- [Male Narrator] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by... - [Female Narrator] The Subaru Crosstrek.

Designed with adventure in mind.

Built in a zero-landfill plant.

So you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint, Subaru, proud sponsor of Growing a Greener World - [Male Narrator] And the following: Rain bird, Corona tools and Milorganite.

- I'm Joe Lamp'l.

When I created a growing a greener world, I had one goal, to tell stories of everyday people, innovators, entrepreneurs, forward-thinking leaders who are all in ways, both big and small, dedicated to organic gardening and farming lightening our footprint, conserving vital resources, protecting natural habitats, making a tangible difference for us all.

They're real.

They're passionate.

They're all around us.

They're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

Growing a greener world, it's more than a movement, it's our mission.

I've met literally thousands of gardeners from all over the world.

We grow different things.

We grow in different ways.

We grow in different places and we grow for different reasons, but there's one common thread that connects all gardeners.

We love experiencing other people's gardens And I'm not just talking about those painstakingly, beautiful public gardens.

You know, the ones where you pay a fee just to get through the gate.

We actually get more of your request to go behind the scenes, to the private gardens of everyday gardeners and take it from me, that's where the real learning and the best inspiration usually takes place.

- When I was little, I used to go spend some time with my grandmother in the summer.

She had a beautiful garden and she would take me out there, show me the flowers, we'd pick blackberries together.

And she'd just show me how you grow a garden.

And that really got me started.

My mom loved to garden as well.

And so we would garden together.

And then by the time I was 16, I started growing my own vegetable garden.

I would grow tomatoes and zucchinis, that type of thing.

And I really loved it.

And I do think that the early seeds came from my grandmother.

- [Male Narrator] Those seeds took off and they haven't stopped growing.

Susan Mulvihill has spent her life in the garden, as a columnist for the spokesman review in Eastern Washington state, as a master gardener in Spokane county, as the co-author of the Northwest Gardener's handbook and as the creator of Susan's in the garden, a popular website and blog that I personally had been following for years.

Susan's passion is gardening and inspiring that same passion in others.

And believe me, you don't have to be around her long to realize that passion is contagious.

- Well, Susan, I have to laugh because as we were pulling up here, the GPS was sending me down the road, but I saw your perennial vetch and I knew right away, this was your place, a gardener definitely lives here.

- Yes, Do you think I have enough flowers?

- I don't know that you can ever have enough flowers, but you have done a great job here.

This is definitely a showstopper.

So talk to me about what you have here.

- [Susan Mulvihill] I have planted just about every kind of flower that I love.

- [Joe Lamp'l] There are so many pollinators right here on these flowers, it's incredible.

Is this year round or you cut it back, and what do you do with it in the winter time?

- It dies out in the fall and we cut it down and just have a bare patch here, but it gets covered with snow during the winter.

So we don't see it.

- [Joe Lamp'l] I bet it does.

- [Joe Lamp'l] One of the first things you learn when talking to Susan is that she definitely follows the golden rule of gardening.

It's better to work with mother nature than against her.

And that means knowing your climate.

- So we get about 16 inches of rain in the spring time and it's a semi-arid climate, so it's really quite dry.

That's because the cascade mountains in the middle of Washington state rob us of all of our moisture.

Then we get a hot summer, hot dry summer.

In the fall, we have beautiful fall colors and in the winter we get about 46 inches of snow.

Sometimes more than that.

Our season is roughly from the middle of May to the middle of September, sometimes a little later.

So it's quite a short growing season.

Because we live in a dry climate, we really have to conserve our water.

We're on a well, and it's a limited amount of water that we get from it.

So we have to be really smart about the way we water.

I use a lot of mulch on the beds, around my plants, especially in the vegetable garden.

And we use a drip irrigation system that we run just in the morning.

And it really cuts down on the amount of evaporation.

Plus it puts the water right at the roots where it needs to be.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Now, when many people hear terms like water conservation and drip irrigation, they start thinking in restrictive terms, what can't do or can't have, but that doesn't have to be the case.

