(bright music) - So many people have horticulture-related questions, but where can they go for answers?

Extension educators and master gardeners are excellent resources, but people who work at local garden centers and landscape businesses are wonderful too.

Today, you're going to meet one of my friends who has been involved in the horticulture industry for many years as a garden center manager and as a landscaper.

When the opportunity to see his yard came up, let's go, have fun, and learn.

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(bright piano music) I belong to several horticulture groups on social media.

Sometimes I just shake my head at some of the goofy answers that are offered for questions on those sites.

With "Prairie Yard and Garden" we are so blessed to be in beautiful places and visit with really knowledgeable people that can help educate in a good way.

Today, we are visiting with Kevin Hollatz who has a background in horticulture and a beautiful yard and has the correct answers with a show on YouTube.

Thanks for letting us come and visit.

- Oh, you're kidding me?

This is great.

I'm so glad you guys made the trip.

- Tell us, what is your background in horticulture?

- You know, I started with, I was mowing grass at a golf course, my hometown Carrington, North Dakota, and so I went to NDSU thinking I was gonna be a golf course manager.

Turf management, park management used to be an option.

Well, that kind of spilled out over into my love of woody ornamental plants, and Dale Herman, I have to give credit, had this enjoyment, enthusiasm of woody plants.

It was just infectious, so I think I've kind of picked up a little bit on that.

So thank you, Dale.

You know, he was just a tremendous instructor.

So horticulture, that led to getting married, moved to the Twin Cities.

I had a landscape maintenance business for about 12 years, and then I moved back to Bismarck and I managed a garden center.

And in the mix of all that, I worked on my yard and observing other people's yards where I really learned horticulture because I was in people's yards weekly, 70-some mowing accounts, so I got to observe if I prune something one way, what happened?

If I sprayed weeds, what happened?

And so that's where I really learned and was able to apply.

Everything I learned in college was just practical, So that's what I'm most thankful for.

- So how long have you lived here?

- This location, it's our third place in Bismarck.

We've been in Bismarck, I think 16 years.

We've been here almost 14 years, yeah.

And we started with kind of a blank slate here where it was mostly just all turf in the backyard.

And I really didn't have a plan that I was gonna become, I'm gonna call myself a plant collector.

I started out using landscape principles, you know, the odd numbers.

Pretty soon, I just wanted one of everything.

We also loved the vegetable garden, my wife and I, and I put vegetable gardens on each side of the property.

Well, I didn't wanna look at what I call, I think it's ugly.

Vegetable gardens aren't very showy.

They're full of weeds.

And so, I built ornamental beds on each side.

And as I added each bed I just became more and more obsessed with keep going, keep going and I'm glad I did because now that I'm older, I can hopefully sit back and more and just enjoy it.

- [Mary] Kevin, how big is your property here?

- [Kevin] We live on two acres, and probably a little bit more compressed because the large tree row, spruce and green ash, that we have takes up part of that space, and then you have to factor in the house.

So I would expect we're gardening and growing our beds on about one acre of the total footprint.

- How did you start?

Where and why?

- Well, when we first moved in, the landscaping that was here, it was curved, the concrete poured edging, very formal, very nice, but I took it all out.

I like informal.

Getting towards western North Dakota, there's so much stone and natural rock.

So I actually took that out and I incorporated into my edging, in my beds a lot of rock, a lot of mulch, and a lot of contouring.

So that's kind of how we started around the house.

And then I just, methodically each year, I would add another bed.

So I estimate I've brought in about 150, maybe close to 200 tons of soil and rock.

Every summer, I would bring in about two tandem loads that I would dump on the driveway.

And I've got a little Kubota tractor.

And quite honestly, how the beds came together, I kind of treat my shovel as a paintbrush.

I don't always know for sure what I'm gonna create, but the shovel just kind of became, as I got started, I would get ideas and then I would just go with it.

So some inspiration, there's some mystery, I guess that's the best way to put it.

