You’ll Need to Sit Down: A Letter to The Midwest

Behind the posts, articles, conferences and social media, there’s a backstory. Have you kept up with the digital correspondence between Ranters Scott Beuerlein and Marianne Willburn?  You can start here, or go back and find the entire correspondence at Dear Gardener.

Lovettsville, VA

August 31, 2024

Dear Scott,

I’m not sure how to break this to you. 

No doubt you are flying high from having your most recent Plant Trials Symposium at the Cincinnati Zoo in the books.  It was sold out again, wasn’t it? 

No doubt it was a rousing success, you got all the adoration you desperately seek, and you got to show off how well you can both BBQ and botanize at your infamous speakers’ dinner the night before.

It’s probably best to focus on those joyful moments as you read the next few sentences – sitting down. 

Here’s a photo of Hans Hansen’s private garden to help center you first.

 

And another, just in case.

 

Here we go.  Deep breaths Scott.

The short version:  I beat you.

The long version: Scott, I beat you soundly.

Yes my friend – you are now tangentially connected to a triple Gold Media Award winner. This one for magazine column writing as designated by Garden Communicators International.  In fact, you are now reading words that probably belong in a museum the moment my fingers type them. 

I know you’re going to try and pretend that you weren’t checking various social media platforms in between buying ice and filling coolers with inappropriate amounts of adult beverages – and you hardly know which award I’m talking about, and if you did, you wouldn’t want it anyway – but I’m pretty thrilled.

All the goading aside, it was a great conference.  The normal getting together with old friends and colleagues was made even better by four specific things I’ll mention and two that I won’t. 

 

First, my plane flight there and back was Southwest-Smooth.  Like the old days.  Of course it helps that there is a non-stop from Baltimore to Grand Rapids; but in the last few years I’ve had that screwed up too, as nothing is exempt from airline shiteshow-ery these days. 

Instead, Southwest delivered a comfortable seat, an on-time, non-overbooked flight, and even an early landing.  No luggage lost, no customers fuming.  And, just like the old days of Southwest (I was a Southwesterner before it was cool), the crew made lots of jokes which recognize that travel is tough for those of us who don’t charter jets in between lecturing others to save the planet, and we’re all in it together.  They’ve just been voted the #1 customer experience for economy class for the third year in a row, and they deserve it.

And no, I’m not an enthusiastic brand shill (despite what is currently being said about my character, motivations, writing style, knowledge, and possibly shoe size, on native plant Facebook pages).

Second, I got to spend a couple nights with your friend and mine (and my travel partner), Andrea Gasper, at her family’s dairy farm just outside Grand Rapids.

 

I got to milk a cow and drive a kick-ass John Deere, and thanks to her very funny husband Aaron, I now know at least two things I didn’t know before:

1) Andrea cannot stand getting her car dirty and would hate my gravel road (which will need to feature heavily in future ribbings); and,

2) Those massive white plastic tubes all over farms are modern silage tubes, not hay storage.  I grew up with silage in silos, so that was a revelation.

Also, the amount of technological innovation on a modern farm is mind-boggling. Very cool.

The third huge bonus to this trip was that I finally got to visit Hans Hansen’s private garden, and Walters Gardens, where I had about three fewer hours than I needed to take time with all those trial beds and exceptional plants. I also had no way of sneaking past armed guards where obviously cool things with genera that will not be named were happening behind a large hedge of arborvitae. So tantalizing. So frustrating. 

 

Okay I’m kidding about armed guards — it was just Christa Steenwyk and her clipboard.

I believe that Hans can genuinely claim to be not only one of the most incredibly imaginative and talented plant breeders on the planet, but one of the freaking nicest.  He and Brent Horvath of Intrinsic Perennials have been running neck and neck on this dual-category award for years.  I’m afraid your affability has nothing on those two.

 

I’ll need to mention the award I won to explain the fourth wonderful thing that happened on this trip, so you may want to sit down again if you’d finally found the strength to stand.

The award was given to me for my column ‘In Defense of Gardening’ in The American Horticultural Society’s The American Gardener magazine.  And the editor who took a chance on it – and for the most part, held my reins at a very comfortable gallop – was David Ellis, who was honored with a Hall of Fame award for his inestimable service to media and horticulture over the last 30 years. 

David is retiring in December, and Rochelle Greayer, designer, educator, and the very capable founder/editor of Pith and Vigor, will be taking over this great magazine – so it made me incredibly proud to see him honored in a couple different ways.  No matter how much or how well we write, we are dependent on good editors who tighten prose and preserve voice, and David is one of the best. 

Plus he gets my sense of humor – which is more than some people I could mention.

So, that’s a brief wrap-up of what you missed. And what you lost. And a million links to help you absorb it. And if we are still friends after this letter, I look forward to hearing what’s been going on with you, as your Facebook audience currently knows more than I do.  Probably way more than they want to.

Yours with hat at a decidedly cocky angle,

Marianne

P.S. I attach a shot of the late-night post-award pajama-clad glee.  Andrea and I took this specifically for your benefit.