Ash: Welcome to Thirsty and Dramatic Unscripted, the weekly meeting where we embrace the humidity, enable each other's habits, and accept that there is always room for one more clear plastic box. My name's Ash, this is my co-host Nina, and since this is our first episode, we thought we'd introduce each other. Nina is the brains of the operation, she's highly organised. She knows what she's doing. She's an expert on begonia propagation, breeding, hybridization, and just crying when they do their begonia-y thing, because they are like us thirsty and dramatic.
Begonia_Lady: Thank you, Ash. And Ash, I'm sure you've all heard of referred to as the Duchess of Dirt. Ash is the brains behind our various substrates and does all of the research and is very good at that kind of thing, whereas I sort of just try it to see what happens. So between the two of us, we'll come up with some way of keeping your plants happy for you. myself and Ash have known each other for just over twelve months now and met through our love of begonias and have become very good friends.
Ash: we are starting with what we hope will be a regular session and our confessions. Okay, it's part of this meeting. We're gonna confess to our own failures. I don't have it in front of me because as I said, Nina's the brains of the operation, she's the organised one. but my confession for this week. is I have two Attrisha Dark form. They are one of my favourite venues. They have these sexy spots. Gorgeous, stunning, and a snail ate one. A snail got on it. It chomped the leaf. It chomped, chomp, chomped. About 50% of the leaf. And then the rest of the leaf died because it was like, ew, get this snail off me. I don't like it. And notice. Yeah, I mean it's valid. I supp her drama, sorry.
Begonia_Lady: understandable. And how And how did you capture the offending snail ash? Or is it still roving around your prop box finding more victims?
Ash: No. I found it. It was evicted. It was given a stun talking to about where snails are not allowed to go, i.e., anywhere near me or my plants. Mate, do you have a confession for us this week?
Begonia_Lady: I do, it is a pretty bad one to be honest. So during the lovely heat wave we had a few weeks ago, I was washing all of the the seedlings upstairs and I got my Bayak cross oscillata, also known as a pink urchin, out of its prop box and put it on top of my shelf to later. amazingly, it's actually still alive, despite the fact it's been out of a prop box in a heat wave for a week. So it's now currently living in a smoothie cup. to see if it actually manages to resurrect itself. But quite an expensive bale, that one really. But luckily I've got a few more.
Ash: Expensive. It does help. It does help. you need a backup
Begonia_Lady: Exactly.
Ash: plan with your drama queens. Because again, thirsty and dramatic. that's how we like our plants.
Begonia_Lady: At least three of them. Yes. Although maybe not quite that thirsty interrupt. So one of the things we'd like to do as part of our podcast is get you guys involved. So what we thought would be a fun and interactive way of doing that is to come up with a new section that we're calling Agony Plant. So if you have an Agony Plant question that you would like to contact us via Instagram, either myself or Ash, we will then read it out during the podcast and answer your questions for you.
Ash: you can find our Instagram links in the show description below. Just look down. if you're submitting your Agony plant us a picture of the plant as well. We want to see your plants. Actually, just spam me with pictures of your cool plants.
Begonia_Lady: She weeks to put a ripple. Today we've got Adam Christian of Malvern Fame with us for our first as a podcast, talking about his show garden that he did in conjunction with his good friend Alina and And it's free. the success that they had on their first attempt. I love it. Yeah.
Ash: I'm really excited to talk to Adam because he's super cool. But Adam, can you introduce yourself? It's true.
Adam Critien: Thank you. Yeah, sure. So I'm Adam Gritian. I'm a terrarium builder, houseplant obsessive and keen gardener. And I'm known as at Earth Champion on Instagram and TikTok and at Earth Champion ecosystems on YouTube. And yeah, I'm really excited to chat to you guys. Thanks for having me.
Ash: It's our pleasure, but really excitingly, it's only About four weeks since the Malvern Spring Festival. So really important for everyone to know. Adam's just won three gold medals at the Festival of Houseplants, which is amazing. How are you feeling?
Adam Critien: I worked on a garden with my friend Alina and we won a gold medal, first time we've ever done it, which blew our minds. And we also won the best in show award and so the best indoor plant garden award and the people's choice for indoor gardens. So we literally managed to somehow win every prize that was available to
Begonia_Lady: Clean sweep, didn't you? as well.
Adam Critien: thank you. That's very kind. it's very bizarre.
Ash: You must be in shock, but it is as Nina said, so well deserved. I mean, a huge project too. how did you guys manage that? How'd you go from being a YouTuber to taking home all the prizes?
Adam Critien: thank you. I honestly don't know. I'm still not quite sure how he did it. So basically the project was a year in the making. So I was at Melbourne last year and I met up with Alina there. We kind of spoken beforehand and agreed what day we were both going to go. And, I think she'd applied to, do an indoor garden for that year and hadn't been successful, hadn't, hadn't been kind of selected. she said, I'm going to try again. Do you want to collaborate with me? So said, yeah, sure. That sounds fun. I knew that she really wanted to do it, so I thought she's quite driven, if she's decided she's going to do it, I think it will happen. I didn't think that we'd necessarily get selected, but I thought, why not? It could be quite interesting. So yeah, then several months later we got the news that we'd been selected, which is amazing. So we obviously kind of had a lot of calls, to work out what we were going to do.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. She's quite driven. Yeah.
Adam Critien: she kind of came up with pretty much all of the design. I had some inputs into some of the different bits and some suggestions and stuff. And yeah, we just spent a lot of kind of late night phone calls finessing what we wanted to do, how we wanted it to look, how we wanted it to feel. We reached out to quite a few different people to see if we could get any kind of support or sponsorship. So we spoke to people like Exoterra and Arcadia and they kindly donated some products for us to use. obviously spoke to you guys and you guys very kindly gave us a load of the terrarium goo and still unbelievable selection of rare and unusual begonias which featured in several of the different setups. yeah, a lot of work behind the scenes to finesse the design, to figure out the logistics because Alina lives in Bristol, I and it was Botanic York. So yeah, they're all businesses. I don't know if any of them had built that kind of indoor garden before. I know Dibley's have.
Begonia_Lady: No, I think it's quite different from the year before from yeah, from what I remember. Hmm.
Ash: Yeah, it did last it. Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yeah, so yeah, it was really interesting. was a really nice atmosphere as well because one thing I really like with the format of the Morphin show is that you're not competing against the other gardens. You're basically competing against yourself. So yeah, you have your design, you have your brief and you get marked basically on how well you execute it. So actually there's no reason everybody could have won gold or everybody could have.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, showcasing, aren't you? Yeah.
Adam Critien: everyone could have failed. It's not like the Olympics where you get first, second and third. So it was quite a nice atmosphere because you're not really competing against each other. You're competing against yourself and everyone's giving each other advice and tips and feedback and stuff. So it's just a really, really lovely experience. And then just to have actually managed to pull it off felt like a big achievement. And then when we found out we'd won award after award, it was crazy. Yeah, was really crazy.
