Garden Rant

One rises; another falls

Voodoo Lily image from the Gentling garden, Asheville

There’s no doubt that independent garden centers and nurseries—like many businesses—have been seeing their sales decline over the last few years. The percentage dips have been in as much as the double digits, depending on where you are in the U.S. Many nurseries and IGCs have been forced to close.

Things could look up, probably as the stately pace of the economic recovery continues. But is it really all about the recession?

Not so much, says consultant Clint Albin, who regularly works with independent garden centers. Albin always has interesting things to say (In a Regency romance, someone would flirt their fan and trill “Such a rattle!” here.), so I was pleased that he was one of the attendees at last weekend’s Asheville bloggers’ meet. He’s lots of fun.

Albin’s theory is that a major recent impact on garden center sales has been a disappointing performance by the baby boomer set. Why? He says it was expected that aging baby boomers, sliding into their golden years, would turn to gardening—and other gentle home-related pastimes—more and more as they lost interest in the passions of their youth.

But then came … VIAGRA. Suddenly an activity that had become somewhat problematic was very much on the menu. Who needs a hobby? And there you have it. Garden centers were the hapless victims of a renewed interest in sex on the part of older Americans.

I can’t say I really buy this. It doesn’t fully explain the female part of this equation, and—well—I'm sticking with the recession. But I like the originality; kudos to Clint.

There is one irony here that has always struck me. I think it is true that many of us got into gardening somewhat later in our adulthood. I am certainly one of those people—I really didn’t start seriously gardening until after forty. But it just seems so unfortunate that I initiated an activity that requires the worst kind of lifting and bending you can imagine just when my body became more vulnerable to the damage that can inflict.

Clint, can you explain this?

Making Nature Irresistible

Rant readers, please welcome Ken Druse, one of the few garden writers whose work I find truly exciting. Druse is the author of 17 books about ornamental gardening, including The Natural Shade Garden, Planthropology, and a supremely useful book just released in paperback, Making More Plants: The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation. What these books have in common is a refreshing sense of style that encompasses both their glossily beautiful photographs and Druse's playful and provocative prose. Even if you are, like me, a die-hard backyard farmer who looks upon her less successful efforts in the ornamental garden with something like disdain, you will find yourself at once intrigued and inspired. Ken's newest book, the just-published Natural Companions: The Garden Lover's Guide to Plant Combinations is illustrated by Ellen Hoverkamp's dramatic scanner photographs of plants grouped by theme--and by a moment in time and space.

Q: Your books are much more idea-driven than many gardening books. Tell me how you decide what to write about.

A: Very often, the people I meet think that I'm an expert, and I suppose that after all this time, I am something of an expert. But I'm really more of a journalist. I tend to choose my subjects because I want to know something or have a problem. For example, my garden in New Jersey needed more plants, but I didn't know that much about propagation. So I consulted the experts and tried every technique they suggested three different ways until I found the best one for Making More Plants.  

Natural Companions came about slightly differently. I'd wanted to work with artist Ellen Hoverkamp for some time. Her fine art work doesn't illustrate a botanical concept or tell a story, though it's extremely pretty in way it uses plants for color and shape. But I wanted to use her photographs to tell stories.

I also wanted to make a gardening book that was beautiful and affordable, something people would want to pick up physically in an electronic age. The publisher had realistic expecations for the book, given the market, but it has been popular enough that they had to order a second printing before the official publication date. Now, my publisher is looking at gardening books again, which is good.

Q: Thank you from all the writers here at Garden Rant! What else are you hoping to accomplish with your work?

A: Well, I worry about nature deprivation. I have cousins who taught their kids that nature will kill you, that every spider is potentially lethal. I see fewer and fewer people outside. And despite the green movement, we still have Scotts as the anti-Christ, putting poison on birdseed.

Horticulture has become a profession, mow, blow, and go.  At least when Dad used to mow the lawn in the past, he'd get a little bit of oxygen. When we were kids, the rule was, you had to come in when the street lights came on, though we never came in even then. Now, no one is outside. If you can get a kid outside before they are three to plant a seed or a tree, that could change everything.

With every single book, I'm trying to get people to recognize that plants are alive, to realize how incredible they are, how sensational. I'm trying to promote nature through beauty. 

Still More Earthworm Madness!

Andrew Keys continues his podcast series, Garden Confidential, with--guess what?  Earthworms!

He and I chatted about all things wormy a while back, and if you just haven't had enough worms already this week, you'd better head over to Fine Gardening's website and check that out.

Have You Peed on Your Garden Lately?

Well, why not?

Our favorite garden professor, Jeff Gillman, tells you how. 

Well.  Not how.  I'm pretty sure you know how.  He'll tell you why, though!

These and other amazing bits of information can be found in his clever and highly useful new book Decoding Gardening Advice, written with his co-author Meleah Maynard. We love the book; go check it out, and enjoy Dr. Gillman's advice.

 

Cactomania: We Have a Winner!

Thanks, everyone, for your highly amusing comments on Scott Calhoun's post about his fine new book, The Gardener's Guide to Cactus.  I was just in Phoenix for a day, and I drove around with a genuine interest and curiosity about the cacti I saw, all thanks to Scott and his clever insights into them.

Anyway, our winner is Michelle at An Evidence-Based Garden, and y'all should really get over there and read her blog, which is just fascinating.

