In my house there is an empty room.  Actually, to say it is empty is not quite right. There are things in the room. 2 beds with frilly bedspreads. A crib with lonely plush animals. In the closet, in a neat row hangs 5 pretty dresses in 5 different sizes and a dresser against the wall is crammed full of pink and purple clothes in 5 different sizes. All this, despite the fact that I have 3 boys.  This room is empty because it is waiting.  I am a foster mom and this room waits for the little girls that sometimes come to visit my house and be my foster daughters. The hope is that one day one will stay and be my very own daughter, but if that never happens, I will at least have had sometimes daughters to think fondly back on.

A few weeks ago, I was asked if I would like to review a children’s book called “Holly Bloom’s Garden.” I don’t review much on here these days as I am rather busy with my other job, but this one I agreed to.  The story is about a little girl named Holly who is having troubles in the garden.  I thought that maybe someday a little girl might come to visit who would like to read about gardens.

The children that go through the foster care system can technically be from all walks of life. But in reality, many are from very poor homes. And when I mean poor, I mean both financially and emotionally. A common misconception is that kids who end up in “the system” are there because of abuse. This is incorrect. Many end up there due to neglect. They are children that no one cares for. They often arrive at their foster homes with little more than the clothes on their backs. This is why there are pretty dresses and clothes in the room. Many most likely never had nice clothes, let alone a pretty dress.

The book Holly Bloom’s Garden, a little girl in a loving family takes care of a garden and fails. Still, she is loved and through the love of her family, she finds a way to succeed. The book is beautifully illustrated with scenes that are seemingly realistic with lush gardens full of flowers, then you realize things like that daffodils and foxglove are not often found blooming at the same time.  But that is not the point. This is a child’s fantasy of a garden and the book is a sweet portrayal of that garden.

To my future little girls, this book will seem even more fantastical. A little girl from a home with two parents, food on the table and clean. Where drugs are not an everyday fact of life. Never mind that there is a yard and the little girl tries to grow flowers in that yard. Gardens are so foreign to many of these children that they are not even comprehensible to their mind. But that is my job. My job is to show that, at least that while they are at my house, that houses like the one in Holly Bloom’s Garden exist and that they deserve it. It is my job to show them what a home and garden should be. And then send them back to their home.  And they may go back and find that their home has changed for the better. Or they may find that it has not changed at all.

Someday, one of these girls will go home with the Holly Bloom’s Garden book tucked into her bag. It will be a possession for them and a fantasy, maybe. In the meantime, this book will sit in the empty room until the next little girl comes to visit.

If you have ever considered becoming a foster parent, I encourage you to look into it. It is a hard job with low pay, but so is being a parent in general. If you have room in your house and heart, consider doing it.  The need is great everywhere for foster parents.

If you have a little girl (or boy) who like to garden, these activities that go along with the book are helpful.

I don’t do many book reviews anymore of books that are sent to me. Mostly, because it was beginning to feel like high school again where the teacher kept assigning me books for English class. Sure, those books might have been interesting, but I had my own book list I wanted to get through and no matter how you slice it, interviewing vampires beats listening to maudlin women ramble any day.

But, once in awhile I get a book that I would want to read regardless of whether it came in the mail for free or not. And last week, that is exactly what happened. A small packaged arrived and the book inside looked just AWESOME.

“How To Survive A Garden Gnome Attack” is the title of the book, with a cover that recalls the cover of Gnomes book that I loved so much as a child (and still occasionally pull that much battered copy out today to read a page or so to my own kids). Having read and very much enjoyed such other survival manuals as “The Zombie Survival Guide” and “Guide to Pirate Parenting” and “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook”, I knew this was right up my alley.

The premise of the book is simple. You are in danger. You are about to die. Your adversary –garden gnomes. Your only hope – advanced preparation, diligence and a healthy amount of paranoia.

The book is a fun tongue in cheek look at gnomes as the enemy, and would be quite fun for any gardener to read. It is a light read and filled with delightfully demonic photographs of rampaging, blissful garden gnomes. This is a classic “gift” book (just in time for Christmas) with eye candy pictures galore, breezy, fun content and a topic that just the title will amuse the recipient. Buy a half dozen and give them to all your gardening friends as gifts for a bit of a giggle.

