- [Madeline] 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?

[exciting music] Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden.

That's our mission.

- Woo-wee, we have been driving for hours.

I've seen Texas to the right as far as the eye can see.

- Definitely.

- And I've seen Texas to the left as far as the eye can see.

I think maybe those mountains might be Mexico.

- We're in the middle of nowhere.

- Well you know, we are in the middle of somewhere.

So where are we going, Madeline?

- Today we're going to Marfa, Texas.

We're going to visit Jim Martinez.

Jim is a landscape architect designer, and over 20 years ago, he bought some land in Marfa before it became such a famous destination and built a house and started a garden.

- Okay.

- Jim actually is known for two things.

He is an authority on native plants all over the southwest.

- Southwest.

- [Madeline] Quite knowledgeable.

- Yeah, that's big.

- And then there's one more thing that I know he's famous for.

- Here comes the bag.

What do you have in the bag today?

- Actually Jeff, today I only have one thing in my bag, and that's because today I'm a minimalist.

- A minimalist?

- Yes.

What do you know about minimalists?

- Not much.

- Really?

- I'm just being a minimalist.

Okay, so a minimalist is somebody who keeps things down to a minimum, doesn't accumulate a lot of stuff.

- Yeah.

I'm not quite a minimalist, am I?

- You're not a minimalist.

I've been to your house.

- [Madeline] But today I am.

- Okay.

- So I want to show you what's in this bag.

This is a book that Jim wrote on Marfa gardens, and he has isolated 65 plants out of 3,500 native plants.

- He has done some minimizing.

- Certainly has.

Each page of this book is one plant.

- Beautiful pictures.

Those are closeups, too.

- They are.

And just look at that.

- Oh, wow.

- [Madeline] Isn't that fabulous?

- Look at that.

- So there are a lot of garden books, and I'm sure I've probably showed you many, but this one is really so unique in the fact that it really just is so simply done.

So I'm really quite excited to see a lot of these plants actually in his garden.

- Well, you know what?

You're going to, because I see a little glimmer of a town.

We're getting to the end of the road.

- Oh, that's exciting, because I don't think we have any more topics to talk about.

- [Jeff] I think we've pretty much covered.

- [Madeline] Everything.

[upbeat music] - [Jeff] Beautiful day here.

- It is.

It's a little brisk, but now we get to meet Jim.

Well, look how nice this is.

This is such a welcoming path.

- [Jeff] It's beautiful.

- Welcome, how are you?

- How nice to see you.

Jeff Hughes, Jim Martinez.

- Welcome to the desert southwest.

- We're here, after all of that.

- [Jeff] It was quite a drive.

- Quite a drive.

- So maybe tell us a bit about how you like to garden.

- For me, it's all about doing native gardens, natural plants that are from a local environment.

It makes the ecology complete.

All the birds, all the insects, foxes, mammals and reptiles that happen here.

Showcasing all these plants that grow in all these canyons and all these grasslands that many times you don't see them, but once the rains come, they all appear and they're here.

I want to see how the environment like the butterflies and bees utilize all of them.

- [Madeline] Let's see some plants.

- So here, you kind of see the result of the natives with all these butterflies.

This particular one, which is called Gregg's mistflower, blossoms during the springtime, and there's a lot of butterflies then and then now in the fall.

- Isn't this fennel?

- It is fennel.

It's bronze fennel.

You can actually eat it.

This particular plant is not a native, but I use it as a food source for all these caterpillars.

- [Madeline] I know what that caterpillar grows into.

- Yes, what is it?

- It's a beautiful tiger swallowtail.

- It's a tiger swallowtail, yeah.

- And I love the shape and the size of the flowers in this particular part of your garden, 'cause they're delicate and they seem to be perfectly blending.

- And what's the red one?

- The red one is called desert honeysuckle.

It's Anisacanthus wrightii, or Wright's honeysuckle.

It grows all through this region and it grows through all of central Texas as well.

- Let's go see some more plants.

- Okay, let's do.

Here's another area.

You have a lot of bumblebees here, a lot of butterflies.

- The colors are just blending together.

It's just lovely.

Is that lantana?

- This is lantana.

This particular lantana is one that's a hybrid.

It's called new gold.

This one is the only one that's hybrid of the more hardy one.

And then this particular plant is a tradescantia, and most people think this is a tropical plant, but it grows all through these deserts and these canyons.

It gets very very wooly the more sun that it gets.

Really bright and cheery during the day.

Its flowers close up at night.

And then here you have a mix of other salvias, grass sages that are are endemic to the area.

- [Madeline] That's so pretty.

- And then we have Salvia farinacea or mealycup sage, and we have a madrone here, which is Arbutus xalapensis.