- What do you do to create a bed?

- I actually take a garden hose, a really good garden hose that doesn't kink.

And I'll lay out my garden hose and I'll view it for sometimes days, even weeks, where I'll sit in a chair, I'll be on my deck, and until I'm comfortable with how that form looks, I won't act on it.

So that's pretty much every bed here started with a garden hose laid out.

- [Mary] And then how do you contour?

- [Kevin] I call it fairly simple.

What I do, again, I just, I take a dump truck full of soil and I'll move it in with my tractor and I'll just start piling it up.

I'll shovel this way, shovel that way.

Sometimes I'll plant before, sometimes after, and then I just build the contours with the rock.

And oftentimes, the rock load you end up with can determine, well, how am I gonna build this bed out?

And most of it's experimentation and again, a little mystery that it's just, it's art to me in a sense.

But the plants, you know, steal the show and that's what I love the most.

- [Mary] Kevin, what do you use for edging on your beds?

- [Kevin] I use a combination of rock and black poly edging.

I did start with the idea I was gonna use all rock edging.

Didn't always have the rock available.

Was too lazy maybe to get more, so then I did do some of the black poly edging.

But the reason I like the rock edging, if a tree starts overgrowing its area, or a shrub, I can quick pop that edging out and just create a little bit bigger bed.

So that's very nice.

I also like the rustic nature of it.

The drawback to using rock, it's hard to get a perfect straight edge.

You're gonna have that seam and the grass will kind of work its way through those crevices.

You have to have an excellent weed whip to be able to do the trimming.

It does take a little bit longer.

I'm willing to do those things because I like how rock looks and I love the contouring and just the extra flavor, if you wanna call it that.

That's what I love about the rock.

So they are the two things I use for edging.

- [Mary] Do you use landscape fabric?

- [Kevin] You know, I don't.

The only place I use fabric or poly is around the house where I have maybe a drainage problem I wanna channel the water away.

I think, and just over my years of observation and landscapes, even landscapes that had poly under it, fabric under it, it's just a matter of two to three years sediment starts building up and you notice the seeds will start germinating on top.

So I thought why the added cost?

And then it was more difficult to create the contouring.

Once that poly and fabric's there, now you're limited to what you can do.

Also replanting, taking out plants, so much easier just to move that rock.

And I think the plants naturalize themselves so much better not having a poly.

I'm not saying plants won't live with that poly, they do.

But if you've ever taken out a plant that has that poly or fabric, the root system is a lot of it's way towards the top looking for oxygen.

So there's some drawbacks, benefits.

If you're the type of person that doesn't want to be in your yard doing anything, yeah, go with the poly and the fabrics.

You'll have a weed-free environment much longer.

- And then what do you use for mulch?

- When I used to live in Minnesota there were more options for mulch.

Here western red cedar is probably the most common, an affordable price.

So that's what I use.

I have used Cyprus mulch as well.

One year I brought in pine straw and that's done from down south.

I think I got it from Alabama.

Very expensive.

But we used it in our garden.

I didn't like the look of it, a completely different feel.

I'm not a big fan of the painted mulch, the red-black.

We're too windy.

They dry up and they move.

So the shredded western red cedar I find to be the best all around mulch.

- Kevin, just looking around, how many varieties of trees and shrubs do you have in your yard?

- Well, you asked me the question before the interview, and so I had always been thinking it was in the thousands, it's not thousands, but varieties of woody shrubs and trees, it's about 300 of varieties, of distinct varieties.

The herbaceous perennials right around 250, which that surprised me a little bit.

I used to be pretty much all woody trees and shrubs.

But now that we're running out of space that the trees get bigger, we've shifted to planting a lot more of the perennials.

So that's been kind of fun too.

- [Mary] Well, I see some that I really don't know what they are.

Would you be willing to tell me what some of your evergreens are?

- [Kevin] Yeah, we're going to take a look at conifers.

