- I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for over 20 years and of course with gardening comes a lot of aches and pains.

So I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems.

and a fellow gardener introduced me to Jeff Hughes.

After working with Jeff, it dawned on me.

What would be more exciting than to travel all over America, visiting a wide variety of gardens, and helping their gardeners get garden-fit?

[upbeat music] Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden that's our mission.

[instrumental music] [paced upbeat music] - On the road again.

So, where are we going today Madeline?

- Today I'm really excited 'cause today we're visiting a dear friend of mine, Matt Markin.

He's the Chairman of the Berkshire Botanical Garden.

- That's right, he's your garden husband, right?

- He is.

[both laughing] Cause I'm the Vice-Chair and we kind of team up.

I kinda never met anybody that has the combination of talent that he has.

He really is a plantsman.

He knows his plants extremely well.

One thing that he does is he creates large scale topiaries.

- Where did that come from?

- Let me show you this one.

So, a topiary, which maybe you know this is a plant that's shaped in a really particular pattern.

It could be a bear, it could be any kind of animal.

So this is sort of a little miniature replica of what he does.

I just thought you should see what a topiary is.

- Oh well thanks for pulling that out of the bag [laughs].

- But there's more than I have in my bag.

- Well, of course there is.

There always is more in that bag.

In order for Matt to make these large scale topiaries he went back to school.

- What is that?

- This is a form that he makes.

- He learned to weld and he fabricates forms like the form of a bear, if you want a bear topiary.

- Oh, this is metal.

- Out of metal.

- It looks like a stick.

- Yep.

- That's thin.

- In his Blackburn Farm.

And he uses these to actually grow the plants inside the form.

So I think you'll really enjoy the excitement Of this garden.

- Yeah.

- I just can't wait for you to see it.

- Me neither, let's go.

[active upbeat music] - So now you get to meet, Matt.

- Can't wait, I've heard so much.

Hey, there he is.

- There he is.

- Madeline.

- Matt.

- It's always a treat.

- And I wanna introduce you to Jeff Hughes, Matt Markin.

- I'm so happy to meet you.

- I've heard so much about you and your garden.

- You've been hugging my garden wife here, and stolen away from me.

[all laughing] I've been missing her.

But I hope you're going to fix me up here buddy.

- Absolutely.

- Very well.

- Okay, good.

- Well, I can't wait to show you my garden.

- I can't wait to see it.

I can't wait for Jeff to see it.

[echoing mysterious music] So, now that you guys have finally met and we're here Matt.

Please tell us about how you organized and started your garden.

- So we have the alley that was shot from a transit level from the front, back door of our house.

And we shot it like here staked out everything, it's flags.

So when you're in the house, and our bedroom is above that door right there.

So when we're in bed, we can look out.

I'm pretty sure it was Le Notre in the 17th century that came up with this notion of a false perspective.

Basically you plant the trees 18 feet apart at this end, 15 feet wide at that end, false perspective makes this thing look longer than it actually is.

- [Madeline] Isn't that cool?

- And the other thing too is, it's exactly 100 feet long.

- [Madeline] It's beautiful.

It's like a wedding set.

- Yeah thank you, I love it.

- It's just gorgeous.

- And people have gotten married here for sure.

So, this is the structure.

- Right.

- And then we move over into another - More structure [chuckles].

- Zone of a different kind of structure, when we get out into here.

- Well this looks different.

- Yes, so we come into a new zone out here, arborvitae, which is what these guys are right here.

These are big guys.

- They are.

- They're are up 16 feet.

This is another variety called arborvitae the gold type.

And look what we got here [groans].

Crow feather.

I love my crows.

- He really does.

They are ribbed with Blackburn Farm.

We got to have our signature animal around here.

We started off with three.

I think we had seven or eight this morning.

- A quick question.

- Yeah.

- Does your back bother you, right here?

- Yeah, it's pretty fried.

You saw that when I just picked that.

- I heard ugh, I heard it.

[all laughing] I'm always looking, always Looking.

- So, this is the topiary out here.

- This is exciting.