They're hard to grow.

They've become a tree that gets maybe to about 20 feet, very beautiful exfoliating bark, and they can be either red or yellow or white.

So we have a little bit of a surprise.

This is one of our big prickly pears.

Just be careful.

We're gonna do a little bit of harvesting in the desert.

- Really?

- These are called tunas, and they're mostly ripe.

There's a few that are not.

These have this really beautiful pale orange flower that's pretty large, and then after they get pollinated, they produce these tunas or prickly pear fruit.

They're utilized by locals and certainly Native Americans to make syrups and juices.

So what I thought we would do is we would collect some and then later on we can process them and make a sorbet or a syrup for margaritas or whatever.

- [Jeff] We're learning things.

- [Madeline] We are.

- So I'm going to need your help to do that.

You'll take one of those.

I'm gonna reach in here and twist this, and they're kind of very plump, a little heavy.

There you go.

Jeff, do you want to take a stab?

- That's a big one.

- I'd love to.

A nice plump one right here.

- [Jim] Do you want to try burning some off?

- [Madeline] Sure.

- The traditional way of doing it is to burn the glochids, these little spots, and then you can process them after that.

We'll harvest and then we'll process later.

- Great.

- So we're gonna go to a yucca forest next.

- How exciting.

This is wonderful.

What dramatic plants.

They're like lollipops.

- These are yucca rostradas.

I think they're some of the most beautiful yuccas.

If you look at the edge where the sun is hitting it on the side, it's got this really beautiful yellow edge.

Sometimes the whole thing looks like it's glowing.

- [Jeff] They're very neon-looking.

- [Madeline] Do you plant these?

- I did plant these.

These particular plants are all nursery grown.

They're grown from seed.

I only buy plants that are grown from seed and never collected from the wild.

It's illegal to collect from the wild, but people many times don't know that and they do it anyway.

So I always try to tell people, these are all grown in a nursery.

They come up like that and five years later, it'll be this big, and they can get up to 16 feet, so they become a tree almost.

- I think it's important that people in their own environment learn who's growing from seed and the nurseries that do that, as opposed to taking things from the wild.

The other thing that I think is really lovely about this is that you've selected one plant, and it just is such a nice effect 'cause they're so startling and dramatic, and it's just wonderful walking through all of them.

- Well, thank you.

They evolve and develop.

They become, the character changes as well, which I really, really like.

There's a little bit of a pine forest that's happening here, and part of it is that they're also associated with the pine forest.

- So the yuccas partner up with the pines.

- Yeah.

- [Jeff] So you're copying nature.

- I am, I am.

I am a copycat.

- You're a copycat.

How wonderful.

- Let's go see some more.

- Okay.

It's a new garden.

- Yeah, just watch your step.

Watch the prickles.

- Don't want to get near that guy.

- This garden is my warmest gardens, southern aspect.

It's planted because of the aspect of this building.

These are all natives, and this particular one in front of us is a nephedra.

Common name is called Mormon tea, and it's called that because when the Mormons came out west, they used it to brew a tea.

They couldn't drink coffee because their church didn't allow them to do that.

They didn't allow caffeine.

This has ephedrine, which is also a stimulant.

They just didn't know that it did.

- [Madeline] The color combination is great.

- It's just a beautiful color.

One of the things I did when I came out here, I hiked a lot around the area to see where they were growing, how they were growing, what kind of soil, what kind of rock.

So when I did the garden, I'm doing these sort of vignettes that happen in nature.

I always tell people go out and look.

That's what the world is all about, to go out and find it.

- Oh, I love that thought.

- Other plants that are here.

- This is an amazing plant.

So structural.

- Very structural, and they get to about 20 feet.

The only reason it has leaves is that it rained two weeks ago, and two weeks after it rains, it puts on foliage and then it blooms, and the blooms are like little flames of red on top.

It may take five years or 10 years for it to bloom.

And then all these other guys here at your feet are agaves, different forms of them, so narrow leaf, and then there's a scabra variety here.

They call them century plants, but they bloom about 10 to 20 years.

I recommend people buy them small and just watch them grow so that they can keep them for 20 years before they bloom, because when they bloom, they die.

- That's it.

- Yeah, that's it.

And these are called little-leaf goldenball trees.

It's blooming right now, but it's blooming at the top of the tree.

The blooms of the lower level have already happened.

It's a legume, and it grows on the south side of the rocky escarpments all over Texas.

- [Madeline] I love these.

- These bean pods are really typical of most legumes.

They look like a bean.

- They do.

Can you eat these?

- I don't know.

I don't know if these are edible.