It’s Not Gardening, It’s Cactomania

Y'all please welcome Friend of Rant Scott Calhoun, author of a new book called The Gardener's Guide to Cactus. Read on for the chance to win not just a book, but an actual cactus. I have to say, this is a totally amazing and really fun book.  Gardening with surgical instruments?  Japanese plant smugglers?  Cacti that are so rare that the only remaining specimens wear metal tags in the wild?  Cacti bred by Luther Burbank?  Who knew? Oh, and after reading his book, I now know how to select a cactus that is seed-grown, not poached from the wild, except when poaching is a good thing,which involves conservations groups grabbing rare cacti from sites that are about to be strip-mined or drilled for oil.  There's a lot of international intrigue in this book, is what I'm saying.  But let's let Scott say it: 

 Why cactus?

I tend to specialize in horticultural lost causes, and cactus are the outcasts and misfits of the gardening world. While I was photographing gardens around the U.S. for my book, Designer Plant Combinations, it occurred to me that most home gardens contain exactly zero species of cactus. In my estimation, they are the most underrepresented group of plants in gardens, nurseries, and plant books.

As I stewed over this injustice, my own cactus collection expanded. I grew a species of pincushion whose flowers smell exactly like Lemon Pledge, and a prickly pear cactus whose fruit makes alluring magenta lemonade and margaritas. I added the totem pole, whose spineless skin looks like melted wax, and the feather cactus whose furry spines feel like the hair of a terrier. I became ensnared in a love affair with spiny plants. I caught, and still have, an STD (spine transmitted disease) called cactomania.

An impressive pot of twin-spined pincushion (Mammillaria geminispina) growing with the wildflower sundrops (Calylophus hartwegii).

I began taking long dangerous trips into the Mexican backcountry with succulent plant explorers. I became acquainted with a vast subculture of spiny plant enthusiasts and cactus traders across the globe: a Bangkok peyote grower, a Tokyo executive who collects living rock cactus, and a young Czech organizing a Prague conference called “Spiny Perspectives”. I lusted after artisan made pots fashioned to resemble meteorites and sea creatures.

A display of otherworldly Mike Cone spiny pots and assorted cactus and succulents at Sticky Situation nursery.

Got Weirdness?

The gardens cactomaniacs cultivate are hardly traditional. Their plants are not potted, but rather “staged”. They plant cactus among knobby rocks to approximate their natural habitats and the most discerning collectors apply a final top-dressing of micro-gravel collected from special anthills whose locations they keep secret. As a final flourish, wildflower seeds from the same range of the staged species are sprinkled over the gravel. Many cactus species are exceptionally slow-growing and long-lived—some so much so that they will be passed down to the next generation. They more closely resemble sculptures set on plinths than plants. I’m not even sure if what cactus growers do with their plants can be called gardening, but don’t care because it is so weirdly beautiful! I’ve decided that weirdness is a greatly undervalued quality in gardens. In my horticultural pursuits, I aspire to high weirdness.

A grouping of the aptly named Bishop’s Cap cactus in a mid-century modern Vessel Pottery container.

Prickly and Tasty

The ethno-botanical history of cactus is deliciously culinary. It is full of marvelously tasty but strangely packaged fruit absent from the produce aisles of the First World: hedgehog cactus fruits are encased in a web of spines that magically fall off when the fruit is ripe, revealing a strawberry-like nugget; the whortleberry, whose grape-sized fruit has the acid-sweet zing of a cranberry-blueberry cross; the organ pipe, whose golf-ball sized gems are said to be the tastiest of all cactus. The organ pipe’s fruit are eaten fresh, and turned into wine by the native Seri in a wild bacchanalia celebrating their New Year. The organ pipe fruit, which is full of tiny seeds, is so prized that the Seri historically enjoyed it twice—picking through their own feces to reclaim the nutty high-fat seeds in a “second harvest.” This is not a practice I recommend for the home gardener, but to each his own.

The fruit of the dinner plate prickly pear is delicious and mysterious.

Kings of Xeriscape

And then there are the practical reasons for growing cactus. Cactus are the undisputed grand champions of drought tolerance. If climate doomsday scenarios prove true, neither watering restrictions nor hotter temperatures should prevent gardeners from planting cactus. When climatologists speak of desertification, I think, more cactus! As a person who is occasionally forced to live a life outside my garden, to hit the road and sell some books, I find it comforting to know that my cactus collection will be stoically enduring whatever the Mother Nature dishes out in my absence.

They are the ideal antidote to fussy perennials that wilt in a warm breeze or trees insistent on dropping their leaves around the yard. Cactus, on the other hand, are nearly perfectly clean, dropping almost no annoying leaf litter on your patio. They also require less watering than any kind of plant that isn’t plastic. When I walk by my cactus, they seem to say, “By the way old chap, would you mind giving me a sprinkle of water when you think of it, it is bloody hot out here. No rush, don’t trouble yourself, just next time you have a watering can at the ready.” Yes, my prickly ones speak to me with British accents. In fact, my cactus sound like Keith Richards.

Manliness

To me, cactus are more masculine than any other plant group. Even those with stunning flowers (and there are many), avoid prissiness by arranging them in a snarl of thorns. The sort of frilliness associated with cottage gardens is nowhere to be seen in the cactus world. When garden clubs ask me to speak, they often say something like, “you can speak on any of your areas of expertise, but please, no cactus.” I usually sneak some cactus in anyway.

It is hard to get manlier than a Totem Pole cactus in front of a tangerine colored wall.

Beyond Ouch!

The pain factor is way overblown. With good gloves and a little technique, you hardly ever get poked. And when you do, it is just not a big deal. Take it from someone who is horrified by needles. In fact, the pain you share with your cactus may further endear you--a sort of horticultural Stockholm syndrome. You too may contract an STD in these intimate interactions with your plants, but the symptoms are largely manageable and not completely debilitating. Buy some long tweezers, a set of welding gloves (for the very prickliest species), and you are pretty well set. For small plants, regular gardening gloves work fine. You can also handle many species by their roots without gloves at all.

