The Great Garden Debate

A Horticulture Magazine symposium and debate on design, plants and garden style. "When the collector meets designer can they find common ground?"

Is it coming to your town?

January 27 San Francisco, CA
January 28 Portland, OR
January 30 Denver, CO
February 1 Glencoe, IL
February 3 Richmond, VA

I wasn't planning to go, but maybe I should! I would have fun! I think. It would give me something to blog about on January 27, that's for sure. I consider myself squarely in the collector category, although I don't like that word. I'm a gardener, and that's where it stops. If a gardener is also a bit of a designer and a horticulturist too, that's fine. But don't call me those things. I'm a gardener.

But anyway, the point is I'll go with an open mind. Ha! No, I won't. Why should I have an open mind? Everything I do in the garden, even to some extent this blog, I do entirely for my benefit. I'm not accountable to anyone. I'm not on a mission. There are those who are, but this about me, me, me. I'm going to go with my very opinionated, highly critical mind and be judgmental as all heck.

Nan Blake Sinton, Director of Programs at Horticulture Magazine, will emcee. Speakers are: Joe Eck, Mat Reese, Penney Magrane, and Wayne Winterrowd.

Eck (designer) will talk about creating framed spaces, harmonizing plants with buildings, and the like.

Reese will show pictures of Christopher Lloyd's garden at Great Dixter. Apparently, it's "the supreme example of the 20th century plantsman's garden". Well, I wouldn't want to miss that.

Magrane is a local designer who will talk about her work over the last 20 years in the Bay Area. She wants to share her detectiving skills with us.

Winterrowd will "explore the alchemy of plants" and how to harmonize plantings to avoid the garden of "bits and dots".

At 3:30, they throw it open for debate.

Go here to find registration info. And to see what the speakers look like.