- Go ahead, and if you don't make it, I'll do the show.

- Call my kids.

So when you put this in, how big was it?

- It was this big.

- So how many years did it take to get to this lovely height?

- This is really only about maybe eight to nine years old.

- So they're pretty fast growers.

- Yeah, they do.

You know, I always tell people when they say why, I'm 60 years old and I'm not gonna see this tree grow up.

I go, just plant it.

You'll be surprised how quickly they grow.

- Jim, this has been quite a visit.

You know, you have such an understanding of nature and environmental balance.

That's what I've gotten from this today, and that's kind of your approach, and that really parallels my approach to how I train people.

You know, you don't have to remember something.

All it has to do is make sense, and then you'll do it.

So that's what we're gonna do today.

Give me an idea.

What hurts from all the gardening that you do?

- Mainly it's in my hands and my shoulders, 'cause I do a lot of pruning.

I do a lot of planting, and so I use a particular tool, it's called a sharpshooter spade.

Use your arm and then you use the force of your arm to force it into the ground.

- Just slam it straight down?

Oh, okay.

That's pretty forceful.

Yeah, okay.

- I usually don't feel it when I'm doing it.

I only feel it in the evening when I go in.

- Yeah.

So that's a pretty common problem with most people.

They're always gripping and grabbing, especially as gardeners.

I have a couple stretches that might help some of that.

Do you do any stretches on your own?

- I have some therapy stretches that I do, but it's mostly for my lower back.

I had herniated my disc, my lowest disc about 20, 25 years ago.

The therapist that I had, instead of doing stretching on my back, he says you go on your stomach.

- So most of your stretches are laying flat down on your stomach.

Okay, all right, that makes sense.

In fact, I think I've got one to add to that.

I want to show you a good stretch that'll help counter all that energy that's being put forth when you do the sharpshooter and other stuff.

So let's stand up.

The first thing to understand with stretching is don't tell your body you're stretching, 'cause it's going, I don't want to.

Tell it you're reaching.

Think of when you yawn.

You don't go oh, this is gonna be hard.

Your body goes oh, I love this, right?

So watch my shirt real quick.

When my arm comes up, my shirt just came up, right?

That's because the length of my body got longer.

So I want you to not think that you have to hoist your arm up and it's all coming from here.

Let your body go with it.

This is kind of what we're gonna do.

I'll do it first and you can kind of see.

We're gonna call this six o'clock, like there's a clock, and this is 12 o'clock, all right?

And then you rotate your body for a nice stretch, and you want to keep your head looking forward, so I'll give you a focal point on that tree right there.

Start at six o'clock.

You're gonna bring your arm up, but you're gonna allow your body to reach with it, and then you're gonna rotate your body back.

Bring this down to six.

So we're really opening up that whole section that you're working the other direction with all that force you described.

So let's do it together one time.

So it's down here at six o'clock.

You're gonna look at that tree with me.

You're gonna rotate your shoulder toward that tree.

Now bring your arm up and reach your body, reach up to the sky.

Now rotate your body.

Keep looking at that tree and rotate your body around to the right.

Yeah, keep looking at that tree, and then bring the arm down to six o'clock.

So they just take turns.

The arm moves up and down.

The body takes you forward, and you feel how that just opens all this up.

So let's just do the other side.

So you're gonna rotate your left shoulder by moving your body.

Keep an eye on that same tree and bring it up to 12 o'clock.

Reach that body, get this side, this shirt should come out now.

Rotate your body back.

Keep that arm up.

Then bring the arm down after you rotate and bring your arm up.

This side's more flexible, so I would venture that you're right handed and you do all your sharpshooting over here.

You're a little tighter on that side.

So that's a good stretch to do any time.

- So you can't do too much of this.

- You can't do too much of it.

Any time you think of it, just do it.

And I had this one other stretch I'd like to show you.

Actually, this is a good precursor for it.

This next stretch is more of a compliment, and we need to just go up maybe on a flat surface like your terrace.

So what we were working on out there with that stretch is a good warmup for what we're about to do.

This next stretch, you're gonna love this with all your critters running around out here.

It's called the scorpion stretch.

It really helps with the sharpshooter part, but also you mentioned that your hands get a little achy from always gripping, and so you want to open those up a little bit and stream that opening all the way through here.

So let me just grab a mat, and I'm gonna have you lay down on your chest.

I'm gonna take your glasses, just 'cause they're gonna get in the way, and let's go ahead and set up.

So you said most of your stretches you lay on your chest.

I'm just gonna add to another stretch while you're there.

Come on down, head here.

Make sure your face is on the mat, legs out straight and arms out wide.

