A Great Gardening Conversation With a Great Gardener 🌿

Join Linda for a delightful and inspiring conversation with legendary gardener and designer Bunny Williams. They chat about garden philosophy, design, and the joys of cultivating beautiful outdoor spaces. It’s a must-watch for any garden lover! 🌿✨

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[Music] will you forgive me if I pinch myself this is truly an honor to be here with the inimitable Bunny Williams this is just such such a joy but I feel like I already know you well I’m happy to have you i really think to have somebody from Oklahoma come here is an honor and I’m very flattered and um yeah you know I’ve sort of been out there for a long time and um I think people feel they know me but um I love to know people so it’s nice to get to know you
well I think we’re constantly reimagining ourselves aren’t we and this person that you may have met through your works 30 years ago is different than from the person that you are now
well I hope we all grow i think we have experiences in life and everything that happens to us makes us a different person if you don’t grow you’re in trouble
yeah yeah i mean you have to keep growing and learning or what’s the point
sure
what’s the point of being here well you know we often talk we were talking about design earlier and the importance of having your garden be an extension of your home and inform your garden but as I walk around Falls Village it is just so charming and I feel that that analogy still holds that your home is an extension of the town itself what’s the importance of Falls Village to you and and this this gracious context in which you garden and live
well what’s interesting about coming to Falls Village i I came here basically because I wanted to buy a house this was over 40 years ago because I wanted to have a garden
and I I loved it didn’t buy a house just for a house i wanted a garden but I wanted I knew if I was going to start a garden I needed to own the property because I was renting a house i was trying to I was married to my first husband and I was gardening but I realized this is ridiculous why should I put this shrub here because it I don’t own this right so I started I said “We need to buy a house because I want to start a garden.” Well of course when an interior designer starts to look for a house the house has there’s an importance to what the house looks like so um it and it’s interesting because I probably could have bought an uglier house on more open land with a view but I fell in love
i I came to this thing i write about it in a uh affair with the house i knew I was going to own this house before I ever walked in the door when I turned in the driveway the driveway that had these big uh locust and sort of allay of locust and this big catalpa tree
and there was something kind of spiritual and I’m not a kooky spiritual person my hands started to persspire literally I sort of had a thing
and I just said this is the house and my ex-husband’s looking at it it was a roaming house it was trash
oh wow the grass hadn’t been mowed but I just saw this wonderful house sitting up on a hill and I fell in love with it and so we we bought it we had no money and um I we couldn’t f we furnished one room so we could sit in the library living room was empty for 5 years and I started the garden
i Yeah because you you know sometimes people say “Oh do you like to garden?” I I Yeah I like to garden but I have to garden it’s not it’s not an option
no you you know um there’s something about getting up in the morning you know throwing on something going out with a tel listening to the birds digging i love weeding i mean what’s more cathartic than weed especially after a gentle rain
a gentle rain i mean and then get your big rubber bucket and go weed and
in your pajamas do you Yeah well this depends who’s around but anyway well I love And by the way is there any better title for a book than An Affair with a House
you know it was very funny the book was finished we were sitting with all of the editors from Abrams everybody the only thing the book needed was an was a title and they’re five of the smartest people they’ve got yellow pads they’re writing down we’re sitting in my office in New York and I’m like “Oh these are just awful.” And I sat there and I looked out of the window and I thought to myself what is this all about and I turned around and I said an affair with a house because I have had this affair i’m still having it i you know as I always say to somebody uh unlike like all affairs you never see the bad parts in the beginning right so let me let me ask you that so new love fresh love when you first saw the house you saw the lattice yeah the lattice work but but new fresh love is different than an older mature um relationship kind of love
