Garden Rant

When an actual garden photographer comes to shoot

by Susan
Suddenly, gardenbloggers and coaches are in the news a LOT, and a secret pleasure for anyone who's been interviewed is to compare really stupid questions that nongardening journalists ask and the sometimes ridiculous things they want us to do for their cameras.  And here at GardenRant we've all hooted over a publicity shot of some model pretending to garden - in blindingly white slacks! 

But when Organic Gardening Magazine comes to town, there ARE no smirks of superiority on the gardener's face.  Just the opposite, especially when the photographer involved is one Rob Cardillo (whom I'd coincidentally interviewed a while back), because he knows his gardens and how to capture them for the pages of a magazine. (Go ahead and drool over his portfolio of gardens.)

To begin with, he takes his time.  He arrived from Philadelphia about 3 in the afternoon and worked til 7, then showed up the next morning for another few hours.  I'd been asked to write a detailed outline ahead of time so he'd know exactly what the article would cover (about coaching, of course, but specifically my "tips" for spring) and he drew up a plan for illustrating all those tips.  But he didn't just want to show color and any old fake action shot - no cliches, please!  And he didn't want to demonstrate the same old advice that OG readers have seen so many times before.  So I was encouraged to suggest my own quirky tips and to hell with conventional wisdom!

See, a photographer with Rob's background knows what's new information for the readers and knows which shots are cliches - like the lady gardener carrying a pretty flower-filled basket - yech!  He knows how to create vignettes that tell a story.  And he knows exactly what it takes to create a winning cover - or so we hope!!  But that's enough hints for now.  We'll all have to wait til the issue comes out next spring to see the final result.

At  the risk of over-gushing, I'll just add that when you're busting your butt to get the garden ready and even running the vacuum indoors, then submitting to hours of bullying instructions from a camera operator or photographer, a little courtesy goes a looong way and Rob was a total prince.  He loaned me his hot-shot camera with the super-wide angle lens to capture my back yard and helped me find a wide angle camera that I could afford.  And he'll be GIVING me the entire batch of photos after the article's been published.  Woo-hoo!

I just hope these photos show how hard a real garden photographer works, whether by arranging some sedums in pots for just the right effect or closing in on some teeny tiny vegetables.

ALL-TIME DUMBEST QUESTIONS OF GARDENERS
All right, gang, let's get snarky!  My personal favorites are:

• "What's your favorite evergreen for spring?"
• For the April issue of a magazine, "How do you install a spring garden?" The news that spring-blooming bulbs are planted in the fall really bummed her out.
• "How many gardens do you have?"
• Having just been told that many coaching clients need to be taught to prune because it's complicated and hard to learn from a book, "So, how DO you prune?"

Anybody have some to contribute?  No names, please, just the juicy quotes.  I'm hoping that if we compile a list that's ridiculous enough it'll convince some editor somewhere to take the bold step next time of hiring an actual garden writer for that piece about gardening.  That was the reaction we had here at the Rant to some nonsensical questions by a freelancer for a women's magazine: Gee, why didn't they hire a freelancer who knows the subject?

Susan Harris: Sturdy As Stone

Susan Harris has become one of Renegade Gardener Don Engebretson's "Top Picks" and his favorite Ranter, though the rest of us are not huffy about it, not at all.

The Renegade Gardener site explains the "Top Pick" distinction this way:

What does it take to make the grade as a Renegade Gardener "Top Pick?"

The item has to be useful without compromise, reliable beyond fail, and sturdy as stone, all while existing in perfect harmony within the Ten Tenets. Sure, it helps when some items arrive free in the mail.

We're sure that Susan is as useful as a truckload of mulch, as reliable as a Raintower sprinkler, and as sturdy as a terra cotta pot.  Maybe she sends the Renegade free gifts, too. 

But Engebretson likes her because she speaks her mind, is really pioneering the whole idea of garden coaching, and has organized all the free-floating Web-based gardening knowledge into a Regional Gardening Gurus site.

Chicken Girls

Chickens are an amazing deal. They not only give loads of eggs and fertilizer in exchange for kitchen scraps, they are also fun to pet.  Photos by my friend Eric Etheridge, whose fantastic book of photographs of the Mississippi Freedom Riders, Breach of Peace, has just been published.

Speaking of Garden Coaches...

A couple weeks ago I interviewed Genevieve Schmidt, an Arcata, CA landscape designer and garden coach for an article I was writing.  You can read the whole thing here and here, but this is the part I wanted to talk about:

It has never occurred to me that I could try out a tool in my own garden before I bought it. When I think of all the money I've spent on tools that fall apart, don't fit in my small hands, or don't accomplish the job I'd hoped they would accomplish, I realize that I've probably wasted hundreds of dollars over the years.

But when Genevieve came to my house, she brought a tub of her favorite tools and let me play with all of them. She had a pair of pruning shears from Bahco that she swears are better than Felcos (gasp!); a groovy little sharpener called a Speedy Sharp, available at garden centers and hardware stores, that fits in the pocket and easily sharpens any kind of tool; and a very lightweight soil knife. I didn’t even know I need a soil knife, but I’m all over it now.