Ash: where do you go from there?
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean, this is the dilemma. We've already had a little bit of a chat about, we going to do Melbourne again next year? And, you know, haven't reached a kind of firm conclusion yet. But that's the tricky thing. I mean, I'd be tempted to do it again just because it was a good experience and I enjoyed it. But in terms of, you know, if you've kind of got a gold on your first attempt and you've won other awards. Yeah, I mean, at the...
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. It's not much incentive is there to it's can you can you top yourself when you won a clean suite of awards? Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yeah, exactly. The very best outcome would be that we repeat what we've already done. And there's a good, you know, there's a very good chance we wouldn't be able to do that again. So actually you'd be in danger of actually not doing you're looking at it as I want to win and I want to get all the medals or I just want to do something interesting and share my passion with the people, which is probably the way I've approached year. I might not be. Definitely want to sure.
Ash: I think one of the great gifts is being able to collaborate with your friends. I mean, I know that's something that I personally love to be able to do professionally or that love with you. Like what better way to spend your time is there?
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, except you.
Adam Critien: Yeah. lives in Bristol, I live in Buckinghamshire. There's quite a big age gap between us. We've got completely different backgrounds, completely different plant show. It was at Gardeners World Live years and years ago. So, Lena was working for a plant shop that had a stall there. And I was kind of...
Begonia_Lady: How did Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Adam Critien: obviously looking at all the plants because that's what I do when I go to plant shows. Exactly. And I saw a really cool looking, cordex plant. I really love cordexes amongst other things. and I just got chatting to her about it. And then we basically kind of stayed in touch and became friends. And yeah, because we've got such different backgrounds, we'd necessarily have become friends if we just randomly met, other than having met via plants. So that thing in common, you we've becoming quite good friends and yeah, it was really cool. we got on really well together and yeah, it just a really, really good experience.
Ash: I think you spoke to something really significant there, which is like the community that plants have. I don't know about you guys, but I find that the people I meet who are into plants tend to be quite introverted or maybe a a little bit neurodivergent. but we all seem to find that sense of friendship and community and acceptance in the plant world, which is one of my favourite things about it.
Begonia_Lady: Mm.
Adam Critien: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think so many people, when you talk to other people in the plant community, nearly, as you said, nearly everybody has some kind of mental health issues, some kind of neurodivergence, introversion. You know, I guess we're all kind of misfits in a nice way. And actually, yeah, we all get on with each other really well. I think there's something about
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Adam Critien: the kind of people that would be really passionate about growing plants. They're probably going to be quite kind, good natured, kind, nurturing people. Yeah, so you're probably not going to run into anyone that's going to be really aggressive or hard to deal with. Everyone's going to be quite friendly and chilled out, I think. That's certainly been
Begonia_Lady: And nurturing yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ash: Thing it's that nice thing of being those slow growing people, the people who've got the patience to wait three years for their plants to size up because they decided to grow sonerella for some reason.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. I know. I mean, you know this is like
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yes.
Begonia_Lady: leaf so far. It's a very pretty leaf. It's very shiny.
Ash: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Adam Critien: It looks really nice.
Begonia_Lady: did you find transitioning from show life back to normal life?
Adam Critien: It was weird. Yeah, because we did everything on a very tight budget, so we were camping there. You kind of think it might be glamorous and be going out for meals and staying in a nice hotel, but no, no, nothing like that. were back to the tent, have a pot noodle. We both camped next door to each other, so we just literally go back.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Get drunk. Exhausted. Yeah.
Adam Critien: hot noodle or something, go to sleep and then repeat. So it's quite weird, you're in a bit of a bubble because obviously everybody you come into contact with is also building indoor or outdoor gardens or they're people setting up shop stands and things. So it felt quite immersive, you just get completely, completely engulfed in everything to do the show and then suddenly it's all over and you've got to go back
Begonia_Lady: Yeah.
Adam Critien: yeah, it was interesting. mean, you know, I've got a young child to look after, he's just turned six, so it's nice to come back and spend some more time with him. Then you come back and the garden's gone mad, all the animals need a bit of maintenance and all the plants. She did a really good job. I mean, I did, I was away at Mulvam for a couple of weeks all in, and I did come home a couple of
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah.
Adam Critien: few times if she got stuck she'd yeah I had to an eye on keep an eye
Ash: Make sure she was doing it right.
Adam Critien: is because it's at the beginning of the year, know, more yeah, if it had been August, it would have been a lot to deal with
Begonia_Lady: one more Malvern question and then we'll go on to terrarium's Adams. That's right. So it's it's one of those like work like questions you're always asked. It's what did you learn about yourself? One good thing or one bad thing?
Adam Critien: Yeah, sure. Yes.
Ash: Yeah.
Adam Critien: what did I learn about myself?
Begonia_Lady: Yeah.
Adam Critien: Good thing, I was probably, I guess the fact that I am capable of doing things like well. and I think it looks awful and other people, wow, that looks great. You've done a great job. I said, no, I could have done better. So I guess.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Well that's the that's the great thing about terrors, aren't they? They never end it, they're never finished, they just They've got their own life cycle.
Adam Critien: Well, there's always more to do. Yeah, but you know, we got some really nice feedback from the judging team about some of the terrariums and that was quite nice. thought, actually, yeah, I made that and that helped us get a gold medal. So actually, yeah, I probably do know what I'm doing more than I sometimes give myself credit for. So I suppose it was kind of, it was nice validation that I can do this and I do know what I'm doing some of the time. And probably the bad thing I learned is... I got very, very frustrated trying to lay the floor. We had all sorts of issues with the floor.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Is DIY something you normally turn your hand to or was that kind of a needs must? Yeah, okay.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I love DIY. I'm normally not too bad at it, but we just had real problems getting the floor to work. So that ended up taking a lot of time, which is really frustrating because it's like, we've come here to build an indoor garden and a plant show and instead we're mucking about trying to get the floor sorted and we're spending much more time on that than we wanted.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. It added where it needed to though, so it was worth the effort.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean it looks alright, it looked nice. Lots of people walked on it, it didn't collapse, nobody got hurt on it, so that's a win, I'm happy with that.
Begonia_Lady: We make it. Absolutely.
Adam Critien: I mean it took a day and a bit to put down and it took about 40 minutes to remove.
