Daily Dose of English 171
Gardens
Daily Dose of English 171
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about gardens. Lovely little gardens, whether they're large actually or small, inside, outside, up high, down low, for fun or for food, whatever they might be for, we're gonna talk about them. Well, for 10 minutes at least. Not gonna get very far into the discussion because there's actually a huge world of gardens and what they can be and do. Oh my God, there's a cat fight under my table. Guys, knock it off, please. I'm trying to record an episode. There's a little bit of a territorial fight between two of my cats right now, so don't mind that. Let's continue with gardens. I am personally quite interested in gardens, and I really would like to have one. I would like to be able to dedicate free time to them, since it's something that I've always had an interest in. but I've never really been able to do for myself. I've never had the space or the time, or rather, this is how I phrase it. I've always either had the space or the time or the interest, but I've never had all three at the same time. And so right now I definitely have the interest and the time, but I don't really have the space for like a garden that I want. So I have more like individual plants that I have, but again, it's not the same thing as what I'm interested in. And one of the biggest reasons is that my apartment doesn't get very much sunlight, which is kind of critical for a garden because plants need sun, that's their food. And so, It's really difficult to keep plants well in my apartment because there is sunlight rather, but there's not direct sunlight. Oi! Stop! Sorry. It's hard to give them direct sunlight, and that's what they really need, like several hours of direct sunlight. There's only a couple of spots in my apartment that get like an hour of sun, but that's not very much. The rest is more just passive sunlight. And so I would love a place that has like more direct daily sunlight that I could turn into a bit of a garden. But I've almost always been interested in gardens for a while, I think at this point. I'm more interested in a couple of different concepts that I wanna talk about. Because I don't really like those super kind of, I guess, plain, boring gardens that are just like perfect and have everything just laid out. I appreciate that as somebody who's very organized, I like that. And I'll probably do something similar, but I want a little bit more life in a garden. And I really like when they have a character, they look really interesting, they have interesting things growing, and there's lots of things growing. And that diversity is something that I think is really cool. because, and I think that's one of the main things that I want to do when I do have a garden, is have lots of different kinds of food and fruit and vegetables rather than just like super basic things like onions and tomatoes or whatever. Those are great. I will have those for sure. But I also want to have like interesting trees and various kinds of, I don't know, lavender or whatever it might be. Some sort of plant that's interesting and native. And that is something that I've been interested in for a while is like native plants to different areas. Because, as you know, the world is very large and there are different plants in every part of the world. And plants that are from a specific place we call native, right? They're native plants. Not necessarily like that's one plant is from there, but like the entire species of plant is from there, because that usually means that they're going to grow really, really well. And that to me is super interesting, is sort of planning out a garden to be super duper productive. because you're putting everything where it's best, right? You're putting the plants in their natural habitat, in the soil that's good for them, in the kind of weather that's good for them, because they will grow better. And a really good example of this is actually a forest planting method that was invented by a Japanese guy like back in like the 70s or something. It's been around for a while, but it's this idea of planting forests in a very different way than like is conventionally done where you find like the big trees and you plant them far apart and you give them a lot of care. whatnot. And this other method is about really dense planting, where you plant lots of different things in a very small area. So you have a lot of density and then also variety. And then you also have different types, like different levels of plants, right? You have plants that are right at the bottom, right? They only grow a couple of inches. You have like middling ones, like ferns and bushes. You have like small trees and you have large trees. and you get this very, very dense and rapidly growing forest, but it only works if you use plants that are native to the area that you're trying to grow in. And that I find really interesting is when you do something that is a lot more wild and allows the plants or whatever it is, the nature to really do its thing and live. And you can see this difference between this technique. I forget what it's like the Miyazaki technique or something like that, where the conventionally grown forests, we're trying to reforest places that have lost their forests, are way slower, they're weaker, they have less diversity in natural life, whereas one of these alternate grown forests is so much healthier and faster and greener. And that is really interesting to me. And in a similar vein, the other kind of thing that is interesting to me besides native plants to wherever I happen to be is the concept of a food forest, which is basically where somebody cultivates an area. So for example, a garden or a backyard or something, but they are intentional about everything that they put in there so that everything produces food in some way. And I think that's really interesting because it creates this space where inherently humans and nature are connected, right? All these plants are here because they provide you with food and the plants are good with that, like they're okay with that because they're... That's what they sort of exist to do, to create this food or this fruit or whatever it is. And so there's this symbiosis of life. And plus it also makes for a great place to be because you can just eat whatever it is around you without really knowing what it is. You can't do that in a normal forest. In a normal forest, there are too many things that aren't tasty, that are poisonous, or that can, whatever, cause you problems in some way. But in a food forest, the idea is that everything you see can be eaten, right? You can just pick something off the tree and eat it and know that it's going to be delicious and tasty. Or that's the same thing, delicious and safe, rather. And so I would really like to be able to balance that idea of like a food forest and a place for people to be and exist with food around them that is growing, and then also be able to actually produce useful ingredients for cooking. because that's something that I think is also really important for me, that I really want to have from a garden is a place where I can get a lot of really high quality, fresh food that I really put time and effort into. And so I plan to have sort of a mix of the two, right, this sort of organized, I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm growing, native plants, that sort of thing, but then also combined with like an interesting place to be and exist. I'd really like to have more time when I'm older, I don't know, when I'm in my 40s or 50s or something, or even older, to be able to like build a garden, like a yard, where there's places to sit, places to relax, different water features, whatever it might be that takes like a lot of time and energy, but to create a really good space. And so I'm looking forward to being able to do that in a decade or two. We'll see when I'm able to get started on something that large because I need to first find a space that I'm not gonna leave and that means buying a house and all these different questions that are gonna happen some point in my life. So right now I'm really just trying to learn more about gardening, understand more of the fundamentals and do what I can in this space that I have because it's a little bit limited, but that also creates interesting challenges. I haven't really gotten very far into it yet, but I do have a couple of things growing that I'm, and I'm just trying to do this learning phase, I guess. And so I'll report back when I'm growing things. Right now I have some, I'm trying to grow some peppers that, I mean, it's been a week or two, so they're still very young. Some other peppers didn't work out, right? So I'm working on stuff, you know. But yeah, that's our episode for today. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a word or two here and there. But yeah, I guess I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode of A Daily Dose of English. I'll see you then. Bye.
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