But I live in Zone 5?

Well, yes, you cannot grow as many species outdoors in the coldest parts of the country, but in a sunny windowsill, you can grow a host of potted cactus plants that you can bring onto the patio during the warm months. And if you want to grow cactus in the ground, there are a few hardy species to choose from. Consider the following: Potato cactus (Opuntia fragilis) is the most cold-hardy cactus and grows well into Canada. It is low growing, forming a mat of little round pads, blooms pink or yellow, and is hardy to Zone 1. Beehive cactus (Escobaria vivipera) grows from Mexico to southern Canada, and sports hot pink flowers and fruit with a strawberry-kiwi flavor. It is hardy to Zone 4b.

A Beehive cactus in all its pink glory near Denver, Colorado.

Obsession with spiny plants is not limited to the desert Southwest. Just ask the Oregon-based author of the Danger Garden blog, whose mantra is, “Nice plants are boring – my love is for plants that can hurt you.”

Okay!  We promised you some free stuff.  Any cactus-related comment will get you the possibility of winning Scott's book.  But wait, that's not all!  He'll send a purple fishnet prickly pear pad (or a more cold hardy species) to the reader who posts the most interesting cactus love tweet to his twitter account: @scottcalhoun.

My Author Crush: An Armchair Garden Classic for $1.99

My very clever publisher, Algonquin Books, is trying something new:  they're pricing seven of their backlist ebooks at only $1.99, for one week only, as a way of sharing the love we all have for some of these, shall we say, vintage titles.  In February, they asked seven Algonquin authors to choose a book by another Algonquin author that they especially adore.  An Author Crush, they called it.

So I was one of those seven authors, and I chose Richard Goodman's garden memoir French Dirt.  This book came out in 1991, ten years before I published my first book.  My editor suggested I read it to get a handle on how garden memoirs work.  That's how we talked about my book:  she would say, "Have you read this?" and I'd read it, and come back and say, "Okay, yeah, I see what you mean, but have you read that?"  and she'd go read that, and then she'd say, "That's a good point, but now go read this."  No wonder it took a couple of years to edit that book--we had a lifetime's worth of reading to do just to get through a conversation!

Anyway, I eventually got to know Richard and realized that he's an extraordinarily interesting person.  Moving to France and planting a garden there--even though he had no experience with either France or gardens--made good material for a book, but he's a writer first, and really barely a gardener at all.  Maybe that's what I love about this book.  He was more concerned with writing an interesting work of literature than with saying anything in particular about gardening.  (He's since gone on to write two books about New York, my other favorite subject, including a fine limited edition work illustrated with letterpress called The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker's Journey Through 9/​11, and a lovely book on creative writing.)

Algonquin has been fiercely loyal to this book.  Most publishers let their backlist (meaning their older titles) dwindle away and go out of print, but Algonquin has this crazy idea that if a book is worth publishing, it's worth keeping in print.  They used to publish hardcovers and let another publisher do the paperback, but now they publish their own paperbacks, too.  In Richard's case, another publisher did the paperback version, but when they were done with it, Algonquin re-issued the book in paperback, giving it not just a second, but a third life.  That is crazy.  Seriously, nobody does stuff like that.

And now--the $1.99 ebook edition!  This is a very interesting and worthwhile experiment.  The questions of how an ebook should be priced, and whether an older book should be priced lower than a new release (much as movies are) is a subject of hot debate in the publishing world and impossible to address here.  All I know is that I would love to find out that these kind of special pricing deals can kick-start a great book from a few years back, and send a few bucks flowing into the bank account of some hard-working writer.

So!  Whether you read ebooks on a tablet, a dedicated e-reader, or on your computer, you can get a lovely bit of armchair garden/travel writing in the form of French Dirt this week for $1.99.  Go here to see all the books on the list, and click on any one of them to get a list of links to download to your device.  And remember, if you read ebooks on anything other than an Amazon Kindle or a Barnes & Noble Nook, you can buy your ebooks directly from a real, brick and mortar independent bookstore.  Go here to find out how.

A bit more techy advice--A couple people emailed me with this question, so here's the info if you need it:   If you don't currently own an ereader or tablet but think you might be getting one, you can still buy the book this week and read it later.  If you purchase it through Google eBookstore, it will remain in your Google account--you could read it on your computer now or read it later on any tablet or ereader that works with Google (which is all of them except the Kindle or Nook, I believe.)  I believe you can do something similar on Amazon--you can buy the Kindle edition now and read it later on a Kindle or any computer, tablet, smartphone etc. running the Kindle app. The price is only good this week, but the book will stay in your account long after this week is over. Hope that helps.

Chicken Gardens: We Have a Winner!

Thanks, everybody, for your comments in response to my chicken gardening dilemma. Jessi Bloom, author of Free Range Chicken Gardens, chose a winner and offered all kinds of interesting ideas for keeping the girls out of the vegetable beds. 

First, our winner is Kerry, who Jessi chose because she loved her ideas about creating a chicken "spa."  (Oh, please do not let my chickens find out what a spa is.  I'll never hear the end of it!)

Okay, here's what Jessi has to say on the subject:

 

It is no surprise that Garden Rant readers have a lot of great suggestions about how to handle your free range chickens and a vegetable garden.   No one wants to go through all of the hard work of growing your own food to have it scratched up or eaten by your hens. 

There are a lot of factors in deciding what to do and it depends on several things: how many chickens you have, how serious you are about growing food, what kind of food you are growing, and how does your garden currently function – is it good chicken “habitat” with a lot of food and shelter for them, or does it have sparsely planted beds with an expansive lawn and a few raised raised beds?  The same solution isn’t going to work for everyone. 

