“The Hippie Gardener”
July 16th, 2006 
by Susan Harris
Ever seen the "Hippie Gourmet Show" on public TV? Well, it’s a hoot, with a bandana’d 50-year-old frying rice and describing things as groovy and psychedelic. He was so on script he used the word hippie once in each segment. 
You know, just like we really talked when we were hippies. And I know whereof I speak becaise I paid my dues, folks. I wore the bell bottoms, went braless, marched - the whole sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll thing.
So how about I get myself a gardening show called the"Hippie Gardener", since I’m so clearly qualified for the position? Just imagine the fun I’d have wearing long hippie dresses and putting flowers in my hair. Yeah, take me back to that look!
As for programming ideas, everything will be organic, and of course I’ll grow veggies, herbs and marijuana, but what else? I know you have ideas, either because you lived it yourself or your parents wouldn’t shut up about it - pro or con.
[The photo shows my boyfriend and me in Tangiers in 1969. Seeing it now, it seems way too adventurous and exotic for me - since gardening turned me into a homebody.]
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July 16th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
I’m only a few years younger than you then - I was paying the elementary school dues… probably while you were in Morocco.
I had an adult friend gently chastise me for asking if he was a ‘hippy’ - that was just a label that the established used to pigenhole people. He said this without a hint of irony… I still wonder if he realised what he was saying.
But his point was taken. Don’t let them pigenhole you with a label! Be free, man!
And you would’t be growing marijuana, that’s so out. You’d be growing hemp and making cloth and paper out of it. It’s the new thing!
(My personal soapbox is pro-hemp - it’s paper, it’s roap, it’s fabric, it’s fuel, it’s so many things - it’s an easy crop, doesn’t need all the chemicals that cotton does, would save a bunch of trees… etc, etc, etc…)
July 16th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
rope. I meant to say ‘rope.’ man, I’m getting old.
July 16th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
I’d watch. It sounds like a groovy show. Maybe you can have a segment filmed like they used to film the “Monkees” when they were on TV? All of them running around, running toward the camera, running into each other. I watched that as a child.
July 17th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Oh, no, you’d still be growing marijuana. Passion flower, too. (Apparently, you can smoke it.) And Camellia sinensis (tea), if you could.
July 17th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Yeah, anything that can be used as a medicinal herb - you’d probably do a few field trips to learn about plant uses traditional to Indian, Asian, and Native American cultures. Groovy!
Don’t forget dyes and sheep farming too - gotta make your own threads to really walk-the-talk.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
1969, a trip to Tangiers! Yes!
Nancy
July 17th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
My parents were Midwesterners who grew up at the end of Free Love and were too straight to have indulged in anything anyway… but I still had to comment just so I could say: That coat you are wearing in the picture is FABULOUS! Just the right amount of swing. So what are you buying from the man in the red cap, anyway, HMM?
July 18th, 2006 at 9:30 am
I think that would be a great show. Neither of my parent were hippies even though they grew up in that era. I’m pretty sure that both of them have smoked pot though.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Cool man! Ahh I forgot what I was going to say…….gotta go….I’ve got the munchies.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:37 am
This ole hippie would watch your garden show. When is it on? Let me know. I love that exotic photo. Ahhh, those were the days.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I’d love to see that Hippie Gardener show. You do look so… Which words were hot in 1969 besides groovy? ‘Boss’? No that was earlier. ‘Fab’? I know we were already seeing “Bitchin!” on T-shirts by then.
I was looking at stroller ads and wearing maternity clothes - no Tangiers in my portfolio.
July 20th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
OK - if you’re a hippy gardener - that’s cool. Just don’t inhale.
August 4th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
I love your photo. I grew up on an organic homestead in the mountains of NC during the seventies - very hippy, but not very happy. Still, I am not unhappy now that I learned how to garden.