrew Belluoin to look at one of the hundred year old wisteria vines that climbs up the backside of the house. 

Hey guys, how's it going? 

Andrew Bellouin: Good, good.

Willa Brock: Hey Haley. 

Haley O'Connor: Good morning Willa. Welcome to our wisteria hysteria. Morning. 

Willa Brock: We are in hysteria over the wisteria, and this is the [00:13:00] time to be talking because it's all starting, isn't it? 

Haley O'Connor: Yeah. The blooms start in the courtyard where it's nice and warm, uh, with some of the sinensis going first, 

Willa Brock: Is that because of all the brick?

Haley O'Connor: because of all the brick, it's totally an enclosed space. Yeah. So it heats up and then it's sort of wraps North around the house looking at the largest wisteria and probably the oldest wisteria. I think, yeah, I do. I mean,

Willa Brock: it's older and larger than the one on the front of the house over the front door?

Haley O'Connor: Yeah, I mean, I think that we have a lot of wisteria that was planted at the same time. This is one of the original wisteria.

Willa Brock: And you can tell because you look at the vine itself and it's, it's, it's. Humongous. 

Haley O'Connor: It looks like a tree trunk. Yeah. You know, a hollowed tree trunk at this point.

Andrew Bellouin: It actually lost about half of itself about a year and a half ago. 

Willa Brock: What happened? 

Andrew Bellouin: It broke at the base here and it used to go up this way to this balcony. . And I think it was about a year and a half ago that it fell. 

Haley O'Connor: And gardeners lovingly nicknamed this Wisteria King [00:14:00] Kong because of its size. . It's a silky wisteria, which, you know, is one of, there are about a handful of, uh, wisteria out there. We have four of the species, or we have three of the species.

We have the Chinese, we have the Japanese, and then we have the silky. Okay. So, sinensis , floribunda, and silky. 

Willa Brock: Wow. And it's called silky because of the leaves or the petals? 

Haley O'Connor: I mean, one way you can see silky, um, We're going to walk over to the plant. The buds are kind of, when they swell, they're sort of squat, and then The leaves have a little bit of a silky texture.

Willa Brock: Okay, I see it. We're looking at this--

Haley O'Connor: a furry, sorry, like a furry texture. 

Willa Brock: A furry texture. Um, it's, this one is just starting to bud out. So there's a couple blooms that have their petals out, but a lot of them are still in the bud form here. And Andrew, are you one of the people who cares for King Kong? 

Andrew Bellouin: Uh, yeah, I am. I've been caring for it for about three years now. I think it was the first thing I ever worked on here, too. 

Willa Brock: Really? . What was the learning curve like? 

Andrew Bellouin: , Oh, it was [00:15:00] pretty steep. I remember, uh, Louise, who used to work here, did the bottom half, and then we had to do the top half. 

Willa Brock: And you were pruning it?

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah. She sent the newbies on the ladder and the, uh, balconies. Because of that, I really like it. Yeah. 

Willa Brock: So wait, how tall of a ladder do you have to be on to get up there? 

Andrew Bellouin: Well, it's a 15 foot ladder, but we can't reach it all the way from there. We have to go up on the balcony and prune from the top and use extension pruners.

Willa Brock: You know, it is actually, you always know it's that time of year when, if you're one of the office workers who works in the house, all of a sudden you start hearing noises outside the window and you see the horticulturalist kind of like daringly dangling from the balcony pruning. So when does this happen, normally, the pruning?

Andrew Bellouin: Um, I think it starts in like December, usually. It goes until January, February. 

Willa Brock: Okay, and you're making sure to kind of be curating what it's going to look like come spring. 

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah, so we're pruning for the way that the flowers fall. Um, and you can do that a number of ways, but you can two bud it, [00:16:00] or you can three or four bud it. We mostly two bud here. 

Willa Brock: What do you mean by two or three bud? 

Andrew Bellouin: So when you're pruning and you see the, um, little offshoots off of these little clouds, we call them, um, there's, you can count the number of buds that lead off. the stem. Okay. And then we'll prune it to the second bud. Okay. 

Haley O'Connor: And so you'll get two flowers, two or three flowers, depending on how many buds or nodes you leave, they're going to develop into these beautiful clusters of flowers.

If we were not to prune this, it would have more flowers, but it would have less vigor to grow. And there we have pretty vigorous, but also pretty ancient wisteria. I mean, we're looking at a hundred year old trunk. So we really want to keep things as tight as possible. So there's not too much weight on these long, uh, limbs.

Willa Brock: It's about the weight, because if you had more blooms, it'd start --

Haley O'Connor: it'd be heavy. It would use a lot of energy. It would need more water. Um, it would also overwhelm any supports that we have set up [00:17:00] for the wisteria. 

Willa Brock: So what have you learned after caring for this vine over the last three years? What surprised you?

Andrew Bellouin: Oh, um, It, well, Kong usually takes, like, a solid week to prune. With, like, Three horticulturalists. Yeah, and so you get to have a pretty good relationship with it by the end. And that's one of the best things about pruning wisteria, I think. It's one of the, I love pruning wisteria. It might be my favorite thing to do. Yeah. 

Willa Brock: And then are you keeping an eye on it as spring comes to kind of come and see the fruits of your labor? 

Andrew Bellouin: Oh, yeah, and we definitely, Take note of like the way we've pruned it and see if we can improve it next year. Yeah. 

Haley O'Connor: And then in the summer, we're coming back and giving it a second sort of summer prune, which is less structural and more just to control that vigor. So we're taking all the whips off in June and July. 

Willa Brock: What do you guys like about Wisteria? Like what's your favorite thing about it? 

Andrew Bellouin: Personally, I might not be a popular [00:18:00] opinion, but I like the way it looks in the winter when it's all bare. I think it looks like a beautiful Giant bonsai, if that makes sense.

Willa Brock: I see that. 

Haley O'Connor: Yeah. I am like, uh, romantic. I love its scent. Um, I also really love the pods. It's in the pea family, so it makes a pea pod. That's its fruit. And I love gathering those. They're sort of furry and fun to, like, fun to have as a little bundle. 

Willa Brock: What do you do with them? 

Haley O'Connor: Well, you know, Willa, I use them in like arrangements and I'll just fill a little bowl with them and I'll, you know, hand them out. The one funny thing is guests will come and they want to collect the seed. And if you plant a wisteria by seed, it could take three weeks. 20 years to ever bloom. So this is one thing I'll tell people when they're buying wisteria, make sure it's full of flowers and that you like the flowers. I don't recommend buying wisteria when it's not in flower or make sure it has seed pods. Um, but it's best to just propagate wisteria by cutting and buy wisteria that's propagated by cutting. So [00:19:00] you know what you have. 

Willa Brock: Working with Wisteria seems like it requires a lot of patience and a lot of, um, delayed gratification. Would you say that's true? Or just balance, maybe? 

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah, balance, balance, definitely. Patience, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I, I, I like the way, all the stages of the Wisteria, so I don't --

Willa Brock: Your gratification is not delayed. 

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah, yeah. 

Haley O'Connor: I would say as long as you're staying on top of it, it's not a plant I would plant and walk away from. Um, it doesn't go out of bounds. And once it's established, it actually doesn't really need a lot of water. And if you give it too much water, it will rot. 

Uh, so it's a great San Francisco Bay Area plant. Uh, but it's one of those plants that people, that is, has become invasive, um, because it isn't really cared for. So you have to be responsible with Wisteria --

Willa Brock: because it's pretty aggressive? 

Haley O'Connor: Yeah, it's aggressive and it needs pruning.

If we turn around on the balustrade, we have wisteria that are probably 40 years old and they have been kept in a shrub form. [00:20:00] You know, those would cover the entire field behind them. Probably an acre if we never touched them. So it's just about managing, you know, managing your vine. Right. 

Willa Brock: So, what is it like working on something that's so old and that has this kind of history? Do you feel the touch of the past gardeners? 

Andrew Bellouin: Oh yeah, you can see all their decisions that they've made. And you have a certain responsibility to keep it going. You're carrying on the legacy. 

Haley O'Connor: Do you have conversations with them? Like when I'm pruning at Filoli, I have conversations with all of the cuts that they've made that I'm in contact with. 

Willa Brock: What do you say? 

Haley O'Connor: Just like, Oh, I see that decision. You know, you disagree with it or you're like, Oh my gosh, this is so beautiful. You don't want to touch it. You come across everything. I mean, you're dealing with a hundred years of decision making, right? 

Andrew Bellouin: I do talk to it too, all the time. Yeah, because a lot of the smaller ones you're working on by yourself and it's winter and no one's around. Yeah. So you're kind of just talking to yourself and the plant. You're okay. 

Willa Brock: So you're talking to the plant or the people who have [00:21:00] cared for it in the past? 

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah, yeah. Both. Yeah. And a lot of them, a lot of the wisteria are really beautiful, like the one in the corner. Yeah. By the Sunken Garden. That's one of my favorites. It has such a nice structure. 

Willa Brock: Should we walk over there? 

Andrew Bellouin: yeah. Let's do it. It's so gorgeous. I really love that one. Is it because of the way it lies along the balustrade and then kind of Yeah, and I think that it's a good height to prune and you're not on a ladder.

Willa Brock: It's pleasant to care for. 

Andrew Bellouin: And really take their time and like really make good decisions. And they have and it looks great. 

