MY Dad: A Professional Landscaper's Yard / Garden Tour + Personal Interview!

Hey, hey, how did you do it? If you come, think behind me again, um, yeah, we want to see your whole

yard

looking good. This is in the front of your house modifying. Hello youtubers, I'm El Ghazi from Elbow Pepper, calm down, our parents can be there. Some of the most influential people in our lives offer more than just genetic material, they teach us values, social skills, and often even practical life skills. As a designer, my mother was a big influence on my artistic side, and as a

garden

er, my father taught me how to work. hard and how to work with plants.

My father has been a

landscaper

for almost his entire life. Today we will see some snapshots of his career, but we will also take a nice

tour

of his

garden

to see how he has incorporated both ornamental and edible plants. This is my dad, El Grassy, ​​in the second Hello dad, I want to ask some questions. Well, people may be wondering what it's like to be a

landscaper

or perhaps how someone could get started as a landscaper. Well, first people may want to. to find out how you started as a landscaper, well, my first start. I remember working with my dad, he had his own landscaping business and I was five years old and he put us on these big giant lawnmowers and he literally floored me. ground and they drug me all over the

yard

and I couldn't stop and they chased me and I'm dragging like this on this big giant machine that kind of thing on the golf courses his father was a landscaper and he taught us that skill also in high school I started my own business I left school at 11:30 to go to work I had my own truck I had my own equipment and when I came back from the army I started my own business again so now here I am Newly married in 1976, you started doing business, did you take any classes And when you went to school that helped me a lot?

Which I did well, so I go because my afternoon break was landscaping, my major was horticulture, oh that's cool, so you actually had a horticulture major. class in the high school curriculum and that's why they allowed me to go to work because my job had to do with landscaping had to do with horticulture, so the combined work is shown as a work release for the high school, yeah that's great in California, there was a very high demand there, they won't call landscapers, they were called gardeners, landscapers in California and gardeners from two completely different fields, a couple of new features I added and added a fountain stance of water away from jobs, so how can I? use them to work well, this is what I do.

I had a few different things, I added some pumpkin elephant ears and some dahlias and hostas and different things, and then one of my favorite cherry trees, they covered it with huge pink flowers this year and with pretty details. I had so many cherries this year that the birds were gorging right among the greens, it works well, the textured hostas, the painted ferns, they are going to start blooming very soon, so you will see that I have a lot of jumping pines on my property and I like them a lot, you just add a lot of

personal

ity to the work, to the properties themselves.

There's probably my favorite Japanese maple, it's just that the fall color is really nice, but it was a stone's throw from a job I got I worked in Pittsburgh and I was really skinny and they liked the place and they grew a nice Japanese red pine on my pond, I love the mists there, there are a lot of different frogs, so being that you started in California, what did things do? You have to adapt when it comes to this mild climate we have in Western Pennsylvania compared to the way the climate is in Los Angeles, California.

I had to learn a whole new system of landscaping because I went from tropical to now seasonal landscaping. of things that people like color, so you started with spring color and some of those bulbs will bloom in early spring, mid spring, late spring, if you know some of your first plants perennials, there are some that will flower earlier, so if you know your trees, your plant material, the network, you know which trees to put in a special area to give it color at a certain time and now you get two trees that have no flowers, Japanese maples Okay, they are beautiful. summer because I have some that are bright red, they are yellow, they look orange, they look very lazy, but they don't bloom, but in the fall, when the fall colors come, they are bright yellow, bright orange, they're bright red, they're really pretty, so you have to branch out to know how to use the plants and then use certain types of trees in certain areas to highlight certain key points in someone's garden. knows how to add dimension of depth, so these are all factors that add to a garden.

It is clear that landscaping is more than his vocation, it is his passion. My apple tree is peeling and I think there is an application. It's just weeds and then. My clematis on top threw a wheel that was discarded, so I used it, I put the Addis clone on it and it works Wow and Dan Oh, more flowers. I like to pick flowers that I give to my wife. She likes them too, but one of my rare Japanese maples. it's called fairy hair, the Lees are so long and thin it's just a very unusual pine and new neighbors, another NASA, a little Robins there and as we go down you can see many varieties of Japanese maples and my different types of asphalt.

