An interview with 2010 Keynote Speaker Valerie Easton

Valerie Easton interview (November, 2009)

Q: What got you writing about gardens?

A: I was a librarian for almost 20 years at a horticultural library at University of Washington, and started writing for the Arboretum Bulletin, and then, the Seattle Times, mostly to promote the library. The Times gave me a column, and asked me to write for them more often. This new book, The Low Maintenance Garden, is actually my 4th book on gardening…the first was Artists and Their Gardens…they approach gardens in a totally different way than most of us…then there was Plant Life: Growing a Garden in the Pacific Northwest and it was a collection of my columns from the Times…with photos of my own garden every week of the year, showing how you can have something in bloom every week. And then, A Pattern Garden, which took me 5 years to write…it takes design from an emotional and personal point of view, and concentrates it on the garden, and it is a very visual book.

Q: Which brings us to The Low Maintenance Garden. How long was it in the writing and development process?

A: A couple years….it was while I was appearing at the big NW Flower and Garden Show a few years back, in Seattle, I made the off hand comment that, “If I ever get over the `hangover’ from writing A Pattern Garden, I’m going to write a book called “The New Low Maintenance Garden: How to Love Your Garden, Save Your Back and Get a Life!” And my editor from Timber Press (my publisher) was in the audience, and he liked the idea…and that sort of forced the issue…a contract was drawn up and signed, and away I went.

Q: Why the focus on low maintenance?

A: I wanted to write about a much smaller garden, that I could take care of myself. I see a lot of grand gardens in my work, a lot of really impressive gardens, and I wanted to see how inexpensively and simply I could make a garden that was still very satisfying, and personal and productive. So it was the antithesis of what I usually write about, over the top gardening. But, also, I wanted more time in my life…to go to movies, read books…whatever…I’d gardened exhaustively for almost 30 years, and I wanted a garden that I didn’t spend every waking moment either thinking about it or working in it. The book started in my own backyard in Langley, but then we went all over the country, the photographer and I, to find other people—both designers and gardeners—doing really innovative clever things to cut down on maintenance, and simplify their gardening lives. And I began to think, in the gardens we were seeing, this is what is truly modern in gardens---more how we take care of a garden and how it’s designed. And I think the whole thesis of the book is this: a garden is modern to the extent that it takes up no more of the earth’s resources or our own time and energy than is necessary and reasonable.

Q: Which you could say is a personal choice for any gardener, right?

A: Yes, it’s definitely determined by the individual. And also, I think as you read the book, it’s about sustainability, and what makes sense in regard to water and resources, for the earth as well as ourselves. It’s a balance that everybody needs to find and interpret, for themselves. While I was writing this book, I got in contact with literally hundreds of gardeners I’ve met over the years while writing my column, and asked them what they think is modern in gardening now, and those quotes are in the book…so there are a lot of other voices chiming in on the subject of modern gardens.

Q: Does it deal exclusively with decorative or landscape or ornamental gardens, or is there anything on vegetable gardens?

A: Oh yeah…there’s a whole chapter entitled `Eat your garden.’ For instance, just one of the ways to have low maintenance vegetables is in pots. And you make a lot of choices…you don’t just grow whatever…you decide exactly what you’ll use, and what makes sense for you and then you don’t have so much to take care of and it does end up being reasonably low maintenance. For example, I don’t have a lot of gardening room, and I don’t want a garden that’s labor intensive, so in my edible garden, I wind up growing primarily lettuces, raspberries, strawberries, herbs and tomatoes because those are the things that really make a difference for me..to have fresh from the garden, so that’s what I grow.

Q: And so, your latest book The Low Maintenance Garden, it really isn’t a situation of Valerie Easton telling gardeners what to do…it’s more along the lines of helping them reach the decisions on what’s right for them, individually. How to see their own personal choices.

A: Right. There’s no point in gardening if you’re not going to wind up with something that you find beautiful and personal---I mean, I love gardens that have people’s fingerprints all over them…you can see who made that garden. You wind up with the garden you love by thinking through what appeals to you, and why. In this book, I certainly talk a lot about design, and that being far more important in the long run than which plants you choose.