When I first heard about Garden & Gun magazine, I thought it was a joke. What are the articles about, I wondered…deadheading daffodils from 300 feet? Slug control as target practice?

Turns out to be a legitimate lifestyle magazine that combines food, entertainment, gardening, and hunting, all with a focus on style.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; gardening fits in with a variety of interests. Just take a look at some of the gardening folks on twitter. @GardenersGardens  is a garden designer who also writes articles about custom motorcycles.

@BestGardens is a gardener at home and a Veterinarian at work, while @GardenLifeCoach runs a portion of her coaching business from her garden. @Beadwitch is obsessed with hostas, but is also a rockhound and Airstreamer.

You’ll find artists, writers, doctors, scientists and just about everyone else in the garden, and this is a good thing.

Just as there are all types of people who fit gardening into their lives, there are many types of gardens.

]]> http://wholelifegardening.com/blog/2010/12/23/gardens-and/feed/ 4 http://wholelifegardening.com/blog/2010/07/23/gardening-secrets/ http://wholelifegardening.com/blog/2010/07/23/gardening-secrets/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:42:23 +0000 CL Fornari http://wholelifegardening.com/blog/?p=2096 Report From PIA – July 23

The first disagreement I ever had with a publisher was over a subtitle. They wanted to put something like “Gardening Secrets You Can Use,” on one of my books, and I strongly objected. The publisher’s point was the people buy books that promise secrets will be divulged, and my position was that there is no mysterious, confidential or heretofore undisclosed gardening information.

This came to mind today when I was on Twitter and noticed a great many tweets contained links that promised to reveal the secrets of love, fundraising, composting and stock trading, to name just a few.

It’s my opinion that there is a vast pool of information, and for each individual that collection can be divided into two groups. There’s information you know, and that which you haven’t yet learned. It’s just not as compelling for subtitles and tweets to promise the latter.

The distinction is important, I think, especially for garden communicators such as myself. If I regard what I know as being secret, it makes it seem exclusive, and much grander than it really is. There is danger in thinking that information is restricted, limited or private and the word “secret” implies all of these.

Writers and speakers should be selling books or booking dates because they write well, give engaging talks, make their audiences think or feel, and spread enthusiasm about their subject… not because they’re duping people into thinking that they have are privy to a restricted supply of knowledge.

Agreed?

My yellow epiphyllums are in full bloom, and here are the "secrets" to growing them: Buy one from Logees, or have someone give you a piece. Put it in a heavy clay pot and put that pot outside in couple of hours of morning sun and afternoon shade. Squirt it with a hose every day or two. Fertilize it once a year when you think of it. Bring the pot inside in the winter and do the best you can to give it some light. Have patience, and when it blooms take photos because the flowers only last for a day.

As you know from my post of February 3^rd, I appreciate twitter because it connects people. Today I noticed a tweet by Frederic A Brussat that contained a link to a post listing twenty-five reasons that twitter is spiritual. I read them, deciding that I’m in love.

Some of the reasons in Frederic’s post are similar to those that I recently listed as benefits of blogging every day. Posts on twitter are similar to blogs, only more concise. I was particularly taken with the following points on Brussat’s list:

4.) Twitter inspires us to practice hospitality in a time when too often strangers are feared and the “other” is shunned.

6.) Twitter prods us to find the divine energy of joy in our daily lives and to share it with others.

8.) Twitter draws out our playfulness and celebrates, in a variety of ways, the holiness of savoring pleasure and the lightness of being.

Ahhh… those alone would be reasons to celebrate this website and means of communication. But how does this relate to gardening? I suggest that in Brussat’s thoughts about twitter, listed above, you could substitute the word “gardening” for “twitter” and it would all be true.

Gardening inspires us to practice hospitality, prods us to find the divine energy of joy in our daily lives, and draws out our playfulness. There are certainly twenty-five ways that gardening is spiritual, and I’m thankful that we have gardens and twitter to cultivate our connectedness.

Follow me on twitter by searching for C.L. Fornari or thegardenlady.

I’m attending New England Grows, a green-industry trade show in Boston. I heard Bill Cullina speak this afternoon, and attended a tweet-up this evening, and once again find that almost magically events come together for this blog.

I took notes at Bill’s talk, and one of the things I jotted down was his mention of a study done on how jewelweed grows roots. The bottom line of this work, done by Guillermo P. Murphy and Susan Dudley of McMaster University, is that when this Impatiens’ roots touch the roots of other plants, they can tell if those neighboring roots are their siblings or not, and they grow accordingly.

When jewelweed is growing in the same pot with siblings, they grow a bit thinner so that foliage on all the plants can get enough light. But when growing with plants that they aren’t directly related to, they grow thicker foliage…when it’s the survival of the fittest, it’s OK to shade the neighbors.

Every plant is on a mission to replicate its genetic material, usually by making seeds, and this is why we deadhead to make sure that a plant keeps blooming. It makes sense, therefore, that after germination each plant would favor its own kind as well. Produce seeds, and then protect the offspring.

Extending this knowledge from plants to humans, however, I wondered if people too have some sort of molecular response that makes them favor their own. It’s good if this helps us protect our babies, but not as desirable if this means we are predisposed to work against others that aren’t related to us.

Which brings me to the tweet-up. There we were, about a dozen people, who were mainly connected through quick posts of 140 characters or less. The key word in last sentence is, of course, connected.

This gives me hope for the human race. If we can celebrate the fact that our roots touch in digital spaces like facebook and twitter, and this alone can bring us together to support each other, than there is indeed hope that we can nourish each other’s growth and someday create a peaceful, verdant world.

Plants may favor their own, but they'll also thrive when placed among many differing varieties. May we also be committed to do the same.