heidi we've done quite a few shows on running through grief haven't we yes vision lot of the and a lot of things we told you about how to deal with grief but today we've got a vet very special show because we're going to be talking about gardening through grief and we've talked about nature and how people love to be nature and that kind of thing but we really haven't gotten into the garden and there are a lot of people that do fantastic cards for their families their mom and like you said we haven't talked enough about how healing it is to be in the garden to plant a garden to keep working in  garden after you've had a loss and so we've got some great guest of a view to really enjoy them one of them is my own gardener i love that again and her name's can perlmutter and we're going to be introducing you to her and then we're going to have sarah carm cornwell she's going to be on our show and sarah is it have a very special garden called you want to talk about the gemmell guide called a gamble gardens and i just went there today for the st time it's in palo alto california right in the middle of silicon valley it is it's absolutely beautiful it's this huge garden and they have a home right there and i don't know what else to tell you i don't know it is amazing to think it is the home of facebook and apple and all those things and here we've got this fabulous garden right in the center so we're going to be talking about that but st heidi let's talk to my good friend kim perlmutter absolutely and she does inviting spaces by kim right right kim yes it is welcome home welcome great to have you on the show today and tell the audience how you met me gloria has been instrumental as my st place to plant gardens it was a wonderful place to begin to realize how important what i do every day with making spaces more inviting i paint with flowers and there's nothing like mothering the earth as after joseph died it made this make so much more so let's talk a little bit about joseph because you and i basically met because of the compassionate friends to start with and the compassionate friends as i said as our partner partners and the compassionate friends are helping people who've lost children grandchildren and siblings and i was interested in that and i got to know kim whose son we talked a little bit about joe and we want to show a couple pictures of joey wonderful so joey loved to garden he was an outside boy from the time he could crawl and as he got older we planted gardens together this little boy with seeds with six packs he needed to cool the roots and he enjoyed watching his johnny jump ups grower sunflowers grow and he was very you know i got a sunflower picture of him joey and i'll probably be showing it in just a minute but talk a little bit we've got some big sunflowers to honor joey today on our on our set so he was you said he got sick very quickly and died when he was four he was almost four and a half when he died of an airborne virus symptom it sounds like you were involved in mother in new york when joey was alive and you did that with him but you didn't do other people's gardens you only did your own is that right that is true ok and it's just people came over and they wanted to be in my garden and they wanted to never leave it and  i came to your garden gloria said i want to hire you and i sat down with her and i said kim i want to garden like this because i am not a gardener and i said i want this and you said ok joey and his gardening and gamble cards what is that show and we were actually regulars that gamble gamble is the near and dear part of his life time he used to go there and race around and have a blast with everyone and never really needing to watch where they are the special part of that gamble is that it's a community garden that is very unique it's free of charge go three hundred sixty five dollars days a year and roam free and there's not a place like that anywhere else and  very special and my son would bring we had playgroups there of people didn't know anything about it people that lived in palo alto didn't know about it so it's just this hidden gem that was near and dear to our heart and became very significant also after he passed away so i made that become a very important priority to be a part of a gamble as a volunteer now to talk about what gardening this meant what is it actually beat in the soil for somebody who's greed grieving what does that mean there's there's something indescribable to watch something grow and to be planting things that need me to take care of them and i wasn't finished it turns out i wasn't finished nurturing and so i nurture plants and there's just something very important to be able to look at the space and imagine four seasons and anticipate the next year and thinking about the future which i don't think in the beginning of this i ever thought about two years away or four years away or how something would grow well that's that's so interesting because here you took care of your little boy and you nurtured him and you you know to care when you fed him and you did all these things with them and now you're doing it in your gardens for people and i also empower other people t take care of things that they didn't notice and to bring them outside and to slow down and to enjoy and appreciate life so as time has gone on i think people that get to know the other part to what i do it takes it to a different level and people end up feeling that they want to share being outdoors and slowing down and appreciating a new day and not waiting for a vacation right and one thing people out there that have losses she you know somehow plant a garden or even you know for me i you know lived in midtown manhattan for years get plants in their home to take care of them and nurture them and you know feed them it seems really really healing it brings you to a place where you get hope and you we've talked about hope and there's something that when you're watching something grow and you're given this thing your energy and you see this happening there's just it's a rewarding experience it's hard to put into words and people who talk about having actually having their hands in the soil do people talk about that had just feeling it and being a little kid i actually get to not dress up every day and write in the ground and get sweaty and play outdoors and there's something very invigorating about that it's very different that's and thinking about with your business to talk about starting a business i mean that must have been a lot after a loss to be able to move in and start doing a business when when someone