[laughs] - This is pretty amazing.

- Isn't this amazing.

- [Matt] Here we are.

- A forest topiary.

- Yes, indeed.

- I love it, it's so exciting.

- This is Mattland here.

- This is Mattland.

- Yeah, where we create sculptural three dimensional shapes out of shrubs.

Topiary has been around forever.

For instance the beginning of civilization.

They have documentation in Mesopotamia and Egypt all over the world.

People just seem to figure out that you could cut these things into shapes.

Basically, this is the traditional topiary material that you use.

They clip up really tight.

You can see right now that we've got a lot of extra growth.

So this got clipped last October and then all of this new growth is gonna get cut off, and these guys are going to be super sharp.

- What's so exciting is when we come back, these are gonna look completely different.

- Yes.

- They're gonna have their haircut.

- They're gonna get sharp.

- So in four weeks everything's gonna be a little bit more like, ready to go.

- You see this right here?

- It's gonna look like that.

- That's what we're talking about here.

We're gonna get this stuff tight, tight, tight.

So everything becomes very precisely geometric, on the geometric ones.

This type right here is the really traditional kind of topiary that you would see at Versailles.

We do everything by hand here.

- That's pretty cool.

- So, everything is by hand.

And you start off with a basic form.

These guys are probably 20, 25 years old.

- How many years is it gonna be before you actually see what you conceived?

- Kind of sometimes you can see where it's going right away.

- I mean when everybody else gets to See it [chuckles].

- That's the other thing too, because I'll tell you the worst question I ever get when people come through is, "What is it?"

People see what they're gonna see, you know.

I mean it's like going to The Museum of Modern Art.

Everybody has their own interpretation of what it is.

- And what happens when something gets to look wonky like that?

- Yeah, so you know what?

I kinda let it go.

They all have their own personality, right?

These are like my kids and sometimes you can't control them.

The plant obviously just wants to grow as a natural thing.

It probably was staked at one point.

And then we took the stake out and just let it to go south like that.

- Because of the the sun I think.

- Yeah, it probably does, goes with the sun.

But you know what?

I don't care about it cause I think it's funny.

And as I said, they all have their own personality.

- I love that part.

- And then this guy over here, I kind of let go for a while.

I remember it was probably 10 years ago that we decided to really hack into this thing.

And now it's gotten to the scale where we actually need scaffolding to get up and to that ball right there.

We have these great ladders that we use.

But even something like this you kinda got to really stage the thing around.

And you know, the other thing too, is that ladders just physically, you gotta to move stuff around and you get down, you get up on time, you gotta stretch around it and everything else, which is what I'm hoping you're gonna help me out with today, Jeff.

- Jeff will help you with that.

- Because there's a lot of strain that goes into this.

A lot of contorting yourself around to get it done.

- Of course, yeah.

- So you have all these geometric shapes?

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And then you're also doing animals.

- Yeah, we definitely have animal forms around here.

It's funny, the most requested topiary I get is people always want horses.

And the horses obviously stand up on skinny little legs and bushes don't grow like that.

It wants to put its structure and its architecture down the bottom to hold the thing up.

So when we do get requests for four-legged animals like this, what we'll do is start it from some kind of a pedestal.

And as a matter of fact some of these actually have frames in them because when I first started off doing this I wanted to make the process go faster.

You know a lot of this is making the plant do what it doesn't wanna do, which is my kind of gardening.

I always wanted to have big topiary and you can't get it in this country.

So, I started making it myself.

We're private garden, we're not open to the public.

This is just for us.

This is for me and my wife and my dog and my friends.

- And us.

- And you, right?

Just enjoyable.

It's fun being surrounded by all this.

- I just love looking back and seeing these wonky forms.

I mean it really is magical.

- [Matt] Thank you, well, I kind of think so.

- So Matt, we've gone from one garden into something clearly different.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Oh, my goodness.

- [Matt] I'd like to welcome you to my garden of discomfort.

- [Madeline] Oh great.

- This is a garden that was planted as a metaphor for the fact that all things have to die in order for other things to live.