If your head's turned to the right, you want to use your right leg and take it up like a scorpion stinger.

Think just like a scorpion.

Now just rotate your body toward me until your foot touches the ground.

And you can use this hand.

Bend it and push yourself over a little bit.

Now you feel that stretch all the way from this hip down your quad to this hip coming across to an angle to that chest, the front of your left shoulder, down your left arm, right?

So we're gonna add one more little feature to this.

Take that hand that's on the ground there and just bring it up like this and rotate your arm like you're waving to all the scorpions out there in the field, and that's activating all these muscles right here.

It's giving you a great stretch.

Now come out of this the same way you came in it.

So roll yourself back over, but leave that scorpion stinger up, and then take it down and come on up.

I'm gonna give you your glasses back, and just feel that for a second.

Feel how open that feels.

- It feels great.

- That counters all that downward motion and everything else you do, plus the squeezing, you opened it all.

Not just the hand, but you opened it all the way up through there.

So if you do that stretch I taught you out there and you use that as a pre-stretch for this so it makes this safer.

Try to do this one at least once a day, one time on each side for the warm up, one time on each side, and that's all you really need.

As the weeks go by, you're just gonna naturally feel more comfortable, and enjoy it, be open with it.

And you have to do it for four weeks.

- Okay.

- I need a promise.

- [Jim] You've got my promise.

All right.

Watch your step through here.

- Jeff, look at this.

One more lovely little garden of just one plant interspersed with rocks.

What a great idea.

Is that what happens in nature?

- It is.

They grow in between these rocks and they kind of look like rocks.

- [Madeline] It's wonderful.

- Jim, it's been a pleasure.

- It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for coming.

- Thank you for having us.

- You're very welcome.

Sir Jeff, thank you.

- Four weeks.

- There we go.

- See you soon.

- Bye bye.

Safe travels.

- [Madeline] What a day.

- [Jeff] He's something else.

- That's fantastic.

I noticed, Jeff, that there's a recurring theme with a lot of the gardeners that we visited.

They really think that they don't have enough time to do exercises or stretches.

They actually think that gardening is an exercise in itself, so I was really impressed that you gave Jim an exercise to actually do in his garden.

- The stretch I gave him for his garden is just the perfect opposite movement and the best therapy for his favorite sharpshooter tool.

- I was so impressed how he used that tool.

I mean, he literally would divide plants or dig holes.

It must take an enormous amount of force to thrust that tool into the ground.

- It takes a lot of force, and I let him know that this particular stretch would be really beneficial to use before and even after he gets done using that sharpshooter tool.

- A lot of gardeners use a lot of strenuous tools.

They use shovels, they use forks, they use saws, and all of them need to do something I think before and after they use those tools.

- He mentioned that his hands hurt, because he does a lot of grabbing everything he does.

I gave him a stretch that stretches the entire front of his body.

- The scorpion.

- Yeah.

- I remember when you first showed me that stretch.

Actually, the hardest part was not putting my leg over my body.

The hardest part was literally putting my arm out and getting my hand up.

- Because you're a gardener.

Everybody that's a gardener has really tight wrists and tight hands.

- So since the scorpion is such a good exercise for the front of the body, do you have something that's just equally overall for the back?

- Absolutely, yeah.

I have a stretch that pretty much covers the entire back of the body.

It's called the walking pushups.

All right, so open up your feet nice and wide, and then what I want you to do is take your hands and place them flat on the ground.

It's okay to bend your knees when you go down there if you're not flexible, yeah.

Now very slowly, I'd like you to walk out one hand and then the next hand.

Now keep the heels on the ground as you walk out, and eventually you're gonna run out of leg and those heels are gonna come up.

- They're coming up.

- Go all the way out to a plank.

Just a half a pushup, don't go very deep.

Now slowly walk back.

The first thing you want to register is when your heels hit the ground.

There, they're locked in, so you're right here.

Okay, come on back, keep going until your legs have to bend, 'cause you're right here.

I just marked those two spots.

Now go into a nice squat and then come up.

All right, and that's one rep. Let's go for another one.

Hands flat.

I have you marked right here on the floor with my feet.

Walk it on out.

There you go, and then keep those heels down as long as possible.

Go out, just a simple, light pushup.

Now walk it back.

There you go, and right there, your heels hit much sooner and then your legs straightened out much sooner.

- Wow, I already felt the difference.

- Yeah, well that's because you're somewhat limber.

Not everybody is limber.

A lot of people just aren't naturally very flexible, and so they're gonna have to have a lot of patience.

When you're working on big stretches, you have to have a lot of patience until you finally reach that goal of being what you think of as being flexible.