You simply have to be smart about how you use water in your landscape.

If you are, even things like a water feature are fair game in the garden.

- This is a place that is near and dear to my heart.

I've wanted a water garden for a long time.

So many years ago, we dug a big hole.

We don't have any rocks in our soil.

And we put in this pond, it's filled with water lilies, koi carp, few goldfish.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Lots of insects and pollinators.

Look at those.

- [Susan Mulvihill] Yeah, they really are drawn to that water.

- [Joe Lamp'l] I love how natural this looks too.

This is amazing.

- [Susan Mulvihill] Thank you.

That was one of our goals.

We had to go out and find a lot of rocks to put around the edge, like to have a little bit of a natural waterfall.

- But what I love is all the honeybees and other pollinators that are taking advantage of the access to all this water.

It's amazing.

- Right?

They really need the water in order to survive.

And this is one of the best source for it.

- [Joe Lamp'l] You gave him a good one, for sure.

- [Male Narrator] Every gardener has to go through a learning curve.

And Susan was no different.

Her's came when she and her husband Bill first moved to the Pacific Northwest in the late seventies and realized they weren't in Southern California anymore.

- So we bought these five acres and as the house was being built, we were looking at it thinking, oh my gosh, there's this big blank piece of land.

What are we going to do with it?

There was a frontline, a back lawn, a little bit of a foundation planting and that was it.

So we sat down with pen and paper and started drawing out plans.

First thing we needed to do was to put in a wind break because we live in an area that gets quite a lot of wind.

And so that was an important first thing.

So we knew open property is not good for attracting birds because they wanna feel safe.

And so that's why we planted thickets of shrubs.

That type of thing, lots of trees.

Having a big piece of property gave us the opportunity to plan a lot of things.

And having an orchard was right at the top of our list.

We were really excited about growing tree fruits.

So we planted 12 of them the first fall.

And by the next spring, we only had three left because the deer had wiped out the other nine.

The hardest part about gardening in Spokane is that we have an awful lot of critters to deal with, whether it's deer, moose, porcupines, turkeys, squirrels, you name it, we get it.

And it makes gardening very challenging.

We didn't ever have to deal with deer down in California.

And so we didn't know that was a problem.

So we did a good job of planting everything.

That's their favorite food.

That was a learning curve.

Though we had to start over, which was really frustrating since trees take a long time to mature, but we did it and we still have an orchid.

- Okay, well, I bet this is your favorite place.

- It is.

I love working in here.

I love growing healthy, fresh produce, and it's where I really spend the majority of my gardening time.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Yep.

Tons of raised beds, totally healthy plants, very diverse.

You have it all going on right here.

- [Male Narrator] Susan has a total of 26 raised beds that she uses throughout the growing season.

And they provide her and Bill with nearly all of their food.

But over the years, she's come up with a whole host of improvisations that make gardening easier and even extend the growing season.

- [Joe Lamp'l] So I like this hoop house that you have here out in your garden, but here we are in the middle of the summer.

You've got things growing in it now, but I'm betting that this is mainly for the wintertime.

- [Susan Mulvihill] It is mainly for the winter time.

I wanted to experiment to see if I could grow veggies through the winter months, which is usually not possible.

Bill and I built a hoop house that is lightweight.

It's very portable.

We can move it around in the garden.

It covers two raised beds.

And in it, I grow really cold tolerant vegetables.

- [Joe Lamp'l] So the key then is to find the most cold tolerant varieties, and that's it?

No supplemental heating or anything else?

- [Susan Mulvihill] No.

We really wanted to have a goal of not using any electricity whatsoever.

So it's really just the sunshine that's warming it up.

- [Joe Lamp'l] So how much do you think you have invested in that whole thing?

- [Susan Mulvihill] Maybe $200 and it should last a long time.

- Okay.

Now this is totally getting my attention right here.

Those are clearly pole beans, and I love that you got them growing up and over this arbor because the classic approach of course is the teepee.