Willa Brock: What's this one that we're walking towards called? 

Andrew Bellouin: This is Frankie. Frankie! Named after my dog. 

Willa Brock: Why did you name it after your dog? 

Andrew Bellouin: Because it's my favorite wisteria. 

Willa Brock: Okay, and he's your favorite dog.

Haley O'Connor: Frankie is white and we do have Uh, like white wisteria that I would say look more like the good, like the luck dragon, from Never Ending Story, which is what Frankie looks like. 

Willa Brock: But this is a purple wisteria. 

Andrew Bellouin: He has a purple soul. 

Willa Brock: Frankie has a purple soul. Um, [00:22:00] what are some other wisteria that have names? 

Haley O'Connor: Jim calls one of them that grape soda. What is grape soda called? It's not Fanta, but it's like in that world of grape soda because they can smell really I mean sometimes, like that's how people describe wisteria is like Yeah, grape soda. 

Willa Brock: And does it make it easier for you guys, like, operationally, to have names for the different plants? Because you can be like, Oh, I'm heading over to Frankie today. 

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah. It makes it fun. I think we like doing it. I think Taylor did name the white one in the courtyard Gertrude. 

Willa Brock: Okay. Yeah. Why? 

Andrew Bellouin: Gertrude Stein, I think. Oh, nice. Yeah. 

Willa Brock: That totally makes sense to me. 

Andrew Bellouin: Yeah. It's 9:56. Okay. 

Willa Brock: Do you guys have to go? 

Haley O'Connor: In one minute.

Um, I wanted to say that John, uh, Taught me yesterday how to remember. So, sinensis and Floribunda, uh, Floribunda wraps clockwise. So, the Japanese Wisteria always will vine clockwise and the Chinese Wisteria will vine counterclockwise. Something that I haven't observed, but in time [00:23:00] lapse you can see. Um, and sinensis, comes from the Latin root, uh, same root for --

Willa Brock: Left!

Haley O'Connor: Yeah. And sinister, you know, left. And so I think that is just a really wonderful, cool fact. 

Willa Brock: Really, really cool. 

Haley O'Connor: Yes. One thing I'll say just from the couple of years that I've watched the plants at Filoli, you get really attached to certain moments and certain activities. And it's amazing to be at a garden, Like Filoli, where you're interacting with that history and like creating your own history and documenting it, it's fun to go back into our photos, you know, into the 1920s and see some of these wisteria in full bloom as these tiny little plants.

Willa Brock: And now maybe someone 50 years from now will be talking to you and your cuts when they're caring for the wisteria.

It's time to close our show with some questions from listeners. I crisscrossed Filoli to find the right person to answer each one. [00:24:00] For this first question, I head up towards the cutting garden and spot Rachael doing some planting. 

Hey Rachael, do you have a sec? Yeah. I have a garden guide question for you.

Ro asked us, how do you get rid of oxalis safely? I have cats. 

Rachael Byrne: So oxalis is a really common weed. It looks like a clover. And it has It's yellow flowers that come up in a stalk and I've seen this, yeah, a common name for it is sour grass because those flowers are edible. 

Willa Brock: I remember eating those as a kid.

Rachael Byrne: They're sour, they're like candy, but oxalis, it contains oxalic acid, so you don't want to eat too many. You don't want to let the kids eat too many because it'll give you a stomach ache. Um, so some people like the oxalis, they've made peace with it. It's pretty, you know, it's a clover, people like that. Um, but it can take over a garden.

I think the question asker is maybe saying, please no herbicide because I have cats, is my guess. Um, what I would [00:25:00] recommend for a organic approach would be sheet mulching. Okay. So first you'd go through and hand pull as best as you can. On the roots, if you get the whole roots, you'll find little nodules on them.

Okay. And those turn into seeds. So if you're pulling oxalis and you get the root and you see little bulbils on them. Yeah. You could feel really good about yourself because you got, you really got it. And then you'd put down a layer of cardboard and cover that with Two, three inches of mulch, and that can help suppress the weeds.

And if you catch it kind of late winter, early spring, just when it's starting to come up, it hasn't flowered yet. It hasn't made a carpet. You'll miss most of your oxalis if you cover it with enough. wood chips. 

Willa Brock: And that's just because the weeds physically can't get through the cardboard. 

Rachael Byrne: That's right. Yeah. We're cutting off the sun. Some of them might come through, but a lot fewer. Okay. So just helping the health of your soil. I think it looks really nice and neat. Big fan of mulch. 

Willa Brock: Okay. That was so helpful. Thank you so much, [00:26:00] Rachael. Um, good luck with your planting.

All right. So for my second garden guide question, I have just found Kirk Crippins, one of the horticulturalists here in the Walled Garden.

He's standing a little bit like Austin Powers here next to the, um, the tulip beds holding Beans the cat in his arms. . Um, I'm going to ask you and your coworker one of our questions. This one was submitted, um, by Tori and they ask, I never know how to find the right plants to co plant. What's important to look for in deciding what can be harmonious in a garden?

Kirk Crippens: Okay, well, it's interesting that we're standing here right now because we planted, uh, in these beds in the walled garden, we planted tulips, a purple ombre mix of tulips, bulbs, and we also underneath planted a common name, uh, baby blue eyes. Uh, we call it nemophila, uh, the botanical name, and it's a California native, and our vision for it was a bed of, uh, baby blue eye flowers underneath the [00:27:00] beautiful tulips that would raise up through the nemophila.

Willa Brock: Right, the high and the low. 

Kirk Crippens: Exactly, and so it, it didn't work out in part because as soon as we planted the nemophila, um, we think is what happened, birds came and ate it like a salad. Now in the future, we're probably going to consider something else that may be hardier or maybe the birds wouldn't eat.

Um, another thing to consider is, uh, timing. We had a, we have in the Dutch garden, um, beautiful hellebores, uh, which, uh, flower in the winter. And so, uh, and when a lot of things were dormant in the garden, the hellebores were blooming and, and we planted, uh, daffodils. And so when these winter blooming hellebores came out, these beautiful yellow daffodils came springing up out of the garden and, um, the contrast in color and in vibrancy. See, um, was just a wonderful mix. And so that, in that case, it worked out really well. 

Willa Brock: I remember seeing that and thinking it was so unexpected almost because you'd never think that they would kind of play well [00:28:00] together, but it really grew on me. And then I know you guys are also thinking about, um, attracting pollinators when you're thinking of planting, you know, companion plants, is that something that's on your mind as well?

Kirk Crippens: It is for sure. We're trying to plant things for the bees. And so one big consideration is how can we have things flowering all the time? One, uh, interesting thing that came up this year is this plant called an archangelica. 

Willa Brock: Yes, yes, yes. 

Kirk Crippens: Which is tall. I'm six foot one. It's taller than me. It's like nine feet tall. It's sprung up like a sculpture in the garden and Put out its flowers and attracted the bees and everybody's questions like, what is that? 

Willa Brock: Wow. Okay. So when you're co planting, you're like playing 3D chess, you're thinking about timing, you're thinking about coloring, thinking about attracting those bees to keep those booms coming.

Kirk Crippens: That's absolutely correct.

Willa Brock: Very cool. Well, I will leave you here with Beans who is kind of relaxing on your forearm, surveying his kingdom. Um, thank you so much for being our garden guide today.

Do you [00:29:00] have a question for our garden guides? DM us on Instagram, email learning at Filoli. org, or check out the podcast page on our website. We would love to hear from you. 

Thank you for spending this morning in the garden with me at Filoli. Don't forget to leave a review or share with a friend if you enjoyed. 

In two weeks, begin your day by looking up with me at the century old trees that arch over the gardens blooms. We'll be exploring the ins and outs of caring for a historic garden, and the inevitable goodbyes and hellos as years pass, trees fall, and new plant stories begin.

Until then, wander under the wisteria, and feel your footsteps echoing those who came before and left their mark on this place.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: The sky was still dark when I got up this morning, but fresh air and bird chatter are better than coffee. And I'm waking up as I walk along the gravel path to the cutting garden.

I'm up at the very south end of Filoli's garden, where the formal beds of blooms, framed with boxwood hedges, give way to more business-like rows of crops.

I'm popping into one of the large wire cages. Inside, there's long rows of tulips, purple and white and pink and sunset red, all crowded close to each other.

This part of the garden was designed for production rather than pleasure. Agnes Bourn worked with her gardeners to choose which flowers to plant here each season and filled the house with bouquets when they bloomed.

I don't have a garden, and I buy my flowers at Trader Joe's, so it's the abundance on display here that infatuates me. The chance to browse through the rows and pick which colors and shapes would blend nicely together. It's like a box of watercolors, functional and ready to be made into art.

From Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California, I'm your host, Interpretation Manager Willa Brock, and this is another Morning in the Garden.

Wander through the springtime garden and into the historic house with me as we explore the art of bringing that garden indoors. Let's talk about how to grow long-lasting cut flowers for arrangements and all the beautiful ways we blur the lines between inside and out.

I think that's the group I'm looking for. They're standing at the very edge of the cutting garden, surrounded by bushes full of yellow blossoms.

Hey guys, thanks for meeting me. We've got Jackie Salas, our Horticultural Production Manager, and then everyone else, can you say hi?

Horticulturist Gillian Johnson: Hi, I'm Gillian and I work in the formal garden and I also do flower arranging.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: We've got Jia, a returner to the podcast.

