From DawnSingh@aol.com Sun Jul 24 00:48:40 1994 Date: Sat, 23 Jul 94 18:59:39 EDT From: DawnSingh@aol.com To: london@sunsite.unc.edu Subject: American Garden Newsletter 7/23/94 THE AMERICAN GARDEN NEWSLETTER Dawn Singh, Editor & Publisher dawnSingh@aol.com Copyright 1994 by Dawn Singh The American Garden Newsletter reviews garden books and interviews authors. It is free of charge and is not affiliated with any organization. To subscribe or correspond, send your e-mail address to: DawnSingh@aol.com TABLE OF CONTENTS-JULY 23, 1994 Interview with Patricia Thorpe, author of "Growing Pains" Interview with Bertha Reppert, author of "Growing Your Herb Business" Book Review: "Landscaping with Herbs" by Jim Wilson INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA THORPE Author of "Growing Pains" Harcourt, Brace & Company 1994, 206 p., $22.95 "Growing Pains" is not your typical garden book. At least I've never read one that compares a midlife crisis with an overgrown, out-of-control garden. Pat Thorpe eloquently ties the two together in a very practical way. Her argument is that many people who jumped onto the gardening bandwagon in the '70's and '80's did not realize the commitment involved, and now find themselves facing a garden in serious need of re-engineering. But instead of seizing the opportunity, they are in total denial. As she says, "We refuse to admit that the cryptomeria has cut off access to the mailbox; we continue to force our way through paths that were once a little too narrow and are now impassible to anyone without a machete." This book offers an explanation of how we got where we are as a nation (in the gardening sense) and what to do once we recognize there's a problem. Thorpe is very knowledgeable and quite witty, but I believe this book is for gardeners who like to read. If you don't garden, you won't understand it, but you must love to read AND garden to really enjoy it. ---------------------------------------------------- Singh: I just finished your book and I must say, it's unusual. When I started it I thought it was going to be totally light-hearted and humorous, but toward the end it's quite serious. Thorpe: I was hoping to bring in a lot of aspects of our lives, not just talk about gardening as an isolated event, and to relate it to where we are and what we're thinking about and feeling. Singh: It's a different perspective. Have you gotten feedback on that? Thorpe: People have very different reactions to it. You can't ever really tell what people are going to think. Some people focus on the mid-life crisis part of it and a lot of people just enjoy it because it's funny and a lot of gardening folks aren't. It takes on some of the serious gardening questions, but it does it in a way, I hope, that is witty and entertaining. Singh: When did you first make the connection between the mid-life crisis and the "mature" garden? Thorpe: For "America's Cottage Gardens," [Thorpe's previous book] we traveled all over the country--I worked with a photographer--and the two of us went all over and saw gardens all over the country and that really brought up a lot of ideas about what gardening means to people and how it is part of their lives and reflects their lives at different stages. I guess it was while we were doing that and talking to people that I became much more aware of how a garden changes and how people react to that and try to deal with it. I did a lot of work for "House and Garden" and one thing I saw was this whole explosion of gardening and in the '70's and '80's it became such a trendy thing to do and people just assumed that you could go out and stick in a garden and that would be it and that was part of what yuppies did and really didn't see that gardening is a vast continuum and these things are growing and changing and that has to be part of how you deal with it. It's not necessarily good or bad. There are parts of it that are wonderful and parts that drive you crazy, but it's the essence of the garden--that it's growing and changing--and you have to see it that way. Otherwise, you're just sticking in flats of annuals every year. This was really intended for people who had begun to go beyond that but hadn't really understood what that was going to mean. You're talking to all these people and seeing these borders--you see a border that looks great and you know that it's only been in for three or four or five years. And you see one that's really going to pieces and you know it's at that transition stage where it's suddenly gotten out of hand and people are trying to figure out what to do. Singh: Most people don't think about what's going to happen in six or eight years down the road. I know I didn't. Thorpe: Sure. My father has been gardening my entire life and I have seen him working on these things and still, when we go out and do it, it's like all those things about life. We all have parents and they have all told us we're going to make mistakes and we still have to make them ourselves. Singh: What do you think the fallout rate is for people who don't want to make that long-term commitment to their gardens? Thorpe: I think there is probably a pretty high percentage of people who got into it. It's the same way people got into cooking and bought all the fancy cooking stuff and did all these fancy meals and entertaining and now all they make is pasta. I think with gardening there is kind of a line of the people who do go on and continue to do new things, who are always starting exotic seeds you've never heard of and trying plants from somewhere off the map, but I think there is a high percentage of people who just stopped at the rudbeckia stage and said "I've got flowers there and it looks like a garden," and that's to be expected from any enthusiasm. Singh: Another thing you talk about--and this is fascinating to me--is the "emotion of anticipation." This is so much a part of our lives, especially as gardeners, because not only are you anticipating what's going to happen in your garden, but you have that outlook toward a lot of things. Thorpe: It's something that I've felt strongly and it's something nobody had really written about, but you see it all the time. It's like waiting for Christmas and how can Christmas ever measure up to waiting