what happens is that you it to me it’s just like life when you you start gardening and you put in a boxwood that’s you plant it yourself it’s this big five years later it’s starting to make a hedge
you put in a magnolia tiny little magnolia because that’s what you can afford eight years later there’s this beautiful blossom and it’s spring and you’re going the depth of what the garden gives back to you is what makes a great relationship and it gets deeper than that first passion and that first and you you there’s a depth to it and that’s what you know that’s what makes a relationship last a long time
well I when I first started my own garden um I I started a family at the same time i started my garden and I I remember this moment and I was still very it was very early on in my gardening life and I remember thinking that I know this garden the way I know every little contour and bump and wisp of hair on my children’s bodies it was that intimate of a relationship and I think that um that’s what a true gardener is is somebody who is having an affair with their gardener in is an intimate relationship with a gardener
i think uh my first marriage didn’t work because my husband resented my gardening and when he would say I’d say I’m going to put a path here and he’d say that’s stupid you’re not going to do that and I realized I mean I should have realized it earlier on that this was not going to work but uh and and the wonderful thing is that when John Rosselli who I’m now married to came into my life which is 30 years ago John was like “Let’s you know anything let what a great idea.” It was his idea to take this barn and make it it was a garage when I came here it was his idea to say “Let’s make this into something special.” So it’s it this is garden’s been a process and it’s it started 40 years ago um it’s still you know as we talk about being creative you’re always creating i don’t want to create another garden i’d like to improve what I have um and maintain it that’s the biggest thing it’s gotten to be a big garden
and uh and the other thing in nature things happen you know a tree dies i mean I’ve lost I’ve lost
um last year this huge pine in the front just fell over literally i I came out one morning I started to cry i think when you lose a hundred-year-old tree it I find that really tragic and it felt But the funny thing is it fell in a funny way over a path and I decided at first I was like “Oh I need to cut it up.” And then I said “Leave it.” It sort of the big root it looked like a dinosaur it looked like something from Jurassic Park and it was so sculptural and I thought okay we just need to do this well now I’m turning it up you know they do these stumpies in England so I’ve planted it with with a prairie rose and ferns and and a a wild clemetus and so I’m going to make something out of this tragedy and that’s what that’s what you have to do in a garden when bad things happen you have to figure out okay how do I move ahead how do I exploit this i I I just am laughing inside that you’re saying this because in my former home I had a hundredyear-old oak tree now let me tell you a hundred-year-old oak tree in Oklahoma
is rare
is rare and oh my gosh the heartbreak of ice storms
I know
the heartbreak of windstorms and a magnificent tree becomes beautiful and and then it it’s not even beautiful anymore really it’s just a constant presence and I did the same thing one large thing came down and we left it there to just sit there and then it becomes something it becomes it becomes a focal point around which then you plan a different kind of garden a different kind of space totally
um and
if you look at nature I mean you look at a woods all the le all the trees have fallen they’ve been left they get mushrooms and moss and and that’s what you let that happen over time um and that’s why you know I I’m really not a patient person i’m like I’m going to do this the garden gardens teach you to take a deep deep breath and slow down
and
be patient
and acceptance right i
I think they teach you acceptance and
and you can’t control everything
you can’t control everything and I think and you probably have discovered this too that when I work with some people you help them with their garden or whatever and they’re looking at it through the lens of this is just an extension of my home in terms of decorating you know but putting you know there’s something different between planting a clemetus and putting a candlestick on a mantle
totally
you you know this is a a commitment it it is truly a commitment
and I always somebody said to me why don’t you do garden design I said “Look in an interior that candlestick’s not going to grow the rug is not going to get mildew the sofa is going to stay the same size you don’t have to provide a warranty.”
