- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher, this week on "Central Texas Gardener", John and Jane Dromgoole, Founders of The Natural Gardener, tour us through their home garden.

At the Whole Life Learning Center and Cultivate Holistic Supply, permaculture grows Caroline Riley and Michael Carberry's vision.

Este garden, female farmers, Anamaria Gutierrez and Lea Scott transitioned from summer to cool weather crops.

So let's get growing right here, right now.

(cheerful music) At John and Jane Dromgoole's nursery, The Natural Gardener, they foster organic techniques and plants that accept our soil and weather.

They brought their work home as they built their house, gardens, and outdoor living patios.

Let's take a tour and hear John's story.

- [Announcer] John Dromgoole's been spinning tunes and tails on the radio since high school.

Then he turned the mic over to organic gardening as the host of "Gardening Naturally" on News Radio KLBJ from 1981 to 2019.

- I was in the Organic Gardening Club for a while and was the President for four years.

There were so many little things like that.

Paul Pryor used to invite me on his show on KLBJ, he was on a program that he called "Early Risers" and they started at 5:00 AM and if Paul wanted to ask a question, cause he heard about me, I was there at five.

And so I was able to translate to the public what they wanted to hear and about the reduction of pesticides, and that it was much easier to build a healthy soil and then grow your plants nicely.

And then pretty soon, people stopped laughing when I said manure.

They began to understand that I was talking about compost and things.

- [Announcer] An organic gardening trailblazer with long term roots in Austin's nursery business, in 1983 he purchased eight acres in southwest Austin and opened The Natural Gardener.

He and wife Jane brought the work home with them as they built their house, gardens, and outdoor living retreats.

- It's a lot to know about and it's a lot to learn.

I talk about plants all the time at work and I have the experience of saying, "Well it does this..." And if it's a dyckia for example, do not put your finger in because you won't get it back out.

I've learned these little things like that and that's what they appreciate, somebody who's done it.

- [Announcer] These days, they're supervised by energetic Lobo.

David Stalker, garden advisor and handyman brings his expertise to every project.

Like many gardeners, John's early passion germinated with house plants and tropicals like bromeliads.

- That kind of plant is what first got my attention, especially the Cryptanthus.

Crypt, meaning down and deep, and then anthus, the flower.

- [Announcer] He protects cold sensitive plants in his greenhouse.

It's also where he propagates them and builds cultivation knowledge to teach new plant parents.

The wide plant spectrum fascinates his endless curiosity.

- One of the things I like to do in the greenhouse is Mount Tillandsias.

Tillandsias are like ball moss they grow in the trees in the southern part of Mexico and other areas down there.

This is one of 'em, very unusual looking.

These are mounted on posts like they would be in the open areas and maybe out in the forest.

And they look really nice, they're easy to grow, and the roots are just for holding on not necessarily for nutrients.

- [Announcer] To maximize space, a pulley and rope design suspends heavy duty hanging plants and brings them down close for care.

They designed the greenhouse to resemble a comfy cottage.

Even one section of the roof is covered.

Inside, that's where he puts plants that appreciate a sun break.

Ladders inside also breaks up harsh rays, a country home style porch, double duties as workbench space and a shady spot to sit back and set a while.

Jane and John carry their outdoor living to a flagstone patio where inviting furniture beckons downtime.

An eye always to recycle, reuse, clever rustic panels separate the patio from a studio, while gate allows another entrance route.

The path to the house, curves along beds, documented with plants, containers, and strategically colorful accents.

- Jane and I built the house based on going to Santa Fe, and then the Fredericksburg area, and then south Texas and all of those pieces were put together in the house.

- [Announcer] Jane and John corralled wide spaces with distinct areas that seamlessly flow together.

A cedar arbor leads to a grassy summertime shady nook, right in early December after leaf fall.

They fashioned a cozy cabana with a bamboo pergola painted in festive crayon colors.

David used water based acrylic brushed on by hand.

When a woodpecker built its nest inside of supporting post, David had an idea.

- We built the cabana and you see the post coming up, and it was a perfect opportunity to, "Well, let's put a birdhouse up there."

And sure enough, they've already found it in just a matter of days.