Horticulturist Jia Nocon: Howdy-ho, I'm Jia. I work in the production garden.

Brock: What are you guys up to this morning?

Horticultural Production Manager Jackie Salas: We're up here in the cutting garden and it's Gillian's turn to do house flowers this week.

we do is we arrange the floral arrangements in the house on a weekly basis. We harvest either from the grounds or from our cut flower garden, and we bring flowers into the house, generally on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and arrange so that the weekend will have a spectacular set of house flowers for guests to be able to enjoy.

Brock: Can you first set the scene with me about this time of year and the cutting garden?

Salas: We're coming out of winter. We're in spring. Plants need to be protected in this time period. We still have the potential for frost for another couple of weeks, so that's why we're growing stuff on in the greenhouses right now so that it can be ready to go out, then it'll have a head start.

Brock: And what's out right now is cover crop generally?

Salas: Correct. Yeah. Nitrogen fixing, beans and veg and green manure. It's just some grasses that we’ll till in and provide some carbon.

Brock: Make it really nutritious.

Salas: Yeah. So the first planting will happen in about two weeks.

Brock: Oh, so exciting.

Salas: There's four cycles, actually. There's a late winter, early spring sowing. There's a couple of summer sowings and there's a late summer, like basically fall sowing, so that we can have crops throughout the whole year.

Salas: And that's what makes the Cutting Garden different than the rest of the garden.

Salas: Yeah. So we're changing stuff out on a regular basis. I chose plants this year that will be able to harvest successfully. They'll be both aesthetically pleasing for the guests that come to just want to see beautiful plants in the ground, but can also be used in the house flower program that we have.

Brock: Can you talk a little bit about that balance?

Salas: It is quite a tight rope to have to walk between what's going to look good and what is going to be needed for the house.

So for example, sunflowers that everybody loves. If you grow like a huge headed sunflower in the Cut Flower Garden, you put all the energy into babying this giant sunflower that's growing, and then you cut its head off and put it in the house for two weeks and it's done.

So instead, in the Cut Flower Garden, we choose a smaller headed sunflower that has multiple flower heads coming off of the stalk, so that you can have a repeat bloom and you can have more bang for your buck.

Brock: Right. And one thing I love about the Cutting Garden too is just seeing multiples of a plant. There's something so satisfying of seeing a full row of the same thing and the same color. I don't know why.

Salas: That's what makes Filoli's Cutting Garden special is because this isn't a typical way of growing plants anymore. So it's really fun to be able to see it in the ground in person instead of it being in a mixed border.

Brock: And it's very satisfying to the eye.

Are you excited that it's your week, Gillian? Do you like doing it?

Johnson: It's like one of my favorite things to do here actually. I feel like every six weeks or so I get to arrange, which is fun because after six weeks, there's going to be completely different stuff to play with because it depends on the season.

And right now, it's tulip time, so I'm so excited.

Brock: Is there a Filoli style that you're trying to arrange to or is every single person pretty idiosyncratic?

Johnson: Jia is nodding like there is a Filoli style!

You're always doing multiple arrangements and in multiple sizes. So yeah, I think the style is lots of flowers. Try to pull maybe from a color in the room. If you can.

Brock: Do you have a specific color in a room that you're thinking about this week?

Johnson: Because so much of what I'm going to use is tulips, I think I'm going to let that dictate what I'm going to do. In the summer, we have a lot more options of what we can use. Sunflowers, snapdragons, zinnias. The summer is like the Cutting Garden Palooza.

Brock: If you guys could describe your styles, would you be able to? Like if you said, oh, I can tell that's a Jia arrangement.

Johnson: I can.

Nocon: There's definitely…

Johnson: Everybody has a style! Everybody has a different style and then you could walk into an arrangement, and you're like, I know exactly who did this.

What is my style? I think my style is asymmetrical.

Johnson: Yeah, bold and asymmetrical. Like you'll do big clumps of like a bright color. And yeah, it's very rarely like a ball. It's always like – 

Nocon: 11 and a 5 or 1 and 7.

Brock: Jia has one hand in the air and one hand low down to show the difference in heights.

Brock: Do you have one, Gillian?

Johnson: I would say like more simple. If I'm going to feature a flower, I'm going to feature that one type of flower, probably.

Brock: Get the highlight, the star of the show.

Johnson: Jia is nodding.

Nocon: Because we have an abundance of material and it's so fun to use them, you kind of go bonkers with harvesting sometimes, but then I like to step back and really focus on what I actually want to harvest and the theme, and also three to four materials I'm going to use for that big arrangement so I don't get overwhelmed.

Salas: And it's actually that's one of the fun creative things that we get to do is play with atypical types of flowers. So I was challenged to create something edible that looked good in an arrangement last week. And so in the kitchen, I put fava beans, borage and arugula flowers together in a pitcher on the table. And it lasted all week and it looked really fun.

Brock: So who challenged you?

Salas: Miss Dani.

Brock: That's Dani, our Marketing Director.

Salas: So you'll have to ask her where that inspiration came from. But yeah, you can be creative. Cut flowers don't have to be something that's scary. You can just have fun with it and see what works and what doesn't.

Brock: Today, we're surrounded by some blooming branches here. But what is where, where would you start harvesting for this week? What's your thought?

Johnson: Well, yeah, we are standing here by the forsythia. This is this bright yellow blooming bush right now. So I think I probably will take some of that in the winter and spring.

There is a lot more emphasis on harvesting outside of the cutting garden itself, specifically because there's a lot of blooming, flowering trees that we can pick from, the shrubs like the forsythia. 

I'm probably going to go into the back 40 back there and poke around a bit. There's some, there's this patch of calla lilies. I might go try to get some of them.

The trick with the harvesting is to get things that aren't fully open, like flower wise. Yeah, that's tricky for people, I think, to visualize because obviously when you're out there looking around, your eyes are attracted to the most open flower, the most vibrant flower. That makes sense, but when we're harvesting for an arrangement that needs to last seven days in the house, where they always have the heater on, that we need things to be open enough where they'll still open all the way, but closed where they have time to open and do their thing inside. Otherwise, they'll just drop all their petals and look good for maybe a couple of days, but not last the whole week.

Salas: There's a reason why floral shops are always cold.

00:09:37.046 --> 00:09:42.046

Brock: That's the reason that my bouquets that I put on my sunny table always go away so soon.

Can we go look at the tulips? Would you show me how you can tell which bloom you would want to pick?

Johnson: I'm actually going to harvest from some pots that we didn't put out, but we can look at those.

Brock: We walk from the cutting garden towards the greenhouse courtyard. Along the way, Jia tells me her secret for picking tulips for house arrangements.

Nocon: I mean, it all depends on the material, the flower itself. I like to give them a little squish. You want a little marshmallow feel.

Brock: That's the texture?

Nocon: Yeah.

Johnson: You're going by feel. Oh my God. OK.

Nocon: Because then you can tell how open or how tightly closed they are.

Salas: Also, if they're showing a little bit of color, right? Just a little. If they haven't started to peak any of that color, then they're not going to have enough starch and sugars in their systems to continue that process.But if you harvest them when they have just that little hint of color starting, in the tulip specifically, then it'll have enough reserves in that stem to continue the process.

Because when you imagine you're cutting a flower, you're cutting off its roots, so it has no way of continuing to grow unless you're feeding it with some kind of flower-based life solution or you're harvesting it at the point where it already has enough reserves to continue its growth process.

In general, for cut flowers, you want to either provide them with that little packet that they'll give you in the floral stores.

Brock: I never use those! Should I be using those?

Salas: Well, if you're harvesting something very early, if you're already harvesting it at full capacity, then it's already done its growth and it doesn't need anything else.

Brock: Do you all put any solution in the water for the vases?

Salas: Yeah, I forget the specific name of it, but it has, generally speaking, a citric acid in it to help with the pH of the water. You want some kind of sugar. So some people just do Quick and Dirty 7-Up that has citric acid and sugar in it.

Brock: Last episode, you were talking about beer for the slugs. Now we're talking about 7-Up for the flowers.

Salas: Keeping it simple. But the other thing is you want to eliminate any bacteria or fungus that starts to cloud up the water. So some people will put a little teeny tiny bit of bleach or part of a crushed baby aspirin in the water to kind of help with keeping things clean.

Brock: Cool. Well, let's -- go show me the pots. Which way?

Johnson: Take a look. They're back here. They're far away.

Brock: We're looking at a pot of beautiful tulips that are too inconsistent to put out in the garden.

Nocon: This is what I mean by like feel.

Brock: Oh, Jia's going to squeeze the tulip.

Nocon: You can squeeze the tulip yourself too.

Brock: I'm going to squeeze it.

Nocon: Give this a little squeeze.

Brock:We're gently squeezing one of the yellow parrot tulips that is still pretty closed and it feels like there's a little resistance when you squeeze it a little.

Nocon: Yeah, and then compare that with the sky or like something that's a little bit more open where like it feels like it's collapsing.

Brock: I'm like scared to squeeze it too hard.

Johnson: And like if you're arranging at home and you can just pull stuff every day as it looks bad, then you know, take the more open ones. It's okay. Just know that they're probably only going to last a couple days.

Whereas since we want something to last, a whole week, we have to be a little bit more like, okay, this is going to open up, you know, within the next day or two, and then hopefully keep its petals for the next like four or five days.

Brock: That seems like the trick of it.