- Right, and I grew them that way for years and I'd stand out in the heat and I'd have to be looking through the vines, trying to find out where the beans were.

So one year I had a light bulb moment.

I thought, why couldn't I grow something up and over a pathway?

And then maybe just maybe the beans would hang down on the inside.

So we tried it the next year and lo and behold, they do hang down on the inside.

- [Joe Lamp'l] So I bet you'll never go back to the classic teepee again.

- [Susan Mulvihill] Never.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Well, I love this idea.

Susan, in the short time I've been walking through your garden, I cannot help but notice all the beneficial insects and pollinators flying everywhere.

And I know that's not by accident.

So talk to me about some of things that you have specifically done to make it happen.

- Right.

It was actually for selfish reasons.

We wanted to have as high a production in the vegetable garden and the orchard as possible.

So we knew we wanted to attract in all different types of pollinators.

That meant we planted flowers and shrubs, perennials, all different kinds of blooming plants to attract different types of pollinators.

- [Joe Lamp'l] So diversity is key to get a diverse range of beneficials.

- [Susan Mulvihill] Absolutely, don't want a monoculture.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Right.

Now, One of the things that you've done, which I find totally amazing is the insect hotel.

So tell me about that.

What was the inspiration and how did you build yours?

- [Susan Mulvihill] When we were in Switzerland, we saw an insect hotel in the middle of a botanical garden and we thought that is the coolest thing.

And then we saw more examples of it on our travels.

And so we decided we absolutely had to add one to our garden.

- [Susan Mulvihill] And I bet you could not wait to leave your fancy European vacation to come home and build your own, right.?

- [Susan Mulvihill] Just about.

- [Joe Lamp'l] So how long you've had this up and running now?

- [Susan Mulvihill] This is it's second year.

The first year, it was kinda quiet then this spring, oh my gosh, there was so much going on because the Mason bees were hatching from there.

They were coming out mating and then laying eggs and starting that whole cycle all over again.

So now it's quiet.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Yeah.

We'll just wait until next year.

- [Susan Mulvihill] I know, I can't wait.

- Well, like Susan, the first time I saw an insect hotel, I knew I had to have one for the garden farm.

So naturally I recruited a DIY guy here, Todd Brock to help us build one.

- Well, building is a stretch.

There's really not a lot of drilling involved with this.

This is a super simple project.

- Well really we're just mimicking what happens in nature.

What they would go to, insects, beneficial pollinators, solitary bees.

We're just really replicating that.

- And you're putting it into a self-contained unit that then you can put near the garden or flower beds or wherever you need to in the landscape.

But this is it.

And it's totally free.

I'm telling you, Joe, literally free, not a dime spent.

This is all scrap wood, found materials from the landscape.

If you're spending money on this project, you're doing it wrong.

- Well, I love that.

And so let's start with the basic structure right now.

Really just looks like a bird house pretty much.

- Yeah, the size and shape is dictated only by what you have on hand.

These are scrap boards that I had in the workshop from a different project.

So that's why it's this size and shape.

Yours might be the size of a small bird house.

I have also seen these take up the entire wall of a garden shed or a barn.

So it's entirely up to you and what you've got to work with.

- Well, and it just dictates how much of, what you find outside you're going to use to fill it up.

And that is the point.

All of these are found objects.

We have sticks and twigs.

- Right, and you're not limited by what you would find in nature.

You've got flower pots, cored bricks, work great.

The kind with the holes in them, you can use cinder blocks, you know what?

Drinking straws are a great addition to something like this.

The key is you're looking for holes.

You want milks and crannies, crevices, cracks.

That', what's gonna replicate the tunnels, the boroughs that these insects would be creating or using out in nature and that's the key.

So once you've got your box and you collect a bunch of materials, you just start stacking.

And the idea is to sort of take like objects and sort of keep it all together.

So, you know, maybe throw a couple of those sticks in there.

So you keep the like items together and then you just use more scrap wood to create these little compartments.

