Sustainable Gardening Blog

 Follow up, as promised:

Of course it WAS actually on TV but you probably missed it and my cable service is screwed up so thank god for the Internet, huh?  Here’s the link to the article - where you can leave a comment if you’d like - and click on the right to watch the video.

My reaction?  Coming Saturday on GardenRant. 

Wow, being taped for TV is fun!  That was my mantra, anyway.  Otherwise a body could get nervous about being on camera, especially if the body has a few decades on it.  And a garden coach could fret over how the whole thing’ll get edited because there’s always that chance of coming off as stupid.  Or smug, or any number of impressions you’d rather not make on the viewers of metro D.C.  Thank god I can blog about it, at least. That seems to be how we bloggers process life.  (Not sure what I think about that but it’s a lot cheaper than talking to therapists so I’m sticking with it.)

THE SHOW AND THE SEGMENT
It’s called News Now at 6 and it’s the lead-in to Katie herself on CBS affiliate WUSA9.com.  The subject?  Garden coaching, of course.  But that was just the starting point.  The idea was to coach the camera - the viewer - so man, what an opportunity!  (See, another positive-sounding mantra - something else that’s easier on the budget than therapists, by the way.)

THE TEAM
First to arrive were the cameraman and producer.  Alia, whose last name I didn’t catch because it was all I could do to remember his first one, created the story line and determined every single shot and clearly knew what he was doing.  After bossing me around for 2 hours of B roll he’s relaxing here on my porch, just waiting for the anchor to arrive. 

With him was "senior multimedia producer" Stephanie Wilson, with whom I had a chance to sip lemonade and shoot the breeze on my deck.  (A respite - no reason to be nervous!)  She set up the whole event and was in charge of the interview itself.  That’s the very cool Stephanie on the right.

And last to arrive was local anchorwoman Lesli Foster, beauty-queen beautiful in person or on the air.  (Hard not to stare.)  I’d seen Lesli do countless interviews with gardening experts in her last gig on Sunday mornings -  including regular appearances by my buddy Kathy Jentz. - and always manage to look like she understood the answers. (She tells me that’s a miracle.)

WHAT I SAID
Quick - think of 5 bullet points you’d like to make in your few seconds on air.  Given what my garden could demonstrate on this particular day, here’s what I hoped to get across and if even one out of five actually airs, I’m happy.

• The lawn-to-edibles conversion.  Edibles are the one segment of gardening that’s growing.  (And I slipped in a mention of the great coaching that GardenRant commenters gave me, since I don’t know what I’m doing.)
• The anti-lawn tide sentiment that’s sweeping the green world, and the reasons for it.
• Climate change = drought-tolerance in plants more important than ever.
• For low-maintenance, choosing shrubs and trees over annuals and even perennials.
• Urging people to buy plants that bloom some other time of the year.  We have plenty of azaleas around here already, thank you. 

And I couldn’t help but talk up the DC Urban Gardeners and hand over the business card.  None of that was on tape - that’s a different story - but we’re spreading the word  every chance we get. 

WHAT I DID
Alia worked me pretty hard.  Had me pruning (while the shrubs are blooming?  Say it isn’t so!)  Also watering, both the wrong way and the right way.  And even dividing a sedum. 

COVERING GARDENING
It’s no surprise that this particular local TV station is covering garden coaching.  They have gardening interviews almost every Sunday morning, after all, with good experts.  And one of their weathermen, Howard Bernstein, has a blog where I recently spotted a discussion of preemergent lawn herbicides.  Neither Ed Bruske nor I could resist jumping in to suggest something organic rather than the synthetic Scotts product mentioned by our local extension agent.  Heck, I’d just read Jeff Gillman’s praise of corn gluten meal as a preemergent weedkiller.  Like the "Weed & Feed" products we rant against, it fertilizers while it weeds BUT in an totally safe and healthy way.

So local Master Gardeners and wise practitioners of the gardening arts, let’s join Howard in his efforts to educate the homeowners of DC about gardening by sending him timely items for his blog.  Then check back with your comments because the more the merrier - and because all bloggers crave comment, right, Howard?

WHAT, NO VIDEO?
It’s coming - as soon as it airs and they send me the link.  Coz nowadays we’re all about the link. 

Hey, readers, I’m taking my site about sustainable gardening live and you’re practically the first to know!  Take a look at Sustainable-Gardening.com and send me your ideas, feedback, corrections (even typographical - especially typographical) using comments here or by email.  Here on About this Site I to explain the method to my madness.