And *BONUS*, I got to interview the author, Chuck Sambuchino (certified GDE – Gnome Defense Expert). Here is the transcript from that:

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Me: What inspired you to write this book?

Chuck: Garden gnomes just creep me the heck out. I find them oddly disturbing, and thought that if they bothered me in a such a way, certainly they bother many more people. It turns out I was right. And as the public begins to learn more of their treachery and skills with edged weapons, the tide is turning against popular support for the average garden gnome (gnome hortus).

Me: What is your preferred gnome fighting object?

Chuck: A plastic snow shovel. When you’re fighting in close quarters, you have to maximize each swing, and a large orange snow shovel does just that. As an advanced gnome defense expert, I also may sometimes bust out a sledgehammer, but those times are rare. (On a sidenote, I do not advise newbies use sledgehammers. They are difficult to aim at first and take 3-4 seconds to recycle a swing.)

Me: Which came first, the text in the book or the photos? (Both are great but I could almost see someone spending time taking demonic photos of gnomes and then trying to go back to write a book around them, so I just wondered)

Chuck: Great question, and the answer is text. I passed in all the text, and the photographer tried to pick out parts he thought would make a great visual complement. The photos, taken by perhaps the bravest man on earth, turned out fantastic.

Me: Why do you think so many people put garden gnomes in their gardens? Why gnomes? Why not puppies or pigs or something else? I have always wondered this. What’s your thoughts?

Chuck: Garden gnomes were discovered in the forest, so it’s a centuries-old tradition to associate them with the outdoors. I think they’re in gardens because this awful Travelocity PR campaign has made them out to be symbols of happiness and gaiety. But we all know they’re actually vicious killers. I think having some puppies in the garden sounds like a wonderful alternative then being stabbed to death in your bed the night the gnomes finally come for you (and they will).

Me: Do you see any other seemingly benign objects as being a threat and therefore a possible subject for a future book?

Chuck: Mwahahahahaha, I cannot reveal all my other book ideas. I will tell you that one of the most common questions I get is about the danger level of pink flamingos and lawn jockeys. Further study is needed, but preliminary reports show that flamingos are essentially harmless ornaments with pea-sized brains incapable of a planned attack. As far as lawn jockeys? The verdict is not yet in, which means I consider them deadly gnome allies until proven otherwise.

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So, lock your doors, gather the children close and spent an hour or so learning how you can keep youand yours safe from the ever present and nefarious garden gnome. This is a fun book.

Other fun sources about this book:

Video:
Witness an actual gnome attack so that you can understand the danger:

Reviews on other blogs
Carpe Geum: How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack
Dead End Follies: Chuck Sambuchino – How To Survive A Garden Gnome Attack (2010)
From My Corner of Katy: Are You At Risk?
One Woman’s Garden: Gardeners Beware! You are warned!
An Interview with Chuck Sambuchino, Author of How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack

You know, people do reviews of all the new books that come out, but sometimes you just need to reach back and grab a classic. Because books become classics for a reason.  In my Literary English Bachelor’s Degree experience (yeah, that was not really a useful degree to get. I should have realized that after the 3000^th time someone asked me “Oh, so you’re going t o be a teacher?”, that perhaps getting a degree in which the only job prospects most people saw were a job that needed another degree with it was a bad idea… but I have digressed) books become classics because they so insularly capture an idea or concept that no other book need be written on the subject.  The Secret Garden is one of these books.

Can I say that I fell in love with book before I actually read it?  I watched it on TV as a young girl, as a Hallmark special. In my memory, it was well done (though I have not seen it since and back then I thought the A-Team was well done too so you can’t really trust my childhood perceptions) and I immediately looked for the book.

When I was 11 years old reading that book, the draw was the mystery and fantasy of The Secret Garden.  At that time, I could not have cared less about all the silly flowers in the garden.  I loved the fact that Mary, Dickon and Colin had the COOLEST secret clubhouse in the whole wide world.

Since then, I have read the book to each one of my boys and I am reading it to my youngest now, which is why it is on my mind.   I think they too love the fact that the children in the book have this place to go that the grown-ups don’t know about, a place where children could make things happen without the meddling of adults (and we meddle alot these days, you know).

