Garden-Writing for the Wrong Region
Imagine my surprise when I opened my local newspaper (the Washington Post, to which I’ve subscribed since 1971) to find this cover image of “Local Living” – a stunning garden fit for a desert climate, not the Mid-Atlantic where, um, most of the Post’s readers live. And by saying it’s the “Prince Georges Edition” it claims to be even more local – just for my county. (The article is here, but behind a pay wall. You may find it on your library’s website for free, though.)
Above is the glorious “after” shot, with this quote from someone with Western Resources Advocates. “When you replace your lawn with drought-proof landscaping, you save about 40 percent in outdoor water use.” Which may be true for dry climates but not here in the Washington Post’s region, where we do much less watering of lawns (if at all). And is there such a thing as drought-PROOF landscaping, anyway? Besides rocks?
The article was written by a Denver-based writer and geared to climates like Colorado’s. Now on some subjects the difference in growing situation in her climate versus ours in the East may not matter so much but on the topic of water usage, it’s the whole ball of wax!
The author’s bio – “Denver-based writer Laura Daily specializes in consumer advocacy and travel strategies” – doesn’t inspire confidence in her garden-writing in any climate, unfortunately.
In my long years avidly reading the Post’s gardening coverage, I’d never seen something so inappropriate. (Okay I have, but only if you go back to the bad old days of chemical product advice yielded by the justly controversial Jack Eden, who was finally terminated after years of complaints. His replacement was the DC-area writer Adrian Higgins, who just retired last September. I didn’t loved many but not all of his pieces (naturally), but they were always appropriate to this region, and he knew the subject.
Sadly, the Post hasn’t shown any interest in replacing Higgins and is resorting to freelancers like the one above. I have zero interest in writing for the Post but I encourage other garden writers in appropriate regions to DC to offer them your articles! (I did urge our Marianne to pitch, and she’d be great.)
Hey, maybe I’ll write a letter to the editor to explain that gardening isn’t like cooking! With gardening it’s about region, region, region.
Maybe I’ll suggest that a more helpful title for this Post article would have “In a dry climate? How to ditch your water-hogging, etc.” Then the vast majority of Post readers could look elsewhere for help – like Margaret Roach’s article on the same topic.
Following Advice about the Wrong Region
Fortunately my other daily read – the New York Times – hired a terrific garden writer in Margaret Roach, who gardens in New York’s Hudson Valley and writes the very popular A Way to Garden blog, plus books. After the paper stopped publishing gardening pieces by the equally good Anne Raver and Michael Tortorello (I have info about why), there was a lull until it landed on its feet, gardening-content-wise, when Margaret started writing the “In the Garden” column in 2020.
Just weeks ago Margaret covered a closely related topic – how to reduce or replace lawn with something more eco-friendly – and it’s such a interesting piece I’ll be covering it soon right here. (Because I follow the subject obsessively.)
Her article yielded almost 1,200 comments (a feature the Washington Post discontinued on its site years ago – too much trouble to moderate) and found several complaining that the piece was only for Northeastern gardeners, not gardeners everywhere. Oh, and that this Northeastern newspaper should publish another article on the subject just for their region. To those complainers I would suggest the obvious – that they ask their own regional papers to cover it! Hey, we know someone in Denver! Oh wait, she writes about travel.
Margaret is so game, she seems to have read all those comments, or at least enough to get the gist, and responded with a second article “Your Lawn Questions Answered,” but is too nice to tell those Western readers to seek answers from local experts.
Hey, that reminds me of the time my feature about a garden in Virginia prompted this comment from a Western reader:
Oh my God! Will there ever be any writers or articles on all of the wonderful gardens in California?!?! I am so tired of hearing about Washington DC, Virginia, and everything on the East Coast.
Believe me, I’m NOT not your best guide to the gardens, plants or gardening practices of California.
When I lived in California, clients would show me articles from home & garden magazines written east of the Mississippi and wonder why I didn’t share their enthusiasm for certain plants, water features, etc. Twenty years have passed and today we have students googling random regional info on the internet. And our local newspaper in Columbus, OH publishes a version of USA Today “Light” with virtually NO regional gardening info, aside from an unpaid column written by the man who administers the Master Gardening program. I’ve gone from loving the local newspapers in Cleveland, St. Louis, San Jose, and San Francisco to now just getting the Sunday NY Times. What’s the point of a local paper without local gardening info? And I agree, Margaret Roach is fabulous!
I quit my subscription to the Sacramento Bee when they let their garden writer go and started using articles (not even good ones) that had nothing to do with gardening in the central valley of California. It was just one of many topics that were not appropriate to this region. That writer started a wonderful blog and that is where I go now for up to date local gardening info.