Brock: Do you guys have any other tips for making flower arrangements last?

Change the water? That's it? Just change the water.

And when you cut them, do you put them straight into water?

Salas: So as you're cutting the plant off of its base, you're creating an air bubble that's going to go into the stem. So the air bubble will prevent the water and the nutrients from going up and down the stem. It's like a straw, and you get an air bubble in the straw, right?

So what you can do is you can put it back in the water, and then as soon as you are going to actually get into your house and arrange, you cut the stem again under water, and as you cut it under water, it sucks up water instead of the air bubble.

Brock: So the second time you cut it, you cut it under water to open up the straw.

Salas: Not necessary in every application, but if you have a really special flower, that you want to provide the best chance of living the longest.

Brock: That's such a good tip.

Brock: I had no idea.

Brock: I thank Jackie, Jia and Gillian and leave them to their harvesting.

It's time for me to head down the garden towards the historic house to meet someone who can shed a little light on the tradition of bringing the garden indoors here at Filoli.

Hey, Kevin.

00:14:07.006 --> 00:14:10.706

Curator Kevin Wisney: Oh, it's so early in the morning, Willa.

Brock: So curator Kevin Wisney is meeting me in the front of the house.

You have to keep it together!

Wisney: You're using your NPR voice.

Brock: I know.

Wisney: Okay. All right. All right. Let's go.

Brock: I've just been out in the cutting garden and chatting with Jackie and Gillian about the floral arrangements inside the house.

And I would love to walk through the house with you and talk about, first of all, how the original owners of Filoli, the Bourns, would have blurred the lines between the inside and the outside through floral arrangements, obviously, but also house plants and even the art they were choosing.

And then I want to hear about how you're doing it today and how you're kind of bringing this life back into the house.

Wisney: How exciting. I'm more than happy to share it with you and all of our listeners.

Brock: Let's head in. So we're heading up the stairs into the front of the house. And because it's spring, there are just so many tulips flanking the front door. It's lovely.

The house isn't officially open yet, so we have to hit the lights.

Wisney: When Agnes Bourn built this house in 1917, one of the directives that she gave to Willis Polk— 

Brock: The architect.

Wisney: The architect, Willis Polk, she wanted to not be able to tell if she was indoors or outdoors.

Brock: How do you know that she said that to him?

Wisney: She wrote that to him in a letter.

And so when you're in the house and you see these magnificent huge windows, think of them being open, the breeze coming through, the birds singing outside, it really would have felt very much like you were in sort of a shady grove outside.

Brock: And I have seen that map that we have of them siting the house originally and being very thoughtful to kind of nestle it among these ancient oaks, which would have already been 100 years old when they moved in.

Wisney: At least, yeah.

Brock: And so they really wanted the house to feel like it had always been here.

Wisney: Well, also, Will, I don't know if you know, but Willis Polk, the architect, built them a two-story platform with a staircase and on wheels. And so they would climb it and he would say to them, this is what it would look like from your bedroom. This is what it would look like from your sitting room if the house was situated this way.

Brock: Because they wanted to make sure the views were just right.

Wisney: This house is all about the vistas and the views. Every single piece of it between the house and the garden is all about framing vistas, framing views and framing nature inside the house.

Brock: And it worked!

Wisney: It did work.

Not only the architecture of the house, but also Mr. and Mrs. Bourn both were avid collectors of house plants. During the early 20th century, house plants were all the rage. Everybody was doing it. There were books published about it.

And it actually probably started in the Victorian era with ferns and that sort of thing that became very popular and then bled into the 20th century when more tropical plants.

Brock: And it was a kind of a status symbol to have these inside of your house?

Wisney: Very much so.

Brock: Because it would be expensive to care for them and acquire them?

Wisney: Expensive to care and acquire them. You'd need horticulturists to take care of them. But also that you traveled the world and you'd seen these things and...

Brock: A mark of sophistication.

Wisney: Well...

Brock: So the Bourns were really on trend with the idea that they were filling their home with greenery?

Wisney: Yeah, absolutely. They were very sort of forward thinking. They weren't stuck in the past. They were always seeing new trends and following them in houseplants, art, decor.

Brock: And even though Filoli can feel really formal compared to the way we live now, I think, for the Bourns and for the time, this was a more relaxed house, right? Does the greenery add to that at all?

Wisney: I think so. But then when you see their house, which is more formal up on Webster Street in the city, it was also filled with plants. It was just their style. Both of them were very interested in plants and plants from around the world.

And so when you look at pictures of the house in the 1920s, almost every single surface had a plant, some sort of flower arrangement, some sort of other greenery. And I'm not talking flower arrangements like big, elaborate, overdone flower arrangements. These were just like - you could imagine Agnes just walked out into the garden, saw what was blooming, cut it, brought it in, put it in a vessel, and that was it. And it was just about the beauty of that singular flower.

And you can see in the artwork that they collected, not only in this house, but in other houses that they lived in, the pieces were all inspired by nature. We have beautiful commodes with beautiful inlay of vines tracing up across the commode with the Verdure Tapestry and the Reception Room.

Brock: Let's go look at that tapestry.

Wisney: Let's go.

Brock: So we circled around back to the Reception Room, which is the big main room you first come into when you enter. This is where the Bourns would have received visitors. It's a more formal room.

And one of my favorite things about this room is that there is a piece of art, a tapestry that is hanging in the same place it's hung for over 100 years. And we're standing here looking up at it right now.

Kevin, will you describe it a little bit?

Wisney: Well, yes, we call this the Verdure Tapestry. It is probably 20 feet across by six feet high.

Brock: It's so horizontal. I've never seen another tapestry this horizontal.

Wisney: Well, do you know what it's actually was used for originally? What it was made for?

Brock: What was it made for?

Wisney: It was made to be a table covering. It's a tablecloth.

There's an outside edge where there are baskets filled with fruit and flowers that run all the way around.

Brock: It's a red border.

Wisney: The baskets on top are upside down because that's part of the tablecloth. They would have hung the right way.

Brock: It's like a little clue to its original function.

Wisney: In the center field are just a proliferation of flowers and birds on a dark blue background. The birds are flitting about through the flowers. You can identify some of the flowers. There's a daffodil.

Brock: On the bottom corner, I see it.

Wisney: Do you see anything? There's a Lenten rose right there.

Brock: Where's the Lenten rose?A hellebore?

I'm getting closer.

That kind of looks like a zinnia to me here.

Wisney: That does look like a zinnia.

Brock: We like to say that if all these flowers were actually planted in a garden, it would bloom all year round.

Wisney: We know that it was woven in Northern Europe in the 17th century. We know that it was owned by the Sackville family. Some of you might be familiar with Vita Sackville-West, who was linked with Virginia Woolf. And so the Sackvilles owned it. They ended up selling it to J.P. Morgan in the 19th century. J.P. Morgan then lent it with about 700 other items to the Metropolitan Museum of Art held onto these.

And this is something in art history terms we call the Great Morgan Clawback. So when JP died, the Metropolitan felt firmly that they were going to be able to hold on to all 700 items, including the Verdure Tapestry.

And then Mrs. Morgan and her children showed up at the Met and said, Remember all those things my husband lent to you? They belong to us. And they took them all back.

 Brock: They clawed it back.

Wisney: They clawed it back.

And then Mrs. Morgan consigned this to a gallery in New York. The gallery then brought it here to the PPIE.

Brock: The Pan Pacific International Exposition, right?

Wisney: Exactly right.

Brock: I always worry I'm going to get that wrong. That was a huge World's Fair that happened in San Francisco in 1917.

Wisney: And it was there that Agnes and William purchased it. It was a really fashionable thing to do, to purchase from expositions, World's Fairs, especially items that won awards.

This was not an award winner. It was just part of a gallery display in the New York Pavilion. But Agnes and William loved it so much, bought it and had it brought down here to Filoli and hung.

Brock: And it's interesting, 1917 is also the year that Filoli, the house was completed. So they were shopping for their new house. And they saw this tapestry and thought it would be perfect, not only for its size, but for its contents.

Wisney: Which I would call a woven garden.

Brock: That's beautiful.

So this tradition of filling the house with flowers and plants was so important that the Bourns actually planned a specific flower arranging room in the house.

Wisney: Yes, and it's interesting because the flower arranging room and other homes of this period would have been tucked away back in the staff area. And the staff would have dealt with all of that. But this is actually right in the center of the house.

Brock: Let's pop in. So it's actually right around the corner from where we're standing by the main Reception Room. It's by the grand staircase.

Wisney: Welcome to the flower arranging room. So once a week, flowers would be brought in here for both Mrs. Bourn and Mrs.Roth. We have cabinets filled with vases, urns, and then two big tables.

Brock: And a room like this is just the dream for anyone who is trying to put flower arrangements together in their own kitchen sink. The idea of having a complete separate room that's just dedicated to flowers!

Wisney: It's kind of like Candy Spelling's gift wrapping room.

Brock: Who's Candy Spelling?

Wisney: Who's Candy Spelling?? She was Aaron Spelling's wife. She's Tori Spelling's mother. They built a house in Los Angeles where they took the top of the mountain off. But we digress because we're talking about bringing the garden indoors, not Candy Spelling.

Brock: I think it is really telling if you go into someone's space, you can tell what's important to them. And so the fact that this room is so central to the downstairs main rooms of Filoli's house just tells you immediately this was important to the people who lived here.