For this situation there are a few main options:

1) Protect your plants with some kind of barrier method. This is what I do personally in my vegetable garden and in a recent blog post I wrote about what I keep in my “chicken garden toolbox”.   By using these tools, you can still employ the chickens to help you with tasks like pest control without confinement, but it might be kind of annoying to set up, move and take down your barriers every season.  And then there is the aesthetics factor.  I personally don’t mind it one bit and early spring my veggie garden starts out with a little touch of steam punk style.  Then it quickly turns into an edible jungle.  

My vegetable garden mid season – the small wall is to keep rabbits out, but the chickens can hop right over it

2) Keep your chickens in a separate area away from your food crops. If you have too many hens to free range or your garden is only for your own food production, this is going to be a lot easier for you to manage.   

3) Integrate your chickens into your garden by using a confined range system.  My favorite method would be to use paddocks.  Basically you rotate the flock through different fenced paddocks or zones at different times of the year.  Much like a rotational grazing system that a smart farmer would use with their livestock on pasture so the land isn’t overgrazed.  You could have different types of edibles (perennial and annual) in each and rotate them out when the crops are ripe or starting to get overgrazed.  I envision many ways of doing this and it is great for the chickens to food to forage, keep pests in check and help with soil fertility without a lot of work on your part after the initial set up.

This is an example of what a paddock system layout could be in a small back yard

Amy, on page 88 in the book there is a sample drawing with 3 rotational zones for edibles which you could use as a guideline if you wanted to go that route, but for now you may find that barriers are the easiest way to manage.  And, if you are up for a redesign and I am ever in your neck of the woods I’d love to stop by, have a few drinks and help you come up with a brand new chicken garden with lots of edibles!

My Chicken Gardening Dilemma

Please excuse the dismal condition of my backyard.  It is winter, after all,  In a few months, the perennials will be in flower and the whole thing will be quite cheerful.  But here's my problem--and if you've got an idea, you might win a book, so read on:

I've been growing very little in the way of vegetables the last few years, in part because I travel too much to take care of them, and in part because the chickens free-range and will either eat or dig up whatever I plant.  But this year, inspired by Michele's fantastic book, I am determined to make more of an effort.  I've got a timer for irrigation and I'm prepared to use it.  Now I just have to figure out how to keep the chickens out of the veggies.  In addition to the six raised beds you see here (placed roughly where they will go--more clearing and adjusting to come), I'll put a straw bale garden back there along the fence, next to the run.  That's always been an easy place to exclude the chickens, because I only have two sides to worry about.  (video on my straw bale experiment here, btw.)

So!  I need help.  I need to figure out how to keep the girls out of my vegetable beds.  Fortunately, there's a new book devoted entirely to the subject of gardening with chickens:  Jessi Bloom's Free Range Chicken Gardens, just out from Timber Press. Everything you want to know about gardening with chickens--including how to keep them away from poisonous plants, a subject close to my heart--is here.

And yes, as you can see, I blurbed the book.  So--you know.  I already know I like it, and I've already read all of its good advice and studied the very pretty pictures.

Now it's your turn!  What's your advice for me?  Short of fencing off half the yard, how can I keep the girls out of my raised beds?  What would you do for something short like lettuce as compared to something tall like cherry tomatoes?  My two smaller Ameraucanas can fly--at least a little--and they can squeeze into some pretty narrow gaps. So how do I keep them out but make it easy for me to get in? 

(And by the way, I don't really need a wooden structure around a vegetable bed.  I just thought that would make it easier to attach chicken wire or whatever.  I could even go taller than the boards, making them all straw bale beds.)

Post your suggestions, or just make a comment, and feel free to link to something you've tried or you like. Or ask your own chicken/garden question.  Next week, we'll have Jessi on to offer her ideas, respond to your comments and questions, and choose a winner!

Oh, and by the way--Jessi's doing a bunch of events, primarily on the West Coast, but she'll be in Maryland, too.  Check out her schedule here.

Also, there's a contest going on at Timber to win a chicken garden start-up kit.  Check that out.

 

I'm off doing something holiday-ish

But where you should go is Lauren Scheuer's wonderful chicken blog, Scratch and Peck, to read this totally charming post about her chicken's feet.

I've written about Lauren before.  She's an illustrator, which is what makes her blog so wonderful, and she's a warm and funny person, as I learned when we finally met in person in Boston last year.

And I have been meaning to say this forever, and I wish I'd remembered before Christmas, but:  You can get some of her wonderful, whimsical chicken art in T-shirt form right here.  Good stuff.

Oh!  And!  You know where else you should go?

Over to Fine Gardening to check out Andrew Keys' latest podcast.  It's no longer called RadioGarden, it's now called Garden Confidential, but it's as clever and well-produced as ever. You'll get to hear the Fine Gardening staff sitting around being--well, being themselves. Pretty cool.

Wolfgang Oehme's Crusade to Change the American Garden

Many in the gardening world are mourning the recent loss of Wolfgang Oehme, one of the world's most famous and influential landscape architects.  He and his design partner James van Sweden populared sweeps of ornamental grasses and easy, mostly native perennials in a naturalistic style named The New American Garden.  Oeheme has said he wanted the masses of meadow-like grasses and perennials to be both a metaphor for the great prairies of the Midwest and also to remind viewers of ocean waves and indeed they do - with any breeze at all.  They planted not in the usual groups of three or five but by the hundreds or thousands, depending on the size of the landscape.

"I like it wild", Oehme said in describing this style.  He also liked gardens that are natural - no chemicals - and gardens that are interesting in all four seasons.  He loved that his gardens, filled with low-care, sustainable plants from around the world, attracted birds, bees, butterflies, dragonflies and frogs.