for Christmas? That's why we try plants we've never heard of and are always looking for something to wait for. Singh: I also found interesting your observation about how as you get older you become interested in different kinds of plants. You talk about trees in particular. I'm kind of at the shrub stage right now, but my neighbor, who is about 12 years older than me, is really interested in trees and she already has a yard full. Thorpe: That was simply from observing all these people [in the cottage garden book] and talking to them. I remember Lincoln Foster was growing all his trees from seed and here he was in his 70's. Singh: Tell me about your background. Thorpe: I went to a small women's catholic college and I've had millions of jobs, going from one thing to another, but I was on the staff of "Esquire" magazine for a number of years in New York and decided to leave and take classes in landscape design at the New York Botanical Gardens. The classes weren't full-time so I made up a card and said I would do flower arrangements and plant care. My husband and I bought a place in the country way back in '72 and we would go to the country on weekends and bring back huge armloads of flowers, so people weren't surprised when I told them this was what I was going to do. I had a business called "Foxglove" that grew out of this. I took the landscape design courses for two years but decided, after dealing with landscape architects all that time, that it was not what I wanted to do. The business was going successfully, but I stopped doing the garden design because the flower part of it was really the part that was working and I found it very discouraging to try to garden for other people. After doing the business for about eight years we decided to have a child and just at exactly that same time a publishing company came to me and wanted to do a dried flower book. I had been teaching it at the horticultural society so it seemed to work out perfectly. Singh: This is a fascinating book and I wish you lots of luck on the next one. Thanks. ----------------------------------------------------------------- INTERVIEW WITH BERTHA REPPERT Author of "Growing Your Herb Business" Story Publishing, 1994 To order: 800-441-5700 186 p., $11.95 US/$16.95 Canada Bertha Reppert is not an insecure person. She has poured into this little book tons of tips on how to run an herb business, all gained from personal experience. She owns the famous "Rosemary House" in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and explains how, from scratch, she started 25 years ago. She is surprisingly candid and open about successful ideas and techniques used in her business. Her philosophy is "the more the merrier." She truly believes that life with herbs is vastly superior to life without (I happen to agree). Her positive attitude and endless energy, I am sure, have carried her through the frustrations of running a small business. This book is loaded with great ideas and I hope it generates a whole bunch of new herb businesses. Wisconsin readers--are you listening? As Bertha says, "if you build it, they will come." Singh: Do you have any secrets left? I can't believe it--this book is absolutely chockfull of ideas! Reppert: Isn't that the truth? I figured this was really above and beyond the call of duty. As I was writing it I was thinking, "I wish I had known this 25 years ago." Everything I put down I wish I had known then. It's a fun book too. I feel of all my books, this is the one that sounds most like me. Singh: Is that because of the subject or the publisher? Reppert: I'm sure it's the subject. It's something I've been so deeply engrossed in for so many years. The wedding book [Herbs for Weddings and Other Celebrations]--you know, I do weddings and love weddings, but it isn't something that I've lived with day and night for 26 years. [My baby] has grown like a child and taken off on its own like a child. Singh: How many employees do you have? Reppert: They come and go. It can be 4, 5, 6. We have part-time employees mostly. Help in the garden and behind the counter and in the tea room. That's our newest addition. Our daughter, Nancy, has taken that task on and she's doing very well with it too. It could be another book. Singh: I notice you are quite a book lover. It sounds like that's been a real important part of your life and your learning process. I just wondered what it must feel like to be a book writer being such a book lover. Now you're a published writer yourself. Reppert: I don't think I really ever thought about it. It's something I do automatically, but it doesn't come easy to me. Everything is written and rewritten and done over again, and it's still not to my satisfaction immediately. I still have to work at it, but I enjoy writing. I always have. I like to write little stories and letters. I sit down and it's like my hand gravitates to a pen. And, of course, I like to write about the things I love. In fact, right now I'm working on a journal, a day-by-day thing in my garden. When I'm out there I think about these wonderful things--at least they're wonderful to me--and I can hardly wait to get to my pen and write them down. So I don't know that there's a special kind of a feeling [being a writer], but it's just something that I enjoy doing. Singh: It shows. It's fun to read, it's well written, you use unusual words, and if somebody said, "here, read this how-to book on starting an herb business," a lot of people would think "yuck, that sounds boring," but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reppert: I just got mine last week. I sat down and read it and thought, "oh, this sounds like fun!" Singh: On page 161 you're talking about catalog sales and the whole mail order thing and you refer to some of the other business owners in town wondering how you've managed to stay in business so long. What is it about herbs that makes the difference? Reppert: You know, it's a very interesting thing. People who come into the shop, it could be local people, who look around and wonder, "what does she have to sell?" Then, if they hear me give a lecture and I hold these 20 or 30 things up and one after another I pound home the fact that this is a useful plant and you can do so many wonderful