The Return of Garden Study!
Lilacs are about to bloom, sweet peas are coming up, every time I go to town I come back with more compost, let's go
Last year I launched a sub-publication of Culture Study dorkily called GARDEN STUDY. Here’s what I said about it at the time:
I have a bunch of Grandparent hobbies, but I really have one Grandparent hobby to rule them all: Gardening.
Nothing gives me as much quiet satisfaction as puttering around my plants. Sometimes I just go outside and look at them. When I’m falling asleep, I think of groundcovers for a newly un-lawned area of the backyard. Part of the joy is watching things grow, change, fail. Part of it is just being deep in beauty. And part of it, too, is the puzzle of it all. Gardens are patient teachers. They’ve got no where else to go.
If you’ve been reading Culture Study for some time, none of this will come as a surprise….And this year, I’ve been cataloging some of my obsession over in my Instagram stories. A few weeks ago, I asked: Where are all the casual gardening blogs? Where’s the Cup of Jo, but for gardening? Who’s talking about basic stuff with good pictures in posts you read on your lunch break?
So that’s what I started. You can find the entire back catalog here, including interviews with Garden Study readers about their gardens (doesn’t have to be fancy! just has to be loved!), specific plant appreciation posts (begonias! ornamental grasses!), recommendation threads on garden gear, how-to posts to get started on container gardening and a lot more.
We have all sorts of gardeners with all levels of experience gardening all over the world in pretty much every garden-able growing zone. It was a delight and an absolute highlight of my week….and then the gardening season ended, and then I got consumed with all of my spring gardening prep, and relaunching Garden Study kept getting lost in the mix. But we’re back, and I’m excited to share all that I’m learning about soil blocking for seed starting, starting a cut flower garden, planting nearly 500 (!) dahlias, sheet mulching, shade gardening, and more — much of which I touch on below.
And if gardening isn’t your grandparent hobby and/or not of any interest to you whatsoever — I get it! We’ll be back to non-Garden Study content this Sunday.
But if you ARE into this content (even in a some-day sort of way) I’ll also be organizing a dahlia tuber and seed exchange for *next* week — and looking for even more gardeners to interview (it’s very casual!!) We’ll have threads on mistakes you’re trying not to repeat, plants you want to try and need someone to either talk you down or convince you to do it, seed starting on the cheap, and more.
But before I forget: Signing up for future Garden Study newsletters is very easy — but you do have to do it yourself.
Click here to go to your Culture Study account, and when you see this screen below, toggle “Garden Study” from “off” (grey) to “on” (green).
