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[Narrator] Even in drought and in deer country Jeff Pavlat spends more time collecting plants
and dividing them for friends than caring for them. Sure like any plants his cacti and
succulents need some maintenance along with gardener's sensibility to their favorite setting.
And they get moved around when Jeff has a new idea for them or that spot, but most of
the time they simply grace the hillside that used to wash onto the driveway in a rainstorm.
It all started when he and partner Ray Clayton tackled a problematic slope near the house.
[Jeff Pavlat] It was kind of a learn as you go thing we both were learning how to use
mortar and work with stone. We built the pond and after awhile doing that then we decided
to get more adventurous and start working on all of the walls in the rest of the garden
and there really wasn't an overall vision initially on what it was going to be. There
was just a few walls that we needed to keep soil from rolling down and it sort of expanded
and expanded and expanded into what you see today. There was sort of this hole where the
pond is now and I tried to landscape it with stuff that was always a little bit shady,
but looking at it was just seemed like the perfect place to put a water feature. It's
a little bit different in that it's mostly above ground. You can't really tell it, but
we build that in there and thought it was a great addition. We moved on to starting
with the rest of the garden, just to fix this hillside that kept rolling down into our driveway
so we started building the retaining walls and then I started getting more and more into
the plants and the landscaping. I've really liked agaves and aloes and cactus and things
for a long time. I had a few little potted plants here and there and I would sit them
around for years, but then when I started landscaping here, first of all the deer will
eat almost everything and that's an area where I can plant most anything I wanted and I don't
have to worry about the deer eating them. Also I don't have to water the garden and
that's a big plus. The more I work with the plants the more I've found that I've enjoyed
them. Now on the cacti and stuff I like the look of the spines. I don't like the feel
of them so much gardening around them, but they are I think really attractive. It gives
you a lot of really strong shapes to work with. [Narrator] But like with any plants
styling them produces harmonious design. [Jeff Pavlat] Because they have strong shapes you
have to be careful not to put too many of the same shapes in even patterns. Odd groupings
of things tend to work the best. Trying to just get a balance and mix of different colors
and usually I try to throw in other textures. One thing when I do get a new batch of plants
in I move them around and leave them first in their pots to kind of try and see what
looks the best, but I spend a fair bit of time before I actually start digging and putting
them in but a big advantage of cacti and succulents are you can move them around. As long as you
can physically dig it up and move it, it doesn't matter how big it is, they don't mind they
can sit for days out of soil, they ship easily, if you want to move it from one end of the
garden and then wait until you get a bed ready on the other end you can do that. So it's
easy to kind of work it around. It's not like if you dig it up it's going to just keel over
and die, and the more I got into the plants, finding out what I could grow in the ground.
I'm just naturally a collector of things, I started collecting different types I could
find and then of course then I started moving into the things that I couldn't grow without
a greenhouse, and I had everything, across in front of the pond I had about 300 plants
at one time, just all different things that weren't cold hearty that I'd pull in and out
in the winter. Then I got caught one day when it froze before I got home. I found out what
would freeze and what wouldn't, but after that I definitely knew the greenhouse, so
once I got the greenhouse that sort of opened up. I had to fill it. [Narrator] For some
that are semi-hearty he just builds a mini greenhouse around them. At the top of the
property Jeff and Ray hauled more stones to build a staircase and upper story patio. Following
the hillside's terrain they connected it to the lower levels. [Jeff Pavlat] I really like
millstone fountains and so that was kind of something I wanted to incorporate into another
garden area and the other thing I was wanting to build was a place to put my aloes, so when
I got to designing that area that's one of the last areas along the front to do. By that
point I'd done enough rock work and stuff that I knew pretty well what I was doing.
I really do like Japanese gardens and that sort of Zen design; although, it's not in
any way adhering to any strict Japanese principles, I think it gets that feel a little bit with
the gravel and then I wanted to have the bubbling millstone and it just sort of evolved that
way. I did a lot of drawings for that area before I actually started building. The general
shape of the area was dictated by the way the cliff runs along the front of the property.
Then I just went from there. [Narrator] With cardboard concrete tubing he made inexpensive
pedestals for his container plants. Their last project, at least until the next inspiration
hits are the steps he and Ray built o connect a cactus garden near the greenhouse to the
play area they built for their son Clayton. He helped too. [Jeff Pavlat] When our son
was born he would sit in his little stroller out where we'd finished the last section where
the aloes are planted and he had a lot of fun when he was little out, you know, helping
out too. [Narrator] Before he was six Clayton had become a plant collector himself. [Jeff
Pavlat] He has his own shelf in my greenhouse and he'll go to the shelf and he'll go to
the show and sale and he'll pick out plants he wants to buy. I've heard a lot of people
worry about these plants with small children. My son was born with all of these plants.
Children are pretty careful. It's older people that have to generally watch out. I do snip
the tips off of the really sharp agaves and things that are eye level both for me now
and also for him; because I don't want any serious injury like that, but in general you
just keep your hands out of them and it's fine. For our club one of the big selling
points is the fact that the plants are so easy to grow. For most people that say that
they can't grow plants one of the issues is water, and I myself have this problem. I can
kill a fern so fast. But on a plant that needs water once a week, once every three weeks,
it's really easy to take care of them. It's fairly low maintenance. I think that's easy
for a lot of people, it's like for really active people I'm going to go away for a week,
I don't have to have anyone come water my plants. I think they are very exotic also
in a lot of ways.