Just an excellent, excellent little, I'm gonna call it niche.

Just like flowers, for a lot of gardeners, conifers are a big thing.

(bright piano music) - [Mary] Kevin, you mentioned conifers, but what is a conifer?

- The broad definition for a conifer is cone bearing.

So if you break down the word conifer, cone-fer, the Latin meaning is it's cone to bear.

So you get the seed.

So conifers are considered more of a primitive way to produce seed.

They don't have a fruit with the seed in it.

They have what's called a naked seed.

So as that cone develops in the spring, eventually it just opens up and disperses the seed.

So conifers are considered an older plant on Earth.

And so conifers the nice thing about it, they've got so many different shapes, sizes, colors.

The breeding program is just outstanding depending on what you're talking about.

So most conifers are evergreen, but there are some examples like the larch, that's actually a deciduous evergreen.

So here again, evergreen is a broad term for something that keeps its needles or modified leaf throughout the season.

But the deciduous plants like the larch, they'll actually drop their needles.

- [Mary] So what are some of the different conifers you have here in your yard?

- [Kevin] Yeah, most of them, what I try to buy is the conifers, just to let 'em do their natural thing.

Whether it's gonna be a weeping like this weeping Norway that you see here, or one of my other favorites is the Colorado blue weeping, I believe this is the Blues Colorado weeping.

But you can also do quite a bit of shaping on conifers if you need to.

This is a pinus mugo pumilio variety.

And I've kept this sheer like a pin cushion now for, well this is one of our first beds, so this has been at least 12 years.

Whereas this plant can actually get four to five feet tall.

So you can do shearing.

I'm just not as much into the manipulated-type look.

So again, we're talking about the yellows that you can get.

If you take a look at this yellow ribbon arborvitae, look at this thing, just the colors outstanding throughout the year.

And then you can bounce over to the Taylor's Sunburst, which that's actually a lodgepole pine, another conifer.

But it gets, in the spring, that burst of yellow growth, and then that fades to green.

I'm gonna mention one more, it's just the opposite.

The Winter Sun mugo pine, that actually, that becomes yellow in the fall and then it's yellow all through the winter.

So you've got all these different variations.

- [Mary] Why do you shear this one and not the rest?

- [Kevin] I think I shear certain plants just because I want to observe and I want to see, well, what's the effect?

How long can I keep it sheared?

So on a limited basis, I do some shearing.

We've also got some of the different sculptured ones like this Scotch glauca nana.

This is a dwarf pine that you get the pompons, so you can do some of that for fun.

That was more my wife's thing, but I actually kind of like it now.

So by the way, when I mention "we" in our gardens, if I'm doing that, my wife couldn't be here today, Angie, she takes care of most of the flowers.

A lot of the weeding, helps with a lot of the gardening, but the landscape, trees and shrubs, that's kind of my thing.

- Well, you've got some blue evergreens here too, so would they be considered a conifer also?

- Yeah, the junipers is probably one of the more, I would say the groups has got the most variation as far as you can have sprawling, even just two to three inches.

Or otherwise you can have junipers that are massive trees or conical type.

So like the medora juniper, that's one of the most common for our area.

Most people know of medora juniper, if you're a gardener.

These are some really nice examples.

I've got a couple.

Star Power, this is another one that's a very spiny-type juniper has a bit of a whiteish-blue to it, so very distinct and unique.

And then the sprawling junipers, again here you've got blue variations, green variations, yellow variations.

So I've got all of them growing, whether it be Icee Blue, whether it be Mother Lode, odd name for a juniper, or the Prince of Wales, which you can do such dramatic things with the junipers, letting 'em drape over walls, exposing the different rock that you put in there.

And that's one of the things you have to be careful with with junipers.

If they have room to spread out, they'll self layer.

That wood stem on dirt or mulch, it'll start rooting in.

- How do you keep some of the evergreens from getting yucky on the bottom?