- [Announcer] They counterpoint wide views with intimate encounters.

A tiny Zen garden frames the studio's wall with peaceful design and its water feature, a gleaming rainwater harvesting cistern.

Patio containers invite closeup perusal while dignifying spaces with accenting color and texture.

Plus, there are good option for seasonal change outs or plants that need winter protection in the greenhouse.

Ferns also elevate dimension while improving soil drainage.

In the vegetable garden, fences and cattle panel trellises, do more than support blackberries and upcoming grapes.

- Well, it's nice to have spaces defined.

That's why we put a fence around it.

The garden it's...

The vegetable garden, it's a sacred space.

Let's enclose it and define that area.

- That gates stood around here.

I'd put it here, I'd put it there.

It always looked good.

It's an art piece but never hung it.

And then I said to Dave, "How are we gonna hang this thing here?"

He said, "Here's what we do.

"We drill through the post, we attach it to it "and it'll work fine."

Except we didn't have a place to lock it.

I said, "Dave, we have a wrench right here.

"Let's dig this wrench into the thing."

And then Dave worked it out and so there's that wrench that we use as a place to lock it in.

And it was perfect to keep the dog out because he was going into the garden, he loved to dig, and so it was the only way to manage that part.

So he watches through the fence now and we talk through him, but he's not digging in there now.

- [Announcer] They grow vegetables and herbs in raise beds were beneficial insects take care of the pests.

Some are constructed with the wood chip and Portland cement composite for durability but good soil is what makes them productive.

- Soil and compost, and one of the tricks we're doing in a raised bed is digging down into the soil that's underneath there, even just a little bit.

There's not much soil there but there's three or four inches, and once you dig down into that a little bit and incorporate your new soil in it, that really gives your roots a lot more room to grow.

They'll transition into the old soil.

- Plants grow more vigorously, they become more drought tolerant, especially with that compost, it's like a sponge.

If we're trying to save water, that's one of the ways we're doing it besides mulching and the plants growing together are a living mulch so we kind of bring 'em, group 'em together.

- And with a raised bed, we have the... We're not walking on the space, we're not trampling the soils so you can really concentrate the plants in there and grow a lot more in the limited amount of space we have.

- [Announcer] They espalier fruit trees like Warren pears.

- When you change the direction of growth on a plant, like the blackberries, like the pears, the apples, the epical dominance, the growth of the hormones that's on the tip right here, changes.

And so now there's more fruit on there than there would be if the branches just went straight up.

- [David] It absorbs the noise too.

Plants absorb more noise than just a wall.

- [John] Yes.

- [David] Helps cut down on the traffic noise.

- [Announcer] Whatever you're planting, personal touches claim a garden as your own.

An old bed spring bottle tree glimmers on the property's former greenhouse.

John takes a cue from nature's art.

- [David] Yes, I find those things.

You can walk in the creek, there they are.

- [Announcer] Since he's learned from many others, his goal is to pass along his knowledge to new gardeners, including on "Central Texas Gardner".

- There was a lady that made the changes, you know?

One of my favorite ladies and that was Lady Bird Johnson.

She did research out by Hornsby Bend, I used to go out there and they had these greenhouses, and they were trying seeds, they were trying new plants, and then they had some field testing.

So she's the lady that really made this thing happen.

I love her.

We went to her house one time to have supper, my wife Jane and I.

And so we were up there, she thought I knew a lot about the natives.

We had supper talked a lot.

She had a beautiful place with pictures of Kennedy, and these other folks, and gifts from around the world.

And so after supper, we went outside to walk around.

She knew more than I did, I was embarrassed to be there.

She walked around, naming everything and she did...

I said, "Oh, that's a Mexican plum."

And she said, "Plants don't know borders."

I said, "Oh, you're right."

- [Announcer] John roots are also grounded in music and art.

In his studio, he crafts portraits of musicians he's known who inspired another lifelong dimension.

His close connections led him back to the radio microphone with "Dance Halls and Last Calls" on Sun Radio, where at home he auditions selections for upcoming programs.

Embracing many outlets for expression, indoors and out is John's secret for a balanced life.