YOU’RE INCLUDED

• If you’re not already listed on my Sites and Blogs page, send me your URL and tell me where you’re located (and even a little bit about you).  And naturally I’d appreciate your links back to the site so that Google will start to catch on and readers will find it.  (Are links becoming the currency of our era?  Hmm.)
• I’m looking for relevant blog posts on each subject to expand the conversation (there’s that Hillary word again).  I could take the time to surf all your blogs, but it’s not gonna happen, so please send them along.  If you’ve written about the topics I cover or any of the plants I’m writing about, I want to know.  Here’s an example of what I’d like to see - only using more great links from you guys. (No surprise, it’s the page about lawns.) Let’s show off the great gardenwriting going on in the blogosphere.
• Send your favorite links and books, too.

NEWSLETTER, BLOG, COMBINATION THEREOF?
Tell me what you think.  As a reader of a gardening site would you (or would beginning gardeners) sign up for a monthly newsletter by the webmaster?  All the experts are insisting that sites have newsletters but on the other hand, I could bring this blog into the site and people can subscribe to its feed.  I’d love your ideas.

SUSAN’S PROMOTING WEED&FEED!
Yes, that’s my darkest fear.  I’ll try to monitor those Google ads but let me know if one gets by me.

THANK GOD THAT’S OVER.  That would be the taping of the gardening how-to video I agreed to do for a new website of how-to videos.  Why all the relief?  Ladies, you know.  Guys, maybe you do, too.  But more important than how-do-I-look is do-I-make-sense?  The topic suggested to me was "How to Create a Garden" after all, not something I could just demonstrate.   And one horrifying sit-down with a tape recorder told me this wasn’t something I was going to just WING.  Unlike Ms. Amy Stewart, who’s so good on her feet I’m sure she could do an off-the-cuff on any old topic.  Or Kathy Jentz, who does radio and TV all the time and does it so WELL.  God love ‘em; I’m not one of ‘em.

But at least I knew what had to be done.  And that would be prepare.  Ignore the person telling me not to write a script.  Write it and practice it.  Then create cue cards to refer to while I’m talking to the camera sans-script.   It all happened this morning and I can at least report that I survived it.  Let’s hear it for Girl Scout training.

So preparedness and videographer Derek Campbell are all it takes to make it a surprisingly happy experience.  He’s a really nice guy who seems to be good at what he does.  So when he promises he won’t make me look bad, I believe.  I WANT to believe.

But as I said, it’s OVER.

Photo:  Derek and his two cameras.  See the cue cards taped to the back of the beach chair on the left?  Very professional.

THE OFFER
I recently got an email from a video production company looking for someone to create gardening videos for a website to be launched next month. (They’d gotten my name from a friend who’s a local community garden organizer.) You can see the actual offer by clicking "Continue reading" at the bottom of this post.

I just love the concept - that thousands of how-to videos will be available on line, presumably all created by people who know what they’re talking about.  I think it’s actually pretty cool they chose a Gardening Coach for the assignment - even if it IS me - and I’m looking forward to getting help from their other experts - maybe instruction in bleeding my radiators or restoring my deck. 

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION
So the upshot is that not one but TWO gardening videos by this very gardenblogger will be coming to your Internet soon.  They’re titled:

• How to Create and Care for a Low-Maintenance, Eco-Friendly Garden (or whatever title the producers in their wisdom choose.

• How to Choose, Use and Care for your Gardening Tools (with the same possibility of a better name being assigned).

In the two days I have available to prepare for the taping this Friday (!), I have to write the 8-12 clips that make up each video, choose locations for each that will demonstrate what I’m saying, assemble the materials I’ll need to show, some of which have to be bought, and get any necessary permissions (which indeed I got because we’ll do some of the taping in my neighbor’s garden).  Hey, could all this be called being "in production"?  Sounds impressive!

So come back soon for a report on the big day.  This time if the result isn’t more than 2 minutes of airtime, I’ll know it’s me.  (But wait - on the web we can’t call it "air time," can we?  Maybe screen time.)

THOSE POOR BOOBS ON HGTV
You know, I’ve already gained something from the experience - sympathy for anyone trying to demonstrate something as complex as gardening in a stand-still, one-time video.  NOW I understand why we see so many demonstrations of "How to Plant a Container" - because it can actually be done easily enough in front of a camera, all at once.  Compared to, say, my HUGE first topic above - planning, implementing and caring for a whole fricking garden.  (What was I thinking?)  More or less in one spot and all demonstrated in one afternoon?  Ha!  The video about tools seems doable enough, but more will be revealed.

Now tell me why the offer below mentions TV and not the Internet.  Does everybody still want to be on TV?