- You know, a lot of the trees, arborvitae pine, spruce, especially pine, you're gonna have a natural needle shed.

Very common.

There's nothing you can do to avoid that.

I think with the juniper, if you're talking about the brown, really what's happening is that foliage is shading out its lower area, so you're just basically no sun and you're gonna get that desiccation.

Now we might think, "What's wrong with this plant?"

But I think a plant, as it uptakes nutrients and water from the soil, what you're getting is a plant's replenishing those nutrients.

So that natural needle shed, that drop is really not a problem.

It's more a problem for us maybe, but you know.

Otherwise spider mites can be a big problem on junipers and can cause that browning.

I recently, I just did a video on this, I had a Icee Blue juniper over here and the mice girdled it and destroyed it.

But I actually, I turned lemons into lemonade on this one.

And actually we'll take a look at it.

It turned out beautiful how I corrected it, and I didn't have to take the whole plant out.

- [Mary] Okay, well now here's another shape here.

- [Kevin] Yeah, the arborvitaes I think are probably one of my favorite conifers.

They've got different shapes.

Either you're gonna find arborvitaes are more pyramids or globes.

They're the two most common.

This happens to be Hetz Midget, which is just a dwarf, never been touched.

Again, that's 12 years old from probably a 12-inch plant.

And I like the punchiness, you can certainly shear it for a more formal effect.

That's always just a personal gardener's choice.

So the Hetz Midget compared to, if you take a look over here, look at those two Degroot's.

That's Degroot's Spire, very narrow, very upright.

It's got that characteristic forking that you see on the top there.

Arborvitaes can be a little bit, in the winters, if you've got cold winters, you can get burning.

So you have to be a little bit careful sometimes where you plant them, what variety.

But I've had great luck with both of these for our harsh winters.

Sester's Nursery out in Oregon's, a grower been around a long time.

This is one of their varieties.

Dwarf Sester, Colorado spruce.

Here, again, never been touched.

That's about six, seven feet now.

They'll get up even a little bit bigger.

That's considered their mature height.

But look at that blue, it's just fascinating.

And then right next to it, we were talking about the larch, where we get that deciduous, and they get a yellow fall color.

Look at that.

Isn't that fascinating?

Just that weeping habit?

So there's so many interesting things about conifers in the breeding programs.

I don't know why I'm not a plant breeder, I guess I'm enjoying the fruits of their labor, quite honestly.

The Quebec weeping cedar has got kind of a golden green.

This drooping draping.

One of the fascinating plants.

I got lucky finding this.

And I actually had a rep from Iseli Nursery, another great grower, he was here and he identified that for me, that was in my early stage of how I organized myself by putting labels in a box rather than writing it down.

But you know, yeah, so the Quebec weeping cedar, fascinating plant.

- [Mary] How did you ever get it?

- [Kevin] I don't remember (both laughing) - [Kevin] Now, are yews also considered a conifer?

- Yeah, yeah, the yews.

I don't grow a lot of them.

I've only got this one little globe yew, but there is one called Capitata, that's an upright pyramidal yew.

I think in Minnesota you're gonna have more luck.

I think you've got more shade.

That's a conifer that's gonna appreciate a little bit more of a less sun location.

They'll grow in sun, but they're often planted in shade because they tolerate it.

- A while ago you mentioned how you shared pruning on YouTube.

Can you talk about how you became a YouTube personality?

- Yeah, I'd love to.

It's kind of a little bit of a long story.

Maybe not that long, but let's go ahead.

Let's talk about YouTube.

(bright music) - I have a question.

What kind of plants can I use to establish a wildflower garden in full sun?

We're in luck in Minnesota.

We have a lot of great plants already here.

I'm a big advocate for native plants.

And so I think that in Minnesota native plants are the way to go.

Where in the middle of prairie country, a lot of tall grass prairie plants are fantastic wildflower garden plants.

A lot of local nurseries are now carrying an increasing number of native plants, so you can get a really good variety.