The New American Garden style was a huge departure from and rebellion against the sweeps of nothing but lawn that up until then had typified American landscapes.  Rather than keeping front yards open to the street, he planted shrubs and trees in front of homes, to create privacy - also an unAmerican practice.  Even more heretical, Oehme hated the most commonly used shrub in the Mid-Atlantic region - the azalea - on the grounds that it flowers for just two weeks before becoming a boring green bush.  He championed grasses instead - they look good all year, and of course they move.

Some of his design team's more famous works include embassies, universities and private homes, including Oprah Winfrey’s.  In Washington, they designed the grounds of sevearl major federal buildings, including the Federal Reserve Building, where he covered its two acres over a parking garage with sweeps of fountain grass, 'Autumn Joy' sedum and feather reed grass.

The New American style quickly became popular with other designers and nurseries had to start growing these plants to keep up with demand.  In addition to grasses, they popularized such perennials as black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, salvias, joe-pye weed, and Russian sage.

Oehme was born in Germany and began planting things at the age of five.  As a teenager he worked in a nursery, then for a local parks department, where he became interested in landscape design. He studied landscape architecture at the University of Berlin and worked on large projects for the Frankfurt parks department and for nurseries in Germany, Sweden and England.

In 1957, he left what had become Communist East Germany to come to the United States and settle in Baltimore, which he considered a horticultural desert.  So he embarked on a crusade to do something about that desert - by designing for the Baltimore parks department and on the side, for private residences.  Those early private clients were pretty gutsy to break the mold of lawn and azalea-filled gardens in their neighborhoods, but many of their gardens still stand and continue to inspire the gardening world even decades later.

In 1964 Oehme teamed up with James van Sweden, then an urban planner, to form Oehme, van Sweden & Associates in Washington, D.C., and they worked together for 30 years.  Here's my blog post about van Sweden's garden on the Eastern Shore.

Wolfgang Oehme died at his home in Towson at the age of 81.

Here's a quick interview I did with Oehme in 2009.  He's telling me about his Federal Reserve Bank garden and the journey that the American native plant rudbeckia made - to Germany, where it first became popular, then back to the U.S. where he he made it popular.

You and the New American Garden
This "new" style of gardening was already in vogue before I got serious about gardening, so I was influenced by it without realizing it.  Those grasses!  Those masses of perennials!  Soooo unlike the prim rows of annuals and clipped evergreens that comprised the garden of my childhood.  My mother may have taught me to love gardening but her style?  Not so much.

How about your garden?  Is it New and American?

Click here to read or add to tributes to Oehme.  Photo credit:  Oehme van Sweden and Associates.

Last-Minute Gift: Made By Hand

Speaking of handmade stuff, as we did a couple weeks ago, here's a brilliant book that absolutely everyone will love:  Mark Frauenfelder's MADE BY HAND. (Which we hope you will purchase at your local independent bookstore.)

Mark is the co-founder of BoingBoing and editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine. So already we love him for his hipster geeky wonderfulness, but it turns out that he's quite the gardener, chicken-tender, beekeeper, etc.  Really!  He is!

Here's Mark telling Stephen Colbert about beekeeping and automatic chicken coop doors.

 

The Colbert Report
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What I love about this book is that Mark writes about earthworms, his kitchen garden, his chickens, and his bees with real warmth and genuine interest.  (Oh, and he rips out his lawn, y'all.  That's Chapter 2, called Killing My Lawn, which comes right after Chapter 1, The Courage to Screw Things Up.)   While his Colbert interview focuses more on the kinds of groovy gadgets that appeal to BoingBoing and MAKE fans, the book itself is, at heart, a homesteader's book. Mark is clearly one of us.

Do go out and pick up a copy for yourself or grab one as a last-minute gift. It's just come out in paperback, and it's a real delight.

A Chance to See "A Man Named Pearl" on Sunday

Susan has written about this movie before, here and here. Now the folks at Oprah's OWN network have contacted us to share a trailer and let us know that it will be airing on Sunday.  Check it out:

 

Watch the Trailer for A Man Named Pearl

That pretty much says it all.  It's airing on Sunday during Oprah's "Super Soul Sunday," a block of programs that runs from 8-11 am ET/PT.  Check your local listings, plan ahead, and do make time to see the film.

More details here, and TV schedules are searchable here.  With all the dreadful backyard makeover-style garden programming out there, it's nice to see Oprah choosing something with so much more depth and character. There are smart, interesting stories out there in the world of horticulture--I'm glad to see this one getting some air time.

The GardenRant Handmade Gift Extravaganza

It's time for our annual round-up of handmade garden-related gift ideas, many of them made by our readers.  I offer you this in the spirit of opposing the mass-produced, the deeply-discounted, the imported-and-exported, the plastic, the impersonal, the disposable, and the soon-to-be-obsolete.  This is a good time of year to reject all of that.  If you want to send someone a nice gift, why not put a few bucks in the pocket of an artist/craftsperson?  Why not give something small and meaningful and handmade?

So.  A couple weeks ago, we invited you to post links to the stuff you make.  Here's a round-up of what you suggested, along with a few other things I just happen to like.  Our one exception to the "handmade" rule was for photographers and other artists selling calendars or notecards of their work.  Sure, it's mass-produced, or printed on demand, in much the way a book would be, but we give lots of love to books throughout the year and not nearly enough to photographers and painters.  So here goes:

First of all, Dirt Couture sells a lovely selection of exactly the kind of thing we're talking about--handmade garden-ish gifty things.  Like this wine bottle torch for thirty bucks.  Yes, please!