And I said “I don’t have to do a warranty.” And somebody can come and dust it once a week and it’s fine a garden it’s changing every day it needs constant maintenance and if I think a lot of people think they want a garden if they’re not gardeners they don’t quite understand that they don’t understand what the care takes
yeah and and it and it’s a it’s a commitment and it’s a commitment over time and it’s not only a commitment to the design you’ve created um and having the vision and to its maintenance it’s also a commitment to the sprinkler system and it’s a it’s it’s just every
it’s a commitment to all of it the the making sure that the the mower is working or the the machinery i mean it’s crazy
but you know it’s it’s funny i think that um one it’s it’s very everybody has a a sensibility i think it’s like you know there’s some ladies who they have perfect hair everything’s perfect
and they want their garden perfect
the garden’s not perfect
and you got to let it go you have to maintain it but you got to let it do its thing and I think that’s sort of the most interesting thing when you if you I’m sure all the gardens you look at you think you look at some gardens you think well this garden would be great if they just maintain it if they just get in here and spend a little time staking cleaning and then you look at one garden that’s so over manicured and so overdone that it has no soul so it’s
it’s the tension
it’s the tension and you know it’s like this room i want the vines growing over i want this growing up through that i want that kind of chaos now that takes This is done
it’s organized chaos
it’s organized chaos and I think that’s kind of what I like about my gardens is they’re organized chaos
well I I I think uh I was helping our mutual friend John and we were looking at things and we were seeing a vision i said “Yes and we see the rose here.” I said “Yes and the rose just has has to have just the exact right amount of black spot on it.” And because there is that the perfectly imperfect you can’t control it you know it’s going to happen and I think that um you know I think there are gardens that lose their soul because they’re over manicured and there’s others that would be better if they took a little bit more care
yeah yeah because it it needs to be both intentional
right
but natural the other thing I think is you know even if you have a tiny garden I mean you don’t you don’t have to have a garden this big but the thing that I find so much fun is adding through the season the containers and the pots and I think if you look around this garden everywhere there’s a even my back door going in we go in the mud room in this house i can’t have a garden there because it’s under these big trees everything’s in containers put the yellow beonas and the black polus and and it it’s a garden there’s not one thing in the ground
right
and even with the garden that gives it personality it ch and you can change it during the summer you can have bright colors whatever it gives it a personality and it’s fun to have in a small garden because they’re easy to work
they’re easy to work and and I I think you can express different aspects of your own personality totally and and mood you know just different moods and of course where where I live things are constantly dying so you know that gives you another opportunity to do something differently and sometimes you want a more masculine sensibility and sometimes you feel vulnerable you might want a different you know a different kind of sensibility so one thing um one thing I I love and which I embraced too on a obviously much smaller scale is just this concept of rooms that um you traveled a lot in Europe you went to all of the great you know um all of the great gardens and the concept of garden rooms
and do you find that how you spend time in your garden is dictated by your mood do different rooms are they evocative of different moods of different times of day of I think that you you know this is a big property i mean this is there’s almost 12 acres on this side so early in the morning I love to go I like get up and take a walk with the dogs and you walk through the woodland garden and one thing I’ve done throughout this garden is I put benches there’s some place to sit everywhere so you can say all right the morning’s coming the light’s pretty it’s all about light and so I can sit down the dogs jump in the little pond up there and you stay there um I think that coming down during the day actually we spend a lot of time in the vegetable garden in the cutting garden because that’s where the work is done i love to do cutings and do potting when I’m here you know there’s that’s kind of the work area i always like the backside of gardens where you know you see the dirt you see the soil you see the pots are yeah because that’s where the gardening done the compost bin so during the day we’re often up there um the this room this garden and this conservatory we entertain in here all the time we have dinners we’ll have um tomorrow at Father’s Day I’m having 12 people for lunch and we’ll be in here and then the sunken garden which you’ll see later was this your first gu the first garden yeah there were just two borders there but we go down there a lot late in the afternoon before dinner john if he can go we’ll sit down there and he has these big fish so he loves to feed his fish and it’s a wonderful time late in the afternoon to have a glass of wine um and then the the last garden that I’ve been working on which is um it’s been fun i year over the years I’ve been collecting these antique birdhouses
