- [Madeline] I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for decades and living with aches and pains, so I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems.

And after learning better ways to use my body in the garden, 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?

In season one, for all our guest gardeners, gardening was their life.

For season two, we're going to visit artists who are also passionate gardeners.

And for this lucky group, I'm so thrilled and excited to welcome this season's Garden Fitness professional, Adam Schersten.

Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden.

That's our mission.

- [Narrator] "Garden Fit" is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[gentle lively music] [gentle music] - So, Adam, next, we're visiting Bunny Williams and she is a very famous interior designer.

I think she has done so much work in the United States and even around the world, and her interiors have been written up in all kinds of publications from Architectural Digest, the former House and Garden, Elle Decor, Veranda, even the New York Times, I'm sure, has done many stories on Bunny.

- [Adam] Wow, that's impressive.

- Yeah, she's quite famous and she loves to write books.

So she's written this book about her house.

This one she wrote in 2005.

I've really been so lucky that for about two decades, I've been able to visit her garden.

So I'm really excited after looking at that book again to see how much it's changed.

- [Adam] This looks incredible.

- [Madeline] I know, it's really a spectacular garden.

It has so many different interesting areas.

I think you'll really love that.

- Yeah, there's so many gardens in here and formal ones a lot like the one we're standing in.

- Well, actually, this is my only formal garden, and it really, I think I was inspired by seeing Bunny's garden, 'cause I realized that you could use these kind of geometric shapes and make hard angles, but you could put all your favorite plants inside them.

So I really owe this garden room to her.

- It looks very beautiful.

- Thank you.

- It's one of my favorites.

- The last thing that I wanted to share with you is she's quite famous for entertaining.

And her big treat is making flower arrangements.

I think she makes gigantic ones.

So she cuts her flowers and probably branches and puts them together in a creative way that must look gorgeous in her spaces and smells delicious.

So I hope we get a chance to see that too.

I think we're in for a really big treat.

- It sounds exciting.

- Yes.

- [Adam] Let's do this.

[lively music] - [Madeline] Boy, this is a lovely part of Connecticut.

- [Adam] And look at these trees.

I mean, I think they're black locust, but I've never seen them that big.

- I haven't either, they're really so impressive.

They're beautiful.

There's Bunny.

How nice to see you.

- Hello.

- Nice to see you.

- Bunny, I'm so happy to introduce you to Adam.

- So nice to meet you.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- I'm really looking forward to this.

- Yeah.

Me too.

- Really looking forward to coming.

What landed you in this wonderful part of the world?

- I grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We were living, I was married, we were living in Manhattan, and I needed some green.

And I thought, I thought, this is it.

So it brought me to this area, mainly because it reminded me of home.

- Did you start gardening or were you already an interior designer?

How did those two wonderful creative things happen?

- I started interior design first, which is important because what it really did, it taught me design.

I wanted to garden because I just couldn't wait to get my hands in the dirt and plant something.

But to me- - Right.

- And I think you'll see it here is the combination of gardening plants and structure and design.

And when you have to put the two together, I think you get something magic.

- I'm sure we do.

So let's go see some.

- Even from here, I see some magic.

- Everything looks so beautiful, Bunny.

Maybe we start here?

- Yes, please.

[lively music] - Bunny, what inspired you to do a parterre?

- I think it was, you know, traveling.

I go look at gardens.

- Right.

- And I always loved the French parterre gardens where they were divided up.

It's this combination of design and plants because the hedges give it structure and the plants are wild.

- Right.

- And I like the combination of that.

I think that makes gardens have an interesting design.

It comes back to my interior design.

- It certainly must because this looks so special.

So you put in the boxwood first.

- I put it in the boxwood.

I planted them myself.

They were about this big, things grow.

Now it's to the point where I wish it wouldn't grow anymore.

So it it has to be clipped twice a year.

And every year I do a different color combination.

And this year you can see it's chartreuse and purple, which actually has been one of my favorites.

These are the green zinnias and the purple salvia.

And I do try to keep the color palette simple.

Instead of doing 20 different colors in this garden, you'll see other places where I don't follow that rule.

But the parterre, the parterre is a little bit more formal structurally, so I like to keep the color palettes.

- I think that would be very helpful to people because I would definitely have put into many colors, I think.

- Here, I think it's more interesting to be controlled.

You know, the thing I love about this garden is that a lot of people could have this garden because it's not that big.

- Right.

- [Bunny] And I add to it by gardening in pots.