Begonia_Lady: Ha
Ash: Mind you, by the time that you were taking it apart, I bet you were ready to go home and it was a blessing.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yeah, yeah, at that point I just kind of wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed, have a nice hot my family, see my garden, see my animals. So yeah, was quite sad actually, it quite emotional taking the garden apart because obviously we spent, you know, as I said it had been a year in kind of planning and developing and then several weeks of building and then we had the highs of... know, winning awards for it and the public coming and looking and people liking it. And then suddenly in the space of a day, it all gets ripped down and boxed up and taken away. So that was actually quite sad seeing it come apart. But, you know, some of the terrariums we've, Alina's kept some of them, I've kept some of them, some of the plants we've kept, some of them we've sold or donated to other people. A lot of the materials that we used were, we got a lot of support from the Bristol Wood Recycling Project, which is a lovely organisation. and they clean it up, plane it down and they then sell it on a really reasonable prices for people to build raised beds or furniture, that kind of thing. So they provided a load of wood for us to build one of the walls and to build the subfloor and then that all went back to them so it's all going to go back and be reused. So actually there's some really nice, you know, hear horror stories about show gardens and everything just ends up in a skip and it all ends up in landfill and that.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. that's good. Mm-hmm. Mm. That's how it should be, shouldn't it? It should be recyclable and yeah.
Adam Critien: that wasn't the case at all. Everything got reused and rehomed. absolutely. Sustainability is a really big thing for Alina and for myself. it was something.
Ash: I think it was so re envisage things, to see a different way to use something. It's amazing.
Adam Critien: Yeah. I mean that was the mentality wasn't it? You know people of that generation, was that make do and men's somehow we seem to have lost that and I think it is coming back now. I think people are a lot more conscious of how unsustainable it is just to, you know, fast fashion and planned obsolescence and all that stuff. I think people are much more aware of
Ash: Hmm.
Begonia_Lady: All these prop boxes get used constantly, honestly, I'm not throwing any of this plastic away, so constantly in use.
Adam Critien: but there's still a long way to go.
Ash: Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yes, absolutely. I think any indoor plant person, I bet if you go to their house, they'll have old Chinese takeaway plastic tubs with cuttings in and all that kind of thing.
Begonia_Lady: yeah. There's there's a few over there.
Ash: That kind of leads us into something I wanted to talk about because we're thinking about that idea of sustainability in the hobby, and that's an interesting topic when we're buying plants that aren't native to our country. we're importing them live, or as Nina and I do, we're importing seeds and growing them here. We're having to create artificial conditions for them.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: There is a degree to which the hobby's maybe not as sustainable as we'd like it to be. And you mentioned fast fashion, which made me think about trends in houseplants. We've already admitted to this. I'm gonna do it on recording. I'm a plant snob. I I just am, I'm sorry. Unrepentant. we got that out of the way. We've confessed for the audience, we're all plant snobs.
Adam Critien: Yeah. So, so am I.
Begonia_Lady: Me too. Ha ha Yeah.
Ash: to think about as a community when we're busy doing plant snobs, how we're approaching that. need a new plant every
Adam Critien: it's a really difficult one. I mean, I think when you get to a certain point in any hobby, you become a snob. I love playing guitar and I must admit I'm a guitar snob. But when I started, I had kind of very cheap, very basic guitars and I've progressed on to kind of now in theory know what I'm doing a little bit. I've got some really nice guitars now and it's exactly the same with plants and I suspect it's the same if you're into cars, if you're into golf, know, whatever you end up kind of, yeah, watches, yeah.
Begonia_Lady: Watches. Better say that for the husbands. Yeah.
Ash: Watches.
Adam Critien: Yeah, something you guys both know about. So I think, yes. Yeah, I think it's inevitable in any hobby you're going to end up progressing and wanting to get either better quality or more, you know, in the case of kind of material things like golf clubs or watches or guitars or more interesting things when you're looking at plants. So yeah, it can be a real problem.
Begonia_Lady: Yes, that's true. Yeah.
Ash: Reluctantly. Okay.
Adam Critien: I I try and get all and sometimes it's necessary for it to happen. Sometimes if there's plants in the wild that people want, you almost need to import them to get them into the hobby because otherwise, you know, it's like if... if the right person doesn't import the plant and look after it and propagate it, someone else will and they might kill it and they'll keep trying. it's probably a necessary evil to bring new plants and new things into the hobby.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, you've got to do it the right way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Depends on your driver though,
Adam Critien: And what some people would do, they'd import a wild coral, you a really big coral, and they kind of break it into four five pieces and sell those pieces for the same price, And then they'd do the same thing and kind of rinse and repeat. I would sometimes have, I would sometimes buy corals which I knew had been wild collected, but then I would propagate them. So I'd keep the parents, I'd break bits off or cut bits off, propagate them. Yes. So, you know, it's that whole thing. It's a necessary evil sometimes to bring I think if you're just doing it to make a quick profit, that's really bad. If you're doing it to bring new plants and new animals into the hobby.
Begonia_Lady: That's what they do with isopods as well.
Adam Critien: and it's being done in a sustainable way and you're actively breeding or propagating,
Begonia_Lady: into 'cause we can't, right? 'Cause restrictions around, you know, regulations and what you can and can't send in different countries these days. It's it's almost like we should be able to recontribute kind of mechanism way, exact thing like that.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: There are biodiversity and sustainability funds, but I'm not aware of one that's specifically rewilding
Begonia_Lady: That
Adam Critien: I mean, maybe that's something, maybe that's something we should look at doing. Yeah. I mean.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Maybe that's some next on our list of things to do around. 'Cause it it feels like there's enough of
Ash: Ha ha ha
Begonia_Lady: us now, right? In this kind of like we were talking about community earlier and we all there's a core of us that know e each other that you would think should be able to do something in that space.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean one of the companies that supported us at Malvern is Oscar And they make things like plant pots, stands, propagate,
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Hmm. bought some. I haven't used them yet, but they're
Adam Critien: he builds everything out of sustainably sourced bamboo, which is obviously, you know, really good material. It's easy to, easy to reproduce. It's kind of, you know, waterproof, the way it works is for every item he sells, he donates money to have a tree planted.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Mm.
Ash: Mm.
Adam Critien: maybe that should be a kind of a thing with plants, that if you buy a plant, especially if it's buying a plant that's potentially come from the wild, maybe you to help look after those populations in the wild. And when you talk about sustainability, you think about, OK, if you're not going to get a wild collected plant, because obviously you don't want something being or being removed from the wild and flown halfway around the world on an aircraft. But then you think these great big nurseries
Begonia_Lady: the Netherlands, right? So yeah. The carbon footprint and the and that's one of the reasons why we grow seed, but that's kind of the the niche plants that obviously culture they're starting to come in and that's a topic for another day 'cause that one's gonna get gonna get interesting. I'm not on board with that one.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah, it's another controversial subject.
Ash: That's the one where we need a cup of tea and a deep breath before we start to rant. But
Begonia_Lady: Yes. But yeah, that that it's not sustainable, right?
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: In terms of how we in in the kind of broader ambient sense of the houseplant business world, that is generally where they're coming from.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean, I suppose it goes back to pretty much any activity, any hobby or anything you do is not sustainable. So I guess it's a question of how not sustainable you allow it to be. You the good thing with some of the, like the rare begonias that you guys grow, some of the slightly rarer orchids and terrarium plants, they're not really beginner plants. So...