I did too! I follow the blog and get much more from it than I do from those last sad days I took the Bee. It was the beginning of the demise of the paper when they eliminated her position.
If you’re in northern CA, I recommend the podcast or radio show “Davis Gardening Show” with Don Shor, owner of Red Barn Nursery.
Boy! are you spot on! The Hartford Courant has done the same and the articles rarely pertain to gardening here in CT.
This is a situation that probably applies in many locations. Our local paper here in the Fox Valley of Illinois has run syndicated articles by Adrian Higgins, noting that he’s DC-based. His articles were often helpful, although some of the plants and issues to which he referred were not applicable to our zone. Our same paper also carries articles by a staff member of the Chicago Botanic Garden, which tend to be more universally appropriate for us.
Great points here! I miss Adrian Higgins and I have been following Margaret Roach’s newsletter & podcasts. Not everything the cover applies to the two regions I garden in, but the concepts are always vetted and the presentation is thought-provoking.
I second your suggestion about Marianne Willburn writing DC regional gardening pieces for WAPO.
High praise Allen, many thanks. -MW
So glad you wrote this Susan – I saw that too and rolled my eyes back in my head, but didn’t immediately run to the laptop. Great Rant.
Something similar happened after I finished my weekly column at the Frederick News Post and they went over to AP gardening content (read: cheap, bland, often anonymous) for their readers. Or, they would grab some poor journalist working two desks and too many hours and ask them to write a piece on wildflowers with predictable results, such as a pillorying of goldenrod as the cause of fall allergies. (!!) That one was memorable.
I’ve said it before, but smaller papers need to recognize that if they do not give their readers regional content in a voice that captures hearts, their readers will leave them for the big players to get the content from its original source — plus a whole lot more.
WaPo is a big player. They need a regular gardening columnist at a time when so many people are heading back to gardening. It’s like taking art and music out of the schools. We all need a fun, fabulous elective to balance the screaming headlines filled with quadratic equations.
And thanks for the vote for WaPo columnist. I’d enjoy the hell out of that job. Perhaps I’ll petition St. Henry Mitchell in my prayers tonight for his divine intervention. Oh, and pitch of course. 😉 – MW
Amen, sister! I’m also in the Car Central Valley and we are cursed with a local? Version of USA Today. We do have occasional articles from our local Master Gardeners that are well written and researched All gardening is local!
I, too, wanted to drop our local paper for the same reasons, but not until they dropped their local sports editor did my husband agree.
I grew up gardening in Alabama, have lived and gardened in California. There is very little the two climates have in common. Now I’m member of several gardening groups on social media. A few are local (county- or region-focused), but some are national or even international. One of the most frustrating things in those groups with wider spans is the request for advice from posters who don’t mention their climate at the least, or their USDA zone in the US. Some people just don’t understand why/how garden solutions can’t really be generic for the whole country, much less globe.
As someone who moved from PA (44″ annual rainfall) to NM (14″ annual rainfall), I wholeheartedly agree that drought tolerance is a subject best dealt with at a regional level. But now that I live at 7000 feet, many of the baking recipes written for sea level bakers don’t work for me…so maybe cooking can be regional, too!
Well, well, well … now you know how WE Westerners feel when reading Garden Rant, 95% of the time! Sorry, but.
Luckily there are some decent blogs that focus on gardening in the InterMountain West as well as beyond (HelLO Panayioti!) and we are blessed to have a local magazine called “Colorado Gardener” (“still free after all these years…) but as for local
newspapers as a source, they are a dying, if not dead, breed.
Good luck with your pitch, Marianne.
Exactly why I started Washington Gardener Magazine years ago – I saw the writing on the wall as all WaPo regional coverage was shrinking to basically nothing (not just the gardening coverage).
I also would get exasperated when I read the comments on WaPo garden articles from mostly readers outside our region demanding appropriate plant choices for their areas far from ours or asserting that the plants described won’t grow for them. “This isn’t for you” I wanted to scream — not everything has to be for everyone!
I’m sure the current editors are responding now to those demands. It is tough when your hometown paper is also the paper of choice for many nationwide/worldwide to juggle those competing audiences.
Unless it’s generic gardening information (what those numbers on fertilizer mean), or warnings about new pests/diseases or invasive plants to watch out for (because we all know how fast and far they can spread!), garden advice in local/regional newspapers should be regional. I’ll give national newspapers & magazines with more leeway. And at least make it known at the beginning of an article where the writer or garden shown is located so we don’t get our hopes up about a fantastic new plant, only to have them crushed at the end because they hate our cold winters or hot humid summers. I really don’t like having to hunt through an article to find where the person is from, and sometimes it’s not even included.
