Gardens and Gardening

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares119 Views

    Jamila Norman From “Homegrown” on Why She Recycles Nearly Everything

    by

    Jamila Norman — a.k.a. Farmer J from the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown” — has a simple home-décor philosophy: “I don’t like buying new stuff.”Jamila Norman has a few houseplants, for the record, all thriving, at her home in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta. But although she has room out back, there is no garden.“My friends shame me for it,” Ms. Norman said. “They shame me for it all the time.”Is she ashamed? She is not. Are those friends kidding? Let us hope.Ms. Norman, 43, a former environmental engineer for the State of Georgia, is the owner of Patchwork City Farms, a 1.2-acre spread in the middle of the city that produces organic fruit, vegetables and herbs flowers for restaurants and local farmers’ markets.She has brought her knowledge and can-do spirit to full flower as the host of the Magnolia Network series “Homegrown.” On each episode, Ms. Norman, also known as Farmer J, helps someone transform an often wild-and-woolly outdoor space into a beautiful, functional backyard farm. (The show’s third season premiered on April 1.)Ms. Norman spent her early years in Queens, New York, eventually moving with her family to Connecticut, then to Georgia. When she got to the University of Georgia, in Athens, Ga., she volunteered with a Boys and Girls Club, sometimes assisting with planting projects.When Jamila Norman is not helping families transform outdoor space into productive gardens, she plants herself at her century-old Craftsman house in Atlanta. “I was looking for an older house, high ceilings, fireplaces, all that good stuff,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York Times“I did not grow up gardening at all,” she said. “But while we were living in New York, we spent extended periods of time in Trinidad, where my father is from. That experience taught me to love the outdoors.”A couple of Ms. Norman’s friends at college had property out in the country, where she’d go to “have some hippie moments.”“So I had always kind of dabbled in nature,” she said. “And I’m a double earth sign.” (Specifically, Taurus sun and Taurus rising.)Astrological imperatives notwithstanding, things didn’t go beyond dabbling until 2008, a few years after Ms. Norman moved to Atlanta from Athens — a long-deferred dream — and began helping out in the garden of a church. Later, she leased land for a farm at a middle school. In 2016, she bought the allotment that became the home of Patchwork City Farms. Conveniently, it’s a five-minute drive from her house.“I knew I wanted to be in the West End,” Ms. Norman said. “I was in the neighborhood a lot when I was in high school, because they had a lot of awesome cultural festivals there.”She and her husband (they have since divorced), looked at an array of properties. One place, a Craftsman house built in the 1920s, captivated Ms. Norman while she was sieving through the internet.“I Googled it and sent a link to my Realtor and said, ‘Hey, can I see this house?” she recalled. “I fell for it online, and when I saw it in person, l was like, ‘This is my house.’”Ms. Norman “gravitates toward turquoise,” as the slipcovers on the sofas make clear. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesJamila Norman, 43Occupation: Farmer, food activist and host of the television series “Homegrown”D. I. Why: “I was like, ‘I’m going to strip the molding all over the house.’ It took months just to do my bedroom using nontoxic stuff like the stuff that’s made from orange peels. Then I was like, ‘Let’s paint everything white.’ So much for all my ambition.”What made it so were the high ceilings and oversized windows, the three fireplaces, the crown and chair molding, and the big, open rooms — plenty of space for her three sons, now young adults. The new roof and the updated electrical and plumbing systems added to the appeal.It’s no big deal that the nails in the old oak floorboards in the living room sometimes pop up, requiring Ms. Norman to knock them back into place. She relishes the sense of history and continuity. “You can tell the house was built in stages,” she said, “because the floors in the newer parts are tongue and groove.”Ms. Norman is also decorating in stages. She has hung the panel of Kuba cloth that she bought years ago from a vendor at a street festival. Also on display are shells from Jamaica, rocks from Greece and artwork by her children and one of her sisters.But her attic bulges with the rugs and lamps and tables she has been collecting over the past decade or so and holding back until the moment is right. “I have boys, and when you have boys, you can’t do all your good things until they’re gone,” she said. “I tell them, ‘As soon as you move out, it’s going to be a new house.’”Ms. Norman makes her own soap. “We grew up as natural as possible, so I make all my own body products,” she said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo put it in horticultural terms, Ms. Norman’s philosophy of home décor tilts more toward perennials than annuals. “I don’t like buying new stuff,” she said. “I like to find stuff that’s already out there and still useful. It’s about finding value in old things. It’s a hodgepodge, but it’s cute.”An engineering drafting table that Ms. Norman found on Craigslist, for example, was repurposed as the countertop for the kitchen island. The spiral-shaped coat rack near the front door was a vintage sale find. The table, chairs and rug in the dining room were sourced at an estate sale. A friend who was moving passed down the curio cabinet. The desk cabinet sits on a desk that belonged to Ms. Norman’s former husband.Some while back, she spotted three steamer trunks sitting on a neighbor’s porch and made a successful offer. The trunks now store pieces of the quilt she is taking apart to reassemble (when she can find the time) and the essential oils she uses for the homemade skin-care and hair-care products she makes for herself and a few fortunate friends and relatives.