Comments on: Garden Writers Redux

By: Marren Meehan

Marren Meehan — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:40:10 +0000

Hope you’ve been enjoying Garry Trudeau’s take on garden catalogs!

By: W.W. Wustenberg

W.W. Wustenberg — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:43:59 +0000

This essay arrived on a day when I was still basking in the memories of a fine weekend with my 14-year-old niece. She came to our farm on a harvest weekend, and proved to be a natural at gathering Honeycrisp apples, golden raspberries, tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash varieties, and eggplant. My 16-year-old daughter made breakfast omelets that morning from Julia Child’s famous recipe and her pet hens. Then my niece baked her first apple pie after going back outside to get a few more. She chopped, I sauted, we blanched, we slipped skins, and then gradually the huge kettle-full reduced to become spaghetti sauce by dinner. Two of the fresh-picked spaghetti squash were steamed into “noodles,” and by dessert we had eaten all day from the 12 acres of sandy ground we call Windswept Hill Farm. Her obvious interest and joy in the bountiful life springing up from the earth kindled mine anew, as always happens when I share a garden with a young person. They are me, 45 years ago: wiping dry dirt from the sweetest carrots I ever ate with Grandpa; dipping tart rhubarb in a cup of sugar Grandma sent along. The essayist is right that those gardening moments changed me then, and change me still. Now I’m the one who gets the questions. Mine is the hand that holds enough berries to share with an amazed child. This essay reminds me that ultimately what gets shared in those moments aren’t the carrots and berries. We are allowing all the glorious attributes of gardening described in the essay to cultivate the next crop of stewards. Thank you for an inspirational read.

By: nancy meader

nancy meader — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:43:13 +0000

I have enjoyed your messages and have been gardening for over 50 years. This year I read the book BRINGING NATURE HOME and felt I had experienced an epiphany. We gardeners need to include native plants in our gardens, but the sources of seed and plant material are scarce.
what a wonderful thing if companies of your caliber would make native things available.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:38:50 +0000

I was a “First Timer” at this year’s GWA Symposium and, as such, was overwhelmed by all the beautiful gardens, informative sessions and great networking opportunities. I learned so much in so many ways and am still sorting out all the details and how to use them in my life and writing career. That said, after six days of intense information gathering, I was able to pull it all together instantly after reading your wonderful blog. The LOVE of gardening must “shine” through our writing or we may as well write for a tool catalog. Thank you for sharing your insights with us here in your blog and for your time and knowledge at GWA.

By: flyaway

flyaway — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:04:57 +0000

Gardening IS the “real deal” It is, it really,really is! George Ball – you are the bomb!

By: Marshall Smyth

Marshall Smyth — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:29:39 +0000

Like sports, gardening has teams that do compete. The passionate total planet loving organic sustainable, slap ya in the face if you even say the word pesticide near my garden gardener competes to sho he or sahe can make a garden pretty as and productive as the total all out bug killing, high potency liquid chemical glove and mask wearing gardener. The in between ones trying to be organic, but maybe cheating a little here and there. Major horticultural centers trying to show their stuff is better than the others, and then, the master gardeners who don’t have ears, only mouths…yea, it’s competition. Levels and forms much like music…ha! A garden might be called Baroque or Classical stretching things. You almost touch on a thing here. Almost. May I say? Seeds. Saving them. Growing them. It is such a natural act, one of the very defining traits of humanity. We simply can’t all of us forget how to do that, or we die. The business end of doing that is also natural, and I think that part of it must have something to do with our brain’s size. We needed to specialize, and those specializing by living in cities, doing city things, lose some of that humanity defining trait. Buying seeds will always be the thing, but don’t we hope there will always be those who save the old kinds? And others who make new kinds from the old? Our human knowledge base grows best if old ways are not lost. This one lives for the ways of old. The way things are going worldwide, we just might have to have seriously large varieties of Beets, (for example), that store well in a root cellar. Almost all my heirloom crossed tomatoes did very well this summer, though a little slower than usual.

By: Anne Dunn

Anne Dunn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:09:33 +0000

The mention of garden writers and North Carolina made me remember the wonderful book “Two Gardeners” edited by Emily Herring Wilson — letters of Elizabeth Lawrence(a NC garden writer) and Katherine White (New Yorker garden writer among other things) — Wonderful book. Made me read K White’s Onward and Upward in the Garden and Lawrence’s Gardening for Love: The Market Bulletins

By: gail wild

gail wild — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:40:51 +0000

Here here! nicely said.

By: Sharon Warden

Sharon Warden — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:27:24 +0000

I always read these essays and blogs. Great stuff. Gardening keeps me grounded (pun intended) but mine is a different kind of garden, a domain if you will. I fenced off a little “piece of earth” in front of my house (to protect from grazing horses who had eaten all of my spider plants with great relish) and have created an eclectic garden where birds, butterflies, squirrels and sharons can relax and talk to the flora. I have seen some amazing winged creatures and some amazing plants that the birds have planted! I have some lettuce coming, some collards, the bean beetles got my beans but I guess they need to eat too. I rescued 3 blanketflowers from slow death by thirst from Lowe’s, 1 dianthus and 1 angelonia just yesterday. They are so happy now out there with the Dune sunflowers, the lantana, penta, etc and the mexican petunias. There are a couple of roadside plants I “drug in” and planted, they are flowering and beautiful. It is indeed obsessive and affords very good exercise whatever age.

By: beth

beth — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:22:36 +0000

Yes, the article was a wonderful call to action. I agree wholeheartedly with Carolyn. Within this context I believe we really need to get out the native plants, exotic invasives story. I know some of you may have just rolled your eyes, but as a five year convert to the native plant movement I find that the more I learn about it, the more fascinating it becomes to me and the more I see how much there is to know (and much more yet undiscovered). There are layers and layers to the story and many concurrent plots and paths to explore. “Shiny bits” everywhere!