OTOH, gardens do go through style trends just as home decorating or clothing does. Seeing what’s “hot” elsewhere can be inspiring to try and adapt to your own location. The hardscape can usually be replicated, though one region may need to use granite instead of limestone or sandstone. You will probably have to do research to find plants that could evoke the feeling of a desert rock garden. And if none are to be found, there’s nothing wrong with certain styles being left to those in areas they do well in. Either plan to visit them in person some day, or enjoy them from afar.
The Quad Cities Times used to have a pretty good Sunday home/garden section but the editor retired 5-6(?) years ago. It featured local gardens & homes regularly, a monthly to-do calendar from the ISU master gardeners, etc. Now it’s become mostly AP sourced articles, very few locally written items. Same with the Cedar Rapids Gazette – local gardens/homes are few and far between now. In fact, what’s in one paper’s home/garden section is usually in the other if not the same day, within a week or two. Sadly Iowa Gardener Magazine seems to have gone away, and Iowa garden blogs rarely get posted to. I can think of only one (Mears Garden) that posts weekly. I suppose most have gone to IG, where a quick photo and short caption are all that’s needed. Writing a coherent blog post takes thought and work. I’m not much of a gardener any more, so my sparse garden content is whining and complaining bitterly about weeding.
So, just to put this question out here clearly – what does it take to become a Garden Rant contributor? Not asking for myself, as writing isn’t my thing (it’s taken me well over an hour to write this!), but maybe some of those who complain about Garden Rant being east coast oriented might take up the challenge to contribute? Though it seems to me that challenge has been made before, with few takers?
JustGail, we LOVE guest posts, esp from diverse regions. Here’s the info about that: https://gardenrant.com/author/gardenrant-guest
Susan, you are so right! Philosophical conversations can transcend all locations (Richard Louv, Doug Tallamy, Michael Pollan come first to mind), and so can concepts, techniques, art. Your own garden’s design (in concept), privacy screen, and your own trials and tribulations connect to any gardener. But other garden advice must remain close to home or region. That article would have been better set up to show what’s going on around the country in climate challenges.
Susan, I could not agree more about the Post’s incompetent attempts at gardening pieces since Adrian retired. And it always irritates me when people in our area say they want a xeriscape. Why would you want that here? It is not a xerophytic climate – it is a mesophytic environment and we are prone to huge often flood-like rains followed with incredible heat and humidity. When I tried growing desert plants they mostly rot.
I let my subscription to WaPo lapse in 2003, but if they hire Marianne as garden columnist, I will re-subscribe! 🙂
#1 The NYT considers itself a national newspaper. If so, why not in articles at least acknowledge differences in climate between NY, IL, FL, CA, etc? WaPo, a different story, though undoubtedly the NYT”s financial success is on their minds. A “national” newspaper has more potential customers. Independent local newspapers are vanishing, owned by corporations that group them for economies of scale and save money by skimping on local coverage.
#2. Perhaps if explaining that the potential environmental harm of lawns goes beyond water use (for example: high nitrogen fertilizers draining into natural bodies of water and causing algae bloom) it would be better understood that reducing lawn is a valid thing to do in more than just semi-arid climates like California. The writer missed an opportunity there. It’s not all about water.
#3 The California gardener gets “a little of her own back” as Eliza Doolittle said. It is only the past two decades that attention to differences in climate west of the Rockies has crept into gardening books (which were largely the means of gardening education for a long time). American book and magazine publishing, including gardening, has been East-Coast-Centric for a long, long time. Sunset Magazine in its long-past heyday was it for the western gardener.
I have been struggling with this very problem for my entire garden-education career. Newbies are especially vulnerable as are those who are drawn to the seductive lure of garden mag photos with accompanying text centered solely on aesthetics. I think this practice of non-regional gardening info (made easier by google) has led to much disappointment, confusion, destruction of confidence (black-thumbism). The nursery industry is equally to blame when they mass produce plants in the greenhouses of Canada or the humidity of Atlanta, then sell them here in Southern California. Customers excitedly buy them, only to have them die in three weeks. You are right that publishers need to get their acts together in this regard and educate rather than bedazzle with pretty, but impossible, or irrelevant, pictures. Btw, all of you westerners looking for good info should try PacHort’s website and archives. (P.s. I agree 100 percent with the above comment about GardenRant which has been saved over the years from the unsubscribe button by its occasional relevance to us here in the far west).
I now live in the Fox Valley west of Chicago, but started my gardening life in Laurel, MD. I learned how lucky I had been that I could grow 95% of any plants shown in garden magazines. After 20 years I’m finally comfortable planting for Zone 5, but still miss azaleas. The big box stores sell them here and forget to mention that the bushes may live here, but never bloom.