Begonia_Lady: Mm, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, and not on a large scale either, generally, are they? Yeah. Mm.
Adam Critien: Yes, exactly. They're quite niche. So you
Ash: Mm.
Adam Critien: would hope that if they are being wild that are then ending up with them are looking after them and propagating and sharing them. I'm not sure that always happens, but you'd hope so.
Ash: with
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Yeah.
Ash: Yeah. Certainly with orchids,
Begonia_Lady: Hmm.
Ash: it's very limited because they're so difficult to germinate seed outside of a lab. You need a laminar flow herd. It it's not easy. They're pretty much all tissue cultured now. dual orchids, because of the life cycle, it's really quite extended to get it from seed to a saleable size, around three years.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: This is why they have to come with a certain price ticket though, don't they? Because it you know it's a passion of love to to be able to produce these things for other people.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: Yeah, absolutely. I think.
Adam Critien: But that's probably a good thing because if you could I suppose the risk would be that it becomes a commodity, everyone will buy one and most a plant is expensive, obviously it's not great if you want to collect interesting plants, but it does probably mean
Ash: Mm.
Begonia_Lady: No. It makes
Ash: what, three, four years ago, how much did a Thai constellation cutting cost? And now they're a £20 for an immature plant, maybe? And yeah, they're they're disposable at that point and they're being bought as decor that will probably not be looked after, won't be in the right substrate.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: That I think I gave mine I think yeah. Exactly. I think I gave mine away.
Adam Critien: You can buy them from B &Q, yeah, or Sainsbury's, it's crazy.
Ash: it won't be in the right plant snobs, I have spent months trying to track down one plant
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: And I'm not ashamed to admit that. The the chase is part of it for me. I you know I want that one and only that one and I'm focused. I recently bought a micro killers tridax or my sparkle princess dual orchid. She's beautiful, thank you for asking. honestly, just stunning. I had to wait six months.
Adam Critien: nice.
Begonia_Lady: Photos later.
Adam Critien: Wow.
Begonia_Lady: I have to wait two years for all of mine. I have to wait for the buckers to grow. And then I forget to pick myself a plant. I'm terrible for that.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: Yeah. But
Adam Critien: you
Ash: but when we're waiting for that sort of time frame or having to hunt down that one hobbyist who imported one ever since. I think we value it more. and it's you know, how do we then transmit that? Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: That's the
Adam Critien: Definitely, definitely.
Begonia_Lady: But also that's how we make the connections, isn't it, Ash? That's how we get to know each other and how we build the community, right? That
Adam Critien: Yeah, I know with you guys, you're quite selective about who you'll sell or give your plants to, which is partly why I was so thrilled with the selection you gave us because I was like, wow, you guys are giving us some really good plants. must,
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Does get us in hot water sometimes.
Ash: But
Begonia_Lady: That's not what we thought, Adam.
Adam Critien: It does mean hopefully people really appreciate the more unusual plants that are harder to get hold of and hopefully they'll look after them. Yeah, and that's...
Begonia_Lady: We're up to about fifteen of us now, I think, in our little plant snobbery club. We should change the name. Yeah, totally.
Adam Critien: Yeah, yeah, I mean it comes back to that whole thing about the community doesn't it? That
Ash: Yeah.
Adam Critien: we're probably all misfit one way or another and you know we've all kind of gravitated towards each other and found people that have similar interests and yeah it's really nice. It's a bit mushy isn't it when it's that whole thing about it's not the destination, it's the journey or it's the friends you made along the way or that I think.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, totally.
Ash: I think it truly is that though. I learned so much from the people around me and like for me personally, a day in which I have learned something is a day I didn't waste, always an achievement. but just having knowing that I can say, I someone who's already been there is amazing. that helps other people as well.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah.
Ash: I think we're really lucky to be in n as you said about Marvin, we're not in competition with one another. We might be in competition with ourselves for that plant that we desperately want, but we all want to help each other grow beautiful plants.
Adam Critien: Yeah, definitely. No, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, and it's so nice because when you, you know, obviously you Ash, know, loads about substrates and stuff and, you know, the, the terrarium good. Well, and you as well, Nina, but I know, I know Ash is the kind of the substrate, the substrate specialist.
Begonia_Lady: No, I don't. I d I trust that's to completely Ashes corner.
Ash: So I get my Tiara out, the Duchess of Dirt.
Begonia_Lady: Absolutely. Yeah. So you very much not just a dirt.
Adam Critien: Definitely. But this is what's so nice because you speak to someone that's kind of obsessive about substrates. You speak to someone else that's very knowledgeable about different plant fertilizers. Someone else will know a lot about the best you kind of, there's so many aspects to growing plants. No one is ever going to know all of it. And if you can make friends with other people in the community, you'll find people about a substrate or a lighting issue, like, ah, that's what I'm missing. So yeah, it's so nice when people share their knowledge and then if we
Begonia_Lady: the theory. It works most of the time.
Ash: Think that's it exactly.
Adam Critien: That's the theory,
Ash: Adam, I know that you are on a time frame this evening because you've got a much more important thing to do at eight o'clock. but I wanted to say thank you for coming and talking to us for our first podcast episode. I really appreciate it. It's nice to catch up as well.
Adam Critien: You ask. No thank you.
Begonia_Lady: Absolutely.
Adam Critien: No, thank you both for having me on the show. It's great. I love chatting to you guys. I love the PHA group. Everyone in there is so nice. Yeah, the plant community is just great. yeah, all need to... The world's a scary, unpleasant place a lot of the time to chat and make friends and share ideas and focus on.
Ash: Ha ha
Begonia_Lady: yeah, we
Adam Critien: weird little plants that we've paid a fortune for that no one else would ever understand.
Begonia_Lady: But we all do. Yeah.
Ash: Absolutely that. Adam, before you go, is there anything you want to plug that you've got coming up or where should people go and look for you on the internet?
Adam Critien: thank you. Yeah, so I'm on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. I'm at Earth Champion, all one word, on Instagram and TikTok. And on YouTube, I'm at Earth Champion Ecosystems, all one word. I've done quite a lot with Instagram, but I'm actually moving more now to doing long form videos nearly finished. I've got one which is a kind of a tour of the Mulven Garden and the show January. That's going to be going out hopefully in the next few weeks. And I've also got several long form videos in the works which were about how we built some of the displays which featured in the Mulven Garden.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, I need to see the one on your tree branch.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean that one's actually doing quite well. One of the orchids has just started flowering you
Ash: thank you so much for sticking with us through our first podcast. It's been amazing to have you here. to be honest with you, this was just an excuse to hang out with cool people and chat to them. But you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you. And if you have any ideas or questions, drop us a DM on Insta. Again, contact details are in the show notes.