So here are these big terracotta pots with vines growing up over it.

And against the building are more containers.

So you can add not only to the beds, but to make it interesting by having pots filled with different things.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And again, it comes back to design, this idea of structure.

Like these are topiary.

They're dwarf Korean lilacs that have been pruned into this ball shape.

And then I made this hornbeam hedge in the back.

On the other end is a rustic arbor covered in roses.

- So beautiful.

- So to me, I've made a room.

I've got walls.

- Right.

- [Bunny] I've got paths.

And then I have the garden with it.

- Isn't that brilliant?

- That comes back to my interior design training.

- It's fantastic.

- And the fun thing about the fence is that it allows you to have another place to grow roses, clematis vines.

So it gives you another surface to garden off.

- Yeah.

- I think it's wonderful.

- And I love how you've got like squares in these hedges, triangles and these ones.

So really, from above, this must look.

- It's beautiful.

- Yeah.

- So can we see some more?

- Of course.

So I'm going to take you to the Sunken Garden, but I'm going to take you through the paths that lead you to the garden.

One of the things I had to perfect in this garden was these, what I call connections.

- Oh.

- So I'm going to show you that connections.

- Let's get connected.

- Yeah.

- We'll follow you.

[gentle lively music] - [Bunny] This is the walkway that's going to lead us to the rest of the garden.

And I love the feeling of walking under something that is kind of cut you off from the sky.

So I had this metal arbor made, and it's covered with clematis.

Two different kinds of clematis and honeysuckle.

And you'll see through this garden I've used a lot of gravel, gray gravel, because our stone in Connecticut is gray.

So I think you want to keep the materials that you use that look like it came from the land and not you.

- Not far, right?

- Foreign gravel or something else.

So this just looks like the fields got, the stone got, you know, ground up and made gravel.

- And the path goes on.

- The path goes on.

[gentle lively music] For years, this was just lawn.

I call this the green room.

So it's plain and yet it's still part of the garden.

The hedging, it's taken about 11 years to get the shape.

- [Madeline] Wow, it's like a dance.

- [Bunny] Yes, you have to have patience, but it's worth it.

- Oh, definitely.

This manipulation.

How did you figure out the curve of it?

You just- - And I did it, actually, I took some stakes and I put the stakes in and got the spacing to keep a shape.

The other thing that's beautiful is the curves are slightly different.

So you see that curve behind this curve.

- [Madeline] It's wonderful.

- [Adam] Yeah.

They don't match up perfectly .

- Play off each other.

So where is this path leading us?

- This path is going to lead us down through this hedge.

And we were going to go into the Sunken Garden, which is actually where I first started gardening, in a very simple way.

- Okay, we'll follow you.

- Great.

[birds chirping] I always feel like a child walking in here.

It's like Alice in Wonderland- - It is.

- And I'm in this little secret space.

What's interesting to me is that this hedge, this lawn, is calm.

It's green, but you turn the corner and then all of a sudden, the light bulbs go off and you come down into this parterre garden where color is everywhere.

- Everything!

- And it's pretty wild.

- Yeah.

And really, you're entering a whole other world now.

- Yes.

This was the flattest part of the property.

So this is where I started gardening.

And it was the only part that was really absolutely flat.

But I found that it needed some structure.

So the first thing I did was to build this stone wall- - Wow.

- To make it have a little bit more drama.

And then I had two perennial borders at each end that we dug, and that was it.

This was all grass.

I was very influenced by a great garden designer, Russell Page, and I'd been to a garden that he had done, which was all these beds.

So I came back, dug up all the grass, laid it out with the stone pads in between the box hedges and then these perennial borders.

And here, it's wild, it's exuberant.

There are all these colors.

Again, I think that they can be wild because the structure is so formal.

On the other hand, if you look down through this, the two old apple trees, there's an archway and it leads you to a totally wild garden, which is my birdhouse village, because for years I was buying these birdhouses.

We'd go to antique fairs and I just fell in love with them.

I didn't... And all of a sudden, they're like 10 in the barn.

And I looked at that space and I thought, let's put, let's make a bird house village.

And it's all an oak grass, apple trees, very informal and much wilder.

So it's the idea of something being more formal, and then it takes you to something that has a totally different feeling.

- Isn't that great?

And you have benches.

- You've got to have a place to sit.

- So can you see that?

- Yeah.

- What is so important in any garden, big, small, is you have a place to sit, because if you're always walking and standing, you leave.

John and I come down in the afternoon and we sit here, we'll sit here for an hour.