Dirt Couture also sells hand-forged tools by actual blacksmiths, these super-warm and very practical liners for your muck  boots--- plus handmade soap, botanical jewelry--all that stuff.  Oh, and succulents!  Check them out.

And before we get too deep into our list, I also want to point out this particularly nice feature on Etsy--in addtion to searching by medium, subject, etc, you can search by zip code.  So you're buying on the Internet, but hey!  You're still supporting some local artist.  Just for fun, I did a search for Elizabeth's hometown of Buffalo, NY and came across this artist who makes lovely botanical greeting cards.  See?

Okay, on with our suggestions from readers:

I love these limited edition pillows from Garden Therapy, using flowers they grew themselves, photographs they took themselves, etc. etc.  These are actually printed with the same glicee printing process used for fine art prints, and do require some care, such as hand-washing.  Really lovely!

 

Here's a guy who makes silly birds out of old garden tools and then paints them with auto paint.  He's a retired tool and machine repairman; our commenter is a friend who helps him sell them. How great is that?  I just really want there to be retired guys welding stuff together in the garage and friends who help get them out into the world.

Friend of Rant Benjamin Vogt is one hell of a photographer, as demonstrated by the fine prints available in his Etsy store.  (You can also buy his books there, btw).

And speaking of Friends of Rant and the beautiful art they make, garden writer and Queen of Succulents Debra Lee Baldwin has a beautiful calendar for sale on Zazzle of her watercolors. Wow, is she ever an amazing painter!  Who knew?  (Oh, and she has other stuff--mugs, postage stamps, notecards, etc.)

 

Oh-- calendars--yes, there are more!   Our friend Carol of May Dreams Gardens has her Garden Hoe Calendar for sale on CafePress.  A hoe a month!  Ho ho ho!  And Craig at Ellis Hollow--you know those breathaking and mysterious scanned flower images, right?  Here's your 2012 version.

Here's another Etsy offering, and may I just say:  OH MY GOD THESE THINGS ARE AMAZING.  Concrete "vessels"--you decide what you're going to use them for--made with hand-rolled bits of different colored concrete.  Not painted.  And beautiful.   This one, for instance, could be a birdbath.  Or imagine them as very outdoorsy platters for your patio table.  Or who knows, maybe you can grow succulents on them.  I don't know, I just know that they are super-cool and unusual and clearly made by someone with a lot of skill and talent.  In Norman, OK. Go, Deborah Brackenbury!

Here's one I think a certain Saratoga Springs gardener would enjoy--the Organic Seed of the Month Club!  For a mere forty bucks, you are promised a monthly seed packet of some rare, heirloom, seasonally appropriate vegetable or herb.  How cool is that?

Joe Papendick makes incredibly cool metal bird feeder sculptures. Love these.

Small paintings of bees done on salvaged plywood!  In Sonoma County, CA!  Some are already sold, some have a Buy Now button--go check that out here.

And here's a handmade tool called a hoedag, which sells on the Dirt Couture site for only thirty bucks and is handmade by a guy whose dad came up with the design.  Our friend Kathy Purdy says it's her favorite tool.

Well, folks, these are just the highlights.  You can read all the responses to our original post here. Mostly, though, we hope you'll be inspired to put a little money in the pocket of an artist this year, and to give something real to someone real. Get to it.

 

Catching up with Graham Rice

What's New and Book Giveaway

Graham Rice is one of gardening's most prolific and prize-winning authors, and we're lucky to have him - on both sides of the Atlantic.  After more than 20 books, including the behemoth Encyclopedia of Perennials that he's holding in this photo, his Planting the Dry Shade Garden is a great resource for the site-challenged gardener.  To win a copy - signed by both the author and the photographer, Graham's wife Judy White - just leave a comment and I'll select the winner at random. (Entries close Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern time.)

But really this whole post was an excuse to catch up with Graham, with whom I've had the chance to hang out a few times in gardens around the region.  He told me about the terrible vole pandemic his Pennsylvania garden suffered this year - the worst ever.  He says voles are more destructive than deer because they don't just mulch on hostas; they eat the centers and kill the whole plant.  At least the family cat had a good year - it bagged over 50 voles over the season, more than earning its keep in kibble.

Of course I asked about Graham's next book and I wish I could report on the answer but he's keeping the details under wraps (Here's his big tease about it).  And he's still pondering what the one after that will be but he tells me he never runs out of book ideas.  Or blog post ideas.  Or magazine article ideas.  Can't imagine that.

And Graham's a Twitterer!  (@Graham_Rice).  Facebook, not so much. 

Transatlantic Media Commentary

Graham is my go-to guy for U.S.-U.K. comparisons, and this time he enlightened me with these tidbits:

Digitally, there's a lag, with garden blogs catching on here first.  He believes he was the first British garden writer with his own site or blog.

Asked to name his favorite garden writers, Graham (cautiously, wisely) named Christopher Lloyd, whose book about foliage made him laugh out loud.  Another source of laughs was Reginald Farrer, now long gone.  And Pat Stone, editor of Greenprints and the Weeder's Digest, is also known to be funny.

I was sad to hear that English gardening magazines, admired by so many American gardeners, are shrinking in number.  Still holding on are the top guns - BBC's "Gardens Illustrated," and the Royal Hort Society's "The Garden," but other mags have stopped paying for photographs - at all.  The cause is the same challenge faced by all print media, of course - having to compete for advertisers with online media outlets that can track results to the exact number of eyeballs.

Speaking of garden writers, the U.K. has no equivalent of our big Garden Writers Symposium - because they don't need it; they see each other all the time.  It's a small place - the country, and the world of garden writing.