Begonia_Lady: We look forward to seeing you in the next one and hearing your agony plant questions. Thanks all.
Ash: Thanks, bye.
Begonia_Lady: Thank you, Ash. And Ash, I'm sure you've all heard of referred to as the Duchess of Dirt. Ash is the brains behind our various substrates and does all of the research and is very good at that kind of thing, whereas I sort of just try it to see what happens. So between the two of us, we'll come up with some way of keeping your plants happy for you. myself and Ash have known each other for just over twelve months now and met through our love of begonias and have become very good friends.
Ash: we are starting with what we hope will be a regular session and our confessions. Okay, it's part of this meeting. We're gonna confess to our own failures. I don't have it in front of me because as I said, Nina's the brains of the operation, she's the organised one. but my confession for this week. is I have two Attrisha Dark form. They are one of my favourite venues. They have these sexy spots. Gorgeous, stunning, and a snail ate one. A snail got on it. It chomped the leaf. It chomped, chomp, chomped. About 50% of the leaf. And then the rest of the leaf died because it was like, ew, get this snail off me. I don't like it. And notice. Yeah, I mean it's valid. I supp her drama, sorry.
Begonia_Lady: understandable. And how And how did you capture the offending snail ash? Or is it still roving around your prop box finding more victims?
Ash: No. I found it. It was evicted. It was given a stun talking to about where snails are not allowed to go, i.e., anywhere near me or my plants. Mate, do you have a confession for us this week?
Begonia_Lady: I do, it is a pretty bad one to be honest. So during the lovely heat wave we had a few weeks ago, I was washing all of the the seedlings upstairs and I got my Bayak cross oscillata, also known as a pink urchin, out of its prop box and put it on top of my shelf to later. amazingly, it's actually still alive, despite the fact it's been out of a prop box in a heat wave for a week. So it's now currently living in a smoothie cup. to see if it actually manages to resurrect itself. But quite an expensive bale, that one really. But luckily I've got a few more.
Ash: Expensive. It does help. It does help. you need a backup
Begonia_Lady: Exactly.
Ash: plan with your drama queens. Because again, thirsty and dramatic. that's how we like our plants.
Begonia_Lady: At least three of them. Yes. Although maybe not quite that thirsty interrupt. So one of the things we'd like to do as part of our podcast is get you guys involved. So what we thought would be a fun and interactive way of doing that is to come up with a new section that we're calling Agony Plant. So if you have an Agony Plant question that you would like to contact us via Instagram, either myself or Ash, we will then read it out during the podcast and answer your questions for you.
Ash: you can find our Instagram links in the show description below. Just look down. if you're submitting your Agony plant us a picture of the plant as well. We want to see your plants. Actually, just spam me with pictures of your cool plants.
Begonia_Lady: She weeks to put a ripple. Today we've got Adam Christian of Malvern Fame with us for our first as a podcast, talking about his show garden that he did in conjunction with his good friend Alina and And it's free. the success that they had on their first attempt. I love it. Yeah.
Ash: I'm really excited to talk to Adam because he's super cool. But Adam, can you introduce yourself? It's true.
Adam Critien: Thank you. Yeah, sure. So I'm Adam Gritian. I'm a terrarium builder, houseplant obsessive and keen gardener. And I'm known as at Earth Champion on Instagram and TikTok and at Earth Champion ecosystems on YouTube. And yeah, I'm really excited to chat to you guys. Thanks for having me.
Ash: It's our pleasure, but really excitingly, it's only About four weeks since the Malvern Spring Festival. So really important for everyone to know. Adam's just won three gold medals at the Festival of Houseplants, which is amazing. How are you feeling?
Adam Critien: I worked on a garden with my friend Alina and we won a gold medal, first time we've ever done it, which blew our minds. And we also won the best in show award and so the best indoor plant garden award and the people's choice for indoor gardens. So we literally managed to somehow win every prize that was available to
Begonia_Lady: Clean sweep, didn't you? as well.
Adam Critien: thank you. That's very kind. it's very bizarre.
Ash: You must be in shock, but it is as Nina said, so well deserved. I mean, a huge project too. how did you guys manage that? How'd you go from being a YouTuber to taking home all the prizes?
Adam Critien: thank you. I honestly don't know. I'm still not quite sure how he did it. So basically the project was a year in the making. So I was at Melbourne last year and I met up with Alina there. We kind of spoken beforehand and agreed what day we were both going to go. And, I think she'd applied to, do an indoor garden for that year and hadn't been successful, hadn't, hadn't been kind of selected. she said, I'm going to try again. Do you want to collaborate with me? So said, yeah, sure. That sounds fun. I knew that she really wanted to do it, so I thought she's quite driven, if she's decided she's going to do it, I think it will happen. I didn't think that we'd necessarily get selected, but I thought, why not? It could be quite interesting. So yeah, then several months later we got the news that we'd been selected, which is amazing. So we obviously kind of had a lot of calls, to work out what we were going to do.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. She's quite driven. Yeah.
Adam Critien: she kind of came up with pretty much all of the design. I had some inputs into some of the different bits and some suggestions and stuff. And yeah, we just spent a lot of kind of late night phone calls finessing what we wanted to do, how we wanted it to look, how we wanted it to feel. We reached out to quite a few different people to see if we could get any kind of support or sponsorship. So we spoke to people like Exoterra and Arcadia and they kindly donated some products for us to use. obviously spoke to you guys and you guys very kindly gave us a load of the terrarium goo and still unbelievable selection of rare and unusual begonias which featured in several of the different setups. yeah, a lot of work behind the scenes to finesse the design, to figure out the logistics because Alina lives in Bristol, I and it was Botanic York. So yeah, they're all businesses. I don't know if any of them had built that kind of indoor garden before. I know Dibley's have.
Begonia_Lady: No, I think it's quite different from the year before from yeah, from what I remember. Hmm.
Ash: Yeah, it did last it. Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yeah, so yeah, it was really interesting. was a really nice atmosphere as well because one thing I really like with the format of the Morphin show is that you're not competing against the other gardens. You're basically competing against yourself. So yeah, you have your design, you have your brief and you get marked basically on how well you execute it. So actually there's no reason everybody could have won gold or everybody could have.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, showcasing, aren't you? Yeah.
Adam Critien: everyone could have failed. It's not like the Olympics where you get first, second and third. So it was quite a nice atmosphere because you're not really competing against each other. You're competing against yourself and everyone's giving each other advice and tips and feedback and stuff. So it's just a really, really lovely experience. And then just to have actually managed to pull it off felt like a big achievement. And then when we found out we'd won award after award, it was crazy. Yeah, was really crazy.
Ash: where do you go from there?
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean, this is the dilemma. We've already had a little bit of a chat about, we going to do Melbourne again next year? And, you know, haven't reached a kind of firm conclusion yet. But that's the tricky thing. I mean, I'd be tempted to do it again just because it was a good experience and I enjoyed it. But in terms of, you know, if you've kind of got a gold on your first attempt and you've won other awards. Yeah, I mean, at the...
