more about: Public Gardens

Going Back to My Garden Roots

June 29, 2011 | By | Comments (5)

Where did you start as a gardener? For me, it was a special place named Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, Maryland, about 35 minutes north of Baltimore. My dad, a lifelong gardener desperately searching for something to motivate his listless teenage son, got me a summer job there many moons ago. I pulled weeds, mowed grass, pruned shrubs, planted flowers, […]

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How I Suffer for My Craft & Make 10 People Mad — A Tantalizing Tale of Betrayal

March 1, 2010 | By | Comments (13)

Southern Living is a nice magazine produced by nice people about a nice place called the South. Everybody I work with is nice. No one yells, no one cusses, no one brings firearms or anthrax to work, no one posts naked pictures of themselves on the internet (well, no one that you’d want to see), and no one runs puppy […]

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Coming Soon — Magnificent Fall Color

September 22, 2009 | By | Comments (5)

In addition to being the object of constant adulation, one of the Grump’s foremost pleasures is touring the South’s most beautiful gardens. And if you love fall color as much as I do, there is one garden in Kentucky you must see before you die — Bernheim Arboretum & Research Forest.   This special place near the town of Clermont […]

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Birthplace of Southern Gardening — Charleston, South Carolina

April 1, 2009 | By | Comments (13)

Want Want to know where Southern gardening began? Then do what I’m doing now. Come to Charleston, South Carolina. Many of the iconic plants so essential to our style of gardening first appeared here. Like Southern Indica azaleas, for instance. Meet Taylor Drayton Nelson and his uber-friendly German shepherd, Isis. Taylor is the latest in a long line of Draytons […]

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Attract Birds to Your Garden

January 13, 2009 | By | Comments (18)

If you love birds, be sure to read “Beauty Takes Flight’ in the February issue of Southern Living. It’s the story of Wing Haven Garden & Bird Sanctuary, a beautiful garden specifically designed for birds right in the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina. Here are some tricks I learned there to help you, the enlightened bird-watcher, attract these feathered friends […]

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