things with them. They can be used for cooking, for cosmetics or medicinal purposes or magic. Then they come back into the shop and they're an entirely different person. Their eyes have been opened. Herbs do make the difference, really. If you're aware of them they do take on what the ancient herbalists referred to as their "hidden virtues" and they do have subtle uses and deeper meanings. And this is what brought them into play for, say, religious rites or as memorials to the dead or whatever reason. People have used them down through the ages for centuries for more than utilitarian purposes. So this, is what I meant by herbs make a difference, although that is the slogan of the herb industry throughout the country. My feeling is, the more the merrier. If we have all these people working on getting out the word, then eventually the people here in town won't walk past Rosemary House and wonder what's going on in there. One time a man came in and looked around and said, "what are you people into?" That took me aback. Another time a lady came in and stood there and looked around a bit and said, "I don't use any of this stuff," and left. All I could think of was, "gosh. soap? candles? tea?" As long as all you see is the stuff you don't understand, the bags of larkspur, calendula and other stuff that you can use to make all sorts of wonderful formulas or potpourri, and if you don't, then more's the pity. I like to talk to older people too. Sometimes when you go to a senior citizens group they can be apathetic until you wake them up with some of the startling stuff and it begins to penetrate in a way that dredges up memories from their childhood, or what their mother or grandmother did and they get nostalgic for boneset tea, of all things, and they can hardly wait to share their memories. Singh: Isn't that funny, I've noticed that with my grandmother. She was raised barefoot up in the Appalachian foothills and she's started recalling things her mother made. Reppert: It's really rather remarkable. As I progress you can almost see it bubble to the surface and they can hardly wait to tell me and share this stuff they haven't thought about or talked about for so long and nobody to share it with, I guess. Rosemary House has been an experience, it's been a sleigh ride, a revelation, it's been all sorts of things, so it was rather fun to cudgel up these things and put them on paper. I'm not terribly organized and that I guess did it. But all along the way I kept thinking, "yeah, I wish I had known this," and "I wish I had known that." Singh: Don't you wish you could keep track of all the people who start their businesses based on this book? Reppert: There have been a lot of little businesses spawned by Rosemary House along the way. Incredible numbers. People would come from all over--Maine or Seattle or wherever they had read about us--had no idea what it was all about but for some reason it appealed to them. And they would come and look around and next thing you know, another little herb business spawned. But the promise of this book is that anybody who has a backyard herb garden and would like to make a few dollars or occupy their time gainfully, can really turn straw into gold from that garden with not any additional outlay. My thinking is that this is for the little guy who wants to do something on his porch or the other half of a double garage. Then when you have people coming you fling open the doors and there you have all your stuff that you have actually grown and harvested and made yourself. Singh: I believe it, it's your life's work. Reppert: It has turned out to be so and has involved the entire family along the way. I'm very happy my daughters have had access to this. They have a really good head start. To me it came in middle life, for them it was part of their lives from the very beginning and it wasn't until they went to school or girl scouts that they found out other mommies didn't do this. For a period of time I was an embarrassment to them. Now they see the light. And they're all in it and that's more gratifying because I think it will give them the same source of happiness that I've had. Singh: Next time I go to New Jersey to visit my sister-in-law, I'm going to get off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and stop in. Reppert: That's what people do, it's just a mile off the turnpike, so it's a handy little stop. A lot of people have done that and have started their own little place. The more people know about herbs, the better off we all will be. -------------------------------------------------- BOOK REVIEW "Landscaping with Herbs" by Jim Wilson Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994 220 p., $35.00 For some reason, I wasn't expecting too much from this book, but I was surprised--probably because I found Jim Wilson's wildflower book to be rather bland. As a fairly new herb gardener myself, I found the most valuable aspect of this book is the recommended plants and their combinations. There are many plants listed I haven't encountered yet and, since I'm still learning how to use herbs, Wilson's suggestions for using the plants is very helpful. Jim and his wife owned Wilson's Savory Farm in S. Carolina for six years, specializing in culinary herbs for restaurants across the country. His many years of experience and vast knowledge of the plants and their culture really impressed me. Thank goodness for people like Jim Wilson who love to teach. The first three quarters of the book talks about how to use herbs as ornamentals in a perennial border, which herbs to plant for fragrance and (most important) where, the wide variety of gray and silver herbs and how to use them effectively, how to plant herbs in walls and paved areas, components of the kitchen herb garden and important considerations in its design, and a great chapter on herbs in containers. Other than a few technicalities in the mechanics of the book (i.e., a discouraging word about plastic containers looking "tacky," is followed by a lovely two-page spread of herbs in plastic containers), I think this is a great book for new herb gardeners. If you just use half of Wilson's creative ideas for plantings, you'll have a show-stopping herb garden. Copyright 1994 by Dawn Singh