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. It's not much incentive is there to it's can you can you top yourself when you won a clean suite of awards? Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yeah, exactly. The very best outcome would be that we repeat what we've already done. And there's a good, you know, there's a very good chance we wouldn't be able to do that again. So actually you'd be in danger of actually not doing you're looking at it as I want to win and I want to get all the medals or I just want to do something interesting and share my passion with the people, which is probably the way I've approached year. I might not be. Definitely want to sure.
Ash: I think one of the great gifts is being able to collaborate with your friends. I mean, I know that's something that I personally love to be able to do professionally or that love with you. Like what better way to spend your time is there?
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, except you.
Adam Critien: Yeah. lives in Bristol, I live in Buckinghamshire. There's quite a big age gap between us. We've got completely different backgrounds, completely different plant show. It was at Gardeners World Live years and years ago. So, Lena was working for a plant shop that had a stall there. And I was kind of...
Begonia_Lady: How did Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Adam Critien: obviously looking at all the plants because that's what I do when I go to plant shows. Exactly. And I saw a really cool looking, cordex plant. I really love cordexes amongst other things. and I just got chatting to her about it. And then we basically kind of stayed in touch and became friends. And yeah, because we've got such different backgrounds, we'd necessarily have become friends if we just randomly met, other than having met via plants. So that thing in common, you we've becoming quite good friends and yeah, it was really cool. we got on really well together and yeah, it just a really, really good experience.
Ash: I think you spoke to something really significant there, which is like the community that plants have. I don't know about you guys, but I find that the people I meet who are into plants tend to be quite introverted or maybe a a little bit neurodivergent. but we all seem to find that sense of friendship and community and acceptance in the plant world, which is one of my favourite things about it.
Begonia_Lady: Mm.
Adam Critien: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think so many people, when you talk to other people in the plant community, nearly, as you said, nearly everybody has some kind of mental health issues, some kind of neurodivergence, introversion. You know, I guess we're all kind of misfits in a nice way. And actually, yeah, we all get on with each other really well. I think there's something about
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Adam Critien: the kind of people that would be really passionate about growing plants. They're probably going to be quite kind, good natured, kind, nurturing people. Yeah, so you're probably not going to run into anyone that's going to be really aggressive or hard to deal with. Everyone's going to be quite friendly and chilled out, I think. That's certainly been
Begonia_Lady: And nurturing yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ash: Thing it's that nice thing of being those slow growing people, the people who've got the patience to wait three years for their plants to size up because they decided to grow sonerella for some reason.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. I know. I mean, you know this is like
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yes.
Begonia_Lady: leaf so far. It's a very pretty leaf. It's very shiny.
Ash: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Adam Critien: It looks really nice.
Begonia_Lady: did you find transitioning from show life back to normal life?
Adam Critien: It was weird. Yeah, because we did everything on a very tight budget, so we were camping there. You kind of think it might be glamorous and be going out for meals and staying in a nice hotel, but no, no, nothing like that. were back to the tent, have a pot noodle. We both camped next door to each other, so we just literally go back.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Get drunk. Exhausted. Yeah.
Adam Critien: hot noodle or something, go to sleep and then repeat. So it's quite weird, you're in a bit of a bubble because obviously everybody you come into contact with is also building indoor or outdoor gardens or they're people setting up shop stands and things. So it felt quite immersive, you just get completely, completely engulfed in everything to do the show and then suddenly it's all over and you've got to go back
Begonia_Lady: Yeah.
Adam Critien: yeah, it was interesting. mean, you know, I've got a young child to look after, he's just turned six, so it's nice to come back and spend some more time with him. Then you come back and the garden's gone mad, all the animals need a bit of maintenance and all the plants. She did a really good job. I mean, I did, I was away at Mulvam for a couple of weeks all in, and I did come home a couple of
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah.
Adam Critien: few times if she got stuck she'd yeah I had to an eye on keep an eye
Ash: Make sure she was doing it right.
Adam Critien: is because it's at the beginning of the year, know, more yeah, if it had been August, it would have been a lot to deal with
Begonia_Lady: one more Malvern question and then we'll go on to terrarium's Adams. That's right. So it's it's one of those like work like questions you're always asked. It's what did you learn about yourself? One good thing or one bad thing?
Adam Critien: Yeah, sure. Yes.
Ash: Yeah.
Adam Critien: what did I learn about myself?
Begonia_Lady: Yeah.
Adam Critien: Good thing, I was probably, I guess the fact that I am capable of doing things like well. and I think it looks awful and other people, wow, that looks great. You've done a great job. I said, no, I could have done better. So I guess.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Well that's the that's the great thing about terrors, aren't they? They never end it, they're never finished, they just They've got their own life cycle.
Adam Critien: Well, there's always more to do. Yeah, but you know, we got some really nice feedback from the judging team about some of the terrariums and that was quite nice. thought, actually, yeah, I made that and that helped us get a gold medal. So actually, yeah, I probably do know what I'm doing more than I sometimes give myself credit for. So I suppose it was kind of, it was nice validation that I can do this and I do know what I'm doing some of the time. And probably the bad thing I learned is... I got very, very frustrated trying to lay the floor. We had all sorts of issues with the floor.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Is DIY something you normally turn your hand to or was that kind of a needs must? Yeah, okay.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I love DIY. I'm normally not too bad at it, but we just had real problems getting the floor to work. So that ended up taking a lot of time, which is really frustrating because it's like, we've come here to build an indoor garden and a plant show and instead we're mucking about trying to get the floor sorted and we're spending much more time on that than we wanted.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. It added where it needed to though, so it was worth the effort.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean it looks alright, it looked nice. Lots of people walked on it, it didn't collapse, nobody got hurt on it, so that's a win, I'm happy with that.
Begonia_Lady: We make it. Absolutely.
Adam Critien: I mean it took a day and a bit to put down and it took about 40 minutes to remove.
Begonia_Lady: Ha
Ash: Mind you, by the time that you were taking it apart, I bet you were ready to go home and it was a blessing.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yeah, yeah, at that point I just kind of wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed, have a nice hot my family, see my garden, see my animals. So yeah, was quite sad actually, it quite emotional taking the garden apart because obviously we spent, you know, as I said it had been a year in kind of planning and developing and then several weeks of building and then we had the highs of... know, winning awards for it and the public coming and looking and people liking it. And then suddenly in the space of a day, it all gets ripped down and boxed up and taken away. So that was actually quite sad seeing it come apart. But, you know, some of the terrariums we've, Alina's kept some of them, I've kept some of them, some of the plants we've kept, some of them we've sold or donated to other people. A lot of the materials that we used were, we got a lot of support from the Bristol Wood Recycling Project, which is a lovely organisation. and they clean it up, plane it down and they then sell it on a really reasonable prices for people to build raised beds or furniture, that kind of thing. So they provided a load of wood for us to build one of the walls and to build the subfloor and then that all went back to them so it's all going to go back and be reused. So actually there's some really nice, you know, hear horror stories about show gardens and everything just ends up in a skip and it all ends up in landfill and that.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. that's good. Mm-hmm. Mm. That's how it should be, shouldn't it? It should be recyclable and yeah.