and I had them in the barn i just loved them i guess cuz they were architecture and I had about eight of them and they were just sitting there and I thought I’ve got to do something with these birdhouses so I had a point of land that had two beautiful big apple trees some big massive pine trees and I thought I’m going to make a birdhouse village and so I started collecting more and they’re on stands and they’re all throughout this area and then um and we we took we had to get rid of all the invasives i mean when you take something the poison ivy the you know it’s awful but anyway we got it cleaned up robert Rhymer who’s the head gardener here has planted a grass so you see it and we planted a lot of shrubs that birds like um and paw paws whatever and then um my niece moved up during CO and I have a 2 and 1/ halfyear-old great nephew i don’t have children so um of course I’m besided by this so I decided I after I’d gone to look at gardens in and I was outside of Amsterdam and I went to this 18th century garden and they had a play a little playground and I took pictures and I came back and I built a sandbox a swing and a seessaw and a playhouse oh my
for this child so now we have the birdhouses it is
it’s like a magic place and you I hope you’ll absolutely just like this
and so we go when Ben’s here of course we’re down there and he’s in the swing or the little kids come over so that’s made this whole little thing have a purpose
well and it’s and it and it’s just you know the one thing about a garden is you know raise it in the way it shall grow and it’s so true with children to have that interface with nature and play and an understanding that this is where stuff comes from
it is astounding to look at a little child he loves the garden i mean loves it he loves Robert Wolver and to see him sit and just pick the raspberries and eat them and just the strawberries are fresh now and he is obsessed with it and he of course now loves tractors and and I think I don’t know what he’ll do he’s a smart little kid but I love the fact that he’ll always love the land
always love the land and and you know what keeps a garden keeps us younger than anything else i mean
I grew up in Virginia and I think that we we had a farm and I think I took it for granted but I was out in the land in the field all the time
and I live in New York i mean I can’t believe I’ve spent all this time living in an apartment in New York but I had to from the very early on I had to get out of the city on weekends and so we had a small apartment and we ended up you bought this house and it still had a very small apartment in New York because I couldn’t imagine myself living in a in New York because I couldn’t imagine myself living in a city seven days ago without
It’s in your DNA it’s it’s imprinted in your DNA
well the idea of you know I I often say that nothing awakens the inner kindergartener in you like just seeing a seed germinate and it’s as miraculous to me every time and sometimes I don’t even care if what lives lives i It’s just that miracle of seeing a seed germinate and checking on it every day and seeing its transformation over time
you know and taking cutings and seeing the root happen and it’s obsessive i mean you could I mean I need to stop it because the water is the same way but you you know in the winter we have this big greenhouse and so there’s not a lot of gardening in the winter and so taking cutings and propagating i said I’m starting a new group called gardeners anonymous and if any if I have any idea of having a new garden I have to go to a self-help group and they have to stop me stop me that I actually should get I should have them with me before I go to the nursery
okay well as part of that I think we we need a counterpart and it and it should be you know a a place where grieving gardeners can go when when they have lost something
and the tree
and the tree and something important to to them and because it truly is a kind of grief
um that is it’s even you know I can remember my son when I was grieving over my tree and he said “Mom I think you care more about this than if something happened to our dog Billy and I you know and I’m thinking well you know it what what I’ve learned now is that you got to move on it’s I have all these old trees in this property and it’s going to happen um you know Robert said we’ve got to take I lost a big limb on another huge
and even forgive me but the Ctopa and the trees that were here originally those are gone now
no they’re here
they are still here driveway they’re on the main driveway um huge but I
and he said “We’ve got to take it down.” What really upsets you is to take these big trees down cost so much money and you’re like
“Yeah
I mean they’re huge they can’t You got to get a climber you’ve got to do it little by little.” It’s dangerous
and it’s dangerous work and I’m like when you spend that money taking down that tree I don’t want to take you out the first place
yeah yeah that’s those decisions like that have become very hard how how would you say your relationship to the garden has morphed over time from from you know your early gardening years to your mid gardening years to now
well you know what happened is in the very beginning I had more time to garden i was working for somebody else and then in 1988 I started my own business and you know when you start your own business you’re working seven days a week you’re work so I I was here every weekend and I mean as much as I could um but all of a sudden my decorating business took off and then I later started a furniture line at Bunny Williams Home so I my career took off and that meant that I had to hire people to do the garden i I I had no I couldn’t do it
even if you physically can do it you
I don’t have the time i don’t have the time
