Marta Jandová uses automatic irrigation on her balcony. It creates a beautiful green wall, he says

When you start talking to her about the garden, tomatoes, hedgehogs, about ‘her’ dahlias, which she likes to observe, or about the moments when she looks at the rising sun on the terrace, she absolutely lights up. Then he takes a breath and won’t close his mouth.

Have you always been this enthusiastic about the garden and everything around it, or did it come gradually?

We always had a big garden, at first there were a lot of flower beds, but they gradually disappeared because we went to the cottage mostly on weekends. Mom then left the flower beds where the flowers were growing semi-wildly. And of course I didn’t enjoy the garden then. The worst part for me was leaf raking, I always ran wherever I could and since I was the smallest, my poor brother, who was seven years older, usually took it. But I always liked flowers very much.

When did you start taking care of your garden in a way that you really wanted to, and not out of necessity?

I was nineteen and I went to see my boyfriend in Germany. We lived with his parents, who had a rather small garden with a pond, so there wasn’t much space left for gardening. But there was an overgrown, unkempt flower bed under our balcony, which I carefully tended, weeded and planted perennials. Gardening became more and more interesting to me and I started growing tomatoes. Although originally it was because of mosquitoes.

How are tomatoes related to mosquitoes?

We had a lot of mosquitoes there in the summer and someone advised me that mosquitoes don’t like tomatoes. So I put a box of tomatoes in front of each window. And I began to find out that a tomato is not like a tomato, that they are like that and poppies, I bought different varieties of seedlings and over time I thought that I would try to grow tomatoes from seeds. So I grew tomato seedlings and everything and it got to the point where my ex-boyfriend built me ​​a greenhouse.

I also tried salads, but only for a while, because before it grows, the slugs will eat it, and I don’t have the heart to kill the slugs and cut them up like some people do, so then it was left to the cucumbers, tomatoes and those flowers. Even though I no longer lived in a house with a garden, I always wanted to at least have flowers on the window. In Germany they say that if you manage to grow anything, you have a green thumb, so yeah, I have that. Now all the orchids at my house have bloomed in the last fortnight.

Do you have a flower at home that you have a special relationship with or that you are very proud of?

I quite often go to exhibitions at the Botanical Garden, and the last time I got a beautiful orchid there, I’m happy with it. And I’m proud of all my flowers. I have a special relationship with my cactus, which I grew from a seed thirty years ago. At the time, I thought I would put the seed on cotton wool, then on the window frame, but only later did I find out that it is much more complicated. The seed must be in the dark, so you have to leave it in a box under the bed until it germinates. This is how I grew several cacti in Germany, but I took this one with me and have been taking care of it for years. Now it’s about half a meter.

Your relationship to gardening, to cultivation and to nature in general is intertwined with the YouTube series JandoVíc, which you started filming together with your ‘step-mothers’ a year ago. How did it all come about?

My stepmother Martina bought an old cottage with a large garden and orchard some time ago. Since she had never taken care of such a garden by herself and suddenly had a huge harvest of apples and other fruits, she got a little lost in it and made funny stories on Instagram. That’s what I thought. First, I advised her to start shooting a gardening show herself. Then I told her that we could do it together, and finally I thought that Alice, Dad’s wife, could go with us. And it succeeded.

Where would you place the show?

So a bit like a recipe with testing. We can’t do everything, on the contrary, and that’s why we invite people who know more about it. And sometimes we fool around not only in the garden. So it’s a show for those who love the garden and also three crazy ‘over forty’.

Do you remember what interesting things or tips you already learned from the experts thanks to the show?

For example, landscape architect Ferdinand Leffler told us a lot of things in a nutshell. I was very pleased with him. What to plant and where to build. Where it blows from and where things thrive. It is his job and great passion. And he’s really good. I was surprised how quickly he got his bearings in the garden and how he immediately saw how it might look one day.

What flowers do you grow in the flower beds at the cottage?

I have peonies, that is my memory of my childhood and of my mother who always grew them in this garden. I bought a variety that has extra large flowers, the heads are maybe up to twenty centimeters. Unfortunately, when we were on vacation last year, they just allowed themselves to bloom, so I didn’t see them. I also really like lupins in the flower beds, it’s called lupine. And gerberas, irises, foxgloves…

And then butterfly bushes! I planted them in different colors all along the fence, and when they bloom, flocks of butterflies fly to them every day. Unfortunately, last year there were fewer butterflies compared to other years, but at other times we had around fifty of them flying around our garden at once. I cut the butterfly bushes wrong the first time, but now I know that in the spring they have to be cut at the very bottom in order for them to grow tall and bloom beautifully. Every year I learn something new in the garden.