Adam Critien: that wasn't the case at all. Everything got reused and rehomed. absolutely. Sustainability is a really big thing for Alina and for myself. it was something.
Ash: I think it was so re envisage things, to see a different way to use something. It's amazing.
Adam Critien: Yeah. I mean that was the mentality wasn't it? You know people of that generation, was that make do and men's somehow we seem to have lost that and I think it is coming back now. I think people are a lot more conscious of how unsustainable it is just to, you know, fast fashion and planned obsolescence and all that stuff. I think people are much more aware of
Ash: Hmm.
Begonia_Lady: All these prop boxes get used constantly, honestly, I'm not throwing any of this plastic away, so constantly in use.
Adam Critien: but there's still a long way to go.
Ash: Yeah.
Adam Critien: Yes, absolutely. I think any indoor plant person, I bet if you go to their house, they'll have old Chinese takeaway plastic tubs with cuttings in and all that kind of thing.
Begonia_Lady: yeah. There's there's a few over there.
Ash: That kind of leads us into something I wanted to talk about because we're thinking about that idea of sustainability in the hobby, and that's an interesting topic when we're buying plants that aren't native to our country. we're importing them live, or as Nina and I do, we're importing seeds and growing them here. We're having to create artificial conditions for them.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: There is a degree to which the hobby's maybe not as sustainable as we'd like it to be. And you mentioned fast fashion, which made me think about trends in houseplants. We've already admitted to this. I'm gonna do it on recording. I'm a plant snob. I I just am, I'm sorry. Unrepentant. we got that out of the way. We've confessed for the audience, we're all plant snobs.
Adam Critien: Yeah. So, so am I.
Begonia_Lady: Me too. Ha ha Yeah.
Ash: to think about as a community when we're busy doing plant snobs, how we're approaching that. need a new plant every
Adam Critien: it's a really difficult one. I mean, I think when you get to a certain point in any hobby, you become a snob. I love playing guitar and I must admit I'm a guitar snob. But when I started, I had kind of very cheap, very basic guitars and I've progressed on to kind of now in theory know what I'm doing a little bit. I've got some really nice guitars now and it's exactly the same with plants and I suspect it's the same if you're into cars, if you're into golf, know, whatever you end up kind of, yeah, watches, yeah.
Begonia_Lady: Watches. Better say that for the husbands. Yeah.
Ash: Watches.
Adam Critien: Yeah, something you guys both know about. So I think, yes. Yeah, I think it's inevitable in any hobby you're going to end up progressing and wanting to get either better quality or more, you know, in the case of kind of material things like golf clubs or watches or guitars or more interesting things when you're looking at plants. So yeah, it can be a real problem.
Begonia_Lady: Yes, that's true. Yeah.
Ash: Reluctantly. Okay.
Adam Critien: I I try and get all and sometimes it's necessary for it to happen. Sometimes if there's plants in the wild that people want, you almost need to import them to get them into the hobby because otherwise, you know, it's like if... if the right person doesn't import the plant and look after it and propagate it, someone else will and they might kill it and they'll keep trying. it's probably a necessary evil to bring new plants and new things into the hobby.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, you've got to do it the right way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Depends on your driver though,
Adam Critien: And what some people would do, they'd import a wild coral, you a really big coral, and they kind of break it into four five pieces and sell those pieces for the same price, And then they'd do the same thing and kind of rinse and repeat. I would sometimes have, I would sometimes buy corals which I knew had been wild collected, but then I would propagate them. So I'd keep the parents, I'd break bits off or cut bits off, propagate them. Yes. So, you know, it's that whole thing. It's a necessary evil sometimes to bring I think if you're just doing it to make a quick profit, that's really bad. If you're doing it to bring new plants and new animals into the hobby.
Begonia_Lady: That's what they do with isopods as well.
Adam Critien: and it's being done in a sustainable way and you're actively breeding or propagating,
Begonia_Lady: into 'cause we can't, right? 'Cause restrictions around, you know, regulations and what you can and can't send in different countries these days. It's it's almost like we should be able to recontribute kind of mechanism way, exact thing like that.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: There are biodiversity and sustainability funds, but I'm not aware of one that's specifically rewilding
Begonia_Lady: That
Adam Critien: I mean, maybe that's something, maybe that's something we should look at doing. Yeah. I mean.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Maybe that's some next on our list of things to do around. 'Cause it it feels like there's enough of
Ash: Ha ha ha
Begonia_Lady: us now, right? In this kind of like we were talking about community earlier and we all there's a core of us that know e each other that you would think should be able to do something in that space.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean one of the companies that supported us at Malvern is Oscar And they make things like plant pots, stands, propagate,
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Hmm. bought some. I haven't used them yet, but they're
Adam Critien: he builds everything out of sustainably sourced bamboo, which is obviously, you know, really good material. It's easy to, easy to reproduce. It's kind of, you know, waterproof, the way it works is for every item he sells, he donates money to have a tree planted.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Mm.
Ash: Mm.
Adam Critien: maybe that should be a kind of a thing with plants, that if you buy a plant, especially if it's buying a plant that's potentially come from the wild, maybe you to help look after those populations in the wild. And when you talk about sustainability, you think about, OK, if you're not going to get a wild collected plant, because obviously you don't want something being or being removed from the wild and flown halfway around the world on an aircraft. But then you think these great big nurseries
Begonia_Lady: the Netherlands, right? So yeah. The carbon footprint and the and that's one of the reasons why we grow seed, but that's kind of the the niche plants that obviously culture they're starting to come in and that's a topic for another day 'cause that one's gonna get gonna get interesting. I'm not on board with that one.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah, it's another controversial subject.
Ash: That's the one where we need a cup of tea and a deep breath before we start to rant. But
Begonia_Lady: Yes. But yeah, that that it's not sustainable, right?
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: In terms of how we in in the kind of broader ambient sense of the houseplant business world, that is generally where they're coming from.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean, I suppose it goes back to pretty much any activity, any hobby or anything you do is not sustainable. So I guess it's a question of how not sustainable you allow it to be. You the good thing with some of the, like the rare begonias that you guys grow, some of the slightly rarer orchids and terrarium plants, they're not really beginner plants. So...
Begonia_Lady: Mm, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, and not on a large scale either, generally, are they? Yeah. Mm.
Adam Critien: Yes, exactly. They're quite niche. So you
Ash: Mm.