Wisney: Well, and if you come to Filoli and visit, you can come into the flower arranging room and see it. And after the horticulturists had picked the flowers for the week, this room is just heavy with perfume. There's no other way to describe it. It's so delicious, and it just wafts out of this room and up into the rest of the house.

Brock: Filoli is different than a lot of other house museums in that we do have living plants and things. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Wisney: Yeah, I was just at a conference talking with other curators, and we were at the Gamble House, and we went through the Gamble House, and they actually use real flowers too. 

Brock: But that's unusual.

Wisney: It is very unusual. The other curators from all the other sites around the state were shocked that the Gamble was using it.

Wisney: And I said, well, we feel like it adds just an extra layer of authenticity to our house.

Brock: And the smells. Because you want it to be, you walk through, you hear the sounds, you see the beautiful things, and also you're immersed in the sounds.

But it's a trade off, right? Because the worry is pests for most museums, but we've really made a calculation that it's important to bring this house to life in that way as well.

Wisney: You're absolutely right about that. And water. Water is the other worry. But we have really highly trained horticulturists and other folks who are dealing with the plants. And pests, we monitor very, very stringently to make sure that we're not introducing any pests.

And frankly, it's not any more dangerous than your own house of having a bouquet of flowers in the house.

Brock: And who doesn't want a bouquet of flowers in their house?

Wisney: Well, Willa, if someone was nice enough to send me some…

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Brock: As always, we'll end our show with a segment called Garden Guides.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted questions, by the way. I'm blown away by how many people have written in.

To answer our first question today, I'm going to see if I can track down John Chau, Filoli's Plant Curator.

So I found John up in the Rose Garden.

John, I have a question that I think you'll be able to help me answer. This is from Erin, and she's wondering, do you save the hyacinth bulbs for next year and will they bloom as nicely?

Plant Curator John Chau: So we do not save our hyacinth bulbs or our tulip bulbs. They come from Western Asia mostly, which has a different climate from ours. So they like a much colder winter. That is what stimulates them to re-sprout and produce flowers in the following year. So in general, in California, if we leave tulip and hyacinth bulbs in the ground, they will not grow as nicely again.

On the other hand, for daffodils, which come from the Mediterranean, which has a similar climate to California's, those will in general regrow again nicely.

Oh my gosh, so interesting. Thank you so much, John.

Chau: You're welcome. Happy to help.

Brock: For our next question, I went and found horticulturalist Joey Bennett to ask him about the staghorn ferns up on our woodland court.

Hey, Joey. Good morning.

Horticulturist Joey Bennett: Hi, good morning.

Brock: Medea asks, Filoli hosts impressive staghorn ferns. How do you keep them so healthy, particularly when we might have a day of warm weather followed by a few days of rain and chill?

And I'll say I have a friend who has some staghorn ferns that are not doing quite as well as the Filoli ones, so this is definitely a hot topic.

Bennett: It is. They're very impressive here. They came to us 40 years old, so they are around 70 years old, a couple of them. What we do is we make sure they have really good air circulation, and we moist them, hose them down about once a week. Especially on a hot day, we'll go up there and make sure. So we don't really water too much during rainy seasons.

Brock: They like the storms. So they've been happy these last couple months?

Bennett: Yeah, they've been very happy. They like the shade, they like a little bit of intermittent light trickled through.A lot of people do press them against a board or something. They do actually prefer being hung.

Brock: Do we have them on a board or they're on a tree?

Bennett: No, they're hanging from a tree on a chain. Yeah, they are huge.They are braced by some pretty thick chain.

Brock: They almost look like a natural deer head.

And I heard that we have a new Staghorn themed spot on the property. 

Bennett: We do!

Brock: Selling some delicious spirits at The Staghorn, which is right by the Clock Tower shop. So definitely go check it out. I hear there's a couple of cool specimens there as well. You could do a Staghorn tour of Filoli.

Do you have a question for our garden guides? DM us on Instagram, email learning at filoli.org, or check out the podcast page on our website.

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Thank you for spending another morning in the garden with me at Filoli.

As always, if you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review or share with a friend.

Join me in two weeks as the peonies and wisteria bloom to explore some of the human stories behind the plants in this garden - the people who created, grew and named some of our favorite blooms and the ways we remember them still today.

Until then, make sure to take a springtime walk and don't forget to bring a little bit of that garden back inside with you.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: [00:00:00] The bell is ringing in the Clock Tower, and I'm walking through the squeaky metal gate into the greenhouse courtyard. It just started sprinkling, and I could see some billowing white smoke coming out of the chimney in the staff head house. The Hort staff are in early, and on cold mornings like this one, they make a fire inside to warm up.

Lined up on the gravel next to me are rows and rows of terracotta pots, each filled with curved spears of green leaves. I see some pink and orange blooms peeking out of some of them. That means they're almost ready to be carted out to ornament the garden paths. This is the staging ground behind Filoli's biggest spring spectacle, the tulip show.[00:01:00]

In the year 1636, this flower skyrocketed in popularity in the Netherlands. Some were so infatuated with the rich colors and petals that they spent a year's salary on a single bulb. 400 years may have passed since this tulip mania, but the bulbs we order from Amsterdam still draw the biggest crowds of the year when they fill Filoli's garden beds with elegant blooms.

From Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, California, I'm your host Interpretation Manager, Willa Brock, and this is another Morning in the Garden.

Take a walk through the tulips with me as we explore today's theme of garden obsessions. Let's talk about what in nature provokes our passion and that flower you just can't stop thinking about.

Hey, beans. Beans is [00:02:00] our occasional garden visitor. He's black and sleek with a short tail and bright green eyes. He just came and found me in the courtyard. I put my microphone down to see if he would make a meow, but he's just sniffing it. It's pretty fuzzy, so maybe he thinks it's a friend.

And right behind Beans, there's Filoli’s Director of Horticulture, Jim Salyards.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Hey Willa!

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: He's meeting me here in the greenhouse courtyard so we can talk more about our tulips, get a garden update, and tell me about his garden obsessions.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: How's it going?

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: You know, Jim, it's starting to rain a little harder. What if we popped into the greenhouse right here? Yeah. Okay.

It's instantly warmer, not so windy and humid. These greenhouses are historic. You, you walk in and you feel like this has been here for a long time.

Jim, so I've just been admiring the terracotta pots out here in the courtyard. We've got some [00:03:00] tulips ready to go. Can you give me some numbers about bulbs?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Typically we bring in around 100,000 bulbs. Some of those go into our holiday sales, but a good 80 are in the garden. Usually it's about 20,000 tulips in the beds. And then all the rest are in containers. So we'll do probably 2,000 to 2,500 containers with the grape hyacinths and the hyacinths and the daffodils and the tulips.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: The hyacinths by the garden house right now are just - I came around the corner and was completely bowled over by the scent.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah. So each year during our spring display, I am planning for the next year, you know, my best opportunity to see how well things perform for us, especially things that are newer varieties, newer mixes.

But our goal for our spring display is we want to get the most out of the tulip season.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: When you're selecting tulips, you're not only selecting for the [00:04:00] color and where they're going to go, But also for when they're blooming?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The early ones are the fosterianas and the early singles and the early doubles.

And then it moves into the kind of the mid-season ones, which are the Darwin hybrids and the triumphs.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Triumphs?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah. And I don't know where the origin of that comes from. Probably just because they're like a breakthrough when they came out and they were triumphant. And then then the later ones are the lily flowered, the single lates, doubles.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: And these are all different varieties of tulips?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Within those groups, there are different colors and different varieties. But they all kind of have this natural timing and we get, you know, hopefully six, seven, eight weeks of tulip blooms.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: You're kind of like conducting a symphony? With the early strings, they start, and then we get the triumph in the middle and we end with the frizzle. Can you tell me what a frizzle tulip is?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Frizzle tulips, I used to look in the catalogs and think, I never want to grow these things. They just look weird. If you think of a parrot tulip, like the [00:05:00] classic Rembrandt's and Old Masters paintings that have those tulips that have those really frilly edges.

So that edge of the tulip and the frizzle tulips, it's a frizzle. is almost like someone's taking pinking cheers, and there's like all these little fine injections that come out of the edge of the tulip. And so it gives it this frizzled look.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: They're a little over the top.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah. But one year we were given a substitution of this variety called Fabio.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: First of all, a variety called Fabio. I love it. Is this like Instacart where you get a substitution if they don't have it?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah. Well, you know, that's a whole other story about what can happen with your tulip order from the time that you ordered to what you get blooming in the next year. But we got Fabio instead of another orange tulip that I wanted to put by the swimming pool. Cause we will often do oranges and yellows by the swimming pool. And people loved it.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Why do you think that people are so obsessed with tulips?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: I mean, they are show stopping. You can have such density of, of flowers and so many colors and textures and they combine so beautifully with other plants. But I think that [00:06:00] a lot of people, you know, especially in other parts of the country, and in the world where you do have a hard winter and you know, you can buy your tulips in the fall and, and even put them in a small pot and put them on your balcony and they'll just sit there and then they come up in the spring and give you, you know, a beautiful show.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: You've been to Amsterdam or outside of Amsterdam and seen the huge tulip fields, right?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah. We got to see the fields and they were, this was late April and they were blooming. And so it was just, you know, as far as I could see tulips in bloom. Yeah. And then the trip culminated in going to Keukenhof, and Keukenhof is the big Dutch grower, bulb growers show but it's all planted in the ground. It's 72 acres. Keukenhof means kitchen garden.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: That's so humble for the tulip - which I think of as so, kind of, elevated - to be grown in the kitchen garden.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Well, they are edible, so, yeah.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: What was so striking about the, the blooms there?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: First, it's the setting. You know, there are 100, 200, 300 year old beech trees with trunks that are 4 feet in diameter. And [00:07:00] there will be, like, seas of, you know, an acre of grape hyacinths that are in bloom. So, just these expansive, beautiful views.