You can enjoy it that way.

If you don't have a place to perch, just think about it, you're always walking through.

- Yeah.

Do you mind if we get up close and personal to one of the borders, so we can really talk about the actual selection of plants.

- Okay, okay.

- Because they were really wonderful.

This is so exciting, Bunny.

- Pretty wild.

- It is wild and so enveloping.

So what are your favorite plants?

- That's like asking me to choose my favorite dog.

You know, the thing about a perennial border is that it's got to start blooming early in the spring, and it's got to last 'til fall.

- Right.

- And in this climate, that's not always so easy.

Early on we have alliums and and bulbs, irises, things like that.

You've always got to figure out your bloom sequence.

And you'll see areas in this garden where there's nothing in bloom.

- Right.

- Because that was a tree peony that bloomed this spring that was absolutely beautiful.

But then you have to make sure that where you have a bare space, you have the lilies or something to balance it.

So the colors kind of even.

As you can see, I love all these colors.

I love yellows, I love pinks and reds, purples.

I love using the dark red foliage of the bananas to kind of anchor it, and again, give you height.

We try to plan this.

We have to put in annuals to get bloom all through the season.

- All the time.

- And that's the complicated.

A lot of these are perennials, but some things we have to add every year.

You know, this is a personal taste.

As I say, I'm a classicist, I bought a neoclassical house.

So I like order, but then I like disorder.

So I try to have a balance of the control of this.

And then the plants are wild.

- I think you really achieve that.

- One thing too, about this garden.

The house is tall.

You can't have a tiny little garden.

When I first started gardening, I loved all these little dianthus and all these little plants.

But it look ridiculous here because the scale is all off.

Everything in the in the end about design is scale.

So the minute I got more adventuresome and I could have big plants and be excited about it, the garden became more interesting.

But I lifted these stone walls to make these beds even higher.

- Wow.

- [Bunny] So that gives you a sense of scale that makes them more interesting.

- Oh goodness, that sounds like a big effort, but really worth it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So do they go straight back?

- No, they bank up.

- They bank.

- They bank up.

They're this far off the ground and then they bank up so those plants can get kind of the sense of height.

- I think that's a fantastic.

- They're not even necessarily that tall, you've like snuck it in underneath.

- Yes, yes.

- Oh, that's genius.

- That's a wonderful technique.

I learned that from great garden designers like Vita Sackville-West and stuff.

So you study, you learn.

- The combination of looking at green and then all this color is just such an exciting experience.

- It's really wonderful.

- It's so cool.

- Yin and yang.

- Yeah.

Well, I think maybe if you don't mind, we'd love to see your cutting garden.

- I think that would be great.

- And then maybe, would you help us with balance?

- Yeah, no, that, I mean- - Balance our way there.

- I'm ready.

- Yeah.

- Ready?

- Yeah.

- We could do that maybe.

- We can find a place, so.

- Yeah, on the way?

- Okay, perfect.

- Let's go.

[lively music] - Now, before we go into this lovely looking garden, would you mind if I showed you a little bit of balance stuff that you could use while we're in there?

- Oh, I think that's a very good idea.

I would appreciate it.

- Awesome.

So the first thing that I just want to talk about in terms of balance is this idea of our base of support and our center of gravity.

And our base of support is really made up from our two feet and really the space in between them.

This is a very safe space for our center of gravity to move around within.

And you can, even standing here, just bring your weight around.

You can feel it move from your heels to your toes, from one foot to another.

And it's really when that center of gravity travels outside the base of support that we have to then change the base of support to either catch ourselves, or if we don't do it in time, we fall down, and that's really what we're trying to avoid.

So standing here with our feet side to side, this is a really natural place to be, and you can really send your center of gravity out a long way and probably feel pretty comfortable.

Does that feel all right?

- Yeah.

- Right.

- As soon as we start to narrow that base of support, now this gets a little trickier, right, this side to side.

So this is a fun one just to do out in the garden.

- Right.

- Just practicing getting that center of gravity.

And we can do that by yeah really moving our shoulders or by moving the hips.

- Right.

- Obviously what we're really trying to get after is single leg balance and really being able to stay on one leg or one foot for a long time.

And what I'm going to slowly introduce you guys to is this idea of the fountain of youth exercise or body position.

- We want that.

- Yeah, we want that.

I'm ready for that.

- We're ready.

Give us that.

- And it's not too late.

- I'm ready for that.

- Anyone can really learn how to do this by following these steps.