“When people in my neighborhood see me, they say, ‘Oh, there’s the farmer girl,’” Ms. Norman said.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesOne of the two pullout sofas in the living room came from a friend; the other was a rare store purchase. Thanks to Ms. Norman’s mother, Raabia, both were recently refreshed with turquoise slipcovers.“She said, ‘Your couches are looking raggedy. I got you something.’ She comes in and arranges things and rearranges them,” Ms. Norman said fondly.This regard for the old and well used is elemental. Ms. Norman connects it to the land that is her livelihood and her love.“It’s about tending to things,” she said. “The oak floorboards came from somebody’s forest. The bricks — they’re from the earth. It’s an extension of nature in a built environment.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Americans Have Discovered the Garden, and Celebrities Want In

      by

      Many of us turned to gardening for solace during the pandemic. Now Martha Stewart and Drew Barrymore want to guide us to green thumbs.Last spring, as the world descended into a collective panic, Drew Barrymore planted her first lawn. “I did not think I could do this,” said Ms. Barrymore, 46, who until last year did not include gardening in her exhaustive list of achievements.And yet, the actress, writer, producer, businesswoman, mother and recent television host managed to make grass grow. “It was all barren. I got the water and the rake and the bag of seed and I waited weeks and watched it grow,” she said, speaking by phone as one of her two daughters vied for her attention in the background.In early-stage pandemic fashion, she — like many other locked-down homeowners — also got chickens and planted a victory garden, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, strawberries and squash. “It was a miracle. I never knew I could do these things, I didn’t think I was capable of it,” said Ms. Barrymore, who lives on the East Coast. “I felt really empowered.”Now, she is sharing her enthusiasm for grass as the face of Instead, a new lawn-care subscription service that fertilizes grass using ingredients like molasses, wheat flour, feather meal, blood meal and alfalfa. Over the course of the growing season, subscribers who pay $132 for a small lawn or $264 for a large one will receive three packages that promise to deliver a “happy lawn” that will be “overjoyed with this special recipe.”Ms. Barrymore is the latest celebrity to seize on a moment when millions of Americans have turned to their gardens as a source of solace, and to spin it into a business opportunity. Martha Stewart was the first to read the room. She weathered the pandemic last summer by filming “Martha Knows Best” for HGTV, a reality series about life on her sprawling Bedford, N.Y., estate, followed quickly with a second series in the fall. The show is now filming its third season, to air this summer.Last October, Aly Raisman, the Olympic gymnast who frequently posts Instagram selfies with her overgrown zucchini and miniature lime trees, partnered with the indoor gardening-kit company AeroGarden to share growing tips. And in January, UrbanStems, a flower and plant delivery service, released the love fern, a potted Blue Bell fern designed with Kate Hudson’s King St. Vodka brand.Even noncommercial ventures seem to play better in the garden these days. During their March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took their guest on a tour not of their Montecito living room, but of their chicken coop, projecting a message that in this time of social distancing, the most intimate setting is the backyard.Americans don’t have a national gardener in the way that the British have Monty Don, who hosts “Gardeners’ World,” which is a national institution in Britain. But with this newfound appetite for homegrown tomatoes and luscious lawns, the time might be ripe for one. As the country emerges from a long winter and (hopefully) the pandemic, all those raised beds and carefully tended lawns planted last spring and summer are still out there, waiting to be tilled and seeded for another season. Someone needs to explain the difference between a shovel and a spade.One candidate for the role would be, of course, Ms. Stewart, 79, who has been schooling Americans on their pruning methods for decades. She published her first book about gardening in 1990 and sells a line of garden tools and décor. In “Martha Knows Best,” she offers housebound viewers advice on how to achieve the perfect gardening soil, plant trees and build stone pathways, among other things.