The Netherlands is, is one of the best places to grow bulbs because it gets very cold. It's low country. And so, you know, cold just kind of sits there in the winter. And because, you know, a lot of the places that have become habitable, were former seabed. So there's a lot of sand in the soil and the bulbs like that, that sandy loose soil.

But because of these perfect growing conditions, varieties that we grow here, that'll be 18 inches will be two feet, two and a half feet tall. So the stature, because they, they have access to all of the biggest bulbs. When bulbs are grown and they're harvested, they grade them by size.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So the bigger the bulb, the bigger the bloom? I did not know that.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: The bigger the flower, the taller they'll be. Yeah.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: I'm picturing you walking, wandering through the tulips with like a notebook, taking notes for things to bring back.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Whenever I [00:08:00] travel and can see any kind of a, a garden or a garden display, there are things that I bring home and want to bring to Filoli.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: What are your garden obsessions?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: I have so many. I mean, here at Filoli, I always tell people my favorite, my favorite plant is the Camperdown elm.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: The Camperdown elms are two trees by the pool at Filoli, which have branches that go all the way down to the ground.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: It's every season. It has something special about it. Moss in the winter when the leaves, the branches are bare. The incredible chartreuse fruits in the spring. And then that just dense canopy of giant leaves that cool you off in the summer and the beautiful fall color.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: You can get lost inside of that.

Can you give me a sense of what is blooming right now at this moment in mid March?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Tulips should be approaching peak, I would think. The beds are definitely popping up but we still have only brought out maybe a third of the containers. So they'll keep going into later March and April. You know, you'll see more and more color in the [00:09:00] beds.

The annuals will be blooming in the beds. And then all of the, you know, the backdrop of the azaleas and the rhododendrons and the camellias should be just gorgeous.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Well, thank you so much, Jim.

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: You're welcome, Willa.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Thankfully, it looks like the rain has stopped just in time for me to go find Haley O'Connor, our Formal Garden Manager, at the top of the rose garden.

Oh, and the sun is starting to come out. I feel that warmth on my face.

Hey Haley!

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Hi Willa.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: How you doing?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Good morning. Everything is gorgeous. It's a little wet, but we are happy to have all this rain.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Agreed. We're here at a spot in the garden that I wouldn't have expected to talk about weeping cherries.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: So right, we are standing near the Knot Garden, which has just been renovated.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Haley's showing me four newly planted trees that to me look like little baby trees.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Little baby [00:10:00] trees. And they're replacing trees that were here that were probably 20 feet tall. Somewhere in late 70s, early 80s, they were planted. They had bacterial canker issues. So we planted a new variety that should be a little bit more resilient.

So what we're looking at is the trunk of a tree. And at about four feet, you start seeing branches weeping. They're drooping down. And they're going to be covered in this soft pillow weeping. It's gorgeous. I mean, gorgeous.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: There's just something about the, the shape of the branch as it falls down. That's so unique and not what you expect almost. I don't know.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: And people say cascading all the time. And for me, that is perfect.

I don't really love weeping trees to be described as mushrooms because I feel like they're, and they are often like mushroomy. But I feel like they're way more for me connected to water and waterfalls and that movement. And I feel like that's why you see them in Japanese gardens. That's one of the [00:11:00] things they represent is water flowing and waterfalls and heaven and clouds. I mean, you know, it's everything.

What I wanted to show you on these is the difference between a root stock, just a straight sapling, and a grafted. Most weeping trees are grafted and they’re crown grafted, which means they're grafted at whatever height, you know, the nursery men is grafting them.

Like our elms, Camperdown elms, are crown grafted at 11 feet. In modern nurseries, it's really hard to find things that are grafted high. Basically because you have to wait for that rootstock to grow so you'll see a lot of weeping trees sold at four or five feet. And then there are these like short little mushrooms.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Can you back up quickly and just explain what grafting is?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Grafting is taking one plant and horticulturally, surgically, connecting it to another plant in the same [00:12:00] family. So you can graft prunus - which the cherry belongs to, prunus - you can really graft on anything that's rosaceae. Most prunus is either grafted on to another apricot, plum, cherry stock.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: And the reason for grafting is to take the good qualities of the root stock and add it to whatever you want to be the flower, the fruit?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah, exactly. So if you want something for production that's really cold-hardy, you'll select maybe like a quince as you're grafting or an apple variety, or if you're looking for a dwarf - With weeping trees specifically, they're grafted typically onto something with a  trunk that grows straight because if they aren't trained from a very young age, it would be weeping and kind of just crawling around the ground. No part of it would want to go up.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Okay, so this is giving us our height for these baby trees.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Beautiful cascade. [00:13:00] So this tree was crown grafted.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Haley's stepping up into the bed here to get her hands on the tree.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: And I'm 5'2 so I'm thinking that that is about a 4 foot graft. Maybe four and a half feet. And you can really see the line, you know, the graft mark is what it's called.

And when you watch this grow and as you go around your neighborhood and you see a beautiful grafted cherry tree that was planted in 1930, you'll see that this remains and it just gets more and more noticeable.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: It's like a, like a bulbous -

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah. It's just, it's a belt. Yeah, it's a pair of jeans that are a little too tight.

I'm going to take you into the walled garden where most of our Japanese cherries are. Japanese cherries, they're very ephemeral. So you get those blooms for a week, a week and a half if it doesn't rain, if no one sneezes. Which is why they're my garden obsession right now.

Yes. Because they're about to peak and I just love them. I love that pre- I don't know, the moment before something happens. When you're anticipating it, you're starting to see a little [00:14:00] bit of a blush. And I walk up and down every day and I look for that pink and you start seeing it in February, you know, because the new wood is a little bit pink and once the buds swell that pink deepens. And it's just sort of this slow build until it just explodes and then it explodes for a good three weeks because we have so many different flowering times.

And you get the hawthorns behind the cherries with their darker pink. So you have this real beautiful pretty in pink moment.

Okay, so we're standing at the Wedding Place, which is in the Walled Garden near the garden house. And it's what I think of as one of our most picturesque rooms.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: And these weeping cherries are huge compared to the ones we were just looking at.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah. And so. These two were planted around the same time. They're from the Domoto nursery. Toichi Domoto.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Who was a nursery [00:15:00] man who supplied a lot of the plants in Filoli's garden over the years. He had a nursery in the East Bay.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: And they're straight specimens, so they are not grafted.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Oh, okay. There's no belt.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: And they're so elegant. I mean, they're really, really beautiful.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: It's a funny time to look at them right now because they, they're just waiting.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah, they're waiting. It's true.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: They don't, they're not particularly pretty to look at. Although you do appreciate the form of the trunk even.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah, they do feel naked. They're so gorgeous.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So can we look a little more closely? Can you show me the buds swelling?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah. Let's look at where we can step foot. Perfect. Oh yeah.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So this is one of the trees that we can get up close to. And this guy, we have the buds just starting to come out. Is that what these little nubbins are?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah. So these sort of swollen and fat, slightly hairy-

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: They're about to pop.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Will pop into color. My memory from last year, these are a little bit later.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: The ones at the Wedding-

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah, the [00:16:00] Wedding Place blooms first. And those are the Domoto.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: I was talking to Jim about how the tulip show is kind of like a cascade or like a symphony where like some things come in first and then you have the next.

And I didn't realize that the cherries are like that too, where you have the, the first little notes and then you have the big upswell.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: You have the big upswell. And then when that big upswell is just like crescendoing, you have the hawthorns start. So this area really guides you through, I love the metaphor of the symphony.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: I like the metaphor because it gives credit to where credit is due for the people who are conducting.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I don't know. I think of myself more as like an orchestra member. But there are a lot of conductors in this garden, right? For a hundred years.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So what fascinates you in the garden? What can you not stop thinking about?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: So like right now, all the winter flowering plants, the hellebores. Every year I look forward to that. I have since childhood. I wait, like, very impatiently for lilacs to bloom.

The cherries I think about a lot. I mean, I really look at [00:17:00] them for color, from afar, and when I see this first bud break, which I just spotted...

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: I'm here for the moment! Wow!

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: It's thrilling! I mean, look at that!

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Oh, you're so right! There it is! We just walked over and there's one single bloom that's just coming out. It's so delicate and so small.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: We'll be standing under, you know, a cathedral ceiling of blooms. It's just, it's stunning. It's so gorgeous. And the time and energy that it took to train that seedling to have this beautiful straight trunk. It doesn't start weeping until about 14, 15 feet. So when it blooms, you really do have this full, beautiful dome of soft pink blossoms. And I don't know- who doesn't live for that?

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: No, who doesn't live for that...

When would you recommend someone come if they specifically wanted to see weeping cherries at Filoli?