But I'm going to demonstrate for you what it is.

And it's just being able to come into a forward bend with a flat back on one leg.

- Wow.

- And I can even I could even reposition my center of gravity, my base of support and catch myself.

I'm going to walk you through these steps, because if you can do this throughout your life, the chances of you having a slip, trip, or fall are going to be way less 'cause you really have the strength to hold yourself.

So let me just grab something, because this is not- - He's going to teach us how to do that.

- Yeah.

We don't want to try- - Not ready to try it quite yet.

- No, I'm not either.

- We're going to slowly step you into this by having something nice to hang onto.

- I thought these were for training plants.

- They, well, they most- - Now they're for training me.

- Exactly.

- Funny about that.

- They're a multi-use training device.

- Right.

- So if we start with our feet nice and close together.

- Okay.

- I want you just to put one foot up on its toe.

And I'm going to call this the kickstand, all right?

And I want you to put most of your weight on the the other leg, the non-kickstand.

And that's the leg that you're really going to train.

- Okay.

- And so now all I want you to do is just bend forward, push your hip, your hips backwards, keep the spine nice and straight and feel that weight in that leg, okay?

This is step one.

And now you can come back up to tall, okay?

As we move through this, the way to make this a little bit more difficult or to challenge that one leg is to lift the kickstand and see if you can- - Right.

- Put it right back down on the ground.

And so then as we want to advance, just lifting the kickstand, we could then lift it and travel it all the way back and put it back down into this kind of long stance, forward hinge and then practice standing up through it.

So you could kickstand, you could tip down, you could move the kickstand backwards and then stand up on the one leg.

And so that will lead you.

And now you're already moving into that next phase, which would be to just lift the kickstand completely and tip down into the position and come back up.

- Wow.

- You can see the stabilizing muscles required to really maintain that body position are so important.

- I love the idea of never losing balance.

- Yeah, that's great.

And this is why we use- - Yes.

- We use this plant trainer.

If you don't have something, like when we go into the cutting garden, just do the kickstand.

Don't try and lift your kickstand.

- Right.

- But practice that bend and put, you know, 70-80% of your weight.

- On one side.

- One side, yeah.

Should we go try it in the garden?

- Gonna slow my cutting down, but that's okay.

- That's all right.

We're not in a rush.

- Good.

- Yeah.

- All right.

- Here, I'll put this back.

- Great.

- This is exciting.

[lively music] - So now as we're cutting these flowers for the arrangements, we can use that kickstand as our method for bending down to get as low as you want.

So just take one foot.

Yeah, you got it on its toe.

That's great.

- Right.

- Okay.

- And simple as that.

Just put most of your weight onto that one leg as you bend.

Remember to use both.

- Obviously I'm never going to garden on two feet again.

- Perfect.

Yeah.

- Is that a promise?

- Yes, yes.

- Madeline looks great.

Maybe soften that.

Soften your knees.

- More?

- Yeah, yeah.

We don't want to keep the knee locked out.

That's perfect.

And you can really feel that hip working to hold the weight.

- You can.

You can feel it.

- Yeah.

- Absolutely.

- That's great.

- It's kind of nice to be on one foot.

- Uh-huh.

- I like that.

- And as you get stronger with that, it will become more and more natural to want to lift that other leg and to venture into those the other stages.

Yeah, exactly.

- Okay.

One last one.

- Good, yeah, great.

- Would you like me to hold those for you?

- Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- So can we just kind of take a look at the whole garden?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- [Madeline] I love what you have in the center.

- Normally.

- Yeah.

Even in a working garden, you have the most amazing objects that you've collected, I guess.

- It makes such a difference.

It's just kind of, your eye is drawn to it.

- [Adam] It's really beautiful.

- It's fun.

This is so pretty.

- This is the foxglove, which is a second bloom.

It was this tall earlier.

You cut it back and it'll bloom.

- Isn't that wonderful?

So can we now see how you arrange the flowers that you cut?

- Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

- Okay.

- It's like making a painting every time, so it's very much fun.

- Isn't that great?

Oh, I'm so excited.

- All right, great.

- Okay, let's go do that.

- Here we go.

- I'll follow you.

[lively music] - This is the conservatory.

This room is probably our most favorite room in the whole house because we use it year round.

This is our dinner table, often we entertain here.

But these vines, so it's all growing up.

And the asparagus ferns growing through a palm tree.

And these passion flowers.

So I always say this is my, the gardens of Babylon.

You know, it's just so- - It is like that, but you've really created a inside garden.

