When my Saturday starts helping Momm’a Garden Club get set up for a plant and bake sale at the Hook and Cook Festival and then moves on to the disco music throbbing crowds of SC Pride Festival and ends with a quiet night watching the Morning Show with Tom, I remember how lucky I am.
Sure, sometimes, I feel anxiety about this life stretched between a country farm and family and an urban apartment with a fake fireplace. But really, I can only feel grateful.
The last two weeks have been like this. I ended up having to learn about printing and publishing; at detail levels which I never wanted to know. Friends jumped in to help. But we got the new book out almost on time. Jumping from editing, photos, fonts, uploads, keywords and categories felt as weird to me as moving from farm festival to pride parade. Even sitting at my laptop for hours, I felt the divide, the stretch we all have to make sometimes to keep our lives, our house of cards, stable.
I don’t have a new story for y’all today. I’m linking to an old one. This is fiction (please, by assured, I never buried anyone in a garden. It’s my attempt to write a sort of Edgar Allan Poe creepy mystery. It’s long; you may want to read it in sections. I hope it’s a fitting mood for the week before Halloween.
The new book has had a great response so far. It went to number one in the Southeastern Gardening category and number 11 in LGBT biography on Amazon. If you bought it there, please make a review. If you bought from our website, you’ll get your copy this week.
Please join us at any of these upcoming events. They are not solely focused on Garden Disruptors, but at each, we’ll have books for sale and time to talk.
Columbians should be proud! Today, you see colorful Asian veggies like Oswaka Mustard and chartreuse Mizuan commonly mixed with fall pansies. The combo brings height, texture, and drama to fall gardens.
Thirty years ago, that wasn't the case. Pansies got planted in mass, flat, boring masses like sheets or quilts spread over the ground. Until a crew of creative horticulturists at Riverbanks Garden embarked on research, trial, and promotion to bring Asian foliage veggies to the winter landscape. The plants weren’t new, but the combos were. The project stimulated Ph.D. research and the entire fall plant industry through the South, and Riverbanks became an aggregator, a center for the display of these stylish, edible winter pansy companions.
Join two of those horticulturists, Jenks Farmer and Melodie Scott-Leach, to learn about these veggies and a little garden history from 30 years ago.
They'll have the bar open and plenty of veggies ready to go home and get planted.
Jim Martin and Jenks Farmer have envisioned, planted, and enlivened more public spaces in the state than any other duo. Since their passions for spring bulbs vary wildly, you’ll get a morning full of fun and diverse bulb lessons. Books and bulbs will be available for sale.
Jim Martin loves the ephemeral moments of joy in the garden. Jim will share his decades of experience picking bulbs for the pleasure of display. From Tulips to Giant Allium, spring flower bulbs are iconic in Southern gardens. Jim loves all those showy, joyful bulbs even if they don’t come back. He’ll share how and where he finds beauty, in the foliage, in the growth, and of course in the flower. Jim’s towering creativity includes using fresh flowers and dried parts of some bulbs for floral displays.
Jenks Farmer shares his love of bulbs that perennialize in our humid climate. He’ll share photos of the eco-bulb lawn surrounding his families 1750s farmhouse. Bulb lawns may be trendy today, but they have a long history in the South. Learn which bulbs persist, tricks for creating ecologically sound bulb lawns, and how to translate their wild beauty for modern, tidy gardens.
*Due to their long histories and friendships, please don’t be surprised if the presenters interrupt, correct, overlap, and roll eyes to make sure the audience gets both sides of every story.
Love your stories, Jenks.
Jenks, I just love your cover. Ordering my copy is on my list.