Oklahoma Gardening

Okay, this is an old one. In 2004 I was the keynote speaker at Gardenfest, a summer garden festival run by Steve Owens, host of Oklahoma Gardening. Steve and his crew came to Glenview to do a pre-festival episode of O.G. with me. Here is the show that aired a week before Gardenfest 2004.



For more info on Gardenfest, see here.

Google video makes this much easier than it use to be.

More Cicadas!

The Cicadas are here!

A colleague told me he was on a property in Winnetka (a nearby suburb for those not in the Chicago area), and, using his words, "It looked like the ground was moving!"

Our brood (Brood XIII), is supposed to be the biggest in the U.S. There is a lot of anxiety about them, but I'm excited. In response to my last e-newsletter (sign up here), several folks in the Mid-Atlantic told me their brood(s) arrived 2 or 3 years ago. Same in Indiana. All I can tell you is that ours is arriving as I type!

My friend Pam Duthie sent me a link to the the following video which tells how these fascinating critters work. Really cool.

HGTV's Landscapers' Challenge follow up

This show aired in May, 2007 and features me, Tim Thoelecke, as well as two friends and local designers, Todd Hayden from Schmechtig Landscapes and Nancy Sauerberg from Nancy Sauerberg Design. Learn more about Landscapers' Challenge here. This episode is scheduled to air again on July 8, 2007.

Some key thoughts:
Notice that all three designs had a lot in common.
The $75k budget at first seemed like plenty, but in reality, it was about half what was needed. The owners got a significant "deal" on this project.
Did Nancy get cheated in the camera time department?
Notice how I start w/ a necktie, but it's gone by the end? The crew determined that the tiny Chicago Cubs logo on it was not permitted.

Anyway, for anyone who missed it, click below. I'd be interested in any comments or questions, which you can post by clicking below.

What's in a name?
At a social function recently, I ran into a friend who also is a former client. In the course of small talk, she asks, "So how's the gardening business?"

I politely responded and continued our conversation, though inside I was seething. We did a fairly large project for this woman, including a pretty substantial stone patio and a pretty cool water feature. Yes, there were plants too, and plenty of them. Furthermore, I know she is active in her garden club. One would THINK she would know that there is a difference between what I do and what "gardening" is.

Am I a gardener? Sure. But that's at home. My chosen career is landscape design.

What are you? Do you deliberately choose what vocabulary to you use when discussing your profession. If you don't, you ought to.

Are you a landscaper? Gardener? Landscape architect? Landscape designer? Landscape contractor? If you are a professional, you ought to use words that sound professional. It's all part of your image.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone not in our industry. What image does the term "landscaper" conjure up? Perhaps that is the image you want. For me, no.
What I do is equal parts art and science. In order to do what I do, and do it well, I need to understand bits and pieces of many other professions. Among those professions, I count civil engineer, architect, horticulturist, environmentalist, carpenter/woodworker, ironsmith, mason, plumber, electrician, and more. How many of those are "gardening"? One. Is gardening an important element? Certainly. But I'm not in the gardening business.

How do we communicate these things to someone not in the industry? I don't know. It's hard enough to communicate them to people IN the industry!

More on this topic later. The cicadas are coming.