- We have our stressful days with traffic and work, and then we come home and it's just nice to be able to decompress and have the beautiful surroundings there and that's why the garden is so important.

- You saw how slow the gate was when you were coming in.

That alone brings you down, you're home and the gates just opening slowly and now you're ready to come into the yard.

And leaving also, it's the same thing before I get out there, you have a chance to meditate on it and slow down, and then get out there.

One of the things that I learned with a friend of mine is the Zen of watering.

That darn hose always twists up.

I don't care if they say, "Guaranteed not to twist."

I bring it home that first day and this got a knot in it, and you're frustrated and you're jerking on it and all this stuff.

And the zen of gardening is to say, "Oh..." And you go over there and you untwist it, and you go back to watering.

- Permaculture gardens and growing community, guides Caroline Riley and Michael Carberry's vision at the Whole Life Learning Center.

At Cultivate Holistic Supply, Caroline helps gardeners grow their own beneficial food forests.

- People just are hungry for the experience of permaculture design and new...

It felt like a new way but it's really the old way, indigenous ways of gardening, right?

That I dunno, it's how can we experience that here?

- [Announcer] Here is the Whole Life Learning Center where Caroline Riley and Michael Carberry can bring their young sons to work every day.

In 2011, when they open their school for Pre-K to eighth grades, their vision embraced a holistic education and commitment to live in greater harmony with each other and the planet.

- Michael and I, we met teaching.

We are educators first and we were also, I guess, courting.

(both laughing) So when we first met, we were teaching kiddos.

He was teaching all the ages at a smaller, I guess it was holistic school, right?

And I was teaching Language Arts.

And the moment we met, we definitely connected around sustainability, gardening, our love for children.

And we spent a lot of time really just talking about what our vision was for education in general.

In the same year, we started the school.

I started teaching Permaculture Design at ACC.

- [Announcer] They planned their dream school to grow community and education for all, children and adults.

With many hands on deck, including the ACC students, they started the gardens.

First, was to create berms and swales to manage rainfall.

To build the berms, they excavated soil that later became the pond.

- Living in central Texas, we know that we experience extreme drought and then extreme flood, it can be, it's all happening at the same time.

And our biggest resource that we want to utilize, we want to slow and spread and sink the water back into the soil as much as possible so that when the rain does come, we take advantage of it fully.

We do that here by slowing, spreading, and sinking the water using earthworks and by using rain water catchment in as many ways as possible.

So any impermeable space like the driveway, the roofs, we direct that water to the soil and the berms and swales here.

So a swale is a level ditch essentially and when you dig the level ditch, you mound up the soil and that's the berm.

And when the groundwater is saturated and the groundwater starts running, it's always an exciting time in Central Texas until all of a sudden we're like, "Oh..." It becomes flood really quickly.

So when the groundwater runs, it captures in the swales, the swales fill up, the water slowly infiltrates into the berm.

When they overflow, they fill up our little pond, and then when the pond fills up, it overflows into the next swale and berm system.

And then when that's full, it runs down the road into the infiltration basins that the city's created.

We also dig rain gardens as much as we can, which is one of my favorite old design systems, I find them to be aesthetically beautiful.

It's a really simple design where you dig out a basin and berm it up, and then we capture rainwater from the roof of the preschool and it goes into the basin it's piped in, but also our condensation from our air conditioner from this building, it can create up to a gallon of condensation an hour.

- A lot of the curriculum is the water that we're swimming in, in that they're just seeing what happens when we get a lot of rain and how that is managed.

And we have our cisterns, catching with 10,000 gallons of rainwater catchment.

- I could distill permaculture into one sentence and oversimplify, I would definitely say it's sustainable design.

And we could take it further and say, regenerative design.

The idea of creating a space that over time is more diverse.

We're creating healthy, diverse ecosystems that are not just for us, they're for every living creature in the space.

And that includes the living soil, we start there.

We actually value the soil more than anything.

I see all plants as an important piece of the ecosystem.

And sometimes we just, we utilize them by recycling them back into grow soil, and sometimes we utilize them as medicine and as food, and we see how they feed the pollinators, and the birds, and the deer, and all the creatures.

