In the garden: Columnist’s garden showcased on PBS’s ‘Growing a Greener World’

It all began with a simple email in March 2016:

“Hey, Susan, I have a question for you. With your love of gardening, birding and nature, we are considering doing features on special gardeners. I think you definitely qualify! When would be the ideal time to show off your garden on TV? And does this even sound of interest to you?”

That email was sent by Joe Lamp’l, host of the popular PBS gardening show, “Growing a Greener World.” To say it had an impact on my garden season would be an understatement.

I’ve known Joe through my affiliation with the Association for Garden Communicators and have long been a fan of his program, which showcases those who garden sustainably.

Knowing this should be a joint decision, I consulted my husband, Bill. His response of “Sure, why not?” – instead of “Are you crazy?!” – was a pleasant surprise.

After sending a reply, the full enormity of what we were getting ourselves into suddenly hit. While our simple country garden gives us so much joy and feeds us year-round, we wondered if it would be appealing and inspiring to the fans of “Growing a Greener World.”

We soon learned Joe and his cameraman Carl – who are both based in Atlanta – would fly to Spokane in early August. After hearing this was their only opening for filming an episode, our hearts sank. After all, whose garden looks good in August?

Bill and I proceeded to make a list of what needed to be done to make our garden camera-ready: new edging around some of the front and back perennial beds, weeding, planting, more weeding, pruning, primping … oh, and did I mention weeding? I’ve never weeded so much in my life.

As our luck would have it, we had a couple of minor catastrophes along the way:

One of the centerpieces of our back garden – a gorgeous flowering crabapple – decided to die. We replaced it with a beautiful yellow-flowered magnolia but a young tree doesn’t look quite so magnificent. We also discovered several trees that border part of our vegetable garden had experienced growth spurts. They were suddenly shading and severely stunting the growth of some of our veggies. That didn’t look very impressive.

The dry heat of summer came early in 2016, but we somehow managed to keep the plants in the landscape – and most of the lawn – green and growing.

Early August finally arrived, along with our illustrious visitors. Both Joe and Carl seemed to really like our landscape, along with our methods for gardening organically. At the time, it was oppressively hot and I fear I’m going to look like I’m on the verge of heatstroke during our episode.

Over the course of two 12-hour days of filming, we learned just how tedious it is to create an episode that will last a mere 24 minutes. Every time a plane flew overhead or a nearby train whistle sounded, things came to a halt. Alternating clouds and sun made the lighting challenging. But Joe and Carl finally got what they were after.

Our episode, titled “In Susan’s Garden,” is tentatively scheduled to air on the PBS Create channel (7.3) on June 17 at 9:30 a.m. – check your local station’s schedule or look for it on growingagreenerworld.com. While nervous about seeing myself on screen, I feel comforted knowing Joe has a history of producing compelling stories.

For more about filming this episode, watch this week’s “Everyone Can Grow A Garden” video on my YouTube channel, youtube.com/c/susansinthegarden.