So it's all planted with poisonous and toxic plants.

And I chose stumps as my material to use here.

In England they do stumperies as an old 19th century garden thing, following kind of that they did.

But here, because architecture is my thing I really wanted to make a big entrance that you walk through.

- [Jeff] You did nice job, It's kinda spooky men.

- A little spooky, yeah.

- A little spooky.

I think you know this is Blackburn farm.

- Yeah, how about the bones?

- Bones are collected at one farm down in Sheffield.

Old dairy farmers around here have a tradition when the cow dies, they just flip the thing over the fence.

And after a series of years and deaths, there's a whole collection of it.

And then we found this wonderful rock when we were excavating here to level of it all out that was in the ground.

And then when I power washed it all of these sort of lines that looked like rooms are on it.

And we turned it into a fountain, which isn't working today but-- - [Madeline] It looks happy there.

- [Matt] Yeah, I like it.

- [Madeline] In the garden of discomfort.

Well, this is certainly a different place.

- It's a design of a different type.

- Let's go back into the light.

[all laughs] - Okay, great.

- So Matt, what do you call this garden?

- So this is what I call the Boxwood triangle.

And this is where we have all of our smaller scale Boxwood.

The big stuff is behind us and the larger scale stuff.

And this is just a collection.

It's almost like you know, sometimes in the winter when it snows on it it looks kind of like a box of chocolates, you know you have got all the different shapes laid out.

- Bon Bons.

- Yeah, Bon Bons.

- So what I would really like, - Yeah.

- is if you could show me just how you trim.

So, I can get an idea of how you hold your body where you are.

- Yeah sure Got my Handy Dandy Clippers right here.

- You were saying your back hurts sometimes from.

- Yeah, this is like my preferred position right here, because I don't have to bend over.

It's when I have to come around and start doing that or I'm stretching in my back and like right now it doesn't particularly hurt.

But after four hours of that, it kills.

I have this kneeler here.

And I guess they're for older gardeners like myself right now, so I use this.

- I don't think pain has an age.

- Okay, that's your specialty.

So, I'll come down here and now it's like right there.

Good for me as far as how I can hold myself.

- You are able to stay neutral in your body a little bit.

- Yep, yep, yep and so I can then go into here.

- And then now it's a kneeler.

So I'm assuming you flip that over.

- Yeah, so it flips over.

- Let me see how you approach that.

- This is a great tool, love it, new to me but so-- And then what's nice about this guy is I can push myself up.

- Your knees and back love that.

- They love it.

- Yeah, well that's smart, that's a tip.

How about showing me what you do with the high.

- The ladder work.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, totally good, I'll show you.

[active upbeat music] - So Jeff this is the awkward part here.

We you gotta schlep this thing around.

Get it in place.

- Yeah - I wanna get myself this close as possible.

- Yeah.

- This hedge starts at nine feet at that end ends up at 14 feet at the other end.

- Oh yeah.

- But when you drive by on the road, it's perfectly level.

It doesn't look bad.

After four hours of this, you wanna die.

- Well Matt, I'm gonna help you with this because if you die we just don't have a show.

[all chuckles] It's take me off the list.

- Okay, well this has been a real experience.

Learning about your garden how you do things.

Tell me, where do you feel most of your problems associated with the work you do?

- I'm actually pretty good, Jeff, except for my back.

I have sciatica.

- Where you're feeling the pain is not always the cause of the pain.

The best way to explain it is I have pretty long hair.

So, if I grab this hair and I pull on it really hard, where does it hurt?

- At your scalp?

- Right.

Do I need to fix this or do I need to stop pulling on it?

So I watched you on the ladder, I watched when you were clipping, when you picked up the feather.

One thing I noticed that was common on all of those.

When you reached down to get the feather.

- Right.

- Your feet were out.

When you were clipping, your feet were out.

You're using your legs turned out as a bracing.

- Yeah, it's like stabilizing.

- And it works except that's causing everything to draw in, your glute, which is like your biggest muscle there.

It actually comes in at an a angle.