hires me now i find it fascinating there's a synchronicity to the pattern of who finds me whether it's a widow whether it's someone that's divorced but somebody that's moved to a new town and they don't know what to do with the space they don't know our climate there's just been it's been very magical and who i find that gravitates to need what i have to offer becomes much bigger than just the garden and i was i know you were telling me about sometimes people move into senior housing and they leave their beautiful gardens and how you had one woman who just wanted her little patio to be beautiful i love i've told this over and over no space is too small to transform and that one in this particular example that one space is everything to this lovely lady who gave up her gorgeous home and her beautiful life after her husband died after her husband passed away and that space became her her sanctuary and she looks at it from her kitchen sink but she loves to just be in it and she has told me over and over every day i sit out here and again i feel like joseph lives on as i do these gardens and helping these people that wouldn't have this without me being a part yes it's really really beautiful and it's so much fun well there's one of your and talk about the wagon with joe is wagon right gardening through grief i started very quickly with incorporating joey's living days and that happens to be his wagon and that became a perfect pot to grow lots of different anthon and i'm very happy to see it and he said he submitted stuffed animals in there that was in his bedroom a step down or i brought it outside i love  have had a loss and i can invite them over in my yard and i have had more than one person i have a bench there a waterfall buddha head very lovely and i can sit there with them in this beautiful garden and talk to them about and such a healing thing to be in nature well let's take a look at we've got a role in from the gamble gardens garden and i want to say that some of the people aren't working there anymore but i loved the i think it just really tells the story off the camel garden and also we've cornwall coming on and she is the new executive director of the garden so she's our up to date person but she tells me that the things that are going on that you'll see in this video are in the garden now and it's in paul also california and it's opened all year long and you can just go walk on the grounds it's absolutely fabulous so let's take a look at the rolling sometimes perfectly good gardens can go to waste but a little bit gamble and her friends made sure that didn't happen here in palo alto miss campbell worked in her garden until she died in one thousand nine hundred and eighty one and today it's a quiet sanctuary right in the middle of the city maryland jensen is the director of horticulture at eliza garden here in palo alto california now can you give me some of the history of this garden it's magnificent sure elizabeth campbell was part of the procter and gamble family and they moved out here in to she lived her entire life here at the garden she was a huge gardener beautiful gardens that have been here since the turn of the century she was noted for her flower gardens that she had cuttings that she would donate to shut ins in the hospital and just to the local community so what's the mission of a garden today the mission of the garden today is education is a primary cornerstone and then just being a resource for the do they just absolutely love being out here getting their hands dirty but secondly we teach them about food food comes from plaintiffs and then they make snacks with their food and then with extra we take to the food bank a lot of good little lessons are germinating here today and the successful children's program ensures that a little bit gamble's garden will be in really good little hands into tomorrow well what a great garden and sarah to meet you and congratulations on being the executive director there it's a wonderful garden you told us that you are yourself before you came or a master gardener right i started and then when i had this opportunity i decided to put all my focus with campbell so you've been there for a year almost a year yes it is phenomenal like is that i've never been there before today and i can't believe it's right in the middle of power although it's shutting a community garden that anyone could go to it's gorgeous it's an amazing place now i know kim you are new so enjoy the garden and it's so interesting to see these kids running around the garden i wonder does that give you a little heart palpitations when you think it's running around of joey running around and he used to give his own garden tours so that was he was going to video around and he knew where everything was here's the place to hide and here's the he was very very well familiar giving his own garden tours  well sarah what do you find that people say about the garden and garden and what are your thoughts about the garden it's just an oasis in the middle of palo alto it's a bustling place and here it is two and a half acres in the warty in style there are different rooms to the garden and you can be in the rose garden in the wisteria garden and just be enclosed in this beautiful greeting me all around you and you're just you just could be anywhere in the  world you're just surrounded by this tranquility and this calmness that i think really connects with people then the other part of the garden is very vibrant there are vegetable beds growing in there are children there harvesting them there's a cutting garden that's  maintained by a volunteer that we've had for twenty five years he turns of ninety one in two months and he's there five days a week and it's a very active cutting garden he he doesn't want to see anything go past that's prime there that you've got a lot of volunteers i mean can anybody volunteer or how does that work absolutely we have over three hundred volunteer no i who some of them volunteer in the garden on a regular basis and love to prune or rake or just want to be there working alongside our staff and other volunteers people and here we are where nonprofit we have a board of directors we have committees where a very active community last year there were thirty five thousand hours of volunteer time so there's everything and there's also volunteering around our spring tour which is our biggest event at the end of april where we have a tour of five residential gardens in and around palo alto and that is a huge production and it's all completely done by volunteers because i was saying to you i know elizabeth