The garden bogging world is a small one and you never know who you might bump into at a symposium or conference. I went to the Perennial Plant Conference at Swarthmore College last week with some gardening friends and spotted a familiar name on a tag: James Golden. James, if you don't already know, has an excellent blog called View From Federal Twist chronicling his "New American" prairie garden, called Federal Twist, in Stockton, NJ as well as his contemporary urban garden in Brooklyn, NY. He has developed a beautiful, what he refers to as wet prairie garden, influenced by gardeners such as Piet Oudolf, Noel Kingsbury (who also visited Federal Twist that day) Dan Pearson, Henk Gerritsen, and Oehme and Van Sweden.
James invited me and my friends, Maude and Tovah, to visit Federal Twist on the way home to New England and we all agreed to take him up on the invitation immediately. We had a full agenda that day because Tovah had a book signing for her new book, The Unexpected Houseplant in the morning so we didn't make it to Federal Twist until after 4 PM. As luck would have it, the light was magical, as was the garden.
Thanks, Jim, for a wonderful garden tour. It was such a pleasure to visit in autumn when the seed-heads and fall foliage were in their full glory. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend View From Federal Twist. James is a thoughtful and erudite writer who has a real pulse on what is currently happening in gardening.