And the compartments is sort of the thing that makes this an insect hotel, as opposed to just a box full of yard waste.

Once you start to see this artsy and geometric pattern happening, you're on the right track.

Now it's an insect hotel.

- I like how it looks already, we're just getting started here.

- [Todd Brock] Joe, you mentioned how artsy this project is, and with art, there are no rules.

With insect hotels, there are two rules, as you found out from Susan.

- Right, you gotta have the roof.

- Yeah.

That's super important.

That creates a little bit of shelter.

And then again, that's just what insects would do in nature.

They, they use overhangs.

They get in under things.

I mean, they're not just out there, out in the open.

So this is a little bit of shelter for them, which they would look for on the own.

- Right, and then when you put it out in the garden or wherever this is gonna live, you want to give it a south facing orientation.

- And that's for sun, right?

- Yeah.

That's for sun.

It gets them up and going earlier in the morning, gets them warmed up and gets them on their way to do what they do best.

Right?

- Well then this is ready for them.

We can Mount this in the garden.

You can put it on a fence post.

You could bond it to a tree again, whatever works for you and your situation.

- And the best place for us is the garden farm.

Now we're gonna have all the information you need to build your own insect hotel, as well as other ideas and inspiration.

It'll be on our website under the show notes for this episode.

The website address is the same as our show name, it's growingagreenerworld.com.

All right, what else do we have room for?

Just as in any great garden, it's easy to lose track of time in Susan's garden.

From the big ticket items to the little things.

There are no unimportant details.

It all comes together in its own ecosystem, everything playing off of everything else.

And it all just works.

It's all fascinating.

And it all teaches you something if you just take the time to notice, and that's a big part of why Susan and her website, have becomes such a wonderful resource for gardeners everywhere.

So as you went about creating your garden and putting in the plants, the various plants, you know, I've already commented on the fact that you've done a great job with your layering.

And I know that's also beneficial to the choices that the birds make for where they put their habitats and the food they eat.

- [Susan Mulvihill] So a lot of the low shrubs provided a thicket.

So if a hawk came through or something they were trying to get away from, they had somewhere to go into and hide from.

Then the taller plants tend to have berries.

And so the birds are coming up into the trees or maybe they're a sentry bird and they're keeping an eye out for predators.

And so there may be up at the top of a tree.

So the layering was important.

- [Joe Lamp'l] Well, and then you have, you know, the hawthorns and the other things that put on berries during the winter time, when nothing else is out there, but in your case, you do have other things out there.

A lot of gardeners, for example, with the perennials, they want to clean up and tidy up their garden in the fall.

But you by design, it's not because you're lazy.

Cause I know that's not the case, but you'd like to leave those seed heads in place.

- [Susan Mulvihill] Right, it is so important to do that because the seeds in those seed heads are an important nutrition source during the winter for many different types of birds.

So when I'm cleaning up my yard, I'm leaving all sorts of seed heads from things like bee balm, black-eyed susans and coneflowers, because I want to make sure they have that food source.

I don't want to take away that food.

- Yeah.

So that's critically important.

And in fact, in the winter time, a lot of people provide supplemental feeding, but if a bird had their way, they would want to just try to forage naturally.

Right?

- Right.

There are some things that we provide that would be hard for them to find, but they also like the natural food obviously.

- [Joe Lamp'l] And you are a big birder, so in addition to providing their habitats for them, you're also capturing a lot of their action and your camera shots, and then those videos that you post all the time, which I love by the way.

So a lot of people want to be better photographers with nature and especially with the birds in their gardens.

And you do a great job of that.

What are some of the tips that you can share for that?

- Well, the first thing I want people to realize is that I don't have a big, fancy, expensive camera.

I have a very simple but nice quality point and shoot camera that has awesome zoom.

And that's allowed me to get some pictures of birds that are far off.

In my office, I keep the window screens off my windows year round because I want to be able to open the window and capture pictures, usually hanging out the window, seeing what I can get.

And usually they're not aware of me, which is nice.

You don't want to take pictures through a glass pane because that distorts things.

