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At various times during the past 25 years people have said to
me, or written, "We like your approach and advice, but it's
different. We're a little unsure whether to go your way. So tell us
more -- how is it that you're in this position, giving that
advice?"
If that's the question that brought you here, then here's an
answer.
If what you want is just facts rather than a story, click to my
bio, in our
press package.
Tomboy teacher
When I was a kid I was a tomboy and an inveterate questioner who
wanted to be a teacher, and a writer. I was a lover of books, the
library and climbing trees. In high school I fell in love with art
-- ceramics -- and discovered the thrill of debate, on the
improvisational speaking team. In college to become an art teacher,
on a scholarship for improv speaking, I sidetracked into love, and
a job too good to turn down installing telephones and lines, which
eventually became a career teaching telephone company management
people how to speak and write.
Gardener in training
Through all this I was a gardener. It was a glorious time. As a
kid I was dad's helper during his off hours, as he handymanned in
neighbors' yards. I was the one of their seven children that took
most interest, so mom let me redesign her gardens. Then just before
college I spent a summer in England, and remade my gardening world
view as I worked in a 300 year old garden in Shenley Church End,
Buckinghamshire. On my return, I began to inhale gardening
magazines and books. Not too long afterward, it became my daily
routine to stand 25 feet up on a pole in the corner of four yards.
What I saw was test, confirmation and expansion of what I'd been
learning -- landscapes laid out as if they were plan view
drawings.
This gave me a very high opinion of gardeners and refined my
approach to gardening. I decided, and still hold, that gardeners
are the most helpful people on earth, based on the fact that
everyone I approached was happy to talk to a voice from the sky
asking, "Excuse me, what is that shrub over there?" Every day I
would come home to my own garden -- our own garden, my husband
Steven's and mine -- with pieces of plants. Every year the
landscape design ideas I gathered and tried became more practical,
more varied, and fit more comfortably into what I'd learned in
school about art and design.
What makes a gardener's brain grow? Questions!
About this time, people who knew me as a gardener began to ask
questions about how to and what if. I was thrilled, and so I
cracked my books and racked my brains to help. When people wondered
"could we?" I showed up with garden spade to make things happen in
other's yards. This time-consuming sideline might have bothered my
husband except it came to our aid, not too much later.
That is, when we had children, we wanted to raise them
ourselves. My telephone company position was the better fitting
job, in terms of how happy and challenged I was, physically and
mentally. On the other hand, my husband was not only ready for a
change but eager to be our child rearer and housekeeper. So we
became a one wage-earner family. That situation fit us and our
children so well that the glory days continued and shone
brighter.
Gardening on the side, can't stop it growing
Yet they were economically tough times. So my gardening sideline
became a second job. It helped make ends meet. It was also
exhilarating to have so much new ground to develop and so many
different growing situations to figure out.
When the kids were in school full time and Steven went back to
college pursuing a degree in photography, we collaborated to make
the gardening business our full time work. It's been that way for
the past 24 years.
Teaching as a sideline
In the winters I taught classes about garden design and care,
and wrote a book on each topic. Then I did two things when it
occurred to me that working full time for myself had eliminated the
time I'd once spent attending classes. (Where? At every place in
the country I could find that offered practical training.) First, I
accepted an invitation to write a weekly column in The Detroit
News, as a way to continue the discipline of learning. People sent
in questions and I dug up answers, delighted with the doors that
opened up at queries from a newspaper columnist.
Second, with Steven's help now that he had a college degree in
horticulture, I started a school for gardeners that we ran for 12
years. We did it to have our own, hands-on curriculum but more
importantly, so we could invite experts in to teach us, and our
community.
Committed to growing and helping others do the same
During those years I hosted a weekly radio show and led our
school instructors on a website Q&A forum. Newspaper, radio and
school connections caused an exponential growth in the network I
could draw upon and the number of situations I could learn from. At
the same time my conviction grew that with greater experience we
have that much more responsibility to give back to others in this
wonderful community.
That's why today we have this website, and how I -- and Steven,
too -- keep up the pace and maintain the enthusiasm. This work is
energizing, compelling, and there is no end to the learning.