As an adult, I am struck by how well Frances Hodgson Burnett captures the heart of a budding gardener or even a long time gardener who has been locked away for the winter.  While there are many passages in the book that convey this feeling, I love this one about when Mary first finds the garden:

“Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.

She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much. “Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she said. “I will go all over the garden and look.”

She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she found ever so many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again.

“It isn’t a quite dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”

She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them.

“Now they look as if they could breathe,” she said, after she had finished with the first ones. “I am going to do ever so many more. I’ll do all I can see. If I haven’t time today I can come tomorrow.”

She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to the grass and the pale green points all the time.

Now tell me that is not exactly how you feel the first time you step outside into your garden after the wind, cold and snow of winter has receded.

Anyway, my point is that this winter, while you are huddled and miserable and gardenless in your house (or maybe that is just me), pick up a copy of The Secret Garden. Relive what it was like to be a child (without having to involve silly things like vampires and werewolves) and remember what it will be like to find your own “secret” garden in the spring.

Imagine a world where Monsanto was not just a multi-national conglomerate, but an international super power capable of warring with and enslaving entire nations.

Imagine a world where genetically modified plants are used as harrowing weapons that can kill entire populations – just so that a company can make more money.

Imagine a world where the equivalent of script kiddie hackers (for you not in the biz, these are amature hackers, like the graffiti vandals of the computer world) can “hack” a plant’s DNA and create deadly or frightening changes.

Then imagine trying to live an everyday life in this world.

This is the world created in the book The Windup Girl.

It was rather ironic that this book arrived at the library this weekend for me to pickup. I had ordered it weeks ago after it was recommended as an interesting read in the steampunk (though it’s more post apocalyptic cyberpunk, but whatever) genre. It was not mentioned to me that plants played such a vital role in the story. Considering that I wrote about heirlooms versus hybrids just a few days ago and that genetically modified crops are the next level in that discussion, it was a very timely and interesting read.

The jury is still out on my opinion on genetically modified plants, but this book did provide a lot to think about.

And while gardening specifically was not discussed in the book, there was some allusions to the idea that things grown simply for beauty were no longer possible and things grown at home to feed yourself were just downright dangerous to your health and general state of being alive.

Now imagine a world where you could not garden and you realize that this book is not just sci-fi but horror as well.

Regardless, an interesting read if you are looking for something to read and ponder this summer.

*Just a note – the book does contain certain amounts of graphic sexual violence as the main character is a genetically engineered “companion” turned sex slave. Just so that you know that ahead of time and don’t yell at me later for not warning.

I have learned an important thing about tillers recently. That, in terms of number of friends you have (like the flesh kind, not the electronic kind), they have a similar effect as to pickup trucks. When people find out you have one, suddenly, they discover an overwhelming need to call you up and see how your life is going, and it just so happens to be that they have a garden they need tilled (or a house full of possessions they need transported, in the case of trucks).

This year, I was asked to review the Troy Bilt Super Bronco CRT Garden Tiller. And I will be honest, I did not use it myself.  I was afraid of it.  The thing is a beast, and in tough soil, I was fairly certain that I was going to lose control of it and take out a fence, a shrub and important pieces of my anatomy.

So, for the safety of myself and those around me, I let my husband use it and I will report his findings securely from  behind a computer screen.

To start off with, the tiller was bang easy to assemble. Pop the handle on and you are ready to go.  That being said, my husband thought that in terms of how well the tiller itself chewed through the soil, the handle felt a little flimsy.  But, being said after that, no matter how tough the ground was, there was never an issue.

We tilled my garden, which already has been broken in during past years with no problems.  The tiller moved smoothly.  I think that if I had this to do again, I would have gone with a slightly smaller tiller though.  I have raised beds and turning it around in those beds was a bit tricky sometimes. 

So we tried it next in my neighbor’s open garden. Again, soil that had been tilled before.  My husband loved that and turning was not a problem.

