Natural gardener to speak
Dirt and a mother’s love of wildflowers were the tinder that set fire to Ken Druse’s passionate journey through gardening. Druse is an internationally recognized garden writer and award-winning photographer who is the acknowledged founder of the natural gardening movement.
Along with the love of gardening, Druse is passionate about sharing what he has learned about gardens and the people who grow them.
Thursday evening he will be sharing stories of his trials and tribulations in garden making with Inland Northwest gardeners when he speaks at Decades in Spokane Valley.
His talk, “Trowels and Tribulations,” will chronicle some of his experiences with creating gardens on an island in the middle of a river in New Jersey, and the experiences of many other gardeners he has encountered across the country.
Druse’s gardening philosophy is simple.
“Leave the place where you garden better off than you found it or at least no worse,” he says. “I love plants and want to grow them all but I don’t grow them all because there are some you shouldn’t grow because they are potentially invasive. I garden in partnership with nature although I am decidedly the junior partner.” He also believes that a garden comes alive only in the hands of a passionate gardener.
He has written more than a dozen books including “The Natural Habitat Garden,” “The Collectors Garden” (Timber Press, 1994 and 2004 respectively), “Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of Propagating (Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2000) and “The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration for a Lifetime.”
“The Passion for Gardening” and “Making More Plants” earned the Best Book of the Year award from the American Horticulture Society, and “Making More Plants” won the Award of the Year from the Garden Writers Association.
Druse is well-published in many gardening and decorating magazines and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times.
He came to gardening via building roads for his toy trucks, forts for his soldiers and rescuing baby birds. His mother revered wildflowers and also instilled in him the need to share what he learns with others.
He earned master’s degrees in illustration and filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. Along with his studies he began growing houseplants in his college apartment. A chance visit to Logees Greenhouse, a famous mail-order nursery in nearby Connecticut, ignited the passion that became his profession.
He loves all kinds of plants and is constantly experimenting with new ones he collects. “I’ve always liked nurturing plants and playing around with them.”