“People have started this hobby of gardening that’s addictive,” said Jane Latman, the president of HGTV. “We get letters and comments on our social feed constantly. Where is the gardening? You’re HGTV. Put the ‘G’ back in HGTV.”The first two seasons of “Martha Knows Best” were filmed with a skeleton crew on Ms. Stewart’s 153-acre estate, where she was locked down with a few members of her household staff. The mogul of domesticity spent much of each episode haranguing her cheery gardener, Ryan McCallister, as he dutifully planted 18,000 daffodil bulbs and wrapped her enormous boxwoods in burlap for the winter. (A crew of silent workers stitched the burlap shut with sewing needles.) In typical Martha Stewart fashion, she also demonstrated how to carve pumpkins and make wreaths, and bantered with celebrities, including Ms. Barrymore, over video.Filming began on April 9 for the third season, which will offer viewers more of Ms. Stewart’s property and take them indoors, as pandemic restrictions loosen. “We’re going to see more chickens,” Ms. Latman said. “The audience was very interested in the chickens.”As HGTV begins to look beyond the pandemic, it still has an eye toward the outside. “The idea of home has changed over the last year and a half, and there is a nesting that people have done and will continue to do,” Ms. Latman said.“Inside Out,” a show about an interior designer and landscape designer squaring off to win the larger share of a homeowner’s budget, premieres April 26 on Discovery+, the streaming service for Discovery, HGTV’s parent company. And “Clipped,” a topiary competition series premiering May 12, has cast Ms. Stewart as the lead judge deciding who has created the best sculpted shrubbery.If Ms. Stewart is a natural fit to channel our newfound enthusiasm for the garden, Ms. Barrymore is a less likely one. “Had they asked me two years ago, I think I probably would have been like, ‘You don’t want me, I’m not the real deal,’” she said of her partnership with Instead.But by the time the company did come around, Ms. Barrymore, who also has beauty and home-furnishings lines, was hosting a new talk show and had acquired an appreciation for dirt. Now, her Instagram feed is an eclectic mix of trying on lipstick for her beauty brand, selfies in the television studio, and videos of her hugging her chickens.In Instead’s version of landscaping, grass has an opinion and “lawning” is a verb like nesting, Zooming, adulting or Instagramming. Ms. Barrymore is the co-chief creative officer of the company, which is funded by the venture capital arm of Scotts, the lawn-care behemoth. She defines “lawning” as the act of “setting up a space for you and your family, and it’s a place that doesn’t want to be a museum that you stare at but a place that you interact with and live.”In a 30-second commercial for the lawn-care product, Ms. Barrymore, wearing a denim shirt and patchwork skirt, spreads out on an impeccable lawn and pets the grass, professing her love for it. “Happy lawn, meet happy lawn,” she says with a giggle.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      How a British Gardening Show Got People Through the Pandemic

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraCredit…Francesca Jones for The New York TimesHow a British Gardening Show Got People Through the PandemicCredit…Francesca Jones for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 12, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETThe television show “Gardeners’ World” is an institution in England, where it has aired for coming up on 54 seasons, having premiered way back in 1968. It broadcasts on Friday nights, welcomed by viewers as a gentle usher into the weekend.Monty Don, a British garden writer and author of some 21 books on the subject, has been the host since 2003. If Mr. Don’s sturdy appearance and deep, reassuring voice don’t comfort audiences, there’s the constant presence of his dogs napping at his feet.Last year, over the course of the 33-episode season, which follows the growing season from March through late October, something remarkable happened: “Gardeners’ World” went from being comfort TV to indispensable viewing.With restaurants, bars and theaters shut down and socializing at home (or anywhere else) risky, gardening was one of the few leisure activities the pandemic didn’t take away. Both the U.K. and the United States experienced a gardening boom last year, with sales of seeds way up and nurseries overrun on weekends. Judging by the 30 percent sales increase of Scotts Miracle-Gro, this spring promises another bumper crop.“Gardeners’ World,” which is available in the United States through streaming services like BritBox and on YouTube, rode the enthusiasm. Last year weekly viewership was the highest in five years and the BBC, which airs the show (produced by BBC Studios) deemed it essential public service broadcasting, said the executive producer, Gary Broadhurst. (The new season debuts March 19.)Crocuses on the cricket pitch at Longmeadow.