One of the nice things about a lot of the native plants too, is that if you get the right palette, it's easy to do.

You can have flowering all summer long.

A lot of the native wildflowers, native prairie plants are really good for wildflower gardens because they do a really good job of establishing themselves.

They will spread very easily, seed themselves in, or spread vegetatively, and they also do a pretty good job of fighting off weeds.

So you don't need to do a whole lot once you get a wildflower garden established.

Here a couple of our natives that we like to use.

These are lobelia, and obedient plant.

These are fantastic plants.

They do really well in full sun with a variety of water.

We have all kinds of plants around me that are fantastic as well.

The blazing stars are great plants for gardens, as our milkweeds, bee balm.

And don't forget about grasses, we got a lot of native grasses.

We've got big blue stem, little blue stem, sideoats grama.

They're also really good for wildflower gardens, not only for the structure they provide the winter interest, but also for pollinators.

So we have a great variety of species readily available to us in Minnesota.

And these species are all good for full sun areas, dry.

Once it's established, especially, they'll take drought.

They'll take it as dry as you can go.

They look great.

They're flowering all summer long, and they're good for the pollinators.

- [Announcer] Ask the Arboretum Experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska dedicated to welcoming, informing, and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research, and education.

You know, I got started in this back when I was a manager at a garden center.

we had a little segment called "Plant Talk."

And they were little 90 second shots and they were aired in the evening news.

And that's kind of how I got started in video.

And it was, I don't know, it was exciting.

I hated and I loved it, okay?

Anyway, I asked several different videographers over the years, "Hey you guys, we should start a YouTube channel."

And there was really no interest.

So eventually, 10 years later, I decided I'm just gonna have to teach myself how to edit videos.

And it's actually become one of the more, I guess, fascinating, more interesting parts about it.

So that surprised me.

So that's kind of how it got started with YouTube.

And I've never really had a personal social media presence.

And I guess I don't talk about myself, but when it came to plants, I became excited, energized, and that'll come through on the camera.

So that's kind of why I started.

It was also one of those things, you know, you hear people say, "Man, why didn't I do that when I was younger?"

And so it was one of those end of life questions where I said, "If I don't at least try it, I'll regret that I didn't."

And what YouTube's done, it's totally reinvigorated, energized me as far as enthusiasm for the field.

You get into a mindset with YouTube that if you have to create content on a weekly basis, your mind becomes just hyper-focused.

And I gotta get a picture of that.

It used to be my wife and I would drive somewhere, but now we have to pull off and I have to jump out and get a picture of a tree because I've literally taken thousands of photos now, and I do everything with the simple tech of an iPhone.

It's just incredible what you can do because everything I take with my iPhone, it goes into the cloud, i can pull it up on my iMac, and then I can edit my photos like that.

Very convenient, and since I'm actually doing a lot of things where I'm pruning and just rough conditions, this is super easy to set up.

I've always got my phone.

And I actually learned how to do this.

Like I had to find two years ago, you couldn't just buy an audio system for an iPhone.

Not a good one.

So I watch YouTube videos to learn how to find the proper adapter.

So that's how I learned to do that.

And then editing videos, I also just found some good guys that really do a great job on YouTube, and I learned how to edit videos one winter.

The hard part I have found with YouTube, and with content and with data, I've had to become more organized on being able to find photos.

So again, I just use my iPhone and the photo library.

I have hundreds of libraries, and it might be Colorado spruce, and I can attach and grab those photos.

You can do the audio layover, video layover.

So as I'm doing the video, my mind now works 10 steps ahead or backwards.

And as I'm mentioning something, I might know I have a photo of a beautiful pine tree, and I can start talking casually about that, and I can just bring that photo in later.

So you learn some of the tricks of the trade.

I'm new to it.

I don't know if it'll ever become where I'll hire a videographer.

It didn't make sense financially.

So I called my channel "Garden Hike" because eventually I knew I might start running outta content in this little footprint so I can start hiking around other people's gardens.