Transatlantic Hot Topic Comparison

Organics are a hot topic in the U.K., as here, but natives and invasives, much less so than here.  Of course I had to ask about lawns.  We complain about boring, resource-intensive lawns here but what about the homeland of the greensward, where supplemental watering is rarely needed?  Graham can't remember seeing anything on the topic in the British press or other media - zip.  He thinks that's because they have such tiny lawns, anyway - or none at all - on their much smaller properties, especially in or near cities.  They're much more likely to use decks or paving for their outdoor rooms, and no lawn at al.  And maintaining the lawns they do have rarely involves the use of pesticides like grubkillers.  Just a bit of fertilizer, thanks.

Off-Topic:  Brit Mix

Honestly, my favorite thing to talk to garden writers about is what ELSE are they interested in?  And in Graham's case he has an actual media outlet for his other passion - music, British music.  He has his own radio show, fer crissakes - Brit Mix, broadcast on 90.5 FM Radio Catskill - that covers "British music right through from the 1960s to next week". I'm a big folk fan myself, so asked for a tip in that genre - that would be June Tabor, with her mix of traditional and contemporary. 

Fun with Google Images

When I went looking for the book cover above I put "Dry Shade Graham Rice" into Google Images and got the usual interesting mix of responses, including this photo of some Graham at some bar (one of 365).  Definitely not our Graham; ours is hip without having to try so hard.  

A disappearing breed

In April of 2007, I came across a word that I didn’t like—especially when used instead of the term “gardening.” I posted about it and got a long and gracious comment in response from the man who had invented it. Here’s an excerpt:

 

 

My partner in life is Nancy Szerlag, the gardening columnist for the Detroit News for 14 years. I started my column on yardening in the Detroit News about two years ago. Within months I was getting almost as many e-mails as Nancy, and she has a tremendous following. I had found an audience. So many of them compliment me for giving them information in simple terms that they can understand. I believe most yardeners have the position - Just tell me what to do and when to do it. I will do it. I give talks at Home and Garden shows and I often lead with my definition of a gardener and then my definition of a yardener. Then I ask how many yardeners do we have in this audience. I have never had less than 60 to 70% in the group putting up their hands and smiling as they did it.

I can’t say that I like the term yardening any better now than I did then, but I did grow to appreciate the commonsensical outlook of yardener Jeff Ball, the Detroit News garden columnist who died Friday after a long battle with cancer.

Ball was the epitome of the old school problem-solving approach to gardening, but he was also very concerned about the soil web, the native plant movement, and the environmental nightmare that is traditional lawncare. And unlike some old school garden writers, he knew that understanding digital technology was becoming more and more essential in reaching gardeners of all levels.

Like his partner, Nancy Szerlag, Ball wrote as an independent contractor for the Detroit News. The paper I read, the Buffalo News, doesn’t have a fulltime garden writer either, though we are lucky to have local expert Sally Cunningham share her horticultural knowledge once a week. Contracting with a local expert —even if not a fulltime employee—will eventually become a luxury many publications won’t bother with, as budget-friendly syndicated lifestyle verbiage becomes increasingly acceptable to editors who don't care anymore. The world of garden journalism is changing along with all journalism—who knows what we’ll see when we come out the other end.

In the meantime, if you have a garden writer like Jeff Ball writing for your paper, you’re lucky. Thanks, Jeff, for reading and commenting—we’ll miss you, and so will all your readers!

Here's Susan's 2007 post about Jeff Ball.

Garden Bloggers: We're Going to Asheville!

Fabulous, exciting, wonderful news.  The next Garden Bloggers Fling will be held in Asheville, NC from May 18-20, 2012.  And there's a new website that will serve as a sort of central hub for this and all future Flings, so be sure to bookmark that: 

Garden Bloggers Fling

We are beyond excited that longtime Friend of Rant Christopher C is inviting us to his corner of the world for the next Fling--although he's not doing it alone; there are always many bloggers involved in putting these things together.  As you probably know, this gathering began a few years ago in Austin, and has since been to Buffalo, Chicago, and Seattle.  It's organized entirely on a grassroots basis and has been extraordinarily successful.  So we do hope that you'll spread the word on your own blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc--and that you'll let the organizers know early if you're planning to attend.  They've reserved a block of hotel rooms and will be busy making other arrangements for which a head count would be useful.

And!  Sponsors!  These affairs always need sponsors.  I don't know what the local group in North Carolina is thinking about in terms of sponsorship, but if you're in a position to be a sponsor, I'm sure they'd like to hear from you.

We'll share more information as it comes together.  Meanwhile, get over there and check that out.  Oh, and there's a Fling Facebook group, too.

Andrew Keys--Back and Better Than Ever

I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Keys when I was in Boston last month, and he is every bit as charming in person as he is on the air.  His fantastic podcast, which has been on hiatus while he moved from Horticulture to Fine Gardening, is back. 

So what are you doing hanging around here?  Get over to Fine Gardening and listen up.

Subtext--A Whole New Way to Think About eBooks

Subtext from Subtext Video on Vimeo.

When my publisher asked me if I'd like to participate in the launch of a new interactive ebook platform, I jumped at the chance.  It's an interesting time for digital books, to say the least. 

Susan Harris' post this summer raised many interesting questions about digital books in general and digital garden books in particular.  Susan made the point that garden books (and travel books, and cookbooks, and other how-to books) can really benefit from a technological update.  Photo galleries, videos, audio features, links--imagine the possibilities! A cookbook with videos demonstrating key techniques.  A garden book with photographs of every plant, or of the garden at every point in the season.  Imagine travel books that can link to maps and offer reader reviews, more photos, faster updates as hotels open and restaurants change hands.

