I have a new book! Saying those words reminds me that I’ve come a long way from my country-boy, dirt-road education.
As a child, my lessons had more to do with growing turnips, climbing magnolia trees, and raising calves than with books. Home learning trumped classroom. On cold nights, we flipped through the 1974 World Book Encyclopedias. I escaped in there. I made up stories in there. I smelled the glossy paper, vanilla vines, and all those captivating breeds of dogs.
My inner world was a funner world.
In retrospect, I don’t know how I even passed the not-so-great schools I went to. But I got through. Along the way, someone schooled me on a better funner. At Clemson, an older friend helped me write required class essays. One night, in the dim light of Nick’s bar, with my papers spread across the table, she made a huge red scrawl, stopped, locked eyes, and said, “Admit it. Your family must be connected. Otherwise, there’s no way you got into this University.”
She taught me the “i before e except after c” rule, as well as the term May/December relationship, which is something World Book 1974 must have left out.
Years after college, the urge to write grew, and other friends helped me write magazine articles and essays. Until now, even my books have been collections of essays about gardening.
‘Garden Disruptors’ is different, something I’d never attempted before. It's a book about people. It’s about how people change as we engage in dreaming and planting together. It’s a long story that needed continuity, flow, and intersecting storylines. It’s true but dramatized in a Southern storyteller way. Squeezing all that into 150 pages challenged me.
This book has lessons and pleas too—serious stuff about race, judgment, and bucking cultural norms. It has plants and horticulture history, of course. The story is sort of a metaphor— a strong plea for rejecting old ways and seeking an inclusive, integrated, supporting community through gardens.
Dang. That’s a lot.
Slick, sweet-smelling encyclopedia pages inspired it all. That boy didn’t thrive in classrooms. But maybe one night, he flipped through Volume 2, B, lingering on the sketch of Burmese Mountain Dog, then the entry for Botanical Gardens of the World, and he made up a story combining the two.
Imagination sometimes turns into real-life adventures. Thanks for encouraging all those little dreamers in your life. Keep it up; they need us to tell stories and encourage their most fantastical inner worlds.
Front Cover with Kellen Goodell, left. Kellen interned with me 14 years ago and is now the Associate Director of Horticulture with the Charleston Parks Commission. Sam Schafer is a Columbia native who models in Charleston.
Click Here to Buy on Amazon
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In 2 weeks or so, we’ll have copies on jenksfarmer.com. Your local bookstore can order via IngramSpark Publishing.
WOOHOO! I’ll share it on Facebook. Should I buy it on Amazon or wait the get it from your site? And of course, I need it signed😘
Been looking forward to this announcement! Would rather wait and get my copy from you though.