Welcome back everyone to the Epic Gardening podcast.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to actually operate a greenhouse at a botanic garden?

I think when you go to, at least when I go to a farm or a nursery of some kind that feels

a little more familiar to me.

We have Ari Novi on the show.

He's the president and CEO of the San Diego Botanic Garden, and when I was up at the World

of Housewives exhibit, it struck me just how different the conditions would be for operating

that particular glass house compared to, let's say, a hydroponic tomato farm, which is

a little bit more uniform, and so what does it actually like to work in one of these

spaces?

Well, you just hit the nail on the head with the key difference between botanic garden

and greenhouses and almost any other kind of greenhouse.

Most greenhouses are commercial in nature, and they're pretty uniform.

The logic of the commercial enterprise is, I want to grow a lot of the same or similar

plants and get them out for sale.

Botanic gardens were a little different.

We're trying to grow an incredible diversity of plants in one space, and that's a huge

horticultural challenge because every one of those plants has different needs, and

yet we're using a greenhouse, which is a controlled, growing environment, to do that.

Since the majority of the greenhouse industry, that actually builds greenhouses in the systems

that maintain the conditions within a greenhouse, are really driven by the commercial side of

it, there's a lot of tweaking and fun that you have to go through to get your greenhouse

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