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Well, I mean, hot tip since we just saw the first bud. I would [00:18:00] say beginning of April is when you're really going to have that moment of ephemeral beauty where everything is about to just flutter away in snow made of flower petals.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: To end our show this morning, I'm calling on Filoli's Garden Guides to answer your burning horticultural questions.

For the first one, I'm heading straight over to the potting shed to find horticulturalist Lisa Griffin.

Hi, Lisa. I grabbed you here right outside the potting shed. Okay. So Lisa's one of our horticulturalists and she is the one that you will often see in the house freshening up the flower arrangements and potted plants. So I thought she was the right person to ask this question.

Lisa, we had a question from someone named Marta and they're wondering: For flower arranging in the house, what flowers have you been growing, especially and using, especially considering that Filoli [00:19:00] is open in the winter as well?

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: Winter time is a good time to use woody branches, be it for the color of the bark and also the shapes. Like curly willow is a wonderful thing, nice curly branches, red twig dogwood for the red bark, early blooming bushes, such as, like, quince, flowering quince, you got spirea, you got forsythia. So you just gotta keep your eye open from January on, what's blooming, what looks cool . If you happen to have some manzanita and madrone, they tend to also bloom early in the spring.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So you go out on the natural lands for things as well.

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: Natural lands, you look at, yeah, whatever is available and easy to get to without- well, look out for poison oak, and don't get stuck in the mud.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So you get creative. I love it. And I love this, I feel like it meets the house in terms of scale when you do those big flowering branches, it feels right.

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: Yes. That's the size. Those rooms in that mansion are huge. So you need to have, yeah, think about the size of the container, the size of the wall and how much space you're allowed before you poke someone in the eye with the [00:20:00] branch. So yeah, it's all needs to be kept in, kept in thought when you're making the arrangement.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Yes. Perfect. Thank you. And she had a second part of her question as well, which was: Who is behind the beautiful arrangements and potted plants displayed on the house?

So I know you're one of them, but can you talk about who creates these things on a weekly basis?

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: So the house plants that you see changed out on display, that is solely my responsibility. But for the flower arrangements, there is a mixture of about six or seven of the horticulturists that have been trained in flower arranging, and we rotate week by week doing the flower arrangements.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So you might come in one week and see a different style based on the person doing it?

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: Definitely. Cause oftentimes the gardeners often will harvest things in their garden area that they've seen versus like - I'm more was trained just for general flower arranging stuff. So I stick to more traditional floral areas that I was trained to pick from and not the garden itself. So we all have different perspectives.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: I love it. And is it still correct that I can give people the tip that Thursday mornings are when you come and see the [00:21:00] most fresh arrangements?

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: Usually, I mean, we start on Thursdays.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Okay, there you go everyone, you heard it here. Thank you so much, Lisa.

Horticulturalist Lisa Griffin: You're welcome.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: And I actually see Jackie right here in the courtyard as well, because I have one more question for her, too.

Hi, Jackie.

Horticultural Production Manager Jackie Salas: Hi.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: This is a fun one. It is from Karen, who asks, What's a more organic way of controlling snails in the vegetable garden? I want to avoid products like Sluggo.

Horticultural Production Manager Jackie Salas: Well, the most organic is a duck. But not everybody can have a duck.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Really?

Horticultural Production Manager Jackie Salas: Yeah, poultry loves snails, slugs, and snails. So if you have garden chickens, set them loose. Just make sure that you're watching them so they don't eat your actual lettuce that you're after.

And if you have to go the chemical route, Sluggo is a really wonderful product.

There's two types. You want to look for the Sluggo that's just iron phosphate. You do not want the kind that has the additive of the Sluggo Plus, it has some yucky stuff in it that I wouldn't suggest, but just basic old Sluggo, [00:22:00] works great. And if you don't have access to that, a simple tuna can inset in the ground filled with some good old beer.

It's kind of a funny wives tale where you can inset that beer and the slugs and snails will take a sip and fall right in and won't be able to slither their little ways out.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Do you have a question for our garden guides? DM us on Instagram, email learning@filoli.org, or check out the podcast page on our website.

Thank you for spending this rainy morning in the garden with me at Filoli. We're new at this, so if you enjoyed it, please leave a review or share with a friend.

In two weeks, start your day by meandering with me through the cutting garden, where we grow blooms for our spectacular house floral arrangements.

Take in tips for coddling your houseplants and tales of gilded age greenery, as we [00:23:00] appreciate the abundance of peak spring. Until then, savor the opening notes of this season's symphony. Your next garden obsession could be right around the corner.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: [00:00:00] It's 7 a. m. and I'm walking through the garden orchard here at Filoli. The air is quite chilly. The ground's still covered with frost. I'm crackling every step I take. When I drove down from San Francisco this morning, there was fog still up by the Santa Cruz mountains and you could see the little tendrils of it coming down the valleys.

So this part of the garden is a meadow at this time of year. You've got these fruit trees dotted throughout. Tall grass in the summer, but it's now at the beginning of February that it is just magic. Around me are hundreds and hundreds of daffodils, poking their cheerful yellow faces up, bringing some sunshine to this cloudy morning.

Some of them come from bulbs [00:01:00] that are over a century old, and they've sprouted here year after year after year, in the same place since the Filoli Estate was created. They are heralding the end of a wet winter. And the beginning of a colorful spring. From Filoli in Woodside, California, I'm your host, Interpretation Manager, Willa Brock, and this is our very first morning in the garden.

Inspired by the way this garden orchard is evolving in front of our very eyes. Today's theme is on the cusp. Let's talk about seasonal transitions in the garden and the beauty we can find in beginnings.

To start, I'm walking down the curved path through the meadow to meet up with Jim Salyards, Filoli's director of horticulture. He's going to catch me up on what's going on right now in the garden [00:02:00] and some memories of his own first spring at Filoli.

Hi. How are you? 

Jim's easy to spot. He's got a big beard and he's often wearing shorts even on the coldest of mornings.

I asked him how many times he's seen the Filoli garden wake up into spring. 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: This will be my 29th year. I started in the spring of 1995. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Wow, almost 30 years of springs. What do you remember about your first spring at Filoli? 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: I remember the first day weeding in the sunken garden. Back then, before 25, 30 years of warming temperatures, everything was still fairly dormant by early February.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Was that the first time you'd ever been to Filoli? 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: No. I had been here the spring before, and It was actually, to be honest, not the best visit. It was raining, the, the garden was kind of past spring peak. I didn't love it. It wasn't until I came back in the fall of 94- I was still [00:03:00] finishing my thesis and I thought I'd just go through the process and you know, be good experience for me to apply.

They had me come for an informational interview and I walked around the garden and saw the area and the work that I would be doing. And it was a beautiful fall day, with fall color, and I wanted the job so bad after that. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: When you think back to your many years and your many springs, your many beginnings, what are your biggest visual memories?

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: You know, there are lots of flashes, but because I did start out in the sunken garden, seeing the sunken garden with the tulips up. . In the early years we used yellow tulips exclusively in the Sunken Garden because there was the honey locust that Mrs. Roth planted and that tree leaves out early in the spring with bright yellow flowers and so.

That visual of the yellow tree ahead of you and the yellow tulips in the, in the foreground, your eye would just kind of cast across the Sunken Garden and then look across [00:04:00] to the Golden Honey Locust. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: It's so cool to hear about this scene, Sunken Garden scene, through your eyes, because you know the work that goes into it.

Someone like me, who's not a gardener, sometimes I'll look at a view or a scene in a garden and not realize all the thought that was put into creating, you know, the foreground, the middle ground of the view, and then even how it fits into the landscape. We'll just appreciate the yellow and not really know that it was deliberate.

What's your favorite seasonal transition? Is it winter into spring? 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Winter into spring is beautiful. I love fall into winter also. When everything gets cleaned up and the beds are actually empty. This garden, one of the things that is so magnificent about this garden is it has incredible bones. The design and the structure of the different garden rooms with boxwood hedges that define all the spaces is incredible.

And then we will [00:05:00] often have a good fall in terms of color. And moving in from fall to, to the cleanup of winter is really beautiful. But of course, winter into spring, as the garden wakes up, is amazing. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: It's a fan favorite. With transitions can also come a sense of loss, as you're saying goodbye. Do you ever feel that as the year goes on?

Are there plants that you're sad to see go? 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: I'm sad when the wisteria finish I'm sad when the tree peonies- I feel like I miss them because they can be so magnificent. I'll see one or two and then the next thing I know they're all done for the year. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: The tree peonies are up in kind of a corner where you almost miss them.

You have to remember they're there. 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Yeah, it's a deliberate experience. You have to get yourself over there and stroll the bed to really get them. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: What did you notice on your last garden walk that is on the cusp we're about to bloom? 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: Kind of on the cusp of some of the earlier tulips this time of year and The flowering shrubs are starting to kick in.

There's a lot of [00:06:00] camellias that are going crazy but we're kind of in a bit of a holding pattern until the next level with wisteria and The tulip show in the garden. I'm

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: so excited. What are the top things that your team is working on right now to prepare for spring? 

Director of Horticulture Jim Salyards: The most important thing for spring is weeding.

As we get the winter rains and it starts to warm up. If you don't stay on top of the weeds, then the garden looks messy. It takes away from the displays. Grooming of the, the plants. Making sure that there's space for the bulbs to come up is, is important. But a lot of it is just watching and observing.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Jim's gotta make his way back to the head house, so I continue on my walk.