Anybody else do this?  Seriously, I was blown away by the idea of any kind of gardening professional coming over to my house and letting me try out tools in my own garden before I buy them.  If I owned a garden center, I would seriously be thinking about a way to do this for my customers.  There's a service the big boxes can't offer!

Wiggly Wigglers Does It Again

A couple years ago, I visited my friend Heather Gorringe at Wiggly Wigglers in England.  Wiggly Wigglers is so very unique and wonderful that it's almost hard to explain exactly what it is.  It's primarily a mail-order company selling any sort of supply you might want for eco-friendly country living.  What does that mean?  From one catalog you can order seeds and plants, worm composters, bird feeders and feed, tools, eco-friendly cleaning products, chicken-keeping supplies, beekeeping supplies, bat boxes, and more. 

Heather also produces my favorite gardening podcast, which you can listen to here, and she recently got a grant that allowed her to travel around the world and find out how other small farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs are using social media (blogging, podcasts, etc) to connect with each other and grow their businesses. (check out Podcast 0113 for her visit to my backyard while she was on that trip)

I just got the latest Wiggly Wigglers catalog--if you can even call it that.  It's 224 pages, bound like a paperback book, and full of articles, interviews, stories, clippings, ideas, and beautiful photographs, along with merchandise. It's the kind of thing you could keep on your nightstand and read all year long.  Yes, there's something very old-school about printing a catalog on paper and mailing it out into the world, but there's a social networking element to this catalog, with its contributions and ideas from fellow gardeners all over the world.

I'm not sure if they'll ship a catalog to the US for free, but in spite of the dreadful exchange rate it would be well worth it to find something interesting to buy from the Wigglers just to get their catalog along with it.  Good luck resisting the tile lantern, the string garden dibbler with concealed blade, or their incredibly cool chicken runs.  You're supporting a good cause--this company is helping to support local farmers by buying their products, employs quite a few clever and interesting people, and is really spreading the word about all things green.  Mostly, I just suffer from serious Wiggler envy--how I adore their bucolic English countryside lifestyle.  Sigh.

You can also find Wiggly Wigglers on YouTube--here's the sort of silliness you can expect:

Here’s to all the working dads who garden—and blog (or at least write)

Susan received this comment after her post yesterday on working moms (like Michele Owens and Kathy Purdy) who garden and blog. After compliments, “Brent” added:

However, I do have to let you know that I'm feeling a little left out. What about the working dads who garden and blog about it? Are we in short supply?

Hard to say. There are, of course, men garden bloggers, though I suspect fewer men than women. We had only about 5-6 in our group of 38 during the Austin meet-up. While not a scientific standard, it does seem to be at least an indication. But not that less men garden, far from it.

Mainstream garden media seems to want to stereotype the man who gardens (and I count ALL so-called yardwork as gardening because that’s what it is). Here’s an egregious example of that stereotyping, from a media "lead" site.

From USA Weekend: If you are a guy or know a very 'guy'-like guy who has found one or more great ways to cut down on lawn/yard/flowerbed work so you can have more time for poker, fantasy leagues and beer-league softball on weekends, send me your tips. No attachments, please. E-mail responses only, and send only one e-mail with no follow-ups.

The above description does not fit any male gardener I know and most of the gardeners I know are men. A few of them are dads. Granted, I really do not know that many “guy”-like guys, if that’s what a “guy”-like guy does. But I do know some great working dad gardeners who garden and write about it. One blogs; the other has written about gardening for the magazine I edit. So—fair is fair—let’s salute them and their efforts.

Above (photo by Michele), you see Bruce Adams, husband of Renée and father of Aiden and Garret. Ok, Adams doesn’t blog, but he is a fulltime teacher, an active and constantly-exhibiting painter, a magician, an art critic, and, of course, a gardener whose garden is featured in the Garden Walk Buffalo book and one of the highlights of the annual walk. It’s also an inspiration, because in spite of the fact that this garden is about as big as my office at work, it contains bulbs, perennials, shrubs, a marvelously engineered pond and waterfall, a spa, and a seating area. Though Renée fully participates, Bruce is the master designer and pondsman. He’s also written about the evolution of the garden and the value of gardening as exercise, and those articles are collected on his website.

One of my favorite passages from his “Urban Oasis” details the type of planning only a meticulous artist would do (all this changes, of course): On paper I carved the expanded lot into Mondrian-like flowerbeds, walkways, and patio space, opting for orderly geometric structure over fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants organic uncertainty. Gazing from our attic windows I contemplated such critical matters as projected traffic flow and barbecue dynamics. If I had known how to use a slide rule, no doubt I would have.

Jim and his garden (photo by Don Zinteck).

Then we have a working dad gardener whom many of you already know: Jim Charlier/Art of Gardening. Jim, husband of Leslie and father of Margaux, is self-employed (full-time) as a one-man ad/pr/marketing agency (with many prominent clients). He also sits on several community boards, is the board president/PR chair of Garden Walk, designed the Garden Walk book, and, of course, gardens. He’s transformed a front lawn into a grassless perennial/annual garden and created a kitchen garden, arbor, play area, and Harry Potter garden in the side/back. Here’s an excerpt from a description of the Potter garden from his blog. It was also published in People, Places and Plants.