- [Joe Lamp'l] And that's the same camera that you're also using for your videos, right?

- Yes.

And you know, I love getting still images because it shows the beauty of the birds maybe in a tree or next to a flower or something.

But when I got the video, it opened up a whole new world to me because I was able to capture a behavior that they were doing.

And then I could share it with people on the internet.

And it's been so popular by so many people.

- Well, it tells so much more of the story too.

You know gardening and photography do seem to go hand in hand.

I've been taking pictures for a very long time, started with a basic point and shoot, simply to document what I planted where, pictures of the plant tags, that's always important.

And then progress of the plants through the season and any problems that developed.

But you know, the more you use your camera in the garden, the more you realize there are so many opportunities.

And it's just like gardening, the more you do it and the more you experiment, the better you get.

And the fact is you don't need a fancy camera like this, but many of us end up here, but a basic point and shoot these days is so good and who does not have the camera on their bodies at all times these days, right?

Pay careful attention to lighting early mornings to late evening often provide the nicest, natural lighting for photographs.

Lucky for you, those are also excellent times to be out in the garden anyway, out of the harsh heat and oppressive sun.

Sometimes you're trying to shoot a wide shot of a huge area, but as a general rule, don't be afraid to move closer to your subject.

Extreme closeups of flowers, insects, fruits, and leaves can make for fascinating photos.

Even if you don't capture the entire image, sometimes a partial image that leaves something to the imagination is most interesting.

Understand that just like planting handfuls of seeds, not all of your photos are going to be keepers.

For every nice shot that I end up with, I probably take at least 20 shots trying to get it.

This is certainly an easier and cheaper concept to warm up to, now that most people shoot digitally instead of on film that has to be developed at a cost.

Go through your photos regularly, weed out what you don't like, but take the time to edit print out and maybe even frame or hang the good ones.

Your own garden photos make for really personalized gifts or cool conversation art pieces that no one else has.

It'll inspire you to shoot more and garden more too.

- [Susan Mulvihill] The garden that bill and I have created together feels so complete to me.

I love the flowers, I love all the wildlife that we get to experience every day.

And I love all the food that comes out of the garden.

I think there's been a huge disconnect between the old days, when everyone had a garden in their yard, and now.

What happens is kids go to a grocery store, they have no idea where potatoes come from.

They don't know that a tomato grows on a plant.

People need to know how to grow their own vegetables so that they can lead a healthy lifestyle and eat their own food that's been grown without any chemicals.

Because I'm a garden writer, I feel it's very important to practice what I preach.

I'm constantly giving advice to my readers, but I want them to know that I do exactly what I say.

I do not believe in using chemicals.

I do not use them in my garden.

And I feel that they have such an adverse effect on our environment.

I think that society really needs to break the habit of reaching for the can of chemicals.

I believe we should all be good stewards of the environment.

And as gardeners we have the opportunity to make that choice every time we step into the garden.

- Well, meeting Susan and bill and spending time with them was like catching up with longtime friends.

I've been following Susan over the years through her blog and website and her photos and videos told me that she was my kind of gardener, the kind of gardener that understands how everything in nature is connected in one way or another, and how our actions can either add or take away from the overall health and biodiversity of this environment.

Thankfully though they take the role as stewards very seriously.

And because of that, this has become a pretty incredible place for all who come to visit.

- [Male Narrator] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by... - [Female Narrator] The Subaru Crosstrek.

Designed with adventure in mind, built in a zero-landfill plant.

So you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint, Subaru, proud sponsor of Growing a Greener World - [Male Narrator] And the following: Rain Bird.

Corona tools.

And Milorganite.

Continue the garden learning from Growing a Greener World.

Joe Lamp'l's online gardening academy offers classes designed to teach gardeners of all levels from the fundamentals to master skills.

You can take each class on your own schedule from anywhere, plus opportunities to ask Joe questions about your specific garden in real time.

Courses are available online, To enroll, go to growingagreenerworld.com|learn.