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York Times“It’s because of what gardening can do for people,” Mr. Broadhurst said. “The channel thought, and rightly so, that people would need the program. Because we were bombarded with news about coronavirus, and this was an opportunity for just an hour to have a release.”Nadifa Mohamed, a Somali-British novelist, wrote last April in the New Statesman that Monty Don and “his placid Labradors” offered viewers “29 minutes of televisual sedation,” adding that “the seasons turn in a neat and predictable way, each offering new shades of beauty and little lessons in how to survive.”To tune in each week and see the daffodils and bluebells coming up, to watch Mr. Don’s raised vegetable beds grow lush and abundant by high summer, was true counterprogramming: Life endures. The birdsong that begins each episode was an antidote to the trauma of the nightly news. In short, “Gardeners’ World” became an oasis of normalcy, a balm for frayed nerves — and not only for British viewers.Alex Yeske, an art director and graphic designer, turned to “Gardeners’ World” early in the pandemic when she felt cooped up in her New York apartment and fried from staring at screens. “So many of us have been reaching our limits,” Ms. Yeske said. “I spend way too much time on my computer, my phone. Getting to see all this greenery was relaxing.”As her anxiety mounted last spring, Alisha Ramos, who writes the newsletter Girls Night In, went looking for something to quell it. She tried meditation apps, but they lacked a storytelling component. Then she found “Gardeners’ World.” Ms. Ramos was living in an apartment in downtown Bethesda, Md., without any green space, and she had never gardened before, but she was instantly drawn in. “Every night before bed I would cue up an episode,” she said. “It’s very gentle in how the episodes are constructed. Even the sounds; the birds chirping, the rain. Those natural elements were really calming.”Mr. Don hosts “Gardeners’ World” from his own home and two-acre garden, Longmeadow, in the West Midlands of England. In last season’s Episode 1, there was no mention of Covid-19. By Episode 3, the United Kingdom was under enforced lockdown and Mr. Don was filming without a crew and getting camera tips from his director via Zoom.While his co-hosts visit London flower shows and the immaculate landscaped gardens of grand country estates, Mr. Don has his boots in the muck at Longmeadow, patching a fence or digging up the horned tulips he has over-planted in his jewel garden. At program’s end, Monty gives viewers jobs for the weekend. In his stretched wool sweaters and old blue work coat, he’s an unlikely style icon — a solid sort.Ms. Ramos mentioned a quote attributed to Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Mr. Don, she said, espouses something of that eternal wisdom on “Gardeners’ World.”“He said something along the lines of, ‘The beauty of gardening and nature is it’s always here,’” Ms. Ramos said. “It’s a reminder that life goes on. It’s so great to be able to retreat into our gardens at a time like this.”Irises, hyacinths and muscari in pots.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York TimesTeasel seed heads.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York TimesPreparing for Spring“The snowdrops are coming, the aconites, the crocuses, the irises. You’re starting to see buds and shoots on the trees and shrubs,” Mr. Don said last month. He spoke via video chat, from Longmeadow, where the very wet winter was nearly over and he and the gardeners who assist him have been mulching the borders and digging up some box hedging hit by blight.Mr. Don, who is 65, was eagerly anticipating spring’s arrival — and with it his return to “Gardeners’ World.” “Particularly after this winter,” he said. “It’s been a long, hard winter here. People are pretty depressed and fed up. So they want to breathe again, and get outside, and have this sense of hope.”On his documentary specials, like “Monty Don’s Italian Gardens” and “Monty Don’s American Gardens,” and in interviews, Mr. Don imbues gardening with a drama and passion uniquely his. A water feature built for the garden of the Roman Emperor Hadrian is “extraordinary”; the lengthening spring days bring him “immense” excitement. He bites into adjectives like ripe plums.“Gardeners’ World,” by contrast, is more subdued, and without any of the hyperbole or busyness common to modern media. When Mr. Don is working in his garden, we never hear background music. Weather isn’t edited into — or out of — the show. If it rains, the host gets wet. Features on gardens and gardeners are given room to breathe; lingering close-ups of a flower or trees rustling in the breeze play between the segments.A Utah family, fans of Monty Don, Britain’s national gardener, replace their lawn with a bed of wildflowers.CreditCredit…BBC Studios“The basic rule is it has to take you away from whatever stresses and strains there are in your world,” Mr. Don said. “But at the same time, it has to be honest. Nothing is manufactured. We never layer birdsong on that wasn’t there.”While Covid-19 upended the show’s production last season, Mr. Don and his colleagues decided for the most part not to talk about the pandemic, apart from glancing mentions of “challenging times.” Freaking people out was the job of the news. “Gardeners’ World” reinforced the therapeutic power of gardening.When the show addressed Covid-19 head on, it did so movingly. Unable to travel widely to film, the producers asked viewers to share videos of what they were up to in their gardens during quarantine. A Utah family dug up their yard and planted a wildflower meadow; a young girl in Wales grew her own pumpkins and left them for strangers. The clips connected viewers at a time of social isolation and showcased gardeners’ creativity and resilience.It’s been a long, wet and cold winter at Longmeadow. Spring is eagerly awaited.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York TimesDaffodils grown as cut flowers.