Everything old is new again

I started a garden blog back in the early days of blogging in 2006–using iWeb for Mac. There’s a reason why you never heard of iWeb. It sucked.

In Fall of 2008, I switched to Blogger. And now, ten years later, I’m made the switch to WordPress.

Coming to a quality bookseller near you (or Amazon), February, 2019.

One of the driving forces to the reinvigorating the blog and format is the impending publication of Buffalo-Style Gardens: Create a Quirky, One-of-a-Kind Private Garden with Eye-Catching Designs, a 224-page book co-written by myself and Sally Cunningham, the garden columnist for The Buffalo News, and Buffalo Spree Magazine, a garden expert on TV and radio, as well as author of her first book, Great Garden Companions. The book is published by St. Lynn’s Press of Pittsburgh. PA.

And I need to sell books! This site may help, but finding speaking gigs and selling books will be a priority this coming year-plus. I give talks to garden groups and any other groups interested in community development through gardening.

In reality, I haven’ been a good blogger for more than a year. I’ve been doing the bare minimum to keep it going. Some of that is because if you don’t keep an active blog, you aren’t eligible to attend the Garden Blogger Flings, which happen every year around the country. I only get to them about every other year, but I do enjoy visiting the gardens and getting to know the other garden bloggers from around the U.S. and beyond.

And garden art. Gardens and art are synonymous in my estimation.

“Gardens are the slowest of the performing arts.” – Mac Griswold, garden writer and historian

But back to the blog. It’s still the same old, same old – garden inspiration by posting on the great creative gardens (and gardeners) of Buffalo, gardens I visit through travel (my wife’s a 35-year flight attendant – we travel as much as we can afford!). And I’ll keep showing what projects we do around out own garden, which has become a popular stop on Garden Walk Buffalo, America’s largest garden tour. And bus tours. And bike tours. And by strangers walking by.

I have visited so many gardens that I’ve not posted about in the past year-plus – NYC’s High Line, The Desert Botanical Garden (photo), and gardens in Austin, Chicago, California, Los Vegas, and more. Plenty to keep me posting through the winter months!

Oh, and another thing I’ve never mentioned in the 13-or-so-years of blogging. The “Art” in Art of Gardening? As much as it refers to art, for me, it has always referred to Art, my grandad, the guy that got me interested in gardening when I was a youngster growing up in Binghamton, NY. My parents, for a short time, had a sad-looking vegetable garden, and gardening for them (and me) was more akin to mowing the yard every weekend.

But Gramma and Grandad, who lived next door, had an immense vegetable garden, a grape tunnel/arbor, spring tulips, rhubarb stands, black berry brambles, blueberry bushes, lilac trees that scented the neighborhood in spring, flower beds, maple trees they tapped, and more. I was lucky enough to have been asked to weed the garden when they went on trips, and I could eat whatever was ripe. I wish I had some pictures to share of his garden. You’d like it.

Enjoy the new blog –let me know if there’s issues viewing it. Let me know what you think!