- Okay.

- So, when you use it, it's pulling up your leg around and where it attaches on both sides, it actually draws energy around and it pushes on that sciatica.

And that can cause a lot of the problem.

You want to learn how to understand how to balance out your body.

When you're leaning over, realize that you have weight going over, you have Clippers.

- Yeah.

- And you need to find a way to pull back even if you're leaning over.

You have to think of anchoring on the other side.

So there's, it's like a scale.

There's just a little bit of balance.

- Yeah, yeah.

So first of all, let's just stand up and what you wanna try to avoid is pressure coming around from here.

So you wanna bring it back around.

So the best way to start thinking about that is not turning your feet out.

So let's just take for instance when you're leaning over that bush the bush.

- Yeah, the bush.

- Okay.

And just pretend like you're here right now.

- Okay, right.

- Now, turn your feet in like this.

- Okay.

And do that and reach over like you're doing it.

And feel the pressure, now turn them straight.

- Okay.

- And do it again.

- Yeah I definitely feel a difference.

- Right, so now it's pulling on your hamstrings, but it's not causing that.

- Yeah, it feels back here.

- So at least we transferred it out of outta your sacral area.

This is going to cause your hamstring to hold you a little bit.

It's gonna get a little tight from all that work.

- Right.

- So a nice stretch for that is to just kind of open your feet up right now straight parallel feet.

- Yeah.

- Just come down comfortably and put all your weight in your fingertips.

So just drop your head and just push hard with these to stand up, really push against your toes.

- Okay then I feel it in the hamstring.

- And then bend and come down úand then push again with your hands.

- So, this is an exercise I should be doing.

- This is the exercise, yeah.

- Okay.

- Now one more time bend.

Now as you push, as come up, keep leaning over onto your fingertips and just roll up.

Don't lean come up straight roll up.

- Okay.

- All right.

Now all that did was just kind of stretch your hamstrings.

Because by doing what I'm asking you to do they're gonna get a little tense and then you... - Yeah, okay.

When you pick that feather up.

- Yeah.

- Right?

Your feet were like this again.

- Yeah.

- And you opened your knees up.

So all that pressure is going out and it's simple Newtonian physics for every action there's an opposite and equal reaction.

So all your body weight that's going down is actually pushing back up.

- Okay.

- And there does it meet?

Right here.

- Right there.

- So simply if your feet were wider.

- Right.

- Your knees aren't going to be wider than your feet.

And so now you're sitting in your hips.

- Okay.

- So when you're going to go all the way down go down until your arms run into your legs.

- Boom, right.

- You can put a hand down like a football player.

- Yeah.

- Drop your knee down and you're there.

- Okay.

- Now remember when you went to-- - Yeah.

- That was your body saying we don't like this.

- Okay.

- So right now you're here.

- Yeah.

- Just roll over and go back to your arm chair and then just arch up.

That takes all the pressure off your back.

You came up instead of dragging up, you Came up.

- Right, okay.

- So you were balanced.

- Right, okay.

Love it, this is a good tip.

- Yeah - I can do this.

- Now the other part of the bracing.

Now we just worked on this.

The other part of the bracing is up top, so simple bracing.

What's the first thing you do when you're getting ready to push a truck across the street, think about.

- Push a truck across the street.

- Yeah if you're behind a car.

What's the first thing you're going to do?

- Okay.

- Bracing.

When your lungs are full, your body has power.

Right nobody goes [exhales deeply].

- Right.

So while you're up there just be aware of your breathing and holding that back pressure in your body.

You don't have to hold your breath.

- Well, I find, I do hold my breath sometimes on.

- That's your body naturally bracing.

- Okay - And then when you're up in the ladder, you really, you have great twist.

You were, way around here doing this that's great.

So when you get done and you need to reset, set that ladder the other way so you're way around here.

So at the end of the day, you know... - I'm even.

- You're even.

When you've been on the ladder for a while and you're doing all of this, you know you're going to go work low, go work low for a while.

Instead of having everything big for a long period of time and then go do something different.

- Okay.