The dandelions come in in the winter, who we welcome.

We eat their leaves, we make medicine from their whole plant.

The bees love their flowers in the winter, the food forest includes, I mean, my favorite's gotta be the mulberry because it bears fruit every year, no matter what the situation.

Several varieties of pears and plum, peaches have come and gone.

Right now, we have two peaches with us.

We have elderberry that we utilize, we make elderberry syrup from the berries every year that we sell over there through the apothecary.

We have loquat and I must be forgetting...

I mean, I'm looking at the roses cause I even, I harvest the rose hips and rose petals and utilized those for tea.

- When we moved onto this property, there was on this whole huge front yard area.

There was a flag pole and a single crate myrtle tree.

And so we moved into a blank slate nine years ago and so we've been busy ever since and the kids along the way, we've had kids from preschool up through eighth grade, get to see their trees that they've planted grow much taller than them, and they've been able to harvest the fruits, and climb the trees, and sit under the shade.

And so that's a big part of it.

- And they come back to visit.

Those are my favorite things, these grown students of ours who are now in their twenties and they come back to visit and they see the space and they're like, "Wow, I remember when that mulberry tree was two feet tall "and look at it, now my younger sibling is climbing it."

- Along with having a big focus on social and emotional learning, we're focused on place-based learning where the kids are really in tune with their environment.

They're learning about their local ecosystem and they're learning about their impact and ways that they can have a more sustainable or regenerative relationship with their local ecosystem.

- For me, a pond was a non-negotiable.

Water, the diversity that water brings in, I feel like a small pond can have a huge impact on an ecosystem.

Even a bird bath can have a large impact on an ecosystem.

And we dreamt of having a pond, be the center of our ecology study here and also be that the place where people can come and have a sense of wonder, a sense of a break for the day.

We see that our teachers take breaks there.

- [Announcer] The dream came true when permaculture students installed pond liner in the hole that was left when they built the berms.

- We applied for a grant through the City of Austin Sustainability Sector, their Bright Green Futures grant, which is four schools and education spaces to finish the stone around it, put the fountain in, it runs on a photovoltaic.

So when the sun is out, the water's flowing and when on a cloudy day, the water runs and flows a little bit less and the kiddos are able to experience, and adult students too, just that direct relationship between the sun and electricity in that way.

The kids play in there, they'll catch tadpoles and fish.

We have a catch and release program.

(Caroline chuckles) It's great.

- And they'll also bring their science class up there or maybe a creative writing class, but they're up there studying aquatic invertebrates and getting 'em under the microscope.

I think first and foremost, the animals here bring us joy.

And the kids, if a kid is having a tough morning, a slow start, we might ask if they wanna come help feed the chickens or the goats and boy, their day just takes a... can shift like that because there's just something that happens when we get to be with those animals.

- I'm really passionate about herbal medicine, along with the fruits and the vegetables, more and more people interested in herbalism keep showing up.

And so now the gardens have transitioned to probably 90% perennial as well as maybe even more medicinal.

The fruits that grow on the trees, we utilize those in syrups and teas.

All of the medicinal herbs, we incorporate into herbal remedies that we actually make here on site.

We have an apothecary in the geodesic dome so when we harvest things, they go straight back into the dome where we prepare them.

And then through what we call Mutable Earth Botanicals, we sell those out into the community through our shops.

- [Announcer] Caroline teaches classes through the Austin Permaculture Guild, along with co-director Taelor Monroe.

To grow the community mission.

Caroline went for another dream in October 2020 and opened a small nursery and whole life side yard, Cultivate Holistic Supply.

- There was a woman who was teaching here, who we had to let go because of everything shutting down, and she has a horticulture degree from Texas State.

And she had been on my mind of, I think I would love to work with her.

And so I called her up and said, "Hey are used to looking for a job?

"I'm looking for someone "who is willing to create something new."

And she was like, "Yes!

"This is my dream too."

And so Lexi came on and we just started to transform this space over by the yurt.

We focus on organics, we focus on edibles and perennials, native and adapted species.

And really the dream is to help people create their food forest and create their medicine garden, create their home vegetable garden and really create the garden ecosystem in a way that we've done here.

