Hello, everyone, and welcome to the indefense a plants podcast, the official podcast of indefenseaplants.com.

What's up? This is your host, Matt. Welcome to the show. How is everyone doing this week?

Today, we are diving into the world of prairie gardening.

And who better to talk to us about this than author Benjamin vote.

Benjamin is the owner of monarch gardens LLC, a native prairie landscape design company.

But he is also author of this incredible book called prairie up and introduction to natural garden design.

And within this book, you were going to find a wonderful set of ways of approaching not only how to grow grassland plants in a beautiful and inspiring way,

but also how to navigate things like plant sourcing garden tools and working within city ordinances.

I can't recommend this book enough, especially if you live in an area where grasslands once grew and no longer do today,

because any little bit you can do to help this ecosystem is going to be very, very beneficial and starting with prairie up is a great way to do just that.

So I don't want to keep you from it any longer without further ado. Here's my conversation with Benjamin vote. I hope you enjoy.

Alrighty, Benjamin vote. It is so great to have you on the podcast.

I am really excited to talk to you about your book today.

But first, let's start off with an introduction. Tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what it is you do.

I am a prairie garden designer. So that means I'm basically using a lot of native plants, native to prairie region, where I find myself here in the middle of the country.

And then I do a lot of speaking around the nation, even around the world. And yeah, sell some online classes. And you know, it's a, it's a multifaceted life.

Nice. And you've done an incredible job. We're here today to talk to you about your book prairie up an introduction to natural garden design.

And before we get into that, I'm curious where this all began for you, because it's obvious. It's a passion. It's truly a profession. And you do it really well.

But it had to start somewhere. So where did that really begin?

It started in two distinct places, I think I could say. And the first would have to be when I was much, much younger, growing up gardening with my mom.

I think for a lot of us, that's how it starts. Or at least there's this nascent seed that's put in us by our, by our mother's or grandparents or fathers, or whoever.

She was always an avid gardener, always buying new plants. And she'd sometimes drag me to the nursery and maybe not so much drag me.

...