Adam Critien: would hope that if they are being wild that are then ending up with them are looking after them and propagating and sharing them. I'm not sure that always happens, but you'd hope so.
Ash: with
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Yeah.
Ash: Yeah. Certainly with orchids,
Begonia_Lady: Hmm.
Ash: it's very limited because they're so difficult to germinate seed outside of a lab. You need a laminar flow herd. It it's not easy. They're pretty much all tissue cultured now. dual orchids, because of the life cycle, it's really quite extended to get it from seed to a saleable size, around three years.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: This is why they have to come with a certain price ticket though, don't they? Because it you know it's a passion of love to to be able to produce these things for other people.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: Yeah, absolutely. I think.
Adam Critien: But that's probably a good thing because if you could I suppose the risk would be that it becomes a commodity, everyone will buy one and most a plant is expensive, obviously it's not great if you want to collect interesting plants, but it does probably mean
Ash: Mm.
Begonia_Lady: No. It makes
Ash: what, three, four years ago, how much did a Thai constellation cutting cost? And now they're a £20 for an immature plant, maybe? And yeah, they're they're disposable at that point and they're being bought as decor that will probably not be looked after, won't be in the right substrate.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: That I think I gave mine I think yeah. Exactly. I think I gave mine away.
Adam Critien: You can buy them from B &Q, yeah, or Sainsbury's, it's crazy.
Ash: it won't be in the right plant snobs, I have spent months trying to track down one plant
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: And I'm not ashamed to admit that. The the chase is part of it for me. I you know I want that one and only that one and I'm focused. I recently bought a micro killers tridax or my sparkle princess dual orchid. She's beautiful, thank you for asking. honestly, just stunning. I had to wait six months.
Adam Critien: nice.
Begonia_Lady: Photos later.
Adam Critien: Wow.
Begonia_Lady: I have to wait two years for all of mine. I have to wait for the buckers to grow. And then I forget to pick myself a plant. I'm terrible for that.
Adam Critien: Yeah.
Ash: Yeah. But
Adam Critien: you
Ash: but when we're waiting for that sort of time frame or having to hunt down that one hobbyist who imported one ever since. I think we value it more. and it's you know, how do we then transmit that? Yeah.
Begonia_Lady: That's the
Adam Critien: Definitely, definitely.
Begonia_Lady: But also that's how we make the connections, isn't it, Ash? That's how we get to know each other and how we build the community, right? That
Adam Critien: Yeah, I know with you guys, you're quite selective about who you'll sell or give your plants to, which is partly why I was so thrilled with the selection you gave us because I was like, wow, you guys are giving us some really good plants. must,
Begonia_Lady: Yeah. Does get us in hot water sometimes.
Ash: But
Begonia_Lady: That's not what we thought, Adam.
Adam Critien: It does mean hopefully people really appreciate the more unusual plants that are harder to get hold of and hopefully they'll look after them. Yeah, and that's...
Begonia_Lady: We're up to about fifteen of us now, I think, in our little plant snobbery club. We should change the name. Yeah, totally.
Adam Critien: Yeah, yeah, I mean it comes back to that whole thing about the community doesn't it? That
Ash: Yeah.
Adam Critien: we're probably all misfit one way or another and you know we've all kind of gravitated towards each other and found people that have similar interests and yeah it's really nice. It's a bit mushy isn't it when it's that whole thing about it's not the destination, it's the journey or it's the friends you made along the way or that I think.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, totally.
Ash: I think it truly is that though. I learned so much from the people around me and like for me personally, a day in which I have learned something is a day I didn't waste, always an achievement. but just having knowing that I can say, I someone who's already been there is amazing. that helps other people as well.
Adam Critien: Yeah. Yeah.
Ash: I think we're really lucky to be in n as you said about Marvin, we're not in competition with one another. We might be in competition with ourselves for that plant that we desperately want, but we all want to help each other grow beautiful plants.
Adam Critien: Yeah, definitely. No, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, and it's so nice because when you, you know, obviously you Ash, know, loads about substrates and stuff and, you know, the, the terrarium good. Well, and you as well, Nina, but I know, I know Ash is the kind of the substrate, the substrate specialist.
Begonia_Lady: No, I don't. I d I trust that's to completely Ashes corner.
Ash: So I get my Tiara out, the Duchess of Dirt.
Begonia_Lady: Absolutely. Yeah. So you very much not just a dirt.
Adam Critien: Definitely. But this is what's so nice because you speak to someone that's kind of obsessive about substrates. You speak to someone else that's very knowledgeable about different plant fertilizers. Someone else will know a lot about the best you kind of, there's so many aspects to growing plants. No one is ever going to know all of it. And if you can make friends with other people in the community, you'll find people about a substrate or a lighting issue, like, ah, that's what I'm missing. So yeah, it's so nice when people share their knowledge and then if we
Begonia_Lady: the theory. It works most of the time.
Ash: Think that's it exactly.
Adam Critien: That's the theory,
Ash: Adam, I know that you are on a time frame this evening because you've got a much more important thing to do at eight o'clock. but I wanted to say thank you for coming and talking to us for our first podcast episode. I really appreciate it. It's nice to catch up as well.
Adam Critien: You ask. No thank you.
Begonia_Lady: Absolutely.
Adam Critien: No, thank you both for having me on the show. It's great. I love chatting to you guys. I love the PHA group. Everyone in there is so nice. Yeah, the plant community is just great. yeah, all need to... The world's a scary, unpleasant place a lot of the time to chat and make friends and share ideas and focus on.
Ash: Ha ha
Begonia_Lady: yeah, we
Adam Critien: weird little plants that we've paid a fortune for that no one else would ever understand.
Begonia_Lady: But we all do. Yeah.
Ash: Absolutely that. Adam, before you go, is there anything you want to plug that you've got coming up or where should people go and look for you on the internet?
Adam Critien: thank you. Yeah, so I'm on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. I'm at Earth Champion, all one word, on Instagram and TikTok. And on YouTube, I'm at Earth Champion Ecosystems, all one word. I've done quite a lot with Instagram, but I'm actually moving more now to doing long form videos nearly finished. I've got one which is a kind of a tour of the Mulven Garden and the show January. That's going to be going out hopefully in the next few weeks. And I've also got several long form videos in the works which were about how we built some of the displays which featured in the Mulven Garden.
Begonia_Lady: Yeah, I need to see the one on your tree branch.
Adam Critien: Yeah, I mean that one's actually doing quite well. One of the orchids has just started flowering you
Ash: thank you so much for sticking with us through our first podcast. It's been amazing to have you here. to be honest with you, this was just an excuse to hang out with cool people and chat to them. But you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you. And if you have any ideas or questions, drop us a DM on Insta. Again, contact details are in the show notes.
Begonia_Lady: We look forward to seeing you in the next one and hearing your agony plant questions. Thanks all.
Ash: Thanks, bye.