Then we took it to my friend’s “fire-sale, bought in a foreclosure action and the yard was abandoned a year before the house was” yard.  This was basically virgin, hard clay soil, and my husband had a blast.  It was like watching a cowboy ride a bronco.  The soil did its best to throw my husband and the tiller and my husband and the tiller handled it. The tiller chewed through the ground and left a lovely, smooth bed in its wake. 

All in all, we were impressed and pleased.

Then the tiller broke.  It seems the spring on the pull cord had snapped.  My hubby, being a hands on kind of guy, took the pull cord assembly apart and shook his head like a doctor who had lost the patient.  I called the company.  And to be very honest, they were quick like bunnies to get the tiller fixed for us.  No fuss, no questions and we were rolling (um, I mean tilling) again in no time.

All and all, I liked this tiller. My husband loved the tiller. And while it did break on the 3^rd time we used it, it gave me a chance to see their customer service in action, and they were very nice and prompt.

So the tiller is now at my in-laws and will then go to my husband’s grandparents and my other neighbor has asked if I could let them borrow it, just for an afternoon.  I am now officially the “friend with a tiller” which is the kind of friend with benefits that gardeners like.

If there is one gardening implement that has drawn lines down gender preferences, it would be the weed wacker. I should know, I now own 3 of them. My most recent weed wacker acquisition came from Troy-Bilt (being the Troy-Bilt’s TB57, Lithium Ion String Trimmer) who wanted me to try it out and let you all know what I think about it. And I felt very qualified to do this because, well, I own so many of them now.

My weed wacker collection started out with me going and buying a weed wacker we were in need of one. So I drove myself down to the hardware store and bought one. I bought one that I liked, an electric one, the kind you plug into the wall like a vacuum cleaner and look like a confused housewife wandering around your yard.

My husband was not pleased. He had no desire to look like a confused housewife (he was doing just fine looking like a confused husband, thank you) and he then went out a scoured yard sales until he brought home a rather large gas powered one.

He hated the electric one because he thought it was prissy. I hated the gas powered one because it was heavy and stank. Often, the neighbors would watch the street theater as my husband and I casually wandered around the yard and weed wacked with our own weed wackers trying to prove, non-chalantly, that our weed wacker was the better weed wacker.

Now, I have this weed wacker from Troy-Bilt. It is a battery operated weed wacker and seems to address the issues that both my husband and I had with each others’ weed wackers. Now, technically, my husband is not here to speak his mind on it, but, like all wives before me, I feel that I am entitled to but my words in his mouth.

The Troy-Bilt weed wacker was light enough for me to carry around, and did not have the allegedly sissy electric cord leash. It certainly had the power to cut through the massive patch of thistle that had sprung up around my compost bin (it was like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre watched on a TV where the color is really off).

I do have to say that I did have some difficulty putting it together. I can honestly say that in this case, the problems started when I skipped the step my husband usually takes in skipping reading the directions. The directions confused me and that made it difficult to put the weed wacker together quickly. I probably would have been better off just putting it together without the directions.

But, once it was together, it worked very well. And the really nice thing about it being battery operated was that when I noticed I had missed a spot, it was no more difficult than picking it up to correct the problem. No lugging the power cord back out. No struggling to get the thing started again.

So now, I have to figure out what to do with the other two weed wackers. I suppose I could always paint them and list them on Craigslist as a matching set of his and her weed wackers.

Tis the season for mental garden preparation. There is snow on the ground and ice on the roof, but right now, the heart of a dedicated gardener is singing the song of spring. And good marketers know that we are doing this. This can be evidenced by now daily piles of mail that are being dumped outside my door. I think this is my mailman’s subtle hint that due to current catalog volume, I need to add myself to a national do-not-mail list.

This is also the time of year that I get inundated with review requests. I actually have to turn some down these days, lest all you read is reviews of product. Helpful as that might be ( and as much as I like free stuff), it would probably get a little old a lot fast.

But when Burt’s Bees asked if they could send me some product to take a look at… Well, there is free and then there is good free. Burt’s Bees qualifies as damn good free.

So, a few days later, among the pile of seed catalogs, a rather non-descript box was also dumped. And it was filled with all sorts of fun little goodies.

About half of the products I cannot make a solid commentary on, beyond to say they smell absolutely fabulous.

