A seed's planted
We're Janet Macunovich and Steven Nikkila,
gardeners who came to the profession in 1981. Our kids were young
and it was tough to make ends meet, but we were determined to
maintain our family arrangement, with one earner and one full-time
child rearer. So we turned a gardening hobby into a seasonal
weekend job.
So many ways it could grow... and it did!
By 1988, that part-time work had
grown on us, and stretched into the off-season in the form of
writing, teaching and illustrating. It had taken us back to
college, shown us the working side of hundreds of gardens, and
connected us with dozens of gardeners as eager as we were to keep
growing. We'd spent ten years learning we'd never learn it all even
as we fell hopelessly in love with digging for answers.
So we stepped it up to
full-time. 
Planting, publishing, broadcasting and more
What came of that was a whirlwind of
work and serendipity. We've continued to plant and
tend -- we don't count but guess we have now worked in over 700
gardens. We had three books published by others and produced five
more on our own, wrote gardening Q&A for a major newspaper for
13 years, hosted 3 years of talk radio, ran a gardeners' school for
12 years, and accepted speaking gigs in far flung places... which
of course helped us see even more gardens. It amazes us just to
chalk it up, and makes us very grateful for fortunate coincidence
since none of it happened by design. It just grew.
Connections came together into practical answers
The Internet came along right in the
middle of our second decade as professional gardeners. Between
email and our school's on-line gardening, we had exponential growth
in our network. We met, taught and learned from thousands of
gardeners. Duing this time, old habits that had sometimes felt a
bit compulsive turned out to be great groundwork: We had decades of
question logs and fact files related to our writing, and detailed
indices of Steven's photos. They helped us make quick connections
between situations and solutions, and grow that much more as
gardeners.
Giving back to the gardening community through this work
Now, we are determined to give back
in equal measure for all we've gotten from this energizing,
fascinating field. That's why we're here, hoping to keep up with
what we've planted and continue to help others find keys to open
even the most puzzling garden gates.
No strings attached
We are not affiliated with any
business other than our own, Perennial
Favorites garden and landscape design and care. We are
not gathering email addresses to sell or share. What you see here
is the real
deal, two people who love what they do trying to help others do
the same.
We do hope by being here to have more
people learn about and buy our books, photos, CDs and magazines, engage
us as designers and invite us to speak to others. We are also very
grateful to those who have assisted us in getting this site going,
both financially and through their labor. We look forward to
the continued help in furthering our educational efforts.
We put our all into everything you
see here, regardless of sales, contributions and referrals. If you find
that hard to believe, we hope you'll put us to the test and then
let us know how to better convey that message.