Your pear apple tree already has small pears, which I'm glad we had quite a few last year and then let's go to the backyard, go up to my terrace. I actually had three trees running through the center of my deck and most people say everything. Go down there, but I don't like them, I like my trees, I'm not going to cut them down and then when you come over here jumping Norway and then this particular yellowish Hinoki, I had it down there and last spring I dug it up. from there and put him here it was fun to move alone but he survived and I'm happy with that and then here we have the nine bark, they call him nine bark, I don't know who named him. that, but it will have a lot of flowers this year, another weeping pine, but it's strange because this year it put up a shoot shooting up, most people will probably call it silly, but we'll see what it's going to do and then here this. the bed has many different things in it Solomon Jack in the pulpit burning stars echinacea lilies different types of other lilies ginger has the old paint that has already bloomed now tree peonies and these are going to be all white very soon he still beats the combines some of them are still blooming and let's go over here Louisa crab in bloom if you see how many berries if you could see them but it had so many berries this year because they had so many flowers it was just covered in pink flowers and then my other tree crying my pine is a pendulum you can tell which I tried to train them because I want to try to get this one to come out straight if I can so I'm slowly working on it and just a little bit of that time training them my rocks where I sit and rest after a hot day and then this used to be a big hemlock tree here I took it out because it was dying and replaced it with a beach harvester now it is my favorite tree in the entire backyard. the color, the way it grows, the perfect specimen for this particular location, you put that red against the blue and everything around it creates a good focal point, so you've been in this industry for decades, that's right, What kind of jobs are you currently doing? like in the last few years, what kind of things, well, if I work backwards, in the last few years I've done a lot of hardscapes, I've done a lot of patios and when I do patios, I try to use red, maybe until the end.

I made a lot of walls and then I had to make walls that had benches on the wall so they could sit around them with campfires so they could stir marshmallows. I made a patio. I have made many ponds with multiple waterfalls. waterfalls and I still do custom landscaping where some of my work, like the one I did for McDonald's, they said they had never seen a McDonald's landscape like this and the owner received an award for the prettiest landscape commercial in Indiana County, that it's great. Yes, I like to do interesting landscaping techniques and there could be many things.

I just don't do things on a flat plane or in a straight line behind me. It's a dawn redwood. It is a big tree. It was only 12 feet tall when I planted it. that and that was not long ago and it's going very well, then you come to this side another cherry tree, but the serpentine, which is probably one of my favorite cherry trees because this one grows far away, had that particular style that was seen in the autumn photos. wonderful and when it's covered in snow it's really nice to walk into my garden, nothing is wasted here, this is hemlock mulch and these are hemlock logs that the tree fell on my garden and I saved the logs because they are all hollow so I used to plant my herbs in them and it works quite well and I plant some pumpkins and cucumbers here my peach tree that has different varieties of peaches.

It looks like I'm going to have quite a few peaches in my garden, we have quite a few in the garden here this year I had to change it because some things have gone bad on the side we played some woods and climbing cucumbers peas beans carrots peppers chives parsley and I got tired of that The squirrel ate all my strawberries cyclamen rain gutters so inside the rain gutters now at least I can have strawberries without them eating them. Did you tell us that the foxgloves did very well this year? They are biannual and this is the year they did best and I have them everywhere. garden, my little eggs will have big flowers this year when you come here, put my potatoes and lettuce on the potatoes for now because they will grow and be harvested before the potatoes grow enough and then my garlic, oh this.

It's a garlic that my son gave me last year, he told dad to plant them and I planted them. I added all of this this year, this is up to you. I made raised beds the entire way. I started placing the wire for my beans. my peas and so many different factors another espalier pear tree another bird's nest that we have plenty of here my currants another type of cherry tree the red tree there that ornamental peach tree more foxglove did you tell us more Carmine's a butterfly maple Japanese maple So what are they some of the biggest challenges you face in this business?