But the other half of the products I can comment on, so here is the quick, fast run down.

Burt’s Bees Muscle Mend – I started a class at the gym called Boot Camp. Enough said. Love this product.

Burt’s Bees Miracle Salve – Winter does a number on my skin. Like, I could be a stand in on The Mummy sort of dry skin. This has done a great job dealing with that.

Burt’s Bees Res-Q Ointment – Not sure what to say on this one. Used it on a burn, but whether it helped or not is hard to say. Still smelled really nice.

Burt’s Bees Garden Gloves – I don’t usually use garden gloves. Way too fussy for my taste. But, I do normally keep a pair around because sometimes there just is that really nasty weed that refuses to budge and has spikes from hell. These seem very nice for that. Tough rubberized palms with a light knit back. Not too heavy but tough enough for what I need.

And then, as the bestest thing that came in that box….

They sent me Burt’s hat. Well, maybe not Burt’s own hat (I imagine a real gardener’s hat is a little bit yucky), but that kind of hat that he wears in the pictures, they sent me that hat. It will be a stylin’ summer in the convertible wearing that hat. Gardeners driving past will bow down to my keen sense of style.

But until the weather gets warm enough to enjoy my garden or my convertible, all I am left with is spending hours unscrewing the caps on these Burt’s Bees products and inhaling deeply.

This month, I received a pair of Muck Boots gardening shoes to try out in the garden. The only problem is that really, I am a barefoot gardener. I risk heel and pinky every year hoeing the weeds in naked tootsies. The soles of my feet are so calloused that even the Canada thistle shies away for fear that my foot will crush it without ever knowing it was there.

When I said I would look at these shoes, I had every intention of trying them myself just for the purposes of the review. But when they came in the mail, The Daily Garden rubber gardening shoes were of such a high quality, that I felt it just was not fair. Why should I keep such a nice pair of gardening shoes when I would wear them twice and then sacrifice them to the hungry monster I lovingly refer to as the foyer coat closet? Surely there was someone in my life who would be more deserving (and apt to make good use of the shoes) than I was.

That was when I thought of my mother. She has been on a quest for several years now in search of a perfect gardening shoe. It wasn’t that she couldn’t find comfortable gardening shoes. Nearly all of them are comfortable. A gardening shoe that is not comfortable tends to be converted to a planter rather quickly and therefore ceases to be a gardening shoe. It was just that, well, they all had breathability issues. Gardening shoes do tend to be overwhelmingly made from easy to rinse but solidly formed plastic or rubber. In my family, one cannot trap one’s feet into a solid confine and not expect there to be a few air quality issues when we remove them. For those who have not put two and two together, this would be why I frequently go barefoot.

But I had high hopes for these shoes for my mother. These shoes are made from the ubiquitous solid rubber, but they had a foam like lining. It felt much like the memory foam that is so popular these days. The packaging claimed that this lining made for superior breathability within the shoe.

My mother tried them on and she was pleased with the way the felt on her feet. She compared them in comfort to a pair of Crocs, with that soft yet firm support. The foam lining is largely responsible for that. The lining also did a good job of keeping the feet cool.  She liked the look of the shoe as well and was impressed with the quality feel of the shoe. This is a heavy, well made shoe and you can feel it.

She did note that because the shoe is so heavy, she is not sure how well she would like it in the heat of summer. She felt that for the Fall and Spring, it was defiantly a great garden shoe, but she would have to try it out during the summer (now a whole year away) before knowing if the shoe would be too heavy.

She did end up with blisters on the backs of her ankles after wearing them for a few hours. This is not so much a fault of the shoe, but rather a warning that if you do purchase these shoes, you will want to protect your ankles until you have built up the appropriate calluses.

All and all she was pleased. She felt that this time, she may have found the perfect gardening shoe. Perhaps now the EPA can stop sending those annoying notices to the house during the gardening season.

Once again, the blogging gods have seen fit to send my way the manna of product reviews. This month, I received the Mosquito 86 to review. As was pitched by the representative of the company, the Mosquito 86 is “a new, innovative way to eliminate mosquitoes in a manner that has previously only been offered through professional mosquito and pest sprayers that use commercial sized foggers or truck-mounted systems.”