and so that meant having wonderful people over the years in my life um I think that the other thing that happens is that you get older your back isn’t as strong your knees aren’t as strong so I’m physically not able I can’t I’m physically not able and I shouldn’t crawl over that hedge to get into something so you weave where you can you work on you work a lot on potting things standing up you you work but you can’t I can’t physically do the work that I did 30 years ago one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is I I’ I can recognize now the importance of sitting in a way that I didn’t and not just from a resting
right right
you know point of view but from a it’s only by sitting that you take the time to see beauty from a certain perspective from a or oh that angle I never noticed that angle I never noticed how I could see through this to get to there and and it and the act of sitting is a creative activity also you need to you need to you’re absolutely right you need to be lower in the horizon but you need to st stay there so you really look we’re often walking through our gardens right you’re walking you’re moving you’re weeding you’re whatever
when do you really stand back and sit
and say “I need to take this in as a whole what looks good what looks good from this angle maybe that’s too big maybe that so you have to be re-examining but sitting and allowing yourself to stay put in it is very important
and and see how how that spot changes so much in a period of time it can be in a period of five minutes it can be and and how by the light changing can completely transform totally
a space and give you an epiphany of sorts that you wouldn’t have had that you wouldn’t have had before so okay you and John have been married now for how many years
we’ve been together over 30 years uh we didn’t get married for a long time you know I always say that John and I I’ve known John because he’s an antique dealer and needless to say we have a lot of things in our house um we’re collectors um we’ve spent our life having an incredible life traveling shopping going all over the world dubai we had John had a great shop in New York John Rosselli uh I have certainly and then we
triage at the same time
we started triage and John and I were just friends and we got this you know idea we went to the Chelsea flower show and I said “Why doesn’t anybody have a great garden shop?” Because in those days nobody had one they’re dime a dozen but then nobody had them and we rented this old blacksmith shop on the east side of New York we started buying for it and you know I have to say I’m talking about influencers that was an influencing shop because every every big company came in there and was like we had you know it’s it was like this it looked like this but tons of fabulous
and at that point in time that did not exist did not exist and from that people started copying it making things trying to have garden shop but I always say to John um we opened the shop we just we were like two peas in a pot I said we had the baby first then we got married and and the baby was triaged Yeah
but you know I’m John and I we’re like it’s like we’re bookends and every book in between we share in common absolutely everything there’s absolutely I have never had a fight with my husband there’s we like the same people we love our houses we love our dogs we love the garden we love to travel he’s the easiest guy i mean even if I want to get mad at him he just walks out of the room he’s like “Oh that’s not what’s the point what’s the point?”
Okay so so but you already have this garden and then John comes in and obviously he he put his signature touches
on it in in the barn and gosh the
magnitude of
just what that has trans how that transformed things how when John arrived how did you as a couple how did that change your relationship to the garden because now you’re you’re a couple you’re a it’s become does it become more experiential john John um honors me as the designer he knows that’s whatever what is great is John loves to go out and work on vegetable garden weed the only thing that we get really upset about John is that when John is out weeding you have to follow behind him because he’ll just throw it so it takes two people for John to weed yeah if you know what I mean now he’ll go and do a lot of work pruning whatever but his idea of all that is just throw it over there and I was like how is that going to get so when whenever something was happening I was making sure there was somebody come along to gather up the compost but he was often gardening often you know being a part of it but he you know it’s just even like with the interiors of our houses he knows that I’m going to design it he’ll buy the things cuz he likes the object he wants to find the table he he’s the antique dealer
uhhuh
but when it comes to
a holistic vision that’s your perview so we’ve he respects that we’ve never had the tugofwar about it
i uh people often ask me “Oh does your husband help you garden?” And I say “No no he he doesn’t but he appreciates it.” But more importantly he shares it so
you know where before you’re here on the weekends maybe you might have friends over But the relationship is a mono amano it’s a one-on-one thing and then all of a sudden you have another person in your life and oh here is our place where we have cocktails in the evening here’s our our favorite place to do this together
i mean John John was an extraordinary cook he’s Italian youngest of 14 children so the
is he really
the vegetable garden in the summer everything would come out of the vegetable garden he’d work in the garden pick the tomatoes pick whatever come back make the pasta you know make dinner i mean we we would entertain every weekend at least 12 14 people cuz he he’s came from this big family he doesn’t know how to cook for four he knows how to cook for 40 and
there were Do you have siblings
