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THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Talking heads tour

Winter is a time when gardening is happening primarily in one’s head. But winter is also the time when we need to see other gardeners.

Winter is a time when gardening is happening primarily in one’s head. Garden catalogs arrive and inspire us to think about new plants for our gardens, areas where we may plant some new trees and shrubs, and troubled borders that we may want to rethink entirely. Imagination is the primary activity, other than hoping to get in a few steps every day so that we are still mobile once the weather begins to warm and we can start working the earth.

But winter is also the time when we need to see other gardeners. Without six hours of weeding ahead of us, we have time to go to lectures and talks and have coffee with our horticultural peers without fretting about what we are not getting done at home.  And we also need to see plants in bloom, even if only on a screen via a PowerPoint presentation.

With that in mind, I am gearing up for some of my favorite events of the season. The Bad Grass series at the White Hart Inn in Salisbury just sent out its winter roster of talks and I cannot wait to attend the first talk in the series. Horticulturist Patrick Cullina is speaking on using plant families to help determine what else to grow in your garden.  He posits that plants in the same family often have similar cultural needs; so perhaps if catmint does well in your garden, you may want to consider using other mint family members.

Catmint, an easy garden favorite. Photo courtesy of NC State University

I am still processing his thesis and, whether I agree with it or not, I look forward to being in a roomful of gardeners who will share their own thoughts on the approach. Listening to speakers share their insights shouldn’t require us to embrace all that they say, but instead we should use such arguments to develop our own point of view on a subject. Gardening is about learning from others and learning through observation. It is what makes it both an art and a science.

I am also looking forward to hearing Jacquelyn van der Kloet speak at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Winter Lecture in early February. I met Jacquelyn twenty years ago when I visited her garden in the Netherlands and always learn something new when I see her. She first taught me how to use flower bulbs in the garden in a more naturalized manner, allowing them to pop up between perennials to add color in the spring Over the years she has also made me reexamine color combinations along with my prejudice towards certain colors and to consider where to site bulbs so that they have maximum longevity in the garden. I will enjoy her talk, but the Winter Lecture will also give me something else, an option to step out of hibernation and interact with all the gardeners in the region whom I run into at nurseries in the spring and summer, reminding me that even in the dead of winter no one gardens alone.

Jacquelyn van der Kloet will deliver the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2025 Winter Lecture. Photo courtesy Hachette Book Group

While I am excited by both of these local events and the images they provide of wonderful plants, I also have one last winter tradition, and it involves heading a few hours south to see a selection of plants in bloom that will open the garden season for me, first outside of Philadelphia and then a month or so later in my garden here. The Galanthus Gala in Downington, Penn., brings together snowdrop lovers from all over the Northeast for a day of lectures and talks focused on this delightful bulb. It also celebrates the plants that ,like me, always want to arrive a little early to the party. This event, begun by my friend David Culp, is filled with a collection of people who could star in a mid-century screwball comedy.  It is a collection of plant obsessives who take their horticulture very seriously where I always think I am the reasonable one.

Galanthus, aka snowdrop, will be featured at the Galanthus Gala in Downiington, Penn., February 28 through March 1, 2025. Copyright David L.Culp. Photo by Rob Cardillo

But just like Jack Lemmon at the end of Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot,” I realize at the end of the gala, that I am really one of them and it’s all right, because “nobody’s perfect.”

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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.

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