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York TimesOne of the more poignant segments paid a visit to Kate Garraway, a well-known TV presenter. Ms. Garraway’s husband, Derek, got Covid-19 last March, became critically ill and was in the hospital for months, and remains seriously ill today. Sitting in her London backyard, Ms. Garraway explained how she and her children planted a garden in hopes that he would return to see it bloom.“You don’t plant something unless you believe it’s going to come up,” Ms. Garraway said. “So by planting something and believing Derek will see it when it comes up, that gives us a sense of future.”When the camera cut back to Longmeadow, Mr. Don spoke in the comforting voice of a minister at bedside, saying, “Gardens can’t make our problems go away, they can’t solve them, but they can help us to deal with them.”Reflecting on the Kate Garraway segment now, Mr. Don said, “I’m old enough to know that if you have grief, if you have suffering, if you have loss, the garden is a solace.”From Jeweler to the Stars to Expert GardenerMr. Don’s parents cultivated a five-acre plot at the family’s home in south England, and growing up, he and his siblings were given gardening jobs to do. As a boy, he disliked weeding the strawberries or chopping wood, but, at 17, while sowing some seeds in spring, Mr. Don experienced what he called a “Dionysian moment.”“Suddenly I was awed by a kind of ecstasy of total happiness. Of complete sense of not wanting anything else,” he recalled. “And bearing in mind this was 1971. The most glamorous thing in the world was sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, not gardening.”Monty Don and his wife, Sarah, in their London jewelry studio, in 1983. Credit…Dafydd JonesMr. Don kept his hobby to himself. Luckily, his wife, Sarah, whom he met at Cambridge University, enjoyed gardening too. In 1981, the couple started a jewelry company, Monty Don. Their loud costume pieces became fashionable during the go-go ‘80s, worn by Princess Diana, Michael Jackson and others. Mr. Don led a glamorous life in London, draped in his own jewelry and knocking around with Boy George. He and his wife also gardened behind their townhome; when Elle magazine ran a feature, he was outed as a green thumb.In the early ’90s, the economy tanked, and with it, the couple’s jewelry business. Drowning in debt, with three young children to support, Mr. Don and his wife sold everything they owned to pay off creditors. He fell into a deep depression. Years later, Mr. Don still bears the scars of that financial failure, friends of his told the Prospect last year. Despite becoming Britain’s national gardener, he is a workaholic, never one to rest easy on his success.Mr. Don and his family left London and moved to Herefordshire, the most rural county in England, because his wife’s mother lived there and property was cheap. The historic house and land they bought was scrubby and untamed. Mr. Don threw himself into creating Longmeadow, in a sense his workplace and sanctuary both. It is no formal, restrained garden but crammed with plants, features and ideas, a canvas for his imagination and enthusiasm.Monty Don and one of his ever-present dogs, Nellie.Credit…Francesca Jones for The New York Times“I found the mixture of creativity and just sheer physical work completely satisfying,” Mr. Don said. “I remember making cuff links for David Bowie. It was as though the previous life was, not the wrong turn because it was fun, but it was a side event. And that what I was doing was getting back to my roots. I was doing what I was meant to be doing.”He began to write columns on gardening for newspapers, appear on TV and publish books, many of them centered on life at Longmeadow. As a passionate but amateur gardener, Mr. Don connected with those who shared his interest but were intimidated by what can be a fixation on expertise.On “Gardeners’ World,” Mr. Don emphasizes function, utility and sustainability. You don’t need to buy $200 pruning shears or memorize pH levels, he shows us. It’s about celebrating the harmony, well-being and richness of life to be found in gardens.To Everything There Is a SeasonLast August, Ms. Yeske and her husband left New York and moved to West Los Angeles, where they bought a house with a large yard. She plans to grow a garden of vegetables and flowers for the first time in her life.“This spring I’m starting things from seed and planning to have a couple of raised beds,” she said. “All of which I probably wouldn’t have done if I didn’t watch ‘Gardeners’ World.”Ms. Ramos also left her apartment behind during the pandemic. She and her husband moved to a suburb of Bethesda, and bought a house whose previous owner, a chef, had gardened in the backyard and even built a drip-irrigation system. Having outdoor space to garden was suddenly high on her list of priorities, Ms. Ramos said. Watching the casual, sometimes fumbling way that Mr. Don gardens had given her the confidence to try.“Gardeners’ World” usually begins each season with half-hour episodes, before expanding to one-hour broadcasts later on. But because of last year’s success, the network ordered one-hour broadcasts from the start. Audience anticipation is high. The pandemic is still with us, lockdowns have not yet lifted — and the garden beckons.“You plant a seed and the next spring it will grow. And next summer it will flower. And maybe next autumn it will bear fruit,” Mr. Don said. “That continuation of life is very powerful.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More