We don't just offer the plants, we also offer a lot of our time.

- And that has been, I think the most important thing is creating the space for people to gather and share, and learn and grow.

- People come in sometimes are like, "Thank you so much for letting me come visit your garden."

I'm like, "It's not my garden."

It's not my garden, it's our garden.

It's everyone's welcome here.

- Este garden, female farmers, Anamaria Gutierrez and Lea Scott are planting new roots at the legendary Eastside Cafe's micro farm.

- Hi, welcome to Este Garden.

My name is Anamaria Gutierrez, I am the Garden Manager here alongside with my farming partner.

- Hi, I'm Lea Scott, also farming here with Este Garden.

- We broke ground here five seasons ago in May of 2020.

This is a very special garden.

And all our neighbors here know that cause when it was Eastside Cafe, it was 30 years of organic gardening, first farm to table restaurant.

And now we're following along those footsteps of our former female farmers- - Yeah.

- Here.

- It's a woman powered space.

- Yeah.

- We're in fall in Texas, which is one of my favorite growing times.

Yeah, we've got a whole lot of new transplants in the ground.

So lettuces and cabbage, kale transplants as well, mizuna, lots of different greens.

And then from direct sow, we've sown a lot of carrots which are thriving.

- I think six weeks ago was our first succession of carrots.

We're growing Bolero carrots, which are a great storage carrot, and super sweet and crispy.

And since then, we did our second succession probably three weeks ago and then we did another round last week.

And right now is the perfect time to seed your carrots, they have been germinating so quick.

Pro tip, use some overhead watering after you sow your seeds for a few days, that's really gonna help with your carrot germination.

In this bed here, we have a loose leaf lettuce called Black Seeded Simpson.

It's one of the few varieties of lettuce we're growing right now.

This is a cut and come again lettuce.

Really easy to grow, can grow in the heat or the cold, highly recommend for home gardener.

So in this bed, we're growing three different varieties of lettuce.

Our first one is the Winter Density, that is a butterhead and romaine cross.

We grew this last spring and it was so delicious.

It's pretty tolerant of the heat.

So it did well in the spring, but we hear it's also pretty tolerant of the cold, which is why we're growing it this fall.

Second variety that we're growing is the Marvel of Four Seasons.

So this is a butterhead lettuce, a nice buttery flavor and sweet, delicate.

And this lettuce is gonna have some red tips on it.

So this is actually a French heirloom lettuce that is from the late 19th century.

And it's called the Marvel of Four Seasons because it is known to self sow after the spring to produce a fall crop.

So it's something that you could also try in the spring.

And the third variety that we're growing is the Paris Island.

This is romaine or a cos lettuce and I'm very excited about this variety because I hear that it makes some great lettuce wraps.

- [Lea] So in these beds, we have a variety of cabbages and Asian greens.

So we have a Napa cabbage, golden acre, and red express.

So three different cabbage varietals, and then two Asian green varietals, mustard greens and mizuna.

- For home gardeners and beginner gardeners, I highly recommend that you grow some radishes this fall.

It is one of the easiest crops to grow and it has one of the quickest days to maturity.

That means from the day that you seed it in the ground to the time that you harvest the quickest growing radishes, like a Sora radish will be ready to harvest in just 22 days.

These watermelon radishes that we're growing here, our variety is the Red Meat, are ready to harvest within 50 days.

Go and get your cabbage transplants along with some blood and bone meal and get 'em in the ground.

So cabbage is a heavy nitrogen feeder so what we did here is when we dug up a hole, we sprinkled some blood and bone meal and then transplanted our cabbage and what that's gonna do, it's gonna help create vigorous cabbage plants with a lot of green growth to produce some beautiful heads of cabbage.

We've got our first succession of cilantro's here that we seeded around three or four weeks ago.

And today we're gonna be seeding our second succession in this bed so that we can continuously harvest cilantro throughout the rest of the fall and into the winter.

With cilantro, you're dropping a seed basically every inch or so.

- Find out more and watch online at centraltexasgardener.org until next time, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(cheerful uplifting music) (bright flute music) (bright flute music)