A redbud becomes the wand-making hornbeam, an over-wintering cactus becomes stinksap-spewing mimbulus mimbletonia. Morning glories become devil’s snare - which seems a more appropriate name for them anyway. Add in some fluxweed, scurvy grass, venomous tentacula, gurdyroot and a puffapod and we have well-labeled and documented plantings.
The best part is to see people (muggles) reading the tags and taking notes and photos during Garden Walk; one person even asked where they could buy them. That's when I have to break it to them that this is a fictional garden.

So there you have it: two of my very favorite working dad/gardeners/writers/bloggers. Never let it be said that we’re sexist here at the Rant.

Though I would like to see more of my male gardener friends blogging. I’d like to see more WNY gardeners blogging, period. Jim and I are getting lonely.

Is Naked Superior?

Succumbing to peer pressure from my fellow Ranters, I attended the Capital District Garden And Flower Show in Troy, NY last Saturday--even though it meant breaking my fervent vow never again to go near any event that takes place in a windowless building. I enjoyed myself much more than I expected, thanks in part to Terry Ettinger, horticultural consultant and frequent Rant commenter, who gave a funny if tragic keynote speech about how not to kill landscaping plants.

The most interesting part of the talk for me was Terry's passionate advocacy for planting perennials, shrubs, and trees bare-root. Terry generously agreed to answer a few questions about the subject for us.

M:  I've had a horror of nakedness every since my mother told me that exposing a plant's roots to the air would kill it. As a result, I've always thought of bare-root planting as a poor second choice. You've convinced me that I'm wrong about that.

T: Well, your mother was right in the sense that you don't want to leave bare-root plants sitting out. You have to have a strategy in place to keep the roots moist. But that doesn't mean there is any need to ball-and-burlap or container plants.

The soil conditions in a typical container are not good. Roots become pot-bound, soil temperatures can soar above 100 degrees F in black containers sitting in full sun, and container soils can become saturated for long periods of time during stretches of wet weather or when irrigated incorrectly. All of these conditions can result in root systems that are severely stressed long before container-grown plants go into the ground.

And there is a huge issue in landscaping with balled-and-burlapped plants--the number of improperly dug trees where the root collar winds up buried in the root ball. So, even if you plant the top of the root ball slightly above grade, the root collar may be four inches below it, and the tree gradually dies. 

There are a lot of advantages to planting bare-root. It's easy to see where the root collar is and set the plant at the right depth. You can see if there are broken or crossed roots and clean them up.  You can make fresh cuts that will generate new roots, and you can spread the roots out uniformly.

Finally, after you backfill, the roots are in direct contact with the soil at the site, so the plant takes right off. There is no interface problem between the root ball and the soil.

M: In your talk, you mentioned other reasons besides plant health to plant bare-root.   

T:  If you think about it, big heavy balled-and-burlapped and containered plants are a symptom of the gasoline age. Before gas-powered engines, before trucks and backhoes, it wasn't easy to move large plants around, so they had to be moved bare-root. Today, we waste huge amounts of fossil fuels basically shipping dirt from one place to another--not to mention the fossil fuels used to make plastic containers. 

On the other hand, it is stunning how many trees a single tractor-trailer can contain in bare-root form.

Lower transport costs mean bare-root plants are much less expensive. If a nursery in your part of the world orders a box of bare-root lavender plants at $1.30 a plant, they can throw them into a two-gallon containers and charge $10 apiece for them. Ideally, they would grow the plants on awhile before selling them, but they don't always.  So why not cut out the potting process?

Mother Nature Is Easy

The current issue of NewScientist has a fascinating interview with Chris Reij, who studies natural resource management in Africa.  (Sorry, the site is subscription-only.) In Niger, he's seeing farmers fight the desertification brought on by climate change--and the creeping Sahara--with the most low-tech of solutions: They're allowing trees to grow up on their land.

They're defying the rules of modern agriculture, which demand treeless fields, and also bad policy that has long made trees government property, giving the farmers every incentive to chop them down and sell them for firewood. And since the trees provide food for their livestock, they've now got a manure source to improve the soil and make it that much less likely to dry up and blow away.

This story makes me think that Mother Nature is amazingly cooperative, and it takes a really towering arrogance to screw up a relationship with her.

The Dirt Chronicles

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll writes about everything, and today 'everything' just happens to be gardening.  Buying dirt and ripping out the front yard, to be specific.  Two of our favorite activities.  Check it out here.

Mood Elevator

Nature's got on her least attractive face today in my part of the world.  The dirty dogshit studded glaciers are just beginning to retreat in everybody's yards, it's muddy, it's rainy, it's icy at the same time.  And it had the nerve to snow last night.

But Olivia Judson, a British evolutionary biologist who's now on her second blogging gig at the New York Times, never fails to remind me that life is beautiful.  Do not miss today's post about the world of weird and wonderful creatures who've adapted to life in the leaves of a pineapple.