What new will you bet this year?

Watercress! First of all, they are beautiful, secondly, they are really good and healthy, and thirdly, once you have them, you never have to buy them again, because all you have to do is collect the seeds from the flower bed after they have finished blooming. Every year I store them in an old can and just sow them in the spring. I had them in window boxes and this year I want to plant them along the fence so that they stretch over the wooden slats.

You mentioned that you are planning to start raised beds. How complicated is it?

We already have two in the garden, strawberries are growing in one, herbs in the other, but we bought them ready-made and were just planting them. In my opinion, building a raised bed is not as complicated as establishing it. We carried buckets of clay from the compost that dad started in the garden about fifty years ago and is still adding to it, so the soil underneath is really extremely high quality and fertile. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we planted herbs one weekend and a week later we almost had an herb garden. Dad, a lifelong gardener, was also surprised. Raised beds are just great – everything grows beautifully, you don’t have to bend so much and it’s actually such a big pot so it looks great in the garden.

What technological helpers can’t you do without when taking care of your garden or flowers?

Some time ago I discovered the perfect watering system for the flowers on our Prague balcony. My husband and I wanted it to be as green as possible, and thanks to this system, a green wall will always grow in the boxes placed on top of each other. It’s not even connected to electricity – we just add water to the bucket, which is right on the balcony, the water is distributed through pipes to the boxes, the small pump is powered by solar energy, and we can schedule the watering as often and for as long as we want.

Let’s go back to the garden you’ve known since childhood. How does it change over time?

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Archive of Marta Jandová / Archive of Marta Jandová

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Spring is Marty’s favorite season

A beech tree has always been a part of it, which eventually occupied and shaded a large part of the garden. Unfortunately, it broke during one storm and we had to have it cut down. We all condemned it, especially Dad, whose garden is connected to ours, and who saw the tree grow. I climbed on him as a child…

At that time, I was filming the garden during the storm, I thought to myself, just so that a tree does not fall on our barracks, and suddenly there was a bang, part of the tree was lying on the power line, half of the village was without power, the firemen, the electrician arrived… But it has that and a happy ending. We found a gentleman who makes furniture from old trees, so he made us two armchairs with a chair from beech. My husband has them in his surgery, all the patients admire them, and I’m glad that the tree actually still exists.

He was left with a huge tree stump that couldn’t be dug out, so we milled it out and it’s still part of the garden. I’m glad, because I always thought that there were a lot of animals living in those old roots that can continue to live there even now. We have mice, moles in the garden, sometimes they take away some flowers, but I don’t mind. In the garden I follow the motto ‘live and let live’.

… which in your garden also applies to hedgehogs or dahlias, which you say you almost adopted. What do you do for them?

Right now I’m thinking about getting a door in the fence for the hedgehogs. So that they can freely get out of the garden and maybe back again. A hedgehog in the garden does no harm, on the contrary, it can be useful, and I will be happy if it can crawl into our pile of leaves in the winter. And our goldenrods, which fly thousands of kilometers every year to nest in our garden, I just adore them!

The year before last, the jay started destroying their nests, and last year the woodpecker again. They were pecking a hole from the bottom to get to the eggs or the chicks… So we bought them artificial nests made of wood and concrete. First, two as a test, and when the gerbils settled in them within two days, we bought another eight.

They still have three or four nests of their own in the garden. Every year I dread them coming again, and when they do, I’m really happy. I listen to their chatter as the sun sets, and last year I watched a sparrowhawk teach her young to fly, which was fascinating. By the way, our whole family is a member of the Ornithological Society, thanks to which we learn a lot of interesting things.

What does the garden give you on a mental level?

How many times I go to sit in the garden in the morning when everyone is still sleeping. I sit on the bench, watch the sun rise, listen to the birds and think how beautiful the world is. For now, we go to the cottage on weekends and return to Prague, but I would like it to be reversed one day and we go to Prague ‘to the cottage’. My dad is the same way. When he didn’t have concerts, he preferred to be at the cottage, while mom lived with us children in Prague. We went to see him on weekends, and then he took my hand and showed me how his tomatoes grow. That’s probably why I still want to grow them. I always clear my head completely in the garden. I usually work without gloves because I like to feel the clay on my hands. And then when I see the first results, that’s always a joy.

What does spring mean to you?

Spring is my favorite season, probably also because I was born in this season. I’m really looking forward to celebrating this year’s round birthday, because I’ll be celebrating it with my friends and the band on April 4 at Lucerna Music Bar.

Source: Receptář magazine