How I Wrote My New Book, "Garden Disruptors," 16

Titles of books ought to be short and snappy. For that, I have to lean on other people. As y’all well know, I am long-winded. If you need someone to put the baby to sleep or calm the dog, let me tell them a story. Trying to title a story, I’ll argue with you about concise meanings. I’ll cite one of my favorite garden books with its 17-word title thesis, not counting ‘the’s’ and ‘’a's’. But in the end I know that current trends, since the late Victorian age, favor cute, punchy titles.

Brainstorming and then sifting can lead to the best titles. Early on, Jamie and I did this. If some of y’all had been around, you’d have offered your quick brains to add snappy titles to the list. I lean on sharp, witty, editing-type folks to make my writing and titles their best. But ultimately, I gotta love the title.

This book’s working title, ‘Breaking Ground’ was replaced with 'Pivot Points.’ That title was based on the idea that the ‘90s was a time of huge cultural changes in the South. Small-town Columbia wasn’t too different from Andy Griffin’s Mayberry before. But the 90s brought all sorts of change. The crew of odd gardeners, isolated on a construction site in the woods, personified those changes. Tired of role-playing and old Southern games of decorum, the Garden crew and construction site became a microcosm of pivotal moments.

Do you see the problems with that title? First, it doesn’t say garden anything. Second, it doesn’t include people. The book is all about people. The list of crossed-out names got longer. In the community surrounding our farm, an informal network of liberal folks share books and news. Lynn, back home from a radical life up in the hippy enclave near Pittsboro, N.C., traded material frequently during covid lockdown. She came to visit and drop off reading material. In our Covid-safe winter seating area, around a fire pit, we kept an 8-foot bamboo stick to remind people. We never used it with Lynn. I pointed the stick out one day to tell her how many folks couldn’t keep their distance. Lynn looked at the ground. Her glasses, obscured by short bangs now falling over them, shook her head and said, with disappointment, “I just don’t know about people anymore.” She put a stack of New Yorkers on the chair. One had a yellow sticky note in it.

The UPS truck interrupted us. Most UPS drivers think they’ve reached the Dark Side of the Moon when they get down this dirt road, so I jumped up to welcome him. Actually, to capture him. I wanted my boxes of bare root summer flowering Gloriosa lilies so I could get them planted.

Stunning Gloriosa lily climbs by tendrils on leaves, from strong underground tubers.

Days later, the magazine stack, still on the outside chair, caught my eye. I thumbed through New Yorkers, then dove into “In The Midnight Hour” with a subtitle, “How ACT UP Changed America.” Lynn had underlined a sentence,

“When we think of ACT UP, the authors want us to think of the fight for universal health care, racial justice, and radical democracy—and to recognize that a few committed activists, when focused on being effective, can accomplish a lot.”

ACT UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) definitely changed my life even though I was miles away from their dramatic New York protests, and I was in Seattle when they wrapped North Carolina Senator Jesse Helmes's house in a giant condom. If not for their loud actions, I may be dead. Or stuck living in the closet like my Gay Uncles. Lots of my mentors lived to teach me because crowds coalesced around a few committed folks to change the research, funding, and vocabulary of AIDS.

The yellow sticky note peeled off that page. I looked down to see another article that didn’t interest me at all, “Tech Disruptors — A Handy Guide.”

We, the crew on that isolated garden site, were a few committed activists trying to change the plant pallet and antiquated styles of old Southern gardens. In trendy new parlance, we were disruptors.

Two months later, in the springtime, my gloriosa lilies started sending up shoots. They grow a stem that’s no more rigid than fat yarn. Tiny tendrils on the leaves grab onto neighboring plants to pull themselves up. They lean, weave, and twine solo—the first year.

After a few years, after the roots grow into a mat, and dozens of stems come up. The weak, single-yarn stems lean on each other to make a robust, upright colony. Gloriosa lilies, so frail on their own, soon rely on each other. They’re strong enough together to crowd out the phlox or spread into the lawn. They, like us, need each other. They, like us, are ‘Garden Disruptors.’