Wherein I interview gardeners of all sorts, visit gardens created by gardening people, and write about the gardener’s world in general. Please also see my gardeners portrait project in progress: The Green Minds Project.
For the second year in a row I have been working with Fiskars Project Orange Thumb® as a member of their editorial board. Project Orange Thumb® gives a financial lending hand to educational, therapeutic, and community gardens in the US and Canada, and this year 30 gardens were each awarded $3,500 in cash and tools. …
Way back in the depths of deepest winter I accepted a position with Fiskars Project Orange Thumb® as a member of the editorial board. Project Orange Thumb gives a financial lending hand to community gardens in the US and Canada and this year 30 gardens were slotted to each receive $3,500 in cash and tools. …
My friend David Leeman is an adventurous gardener whose experiences span a widely divergent range of growing conditions. During Toronto’s growing season he works non-stop as a professional gardener, tending to and restoring gardens for clients. When not working on other people’s gardens, David experiments in growing trees seedlings and has been growing his own …
“…increasingly I am finding it very hard to justify that sort of tidy up, very designed garden over the fact that it’s an ecosystem and I care much more about the insects and the other animals, birds, than I care about my own aesthetic being.” This week we take a trip across the pond (as …
“Everybody right now who is gardening (and who lives long enough), will eventually be a disabled gardener, it’s just that some of us encounter disability earlier than others do.” Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the physicality of gardening. When I was younger I was well aware of the financial, time, and space limitations …
I’ve known this week’s guest, Derek Powazek, for ages and while he claims to have only become a gardener 7 years ago when he moved into a home with a yard, I can’t recall thinking of him in any other way. In my mind he was always a gardener without a garden; his apartment full …
Do you love tomatoes, want to grow tomatoes, or want some advice on new varieties to try? My guest this week is tomato crazy gardener, Kelly Gilliam. Kelly was a regular of the now defunct You Grow Girl forums way back in the day. Back then she was gardening in zone 8b out on the …
A recent Grow Write Guild writing prompt asked you to write about loss, attachment, and letting go. The idea for the prompt came to me as a result of the volume of beloved plants that I lost this spring due to a particularly harsh winter. However, I suspect that there were other losses in the …
“I thought, “Gardening requires so much attentiveness that I will feel put out if I do this.” I literally spend 10 minutes a day… It’s become 10 minutes of ME.” My guest this week is Karen Walrond a professional speaker, writer, and photographer. You may know her from her site Chookoolonks, where she pairs her …
My first episode was with a very rural gardener, so I thought I would flip the script for the second episode and talk to someone who gardens under very different circumstances. My interview with Ramon Gonzalez begins with a mutual praise for growing bulbs and even delves into his love of some of the same …
This podcast was a longtime in the making. I’m a visually-oriented person; sound is not my forte. It took quite some doing (and a lot of help and encouragement from Davin), but after a seemingly endless stream of hurdles I am pleased to finally launch my new podcast, What’cha Growing?. Since this is the inaugural …
Last weekend I visited my friend Barry Parker, the man with the best backyard garden in Toronto. Barry recently returned from a botanical tour of South Africa (he is starting to post pictures on his blog) and we were treated to a slideshow of photos he took on the trip. So of course, I have …