i have a brother i have an older brother yeah and uh so you know that was our life and the garden was very important to him because of the produce and what was you know in the garden it was functional it was util it literally
fed the I’m one of 10 so I can I can relate I can relate to that sensibility of just um
Yeah and and to me in the garden the most important thing is or the thing I think I like most is beautiful form meets beautiful function it is something that has a purpose and it is also
inherently beautiful what is kind of like your favorite thing your favorite kind of or is that like asking you a favorite child or a favorite person
a favorite thing about Oh well like I just love beautiful form meeting beautiful function for you is it like how something is pruned in the architecture of it is it um the tension between clipped form and and bounty
for me for me it’s always contrast i mean I think that when you have like this garden is the the box is clipped by the end of the summer the the everything will be wild and woolly so I for me it’s always about contrast it’s it’s uh you know I like I like design and structure and then I like it to go wild i like patina i you’ll see all over this garden the weathered fences because
Oh and your pool house which is inter describe describe your pool house a little bit the the interpretation of taking one thing and completely transforming it
you know funny with John we were we had triage and John said “We need a swimming pool.” Cuz it it was it’s hot in July and August and I said “But we can only swim two months i don’t want to look at a pool near the house.” I mean people would have put a swimming pool out there in this garden i said I don’t want to look at it i’ll go to it we’ll spend time have lunch swim but I don’t want to see it but because I moved it away from the house I needed a pool house and I had this hill we were in in France buying for triage and we found these beautiful stone coping that had come from a basson in you know in in outside of on a chatau in France and John said “This would make a great coping for the swimming pool.” So you walk up through the orchard and you’re up on a plateau and and you it’s a stone wall what you see is a stone wall till you get to the top and that’s one side of the swimming pool but I needed a pool house because it was too far from the house
falls Village is filled with Greek Revival architecture it’s a it’s 19th century the columns columns i have a house with a column so I thought well I love columns and I love Greek Revival architecture yeah and because it was backed up to the woodland garden I wanted it to look like the trees had come out and made this temple i wanted it to disappear in a way i didn’t want it to be a white little perking pool house it had to have some character number one this is understanding your land
it’s understanding your environment and what you want it to do so I got this idea of a temp Greek temple made of logs it’s oak logs and the pediment’s got pine cones in it and it just sits up there like it’s always been there i mean it’s kind of crazy
and it’s completely consonant with the woodland garden and and and everything and it it’s very much that bunny melon thing that nothing should be noticed
right right it’s it’s that for me is very very important um I I mean this is a big garden there’s a lot going on but I really prefer it to I want everything to kind of fit into the space and not be
so noticed
wow
and then the the you know if you go up to the studio you know that was a house that was um I didn’t need it but it was a very unfortunately ugly house next to me and it was it was I could hear it from the pool house when we were up there and the nice young couple who they weren’t young anymore they had built it themselves and it was an unfortunate house very rundown and they had to move to the south and I said “I better buy this house because I don’t want anybody who likes this house to be my neighbor.” And yeah and now it’s unbelievably magic because I took the A-frame thing gutted it and made a studio and I did this it was finished about a year before co I had no idea wow and for the entire of co I lived here for over two years worked out here learned how to work off my computer learned how to do I mean it was it was
I had to say co for me was very exciting i had a huge project i had to do it i had to figure it out and I got to use the studio
and and and helped you grow in a way you never would have grown because you couldn’t have ever taken the time you couldn’t have ever gotten off
and also I’d never had a place to work here where you can leave a mess you know if you’re working and I do I may I make my scrapbooks or I’m painting or stuff you want to be able to walk away
oh yeah
i never had that space i hope you you go up there well and and because because as soon as you leave the space it’s an interruption of thought but if you can leave everything out you can pick up that thread and you can pull on that thread again and I think it’s it’s one example of ways that the garden can and is our salvation and it this in this garden you’re you know my father died very suddenly just had a heart attack you got off the plane in LaGuardia and had a heart attack in the car going into New York and all the horrible things that really tragic things that can happen in your life the garden in this house has been my my place that I came to and gave me comfort it’s always given me comfort
and I think gardens give you comfort they they can drive you crazy telling you they can go but there is an extraordinary
