Last time I sat down to work on the book was an entire week ago. It seems like months. Now it’s Saturday morning and too early to get up on a weekend. Now it’s down to merciless writing at this point. Every hour counts (as it did before) but with the deadline looming and much to do, there’s no time to spare. I hope you’ll forgive the infrequent blog entries in the meantime as I focus on the book writing.
Last night I returned home from a long week on the road. Garden Smart wrapped up their season for this year as we taped three shows in Charleston, SC. I recently saw where South Carolina was named as the third most popular city to visit in America. I can see why. There’s plenty of history, some amazing buildings and lots of great gardens. In fact, Charleston has quite a horticultural history, boasting Charles Audubon as one of its earliest members.
On day one, we featured the Charleston Garden Festival, an outdoor event that boasts many designs from some of the top landscape architects and designers in the area. They invite top national gardening speakers and create quite an event. The festival is held on the grounds of Middleton Place, a historic and former rice plantation dating back to the early 1700’s. The gardens and views of the river are amazing and October is the best time to be there. We taped our third show there as well and focused on the grounds and gardens themselves. Middleton place even holds claim to having the oldest formal landscape garden in America.
Our other show was taped just down the road at Magnolia plantation. If you like Camellias and history, come to this place. They’ve recently hired one of the top camellia experts in the country, Tom Johnson, to restore the gardens to the showplace it was. It’s one of the most photographed gardens in the south and their gardens in winter are prime time.
That’s the lowdown of last week. I’m wrapping this up to get back to the book. Thanks for checking in.
JL