- Just doing something different back and forth gives you balance.

Now one more thing.

With this, when you sat down on it.

- Yeah - Again, you did this and your knees went out.

- Right.

- Simply opening your feet up, doing that squat instead of having to go to the arm chair you've got this.

- Okay.

- All right.

And actually, I remember when I was a kid, my dad his friends used to come over and they turned the chairs around backwards.

- Yeah, right.

- And then I started doing that and I realized you straddle a chair or you sit this way your curb and your back is perfect.

Your legs are actually holding weight instead of the seat holding your legs.

- Okay.

- And try that.

It forces your feet to be wide which is what I was teaching you anyway.

- Yeah, okay.

- And so when you stand up it just works.

- Yeah, okay good.

- So you got a lot of tools to work with.

- Yeah, thanks Jeff.

I got a lot to think about.

Well, there's more to it than that.

- Okay.

- We're coming back, I need a promise.

- Okay.

- That you're going to do everything you can to put this into action for four weeks.

- Well you know what?

It's clipping season.

So they got a lot of time to practice and you better believe it, I'm going to do it Jeff.

- Oh, we got to do.

- All right, thank you so much, - All right.

- I appreciate it, okay.

[dramatic music] - Matt, this was such a great day.

Thank you so much.

- Madeline.

- Madeline always great.

Love to have you guys.

And Jeff-- - Matt.

- It was it was good - So nice to meet you.

- Yes, it was.

- Really appreciate.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- And I look forward to seeing you again and you're gonna see me garden fit.

- Jeff, the fix that you gave Matt for his sciatica go is great.

But what really intrigued me was a new concept that you talked about for all gardeners, which would be to break chores into three stations work at them for a short of period of time and then come back to them.

- Yeah Well you know, limiting the time you spend on a particular motion or movement just giving it a chance to take a break and recover while you go use a different motion or movement.

That's what keeps the body happy.

I've got a surprise.

- You do oh my goodness.

I wanna see.

- Your place and I got some of your stuff.

- You got tools.

- Yep.

- So, here you go.

- My Clippers.

- Your Clippers.

All right, what do you do with Clippers?

- I clip, I either deadhead or I'm pruning, but there are always things to clip in the garden.

So I definitely bend over and clip for a long period of time.

- So let's just assume that, oh, I don't know 30 minutes has gone by.

- All right.

- So if you're in your garden, what would your mind tell you right now?

- My mind would tell me to keep deadhead.

- Right.

- Right.

- What's your hand telling?

- My hand's really tired from squeezing.

- Okay.

- Yes.

- Oh let's just, let's switch that out.

- Okay.

- And let's do something a little different.

Here you go.

- My shears.

- Yeah.

- Well, Matt taught me how to clip Foxville and so I love to do that now.

And this also is a really fun task but it's a lot of bending and a lot of arm work cheering away.

- Well, let's just let another 30 minutes go by.

- Right.

And now tell me what you're thinking if you were at Matt's place.

- I'm thinking that there are about 50 more topiaries to clip.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yes.

- So what are your arms telling you?

- My arms are telling me that they're too tired to go on really.

- Okay, well let's take that.

- Okay.

- And here.

- A shovel.

- Have a little fun With that.

- Okay.

Well with this shovel, I bought a lot of new plants and I wanna get them all on the ground today.

- Yeah.

- So I'll take my shovel.

Dig in.

- Yeah.

- And plant the plant.

- 30 Minutes has passed by what are you thinking?

- I'm thinking that I wanna really do the rest of the plants.

- What's your body telling you?

- My body is tired now.

My leg is tired My arms are tired for moving.

And my back is tired.

- How's your hand feeling?

- My hand's feeling actually somewhat refreshed.

- Okay, well here you go.

- I got my sheers back.

- Yeah.

So, the idea is that if you keep switching every 30 minutes or so forth whatever, just try to keep moving around not using the same tired muscle, do something different.

When you come back to it, it's actually more efficient.

You're gonna get more done now with a rested hand than you would have kept going.

- What a great thought.