As I round the corner past an Irish yew tree, the first thing I hear is the sound of clipping. I've stumbled across a group [00:07:00] of Filoli horticulturalists pruning the fruit trees that lie in the path all the way up to the high place. They're up on ladders, laughing and chatting as they work. 

That is such a satisfying sound.

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: It's very satisfying. I'm Jia Nocon. I work in the production garden here at Filoli. I help take care of the vegetable garden, the cut flower garden, and the two orchards. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Well, what is the project that you're working on right now, Jia? 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: We started winter pruning our fruit trees. Currently, they're dormant, so it's the best time to come in and see the structure before they wake up from dormancy to push out their flower buds before pollinators get in and those flower buds turn into yummy, big fruit.

We're here in a formal garden, so aesthetics is a thing, but here in the production garden, we're trying to marry aesthetics and also the production of fruit. We want as much fruit as we can to turn into product to share with our guests and educational [00:08:00] purposes. Most of our trees here are pretty old and historic, and so a lot of the structure, the scaffolding, is already set in place.

It's really challenging, honestly, but it's also really fun to prune these trees because it is the aesthetic is in place. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Do you feel like you're following in the footsteps of the historic gardeners who are doing it? All the time! 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: Yeah, I feel like every time we approach a fruit tree, we're seeing all of the decisions from years past, probably even decades past, because you could follow a branch of a tree.

Down to the year prior's cuts and then just continued down trying to like assess or hypothesize Like, oh, what were they trying to do by like removing that branch or even keeping that branch? 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Gia wants to show me something so she leads me down some stairs 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: Currently, we're at the bottom of [00:09:00] the Yew Allee where the espaliers are, just past the walled garden I remember I pruned this pear tree last winter. I cut it pretty hard because there was a major branch growing towards the brick wall that had a ton of disease.

And I wanted to cut that off so that the disease doesn't continue spreading. Is that this one over here? It was, it's in the way back. One of the big things we do whenever we're coming through To just prune in general is to cut out dead, dying, disease decaying, and disoriented branches, so the five D's.

Yes, exactly, yeah! And once we do that we come through, see if anything's growing inside towards the middle of the tree. Anything that's shading out the middle because we want all that sunlight to come in and help with photosynthesis. All those sugars are developing towards new growth. But here I cut off a really big limb that was part of, like, the [00:10:00] major structure of the tree.

And so I made that decision because hopefully you're taking a gamble of the tree response. And so this year I noticed a really nice big Vegetative growth. And so I came in yesterday and I selective, I selected three branches that can potentially replace that branch to hold fruit later in the next coming years.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So it's a gamble that you make and then you don't see it pay off until a year later. 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: Exactly. We're making like really, sound judgment, but sometimes the tree just does respond differently than what you anticipated because there's only so much you can control. Exactly. Yeah. So, it's, it's like what they say, horticulture is an art and a science.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: And you're quite the artist. 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: I enjoy pruning in the morning. Because we get the garden to ourselves. Sometimes if this tree is like supported enough, we'll climb into the tree. And it's a great perspective to also be in the tree and [00:11:00] look up and imagine if like, if I was sunlight, am I actually coming down through the canopy of the tree enough so that, you know, you could help with photosynthesis and fruit production.

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So you've kind of got to become the tree. 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: Yes! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So you love this time of year because it's quiet? 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: It's kind of like taking the garden back. In a way. We, unlike in other parts of the U. S., because we have a year long growing season, there really isn't any winter dormancy for us. So we're always, no break, we're always constantly hustling.

But I feel like our, my way of rest is working on these trees because then you kind of get into a groove. people are in their own heads and we're silent and then you can hear all the birds chirping and then you have the daffodils just right next to you. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: So you're not chatting the whole time you're pruning?

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: We're chatting sometimes, but then like there are like big chunks where we're just, you just hear like snips, snips, [00:12:00] snips. Yeah. 

Horticultural Production Manager Jackie Salas: In the zone.. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: That's Jackie Salas chiming in, Filoli's horticultural production manager. She popped around the corner from the walled garden just in time to join the conversation.

You guys are here all the time. You're always in this, in this garden. Like, as it becomes February and the daffodils pop up, is there a part that you will walk in, kind of, for pleasure? Like, you detour to go into a certain part of the garden. 

Horticulturalist Jia Nocon: The garden orchard with the daffodils popping up right now.

Especially in the morning. We do, where I like to do an area walk, like maybe Mondays, Fridays, after a storm to see if there's any damage. But also, it's for my pleasure. To look at the daffodils and take pictures. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: I think my entire camera roll is pictures of the daffodils right now. 

Horticultural Production Manager Jackie Salas: The other highlight this time of year in that burst from winter into spring, the little peek that you get of the deciduous flowering shrubs starting, so the quince and some of the early flowering apricots really give you [00:13:00] that glimpse into what spring's gonna be like.

Right. And so, that's another really, like, tantalizing little, like experience for a gardener to see those buds swelling and opening. Cause it's about to happen. Cause 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: to end our show this morning, we've got one last segment called Garden Guides. We asked all you home gardeners and phyloly fans what questions you have for our horticultural experts, and I crisscrossed the estate to find the right person to answer each one. My first stop was with horticulturalist Joey Bennett.

He's going to help me answer my number one most asked question about, you guessed it, the tulips. So hi, Joey is up on a ladder right now working on some pruning, but I'm going to stop him quickly. So we have a question from Tiffany. When is the tulips blooming season? The tulip blooming season typically tends to be around late April, early May.

So when do you think is the best time to see the tulips? 

Horticulturalist Joey Bennett: The best time to see the tulips is May, because you might get some early roses. They'll definitely be full, and they'll be completely spread out throughout the number beds. [00:14:00] 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Sweet! Thank you so much, Joey. Next, I tracked down our formal garden manager, Haley O'Connor, to help me answer a couple more questions.

We've got some tree work this morning, so many chainsaw sounds. Linda asks, What do you think of the concept of fall spring? Are we having one? 

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: So I don't really think there are fall seasons. I think the concept of a fall spring is an easy way to sort of say, well, it was warm and then it got cold, which to me happens every year.

So I really look at our last frost dates. For us, that's mid March. As, as our true beginnings of spring, and I ignore everything else. You will see that at Filoli our tulips are starting to bloom. When we do have those hot spells, like we did two weeks ago, where it was 75 degrees in January you see things emerge and bloom on shorter, You know, they're just like [00:15:00] stubby tulips.

So you'll see that with your bulbs. One of the things I like to remind gardeners of though, is just to pay attention to your years. You know, make notes of when things are happening so you can always look back at your records and say, Oh, this is blooming earlier, this is blooming late. Mostly so you know if you need to cover something.

Expecting that we will get some of those late season frosts. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: Thank you, Haley. I'm going to ask you one more. This is from Janey B1 on Instagram. And they ask, When was the daphne planted at Filoli? And is it hard to grow in our home gardens? We walk and talk as Haley leads me into the Walled Garden. So we're in the, in the top of the wedding place.

And I always think about the daphne that's outside of the front doors of the house, but Haley has led me right over to the daphne in the walled garden right up against the woodland. It's a little secret, very shady corner, and it is smelling so good right [00:16:00] now. 

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Yeah, I brought you over here because it's really that beautiful Full lemon scented, sweet daphne smell, which is why I say yes, yes, yes, grow them, grow them, grow them.

They are fickle. They're very hard to transplant. It's best you know, to plant them when they're small, get a one gallon or smaller. In all of my years, I've never been able to successfully transplant a daphne. So they are easy to grow. They want you know, a shady spot. They'll still bloom in shade.

They are somewhat drought tolerant. they're established. They don't like to have wet feet, so they can be, you know, they can be prone to root rot. I think of them as a hearty herb, something that's going to give you 10 or 15 years of beauty, not as a hundred year old shrub. So do expect that. They have a, you know, they're, they're, they're a pricey plant because they're difficult to propagate.

So. You know, know that it's an investment, and it's an investment maybe in, if you're lucky, 20 years of that [00:17:00] amazing scent. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: It's amazing. One of my favorite things about spring. I know. So our question asker asked us when the daphne was planted at Filoli. Do you know? So I think 

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: Most of the daphnes that you see at Filoli were probably planted in the Roth slash National Trust era because they're not really long, long lived herbs.

I don't think that we have any daphnes that are maybe more than 20 years old. And we don't have records of them being here in the Bourn time. But they were a very popular plant in the 1920s, so it wouldn't surprise me if that was something that was planted here. I

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: love their little variegated leaves, the edges on the leaves that just gives it a little bit of definition and kind of whimsy.

Formal Garden Manager Haley O'Connor: It does have that beautiful variegated leaf. That's one of the probably the most popular daphne odorata is in the, in the nursery trade. So you see it a lot, but there are hundreds. 

Interpretation Manager Willa Brock: You heard it here folks, go get your winter [00:18:00] Daphne for your own garden, but don't expect it to last for decades.

Do you have a question for our garden guides? DM us on Instagram, email learning@filoli.org, or check out the podcast page on our website. Thank you for spending this morning in the garden with me at Filoli. It was our very first episode, so if you enjoyed it, please subscribe and share with a friend.

In two weeks, join us again as we wake up and wander among the tulips. Is there a better flower to help us explore our garden obsessions than the one that almost 500 years ago inspired a mania? Until then, find beauty in every little beginning, as we and our gardens welcome in the spring.