gamble from the procter and gamble family left the house the house is there too they were didn't show that on the tour but it's a lovely house and somebody said well it's not that grand and i said that's what i love about it it's like the garden it's just it's just really understated the are very natural and it's really fantastic but i love the idea of volunteering because one of the things we find out and i think kim would say this too after a loss the time when you know you have to take care of your own garden and your own self but you there's a time when you start moving out to do things for other people and i am also thinking  do find out as far as moving to giving or is going to add is to feel like i have a purpose again and it feels to gardening for others was a very different level then just staying at home in my own sanctuary and to be able to then go further out and feel safe even if i could shut the gate and no one knew i was there it gave me hope to be able to have something to do that was very meaningful and productive yeah and did you say something about a bench that was given to gamble barnes of that you had that was joey's i don't know tell if it were donated a few things fall down on your head so he would love to try to take that would then he also love drugs and we had a fountain at home and we donated but it was magical when they chose a fr corner there's a bench and the south and are close by and i know that it's a well loved bench and i want to say this about campbell it sounds like everybody's always there but you end up having the garden to yourself very well it was very  very typically like that you walk through and it is really your own private garden and not so interesting where it is and its location and i left a community day there really are not a one hundred people there probably you know we like the same time which i think is appealing to if you had a law that you could volunteer there and it wouldn't be like a whole bunch of people you know there at the same time probably you can are to say that was a falling garden volunteer program in the morning it's a group of about twenty or so people who are very passionate about gardening and they know what they're coming in to do like to garden in groups and though we to bed together some people have a particular spot to the garden that they love so every week back in the spot that they love and doing what they love and really feel a sense of ownership of a particular spot in the garden that's awesome well kim i want to ask you if i've had a loss and i you know would like to so it feels very fulfilling in that it's immediate gratification but it's not as daunting as digging up a patch and trying to figure out what to plant and it let's start with a few pots i love that a few pots and i know one of the things that you do is kim  s for lack of a better word you stock the the flower places or the plant places to find out what the best looking plants are for this time of year or ones that you think look good and you bring him home and sometimes to have some little special purple about here and gotten to because you were saying there is a solitude about a garden too if you need that you know you were saying that you could go to the campbell cards it's restful or you can go to your yard and you know you know you can find that solitude  you know in the garden and the quiet that you need some so it's great you know just to be able to gladden nature absolutely and that's really healing thing is that you feel as what do you think helps people the most about being in the garden i think there is a solitude but then also you're surrounded by the birds chirping the wind blowing and all these things that you may not pick up on otherwise and suddenly the wind whistling through a tree or through plants nearby has  really key because you know we're so anxious after a loss and you're grieving for everything that you don't have in the future and you're grieving for everything you've lost in the past if you can just stay in that moment it really is helpful and we need those breaks from grief y there also is photography so one of the things that i have done and you see it again well is so frequently there's people taking pictures and and that's an a very mindful stay very present moment and you can't really think about anything else when you're taking a picture and so the combination of how quickly a bloom is excludes it and then it's speeding means that we have to slow down and really attention to staying in the now or you miss it and it's gone absolutely  and i was thinking about a look at the gamble too has passed on now and what she has left and about how we do can i think how do you always say don't never forget your impact that you've had on the world or that other people have had in the world you know and i think that's really important and also when i see plants and flowers now i try to think about the fact that there are people taking care of and the beauty in the world that when you see beautiful roses they didn't just every day matters i feel my son taught me to slow down i really appreciate every day knowing that he lives on with i wouldn't be who i am today doing these gardens if i hadn't had the opportunity to be my child's mother and we can't take anything for granted like this precious and sara what for people who come to the garden what would you hope for them  to stop for a minute and breathe and look at the light and the space and the community gamble garden is a garden but also an incredible vibrant community of people who are passionate about gardening  and passionate about creating tranquil spaces even if they only don't go get a chance to professionally even if they can only volunteer it or just only visit it i just appreciate all the love that's there said you can do it you can just start with a small pot yes you don't have to join yard or even have a yard to do this absolutely and also you can also volunteer if you don't palo alto area you can volunteer in other community and with the internet you can find out what's going on in your neighborhood as far as plants and flowers and their community green i mean you have you in our neighborhood if you live in midtown manhattan where there are no yards you can go to central park they have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers so you can do it anywhere in any community and you can just do a day or an hour or whatever but i want to say that the st thing that should members to take care of yourself and we want to thank you guys for what you do and thanks everybody for watching the show today and