|
REFLECTIONS ON 10 YEARS OF GARDEN-COLUMN WRITING
Ten years and more than 200 Putting Down Roots columns have taught me that gardening has staying power and that gardeners are very nice people.
I wrote my first column in 1995 at the request of then-news editor Jenny Eldridge, who advised me to “just write about whatever is going on in your garden, or about whatever captures your attention.”
That first column focused on starting seeds indoors, a subject I have revisited most years in late winter or early spring.
Reviewing past columns brings back vivid memories of the events and situations behind the columns: growing pumpkins, coping with poison ivy, measuring big trees, making salsa, picking blueberries, batting corncobs, constructing arbors, carving buckthorn spoons and nurturing a Chia Pet.
The columns I have enjoyed writing the most have been the horticultural travelogues from places I have visited. Writing about gardening and horticulture in other parts of the world has been interesting because, in addition to being tourist on these travels, I have been able to pursue the additional mission of uncovering the horticultural and agricultural stories from other cultures.
My first travel column was about the horticulture of Greece. Highlights included studying 1,000-year-old olive trees, observing cotton being hand-harvested by Gypsies, and photographing spectacular Bougainville vines sprawling across the white-washed walls of Santorini.
Other memorable travel columns followed from trips to Egypt, China, eastern Europe, Costa Rica, Turkey, London and, most recently, Tibet and western China.
In the U.S., I enjoyed writing about gardening and horticulture in Palm Springs, San Francisco, Charleston, Longwood Gardens (Pennsylvania), the hill country of central Texas, Las Vegas, Blue Mounds State Park (Luverne, Minnesota), Minnesota’s North Shore and Ron Wienhold’s unforgettable River Glen Gardens at Long Prairie, Minnesota.
One of my goals years ago was to write a book. I was never able to figure out the secret to writing “the great American novel” so I sort of wrote off that goal as unattainable. Then one cold winter day in early 1999 it occurred to me that I had a collection of published gardening columns sitting on my computer. Since I worked daily with a desktop-publishing software program (QuarkXPRESS), why not use the software to format the columns into book form?
In late 1999 I published Putting Down Roots, “a delightful blend of gardening wisdom, wit and whimsy.” The 166-page paperback features a color cover (photographed by Marcus Zbinden, Carver County environmental specialist) and contains 65 columns.
The experience taught me several things about book publishing. First, it’s easy to publish a book. All that is required is to send a computer disk and a personal check to a printing company. A couple weeks later a very large truck backs up to your house and delivers countless cartons (104, to be exact) of shiny new books.
I also learned that self-publishing means that “self” does everything -- distribution, promotion, collection, delivery, accounting, tax-paying. “Self” also carried the 104 cartons into the basement.
I have considered publishing a second book, featuring columns from the past five years, but decided one book was sufficient. As an alternative, I created a website as a way to archive all past columns. I invite you to check it out at: www.puttingdownroots.net. I even refer to the site now and then to see what or when I wrote about a particular gardening topic.
I am thankful that I haven’t gotten myself sued for anything I have written during the past 10 years. Several columns caused controversy. A 1998 column headlined “My advice: don’t plant Colorado blue spruce,” for example, wasn’t a big hit in the nursery trade.
After 10 years, there aren’t a lot of horticultural topics I haven’t written about at least once. I am willing to write about most anything that is of interest to gardeners. If you have a topic that you would like to see researched and written about, I invite you to let me know. My email address is: Cliff@puttingdownroots.net. I welcome your thoughts and comments on any topic, for that matter.
That’s all for now...time to go to my basement and start some seeds.
|