Read the rest of this entry »

"Prunettes" are what I would have named this team of DC-area lady pruners, who actually go by the name Yankee Clippers.  Yankees in D.C.?  Well, I guess that’s because president Elizabeth Doyle started the company in New York way back in 1994.  Here’s Elizabeth with one of her crew hard at work in an extremely overgrown garden.  (Growth happens!)  After leaving the business world, she taught herself the art of pruning and decided to create a female-friendly company, with work hours ending at 2 every afternoon so moms could be home for their kids after school.  Now she employs about 35 women, who work on their own loosey-goosey schedules as needed, but descend en masse in groups of 6-10 to transform the shrubs and small trees of the many Yankee Clipper clients.

Wanna be a Yankee Clipper?  Well, you don’t even have to be a gardener.  In fact, the less you know, the better, because Elizabeth has her own style and likes to train with a clean slate. 

And what IS the Yankee Clipper style?  Leave the garden looking good, with even the cuts cleverly hidden.  (There’s a technique for this; who knew?)  This is art, not plant butchery.  And prune for health.  That means NO SHEARING.  Learn how each plant grows so you can work with it, not against it. 

For more information I consulted the hand-out given by Mary Ellen Fernandez, pictured here practically hidden by the killer rose she’s tackling, at a recent garden club talk.  And student of pruning that I am, I read it carefully and hyper-critically and to my amazement, agree with everything except the advice to prune spireas like forsythias - at the base.  Readers may remember this is my favorite shrub for sun and I have oodles of them, none of which have ever been hacked back so brutally, a treatment I’d bet my Felcos would kill the poor things.  But these ladies have probably pruned even more of them than I have so - drumroll - maybe I’m mistaken!  See how open-minded I can be?  As a last resort, of course.

And something else I learned from Mary Ellen is that even arthritic hands like her own can prune five hours a day if the pruning tool is a ratchet-type.  No Felcos!  I know; another shocker.  She swears by her Florian Ratchet-cut Pruner and on her recommendation I’ll even provide the link.

But here’s what I don’t get.   How can these ladies, with no Olympic pentathletes or spring chickens in the bunch, do this really hard work for FIVE STRAIGHT HOURS?  Good Lord, I’d seriously considered applying for employment myself, thinking I know my pruning and I’m a hard worker, too.  But honestly, my version of hard physical labor begins when the sun comes up and ends about an hour later, especially in our summers.  Anyway, I’d have to unlearn everything I know, or think I know.

So I won’t be joining these fine ladies in their mission to save and beautify the shrubs of the D.C. area after all.  Taking photos and chatting with the homeowner?  No problem, even in the heat.

The Yankee Clippers can be reached by email.

If you’ve found your way here via my guest article on Open Register, the blog of America’s garden center association, welcome to the home of a loyal customer.   Do I suggest to readers or clients that they shop at Home Depot?  Not on your life.  In fact, I haul them to independent nurseries and show them the ropes.  Do I promote the excellent free talks and workshops offered by the Behnkes Nurseries?  Often enough to be boring, I’m afraid.  And I consult horticulturist Mitch Baker at another outstanding Maryland nursery, American Plant Food, for so many of my articles I may be wearing out my welcome with him (hope not - he’s a star in my book).

So consider me a member of the family and take my suggested improvements in the friendly spirit in which they’re offered.  Now if you’re reading this, you clearly have a computer and surf the Web, so how about using it to more effectively reach your current and potential customers?

I met the coolest woman recently - smart, honest, warm and real.  All that on first impression.  When she casually mentioned her job editing a local magazine I naturally (and innocently) asked "Which one?" and then had to suppress my squeals when she said "Washington Home and Garden".  Well then, need a garden writer?

Readers, long story short, I have an assignment for their August issue!  Wish I could tell you the subject but in the long-lead-time world of magazines and books, everything is kept under wraps (I’m learning).  But it’s safe to say it will be outside of the world of plant swaps, folksy garden clubs and park clean-ups that are my usual haunts.  Oh, yeah.  Now it’s luxury gardens of Greater Washington, D.C., here I come.

So friends, readers, lend me your ideas.  What would YOU write about for a decidedly upscale suburban readership, besides garden and plant profiles?    And does anybody know of a similar metro-area home&garden magazine that does a particularly good job?