but even when it’s driving you crazy you’re not thinking about something else that is of craziness of a larger magnitude it it it’s certainly and also it’s not you know it’s like yesterday I was talking to Trisha who Robert’s wife um who does the vegetable garden and we’ve lost our peas for some reason and she said it’s in the soil she said it wasn’t in the leaf i couldn’t I couldn’t figure out what it was i said well we’ll buy some peas this year it’s not that big a deal you We always last you in more fresh peas and but it’s okay what life you got to figure out what the problem is
yeah yeah
yeah i have a a neighbor who who said one of the wisest things to me we were putting some We were putting something together a fire feature in my backyard and it was frustrating it was just he he and I
and I was he could tell I was getting frustrated and and he said “It’s all good it’s all good.” that he said humans were meant to solve problems
i mean that is what makes us happy is to solve problems
also I think a garden teaches you to just move on deal with it and move on
because there is another season there is another day there is it it it is the embodiment of hope and optimism and and I call it you know the the agony of defeat and you know the thrill of victory because it the y it is the ying to the yang
sure
you are absolutely delightful absolutely delightful i can’t thank you enough well I’m so happy to have you here and I hope you’ll
go and look at all the all these Oh you know I will all these little Everything’s open the studio’s open everything’s open and uh you know this place has been my soul and meant so much to me and does every day and uh I think that I just finished a a book i don’t know if you’ve read it but you everybody needs to read this book it’s called Raising Hair and it’s a
h a r e or
raising hair okay
and it is a it’s a true story of a very successful woman who was living in London she was a a a writer she traveled all over the world and during co she went to her little house in the country in England and she it a hair a rabbit adopts her and what I what I saw from that book is how we have to have fi fine times in our lives
to slow down
to appreciate everything around us and nothing does gives you that like a garden
well it’s uh Shan Moral Lindberg’s gifts of the sea it’s that right yeah it it’s
it’s recognizing a point in time uh that has potential and that has um
it’s just a fabulous book i love
Oh I I definitely will i I often tell people I and I en encourage people Oklahomaans and nonoclook Oklahomaans to read the book The Worst Hard Time uh by Patrick Eeken about
um the Great Depression and the and and and can you imagine
and what self-imposed pain we created you know we created this um and then we fixed it let’s not create it again
and we have to learn from history and we are not doing a very good job of that now but that’s the sad thing is that um
we we’ve gotten away history repeats itself
and the more you know about history but we so many people don’t know anything
let me let me ask you one final question um do you do you sometimes because this whole area New England of course is just iconically historic my son went to University of Virginia um from Charlottesville um every every place is just steeped in history you can smell it you can sure feel it all around you and and even in Oklahoma you know I say to in Oklahoma you need two things you need to have a great sense of humor right
and you really need to have a pioneering spirit you need to have a frontier spirit do do you feel as you garden that you are you are gardening with your your four fathers your four mothers that you are part of a continuum of of tending to the earth over time you know it’s funny i think that um this garden probably won’t be here after I’m gone which is fine this has been my love my creation it’s why actually I enjoy having people come and see it not because I want them to think about me but I want I know how much I learned going to look at other gardens they were life-changing to me every single thing on this garden is come from an idea or something I saw someplace else so I’m happy to share it in my lifetime because when I go who’s going to make they’re not going to get it and I don’t think it should be preserved i don’t think it should go on it’s it’s been my endeavor um so I think that what I hope is that you leave a seed for somebody to want a garden of their own and then they legacy that’s the legacy is that they learn something they see something they go home and they think “Okay the woodland garden was there was no woodland garden i created all that.” And they they can be inspired by that so the seed is planted I hope for people who come here to go on and have create a garden and have the joy I’ve had all my life
and you know garden should be shared and gardens create a sense of community and and garden creates you know in this I I have often said I did public speaking things I often said in this very contentious time gardens can bring us together
totally we can all agree on
a garden
on a on a garden and and the importance of having the first tomato or so you know something along those lines
thank you so much for coming i’ve loved talking to you it’s been a treat for me
if you had to share one piece of of wisdom with new gardeners or just gardeners in general one
learn and go look as much as you can
don’t just go to the nursery maybe that day go see the the garden conservancy has these open days all over the country and going to look at another garden you know where if you travel look up the botanical gardens look at things that you can go look at because you will see things and it’ll give you an idea of how to handle your own garden and educate yourself i mean that’s
Yeah
so important
yeah yeah and and and as I’ve often said gardening is accessible don’t don’t let it be intimidating to you you you will make mistakes and that is part of it totally yeah thank you
thank you nice to see you so much welcome enjoy having a tour
oh we will we absolutely will [Music]