I may get used to this blogging stuff and hanging out with this group. Ed Snodgrass getting all this love ?! He’s just a farmer. Who was that farmer of Woodstock fame who got all the love for just saying: “I’m only a farmer…” Oh, Ed I love you too. Thanks for the memories last summer. To our blogging audience, I must let you know I just finished a book called “Hardy Succulents” due out next March and visited Ed. What a trip to have him hoist me up in his front end loader to get photos of his rooftop. Extreme garden photography…
I left off talking about truth in gardening and will use this blog to explore very, very non traditional gardens. Traditional media is fine and buy garden books of you want traditional stuff. Let’s enter John Greenlee’s garden:
I am working with John on a new book “Meadows By Design” and is the reason I am on the road, now in Chicago. No one who knows John will dispute he is a madman and a passionate lover of grasses. He is also at work on a book: “Kill Your Lawn” and proudly displays his garden style in his Pomona, CA garden:
I would love to hear John’s comment on the story about the Buffalo, NY gardener cited in the Garden Rant blog. John may be the most subversive gardener there is and his withering comments on traditional lawn mentality would shame any town councilperson out of a narrowminded intepretation of garden aesthetics. Maybe there will be more lawns like John’s:
I, for one, would much rather have a picnic and entertain friends on John’s lawn than the sterile one’s that pass muster in town ordinances. I guess this is why we are collaborating on thie meadow book. Others may want a pool table lawn…
John’s garden is complex, subtle, and chocked full of esoteric plants, most of which he has seen in the wild in his travels around the world. His garden makes a statement even as it ages and his interests move on. Gardening Gone Wild. We should all be so bold:
Truth in gardening. A good garden photo should not simply document – it should reveal, make one wonder.
So, I am off in search of more meadows. I will see Neil Diboll’s garden of Prairie Nursery fame and Roy Diblik of Northwind Perennials before going off to New Mexico next week. David Salman and I may cook up something for the blog from his High Country Gardens.
Off to bed. Dawn is now not until 6:45. I get to actually sleep when I travel this time olf year. And time to blog in hotels with free wireless….