Oh, the Times

Marian Burros, who wrote about the Obama's vegetable garden, called from the NYTimes some weeks ago and picked my brain at length about rooftop gardens (about which she apparently knew nothing, in a rather combative way). I suggested she consider terraces, too. She said, no, just rooves.

She calls back again today, and says she's considering terraces and asks where all our apples, fruit trees, herbs, etc. are located (I told her about them last time). Um...in our gardens? I say. She reads aloud on the phone an email I sent her weeks ago at her request, about a multilevel garden where we are planting espaliered apple trees, blueberries and herbs this summer. That doesn't sound like much food, she says crossly.

We have other terraces where we have fruit trees, vegetables and herbs, I venture. But is the entire terrace or rooftop devoted to them? she asks.

No...

Click.

Someone read it when it happens and tell me all. This is missing the entire POINT of gardening, and gardening in high places. It's multicultural, like New York. The blueberries live with the ferns. The apples with thyme at their feet. The Swiss chard in an ornamental urn. The serviceberries double as specimen trees.

All so humourless and fundamentalist...no wonder new gardeners are put off. It has to be This Way, or else.