Now, as far as Jim goes, I would love to come back and have him say, you know, my hands feel better, my whole body feels better, but honestly, remember how tight he was?

He was really having hard just doing this work and just laying flat and starting to roll.

I would love to go back and just have him say that the scorpion is a pleasure to do, that he's flexible enough to it.

That would be a marked difference in his flexibility, and that would be a win for me.

- Well, I think that Jim is a really patient man.

He takes small trees and plants them, Jeff, and he waits 'til they get to be big trees.

So I think he understands that it's gonna take a long time for the stretches to really work.

And I bet when we get back, you're gonna get to see what you want to see.

- All right.

- Let's go see Jim.

[gentle music] - [Jeff] Well, back in Marfa, Texas.

- And it's just a little cooler today.

- It's very seasonally different, yes.

- It'll be nice to see Jim again.

- Yeah, I'm really interested to see how Jim is.

Hey.

- Welcome back to Marfa.

- So nice to see you.

- Hey, Jim.

- So how have you been?

- Good.

Working on that scorpion, got that one down pretty good, but my other is a little.

- But the scorpion fit right in with everything pretty good?

I remember when I gave you that stretch, it was just uncomfortable for you to even be doing it.

So has that changed?

- Oh yeah, it's much easier.

- Oh, that's good.

That's really what I was hoping for.

You know, these things, they take a while.

You're a patient guy, you know nature takes a while.

This is nature.

- It will work, we'll get it all done.

- So I'm glad that the scorpion injected into what you're doing and is helping.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- All good news.

- So welcome to the garden.

- And on to the garden.

- Let's see what's going on in the garden.

Oh, it's so nice to be back here.

- Let's take a look at this surprise in the garden.

This is my fall blooming wonder, this eupatorium.

- [Madeline] Oh, look at that, Jeff.

So pretty on the white flower.

- This is Wright's eupatorium.

It only blossoms in the fall.

In planning a garden, you have this great availability of native plants that have this sequenced booming period.

It's kind of the star of the garden right now.

- It's wonderful the way you plan to have stars every season.

- Part of the wonder of a garden is to meander and walk through it and discover, so you want these discoveries to happen during your daily walks, and see it covered with butterflies all day long.

- [Madeline] Love that.

- Come and see a little bit more.

This buckwheat is beautiful.

It's gonna turn just completely bronze and beautiful, and there's a few butterflies here and there still.

- [Madeline] And you have your lantana.

- Lantanas are going.

The grasses are changed a little bit.

They look different.

- They certainly have.

- You have a little bit of reddishness, some green still, but a lot of the golden, and some are turning red.

- Warming up.

- So pretty.

- It is warming up.

They look beautiful with the sun on them now.

And what about this soil, Jim?

- The soil's here because we're surrounded by these volcanoes, are all volcanic.

They're unusual in that they go down 20 feet, which is really, really deep for soil.

That's how they're able to survive in this desert.

You get heavy rains, it goes all the way down, and then they can sustain themselves all winter.

Now we have some unfinished business.

- Oh, we do.

That's the prickly pears.

- Oh yeah.

- [Madeline] So excited.

- [Jeff] I forgot about that.

- [Madeline] Let's go do that.

- [Jim] And here we go.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness.

- Here we have the work.

These are the prickly pears in here, and what we'll do is kind of just smash like this.

- Oh my goodness, this takes a lot of muscle.

- You got the muscle for it.

- I got the muscle for it, but you've got bigger muscles for it.

I remember when we actually used those tongs to pull them off the plant.

You burnt off the.

- The glochids.

- The glochids, and then you wash them.

- Yeah, in an ice bath and freeze them.

You can keep them there for about a year if you wanted to in the freezer.

- [Madeline] And then in the middle, you have to be really careful not to get this on you.

Look at that color.

It's just beautiful.

- [Jim] Here's our finished product.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness.

- [Jim] Usually you freeze it and then you can scrape it and serve it to your guests in bowls.

- May I?

- You go first.

- I can't wait to taste this.

This is so fabulous.

Why don't you taste that?

It's got such a unique flavor.

I would say that this is worth the effort now that I've actually tasted it.

- That's prickly pear.

That's indescribable.

Jim, this has been a great visit.

- We've had such a good time.

- Likewise.

- Keep those stretches going.

- I will, I'm gonna master this.

- Master that.

- Be as patient with your body as your garden.

It'll come.

- Thank you very much for coming.

- Well, thank you for having us.

- My pleasure.

- I'm gonna have a little bit more.

- Yeah, please.

- [Madeline] You can eat that whole thing.

- [Jeff] Mm, mm.

- [Madeline] Mm, delicious.

[exciting music]