- Yes.

- So I know, again, you're quite famous for your entertaining, but we know how famous you are for your flower arranging, so we'd love to learn that.

Okay, so how do you start?

- So this beautiful glass face is perfect for doing flowers.

One thing, when people look at containers, it's very good if you can keep a narrow space here and a wide space here, meaning you get plenty of water.

But to try to do an arrangement in something that has a big top, it makes it harder.

- Right.

It's almost like a bouquet.

- It's like a bouquet.

So it's just easier to do flowers.

But when I do this, I always start with the bottom.

This is just a a shrub.

This is growing up in the woodland and I use a lot of shrubbery for the structure.

I like to start with something kind of spilling over the side of the container so that not everything is going to be upright.

- Feels stable.

- Yeah.

So then I start building at the bottom, and I often use some of my bigger things around the base.

So I'm going to take these sunflowers and I'm going to start this kind of around the bottom.

And I'll use different flowers.

It's not a science really, it's just what is going to work.

So I'll start moving around with the bigger- - [Madeline] Those colors are breathtaking.

- Yeah, these are.

And when I'm doing it, I turn it around so I can see, you know, how it looks, like I need something here.

So you want to keep turning your vase around so it's a bit more balanced.

- Yes.

- And there's nothing about a sunflower that is- - So then I'm going to go to a flower that's not as heavy.

So it's going to be cut longer.

And I start to build it.

And again, these are the green zinnias that we've seen in the garden everywhere.

So start building that.

- You can almost see how the structure starts to develop.

- Yeah.

- And again, just like my gardens, I like, I tend to like things that have a little bit of life.

So then I'm going to take this hydrangea and I'm going to cut it lower and put it in here.

- Oh, wow.

- And then you see I'm starting to kind of fill up this vase.

- Everything.

- Oh, look at that.

- And here's then another one.

- They fill up the space between all these.

- Yeah, I'm just making it have a little bit more body.

I've built the bottom and the weight of it.

And now I'm going to start to give it its height.

Probably one of my most favorite things, just the most native thing in the world, which is Queen Anne's Lace.

- Of course.

- It grows along the side of the road, and if you don't have a garden, you can go pick Queen Anne's Lace everywhere.

- Absolutely.

- And I think this is just one of the most beautiful plants and flowers.

I don't know, it just makes me happy.

I keep it very long and very airy, and therefore- - Just like it is.

- Just like it is.

- In nature.

- So then I build up the flower.

You see through it.

But this begins to give you this wonderful height.

I want it to look like a bouquet.

- [Madeline] Right.

- I want it arranged, but not like stiff.

- [Madeline] Right.

- I don't want it to look like it came from the florist shop.

I want it to look like I might have gone out and cut these things.

- I love the freedom of it.

- It's beautiful.

- But then you get this.

- All the layers.

- And the freedom and the airiness, and you just can keep putting Queen Anne's Lace in for hours.

- Oh, that's just gorgeous.

- Because it's beautiful.

I'm going to let you all do that.

Why don't you put some Queen Anne's Lace in this vase?

- [Madeline] Ooh, I'd love to.

- I love that it just like exists above the whole thing in like its own little stratosphere.

- You keep adding, come on, I'm gonna... You're gonna- - Just give it- - [Bunny] You're gonna be a flower arranger after this.

If I have to exercise, you have to do flowers.

[all laughing] - Isn't it fabulous?

- [Bunny] And I just keep turning this around.

- [Madeline] Oh my goodness.

Look at that.

- [Adam] Get up there with the Queen Anne's Lace.

- This is so beautiful.

- So here is the flower arrangement.

And I thank you for your help.

[Adam and Madeline applauding] - Oh my goodness.

- Bravo.

Our pleasure.

- [Madeline] So I cannot wait to go home and cut some flowers and make an attempt at doing this type of arrangement.

So I thank you.

- [Adam] And I'm going to go look for some pedestals because I love these plants on pedestals.

- [Madeline] They're really fun.

- And I am going to go practice my balance.

- Oh my.

- Great!

- I thank you all.

So thank you for your advice because I really have learned a lot and I think I can incorporate it into my gardening.

- But we have too.

It was a lovely day with you.

- Thank you for coming.

- Thank you.

- [Narrator] Get Garden Fit with us.

[lively upbeat music] [lively upbeat music continues] [lively upbeat music continues] [lively music] "Garden Fit" is made possible in part by Monrovia.

[gentle lively music] [lively music]