The latest Fine Gardening Magazine arrived and I jumped on it, as always. The story about paths and pavers grabbed my attention because I’ve been looking for good-looking, low-cost materials to recommend.  First, I finally learned what "Crab Orchard" is - the landscapers on HGTV swear by it - it’s a type of sandstone, cheaper and easier to cut than, say, granite.  And I appreciate the good cost information about choices in paving materials, which range from 25 cents a square foot for gravel to $20 for that super-hard granite.  Composites like concrete and aggregate can be super-cheaper, too - as little as $1/sf.  As a fan of concrete pavers myself, I’ll second the notion that they’re worth a try and homemade, they cost about 50 cents each.  That’s not counting the cost of the really cool things you can put in them - like marbles and tiles and real leaf impressions.  Hey, I think I’ll throw a paver-making party as soon as it’s warm enough to make a mess outdoors.  Wanna come?

Now I don’t want to forget to tell you my gravel+slate story - the OUCH.  See how nice they look together in the cover story above?  Fine, just don’t try walking barefoot on that combo because little rocks find their way on top of the hard, hard slate and DO NOT SINK IN when stepped on, and hurt like hell.  Seriously - don’t try it at home.  I’ve seen this dangerous combination recommended a zillion times and it makes me wonder:  Am I the only barefoot gardener left??  Maybe it’s just us Southerners, but I’ve gotta have that full garden experience of feet-on-grass and feet-on-dirt. Gardeners, am I alone?

Moving on, these are my other faves in the February issue:

• How to prune Japanese maples.  If you’re a pruning geek like me, you’ll love this article, with good illustrations and this quote: "The wise gardener learns to appreciate plants for their own attributes and remembers that a good pruner can only reveal beauty, not create it."  Damn right.

• A new pruning saw I absolutely MUST HAVE because it’s so sharp it cuts "like a hot knife through butter".  The Product Review Department features the Silky Pocketboy 130, reportedly well worth the $26 it costs.  It’s available here.

• A really cool article+photo spread about using straight lines and perfect geometric shapes in  lush, modern ways - very Pacific Northwest and gorgeous.

• Stephanie Cohen has gotta be the cutest garden writer on the planet - it’s that smile, so big it makes her eyes disappear.  And it’s not for nothing that she’s called the High Priestess of Perennials, judging by the quality of her perennial update in this issue of FG.

A bit of glamour came to the Takoma Garden this week.  From the new cable channel Retirement Living TV came a producer and his cameraman and soundwoman, filming me for a show about seniors who blog.  Okay, it’s not exactly HBO, but exciting by my standards.  I was one of four bloggers interviewed for an 8-minute segment, so my share of fame will be maybe 2 minutes, if I’m lucky, not the proverbial 15.  But hey, I’ll take it!  Unless and until I see a close-up of myself in living color and freak out.  See, I may be younger than their target audience of 60 and up but I’m still old enough to want long shots with me off in the distance like one of the shrubs, or at least no closer than these stills.  But TV producers rarely go for that approach.

Well, enough of my whining.  Here’s the blow by blow of the event, indoors and in the garden.

The interview itself was in my living room under a frightening battery of lights and with a microphone wire threaded seductively under my blouse.  The soundwoman heard the most amazing things - my cat scratching, the hum of the refrigerator, distant trucks.  Lord, what a noisy house I have - to trained ears.

The segment filming me at the computer was just weird.  Watch her type!  Watch her surf!  I scrolled through plenty of garden blogs, though, so it’ll be fun to see which ones (if any) are shown.

Now for the segments in the garden, I was told they wanted shots of me gardening - you know those totally fake shots we see on HGTV all the time of interviewees nicely dressed, accessorized and in full make-up doing their gardening chores.  Just like we do them all the time.  So I thought I’d set these folks straight - gardeners will laugh, I warned - and suggested they film me showing them around the garden, just like the much-missed Erica Glasner used to do on "A Gardener’s Diary."

But guess what.  They know more about producing a TV show than I do!  I know, that surprised me, too.  After it was explained that there would be nobody for me to show around the garden - no Erica asking me questions - I gave in and grabbed my Felcos, ready to do a little pruning.  (Their suggestion in an early phone call that I change into my normal gardening clothes was greeted with such derision on my part that mercifully, it wasn’t mentioned again.  Though it might have been fun to emerge in my typical paint-and-mud-smeared sweat pants, filthy T-shirt, beat-up clogs and unmatched socks, just to see if they still liked the idea.)

So, folks, one more pretend gardening scene.  They’ll be sending me a DVD but that’s so 20th Century - gimme a link!  It’s what a blogger’s readers expect, after all. 

Photos by Jimmy Daukas, an innocent passing neighbor.  The lower shot may look like I’m bossing these folks around but don’t you believe it.  For two and a half hours I did exactly as I was told.

Thanks to Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By for asking me to participate in the show.  She tells me the folks at RLTV are treating their viewers with a lot of respect and if they somehow got past her famous condescension-detecting device, they’re okay by me.