[music playing] Matt said we should meet him at the pool and there's Matt.

- I was so great to hear you guys back, Jeff - Matt.

- Great to see you again.

- It's so good to see you - So listen, I've been doing a lot of work as instructed.

I've been clipping six, seven hour days every day.

[all laughing] - As instructed.

And I gotta tell you with the tips that you gave me, I'm feeling good.

You know, it's all good, It's working Jeff, It's working.

- I gotta give you another hug.

Thank you for doing that.

- Well listen, thank you because this is what I do, you know, and I really have to thank you for it.

- So now that you've done all this work can we see the results?

- I'm dying too, got follow me.

- I can't imagine what he has in store for us now Jeff - I'm starting to wonder.

Wow.

You really have been working hard.

- My goodness, Matt how many man hours have you put into this?

- I hope that we've got 60 hours in this.

- Yeah.

- Oh my goodness.

- And thing that's been great is that after working with Jeff, what I'm doing hours is I'm doing some ladder work coming down on the ground.

Working some on the ladder coming down on the ground.

- Oh that's our garden fit too.

- Yes, exactly.

And it works.

- Let's go inside and see all the other ones.

Oh my goodness.

Well these have changed a lot since we've been here last.

- You really get a chance now to see how crispy everything gets once you click it up.

You can see now what a difference it makes.

'Cause they're readable when they're not clipped, but when they get clipped, you really get it.

- It's wonderful.

- So can this feel?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- That's solid, You can actually set things on.

- Yeah definitely.

That's where we lay the Clippers when we're moving around.

- I guess.

[mumbles] - It is.

- Put a ball of water on it, multifunctional.

- It's fun.

- So I have been out here for a month getting this place clipped up.

And so now I've got a challenge for you.

This is going to give you some idea of what it takes to get a topiary.

So we're gonna head off to the pool and I've got something special for you up there.

- Great, let's go.

- Okay you guys.

So now it's time for the garden fit challenge.

- I'm ready.

- Oh my goodness.

- Okay so, you're going to take these box woods you're using Clippers and you're gonna clip these into a ziggy rod form that goes all the way around both sides.

- You know what that is right?

- Okay I don't know.

- Okay so it's a spiral for each other.

- Got it, a spiral.

- It's a spiral.

You're going to taper down.

I want you to be conscious of the flow as it goes down and I want you to pay attention to your sides, okay?

Those are the only tips I'm gonna give you.

- Okay?

- Grab your Clippers, you've got 10 minutes go.

There you go.

Okay Madeline, there you go.

Hurry up Madeline.

- I'm going, I'm going.

- Clock is running.

Keeping where you stand here.

- Very slow.. [indistinct] - He's been around it too much.

No, no.

- I can't get the down part.

[indistinct] - You get You're on your own.

Push that.

- He's getting there.

[laughs] [dramatic music] - Clippers down, challenge is over.

You guys didn't do a bad job, I got to say Two different techniques.

You're a snipper, you're a chopper.

Right?

[Medaline laughs] And we're gonna get to the same place in the end.

But what I withheld from you at the beginning is there's a trick to doing this.

You run the string in a spiral around your shrub and you use that as your guide to clip against it.

- So there's straight.

- Let me show you something.

- That.. - Oh wow.

- Okay, that's what it's supposed to look like.

- Got it.

- All right.

- Yeah.

- But it's a rough cut.

You know, you can see that there are areas that haven't grown in yet that we will, you know that the plant itself will grow in.

And after a couple of clippings this thing is gonna be super tight and go in the ground and live for a really long time.

- I love the way the center is sort of off center.

- Yeah.

- It's very cool.

I think we should practice every day and come back and show Matt what we've done.

- That might be an idea because I got to tell you I enjoyed it.

- Good, I'm glad.

- Great fun thank you.

- Thank you really great, I learned so much.

- I did too.

This was great.

It was easier than I thought it would be because it was fun.

[Matt] Oh good, well that's what you got to do right?

Try and have fun whenever you can.

- [Medaline] I think you're right.

[all laughs] [active upbeat music]