I will say that part of the worst thing is the range because sometimes people don't realize that if it rains one day, you have to have another day to dry things to do. your job if I'm making a patio, for example, so that I don't lose one day, lose the day when it's raining and another day waiting for the site to be viable again many times, as many times as the year lasts I had to put up tents to keep it dry my place. I cover things with tarps to keep them dry that way I don't waste a day and then when I find a sunny day I work at 10:00, sometimes 12 hour days. sometimes 6 days, 7 days a week because I know it's going to rain next week oh my garden is flooded, my whole yard was completely under water, welcome to my backyard.

Things happen and you feel like throwing in the towel, but he never gives up, no matter what. tenacity, something we all need when facing adversity, so this year I had some leftover work products. I made my own sewer and it works fine. We had a storm a week ago. You know, all the water was right in the sewer, lie down, lie down in the Creek Basin, where I need to be now after all this, was in the water, that flood took away all my new plans I had for a job, just wash them all away , wash everything and so on, but we can't control what comes out of The sky I could control a lot on the ground, but I'm at the bottom of the hole and the bridge is dammed.

The bridge I used for my lynx or just a walk and then I have another one, my main bridge was washed out. and it was destroyed, we had to replace that bridge and this is where I keep nursery stock, mostly just plants, an old linden tree that plays the Pittsburgh sycamore and it was a bonus for my work that we did in Pittsburgh and I love it. these trees because in California, when I lived in California, we used to climb them all the time, we would put ropes on them and swing them, and it is a tree that goes fast, a nice shade tree, I like them a lot, all this changed.

Used to have a game here. you would see my old video, but I took it out all my children are older now, I don't need them anymore bongo grass, that's what it's called, it's called bongo grass and it will be covered with pink flowers, a lot of butterflies, they have a lot of things, so on this side I have a lot of different things for a birdhouse that no longer exists. It is necessary to recover it, but we will see what we do. I love being able to build some new birdhouses. I have many birds, there are many different types because it is a sanctuary that they like a lot.

When you walk around here, you have a big corkscrew under me, on top of my dinosaur plants, these get really big, I think it's probably one of the biggest. Not leagues at the moment, that one is a little bigger, they get huge. This plant could be elusive, soyou have to watch where you put it but it loves water and it only grows about four inches deep if so and I only put it here because if you choose quiet for a second you can hear the water at the bottom. I hear it. I can also hear the wind, so that branch fell on the willow tree and I did this.

I get all these sprouts like that, that's pretty good. I just left it like that and my wife's blueberry tree, hopefully we could have blueberries this year before the sedum squirrel or the bird edom, she just has to get the timing right otherwise they'll be gone, come here , it's the good thing I have. As with all these trees in the world, the engines create a good sound barrier, breaking up the noise of the truth, the farmers and making my property completely private. No one knows this property is here and the only way you can see it is because they have you. got a plane over or did you sneak into my driveway somehow my liquid sweetgum live liquid amber is what they call it here's a job that was for my job that we took out just didn't work out so I let him come here one of My Favorite pine trees this one because I just like the canopy underneath with the different colors of the hostas.

It works well. I mean, these trees were only 3 feet tall when I bought them and now they are huge on the sides. These trunks in that big trunk and he says I like the way this hangs everywhere. What would you say you enjoy most about the landscaping that you do with that faction that I had with my work if I put it in a patio that I put in a water feature, if I put it in a garden, it's a fact that when you leave a work, the client loves what they have, they will live it 24/7, if it is a water fountain, if you want it.

They listen to the water fountain they want to see the water running if you make a patio I get angry I tell them I told them I don't like making a patio why is it because someone is going to walk all over my yard and they laugh they get my point but they use it , they entertain themselves, they live half the summer outside, they won't be able to go out and, if you want, everyone has something that gives back to them, they enjoy it and you give a product to someone who really enjoys it, you want.

I live outside and that is why I try to create a habitat that is outside because we are not dying to live inside permanently. I am a perfect outdoorsman and love my outdoors and so do other people. There is an old proverb that says there is nothing better. That for a man to enjoy his work because that is his reward in my father's profession He lives those words every day Has your father, mother, or another family member taught you a valuable life skill? thank them for what they have done, not just one day a year but throughout the year share how they have influenced you in the comments below thank you for watching this video I appreciate all your support on my channel, please subscribe if you haven't already and always happy gardening