Page Dickey is a gardener, garden designer, author and editor of many notable garden books, and the co-founder of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days scheme in the US.
Page joins me today to share more about her own garden life journey, and the many – sometimes surprising ways in which we as gardeners grow – including trial and error, life-long learning in relationship to plants, and as described in her newest book, "Uprooted, A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again" (Timber Press, 2020), the sorrows and joys, griefs and expansions of leaving one beloved garden and finding yourself rooting into your next one differently and still lovingly. Page's books include Duck Hill Journals, Breaking Ground, Portraits of 10 Garden Designers, Embroidered Ground , and Gardens in the Spirit of Place.
In addition to gardening and writing, Page sits on the board of the Garden Conservancy, and was editor of Outstanding American Gardens celebrating 25 years of the Garden Conservancy . She was one of the original co-founders of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Scheme, and in our conversation she shares more about this very specific generosity of gardeners.
You can follow Page on line at: Page Dickey.com and on Instagram: @pagedickey/
Join us again next week when we go even further north to Canada as spring is still a ways off for many of us to learn more about the enthusiastic and intrepid deep winter gardening and season extending gardening of the inimitable Niki Jabbour. Her abundant gardening on the 45th parallel will inspire anyone.
RELATED EPISODES INCLUDE:
Thinking out Loud this week...
In this conversation with Page I am really stuck on this idea of how we learn to love our gardens in time and space. We live in an ever more and more comparative culture and in-line landscape. Everyone else’s garden can look bigger, better, prettier, fuller, more everything.
If I had one wish for ANYONE listening to this this week it is this – and at the risk of sounding incredibly and irritatingly matronizing – try to remember that everyone’s garden started somewhere and no-one’s garden is weed or pest of awkward section free. It’s honest to goodness not about the magazine cover shot, the comparison or the competition. Try to find to just be with your garden and love the time and any small task engaged in. Remember why you came to love this friendship with the plants and the land in the first place.
When and if you find yourself scrolling online or flipping through pages and feeling overwhelmed or badly rather than filled up and excited – just go outside and play a little ok? Just go outside and be with the garden or the park or the trail.
You will feel better – you will remember. You are a gardener. It's good.
WAYS TO SUPPORT CULTIVATING PLACE
SHARE the podcast with friends: If you enjoy these conversations about these things we love and which connect us, please share them forward with others. Thank you in advance!
RATE the podcast on iTunes: Or wherever you get your podcast feed: Please submit a ranking and a review of the program on Itunes! To do so follow this link: iTunes Review and Rate (once there, click View In Itunes and go to Ratings and Reviews)
DONATE: Cultivating Place is a listener-supported co-production of North State Public Radio. To make your tax-deductible listener contribution – please click the donate button below. Thank you in advance for your help making these valuable conversations grow.
Or, make checks payable to: North State Public Radio - Cultivating Place
with Cultivating Place in the memo line, too
mail to: California State University, Chico
400 W. First Street
Chico, CA 95929-0999