This is all very exciting, and I'm glad to be a writer at this moment, when so much is possible.  But guess what?  Publishers are really scrambling to figure it all out. They're hiring programmers, contracting with startups, and wondering how much they can invest and what the return on that investment will be.   Authors who want to leap into the digital world are turning to their publishers for the tools--but the tools aren't all there yet.

So--into all this comes Subtext.  The beauty of Subtext is that it requires no extra technical know-how. The author and the publisher just have to create a beautiful book, as they have always done, and anyone who can send an email or post to Facebook has the skills to add extra digital content. No programming required.  Repeat:  No. Programming. Required.

Here's how it works.  Note that they are still in launch mode, and only a select few titles are feature-rich right now.  But overall, this is the idea.

First, you download the free Subtext app to your iPad. (Yes, it currently only works on the iPad.  It's just getting going, so give it some time and I think we'll see it on other tablet/reader platforms.)

Second, you buy an ebook through the Google eBookstore. This is one of many places that ebooks are sold.  Millions of books are available there, including new releases.  Independent bookstores have a deal where they can sell ebooks to their customers via the Google eBookstore site.   (Yes, you might prefer to buy your ebooks from some other source.  Again, Subtext is just getting going, so who knows where it might go next? I believe it also works with Kobo and a few other sites, but they started with Google.)

Third, you open up Subtext, sign in, and your ebooks are there on your Subtext bookshelf.  You can read your books, comment on them, and discuss them with other readers, sort of like how you might post and comment on Facebook.  Or you can choose not to, and just read.  Up to you. Also, you can invite your friends to join you in a Subtext discussion of a particular book.  Yes, this imagines a world where everybody has an iPad and reads ebooks on them, but again, we've got to start somewhere.

Fourth--and this is what I'm getting at--the author can go in and fully annotate their book.  The author (or, for the JK Rowlings and Stephen Kings of the world, their staff) can add pictures, video, links to relevant websites or news stories, audio commentary, or just written commentary.  Extras.  Of all kinds.  The author can also answer reader's questions.  Maybe host a little discussion, right there in the book.  Keep updating it as time goes on.  All that stuff. 

It's an annotated, interactive ebook that requires no special programming.  Anyone can do it.

So--they're only launching with a few books.  The idea is to test it, kick the tires, get a large crowd of people talking about a few books to really test the interactive features.  And one of those books is Wicked Bugs.

What I've done in Subtext with Wicked Bugs is to link to sources, experts, videos, and photographs that offer a deeper look into each bug (sometimes literally.)  I'm also linking to relevant news stories and useful references.  And I've added my own personal reactions to some of these bugs, as well as the reactions of other people I've met since the book came out, from drive-time DJs to victims of bug attacks.

I also worked with the artist, Briony Morrow-Cribbs, to help illuminate the process she undertook to create the copperplate etchings that illustrate the book.  We created two videos about the art, and I linked to her full-color illustrations and other bits and pieces about her and her work.

It was great fun to participate in the launch.  In all, I uploaded over 150 comments, links, videos, and other extras that I hope will enhance the book--for those who want their books enhanced, that is.

Now, a couple of caveats for those of you who might want to nit-pick (to use a Wicked Bugs term!)

Caveat #1:  Like I said, at the moment it's only available on the iPad, with the Google eBookstore, and they are starting with a limited "bookshelf" of books that are highly annotated and being discussed.

Caveat #2:  Right now, Subtext can only "read" and allow comments on the "plain text" or "flowing text" version of the book.  eBooks also come in a "scanned pages" version, which is exactly what it sounds like--a PDF-type view of the book exactly as it appears in print--with color, graphics, fancy typefaces, etc.  The plain text or "flowing text" version is fine for novels, where art, layout, and design are not as big a deal. In fact, the "flowing text" version is better with a novel, because you can re-size the type and even choose your own font.   But when it comes to highly designed and illustrated books, you want the "scanned pages" version that looks as beautiful as the real deal. They tell me that's coming, so hang in there. 

Caveat #3:  Right now, all of the author's comments appear as little icons on the side of the page that you click to read.  I would love to someday see a scrollbar type thing along the side or bottom of the screen that previewed those author comments, pictures, video, etc, so that you don't have to click every one to see what's there.  I don't know if they have something like that planned or not, but given the progress I've seen as they've worked on this thing all summer, I imagine more enhancements are in the works.

So.  What do you think?   As an author, do you like the idea of going in and "enhancing" your book, rather than waiting around for your publisher to figure out how to do it?  As a reader, do you like the idea of an enhanced ebook that includes video extras, reader discussions, author commentary, etc etc?

An apple a day—since 1986

First, there was the black screen with a “C” prompt. That was the PC I used to learn the Wordstar program in 1984. Two years later, I bought my first Mac. Suddenly I was looking at a screen where graphics and blocks of text could be easily seen and moved around—and soon I was making newsletters, calendars, and fooling around with sound programs. Even in the days before the web, Facebook, or Twitter, I was on my computer every day; it was easy and fun. Eventually, all PCs were employing a graphical interface (more or less), but I am not the only one giving Apple and Steve Jobs the credit.

If publishing our images and thoughts on gardening wasn’t easy, none of us would do it. We’d be too busy working, raising a family, gardening, traveling hanging out with friends, or any of the other life-related activities. But it is easy. You point, you click, you upload a picture, you type a few words, and you can see what it looks like right away.

Many of the gardeners I know locally struggle with technology. Even here, I remember the initial reluctance about Twitter and Facebook. Now, I think many people who would have spent their time reading and commenting on blogs are switching to the faster, easier communications those networks make possible. It’s a natural progression.

But whatever happens, it’s all so much better than that black screen. So—even though I neither know nor care if he was a gardener—I’m thanking Steve J.