I also, one of my ambitions, I'd really like to do it with my wife, we want to go to the different arboretums, botanical gardens all through the United States.

And then I can do filming, do editing, do the videos, those type of situations.

We haven't had much of a chance to do that yet.

And I've noticed too, there's a difference between doing video when you're by yourself compared to out in public, whereas you get people noticing you, so you have to overcome certain fears.

And I guess bottom line, the last thing about it, is once you overcome the fear of being on camera, you don't really notice it anymore, and it's kind of a liberating feeling to do the YouTube.

At the same time, it's a lot of work, it's a grind.

And I've learned YouTube, if I ever wanna make some money, I'm making a little bit, it's a long haul.

I'm sure there's people that are successful immediately, but for me I'm looking at a five year window and then I'll reevaluate it and see if I want to continue doing it.

Either way, I'll have hundreds of videos.

I'm closing in on about 185 videos right now, and my goal every week is to do one a week.

And then I started a blog too, gardenhike.com, and I'm trying to match up a little bit of content where I write, to see if I like writing.

I'll match that up with my videos.

And so that added more time to the equation.

Kind of like being a writer, but I think that's gonna be more of the winter project.

- When you do your programs, how long do you aim for them to be?

- You know, maybe it's my perception, I see a lot of other gardening channels doing really long videos, 30 minutes, an hour.

And as a consumer I like to shorter videos.

And so maybe that's why I gravitate towards more of a, I would say, on average, on maybe seven or eight minutes.

Probably the longest videos I've done are 20 minutes.

What I find the longer the video, the more the editing and the longer it takes to produce it.

And I think the average that I kind of came up with, if I did an eight minute video, it's about an hour per minute.

And so an eight minute video, I probably have at least eight hours into it by the time you film it, edit it, do everything you have to do to download it to YouTube.

But I wanna encourage anybody that has aspirations to do YouTube, it's quite the experience.

Being a content creator just gives you a different mindset.

So it's really one of the best things I think I've ever done.

- Do you do most of your filming and pictures here in your yard?

- I do.

And you know, I do have the benefit of having so many varieties, like we talked about.

And I can do pruning, I can do mulching, I can do little landscape projects, but I also work for a great small little landscape company that he says, "Hey, anytime you want a video of something, I'll just ask a customer, do you mind if I set my camera up?"

And so if I'm doing a pruning job, there you go, set my camera up, throw my mic on, and I'll just prune away.

And I've always got the footage.

That's the other thing about YouTube.

I think people think that they have to use the video, and you don't.

Do the video, take the picture.

It might be a year later that you decide, "Hey, I've got that content.

I remember doing that."

And I've had many situations now, even like 18 months ago, but it takes me about three months to find the photo.

That's the trade off.

But yeah, so it's really a unique type of thing.

Initially when I started YouTube you would tell people, "Yeah, I do a YouTube channel," you'd get the the eye roll and then they find out you're making a little money and it's like, okay, then they take you a little more serious.

So, yeah.

- So how's it grown so far?

- You know about, I say 14 months ago, I think I hit the thousand people, a thousand subscribers I hit where you can monetize, and now I'm up to 6,000, 6,300.

So I get about 20 subscribers a day.

Yeah, so it really does, if you do the long haul with YouTube you can get a pretty good scale up.

Now I'm still fighting in my mind whether or not I want that much exposure.

Right now I'm just trying to keep it about the plants, and that's my primary focus.

If I lose that and it becomes a money game, I think it'll just change.

- [Mary] Well thanks so much for letting us come out and see your beautiful yard and learning so many things too.

- [Kevin] Oh, I just loved having ya.

I was really excited about this, just to show you.

My wife and I love sharing the gardens, and it's not about what we've done, it's just how beautiful plants can be.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative.

Proud to be powering ACIRA, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yeakel Jolene in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden, A community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(bright piano music)