I.E. It is commercial grade pesticide.

I am not an organic gardener, though I do try to stick to mostly organic methods, mainly because I am a cheap ass part Scottish woman and you can’t get much cheaper than organic. But, I am not above using chemicals if I feel they are worth the cost and effort. So I said I would look at this product.

Beyond that, being a gardener/nature lover/without air conditioning, I regularly eat dinner with my family outside in the summer. Mosquitoes put a crimp in that lifestyle and I don’t particularly like to decide between battling blood sucking insects outdoors or being heated to the same temperature as my food indoors.

This seemed like it might be a good solution. Why not give it a try?

The box arrived as promised and my eldest son and husband assembled the contained system with no problems and without once having to refer to the directions, not that they would have if they needed to, but it was nice that the situation never came up.

While they assembled, I did read the directions and the box, and read the following “Kills mosquitoes (check), wasps (check), yellow jackets (check, check, check, check) and bees (ummmm…). Fortunately, it is late in the season. Most of my flowers are dead or fast fading, so bees don’t make forays into my yard at this time.

My eldest, who is 12, donned the system and my husband and I immediately started to sing the theme song to Ghostbusters, though we were quickly reminded of our age when our son asked “what’s that song?” *Sigh* The loss of the high entertainment of my childhood is tragic.

And for those who may be concerned about the effects of the chemicals on my son, remember, this is the same stuff that your local city (at least mine, anyway) drives around and squirts into your front yards via truck. Here in Ohio, mosoquitoes are a concern due to West Nile.  This chemical has been found safe at reasonable levels (which we will be well below) for humans and pets.

My son sprayed the yard and a few hours later, we sat down to dinner. I have to admit, dinner seemed more mosquito free. It was certainly more yellow jacket free, and they had been a serious problem at dinner as of late.

So, would I recommend this product? That is a tough call. They had me right up until the box said “bees”. I need those in my garden, so this is not a product I could use regularly or even often. September would be the only month where I could even think about using this product. But, most of suburbia is not as dependant on bees as myself but they are certainly as plagued by mosquitoes and yellow jackets as I am. The average suburban home owner would find this to be an effective product.

In the meantime, I was pleased to see that Columbia Pictures has decided to release yet another Ghostbusters. At least then my movie references to my children will seem a little less obscure.

Yesterday, I reviewed the book “Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls”. After I read the book, I had the delightful opportunity to ask one of the authors or the book, Noel Kingsbury, a few questions. I skipped over the availability question this time. While he is quite adorable, I thought that the audience at large (that would be you) would be interested in some more relevant information. So here it goes…

What is the best use of either green roof or vertical gardening (or both) that you have seen? Why does it win that distinction?

Best green roofs I have seen have been in Germany where you have a rich dry meadow type habitat that looks after itself but is really bio-diverse with masses of drought-tolerant wildflowers. And one in the north of England which Nigel Dunnett designed, with a 12cms substrate, very flowery, but that is quite a generous substrate in a cool climate. The only vertical gardening that works is Patrick Blanc’s work in Paris, but it is very expensive and not an easy thing to manage. Far more practical is the use of climbers to cover vertical surfaces – which I know is not done much in the US, but is very common over here in Europe.

What advice can you give to a person who would like to implement a green roof in the typical American suburban neighborhood? Keep in mind, that these neighborhoods typically have ordinances that discourage new or atypical appearances on homes.

Ahh… the USA… land of the free! Where if the city won’t get you for being different the neighbours will. Why are you guys such a nation of conformists? 

A really inspirational gardener here is a chap in Chicago…. Marcus de la Fleur , despite the name a German and a good European freethinker. Check out his website at www.delafleur.com/168_Elm/ for how to convert a rented 1920s house in a classic suburb. He got his landlord interested, has a noticeboard for the neighbours to read, has open days. In other words he is saying he is doing something different and happy to share his ideas with others. If it is about saving water, saving energy etc. then it usually gets people interested.

What are the top three difficulties the typical home gardener may face or should consider when installing a green roof?

1. finding a sympathetic builder or other construction professionals
2. working out a suitable plant mix for your locality
3. sourcing an economic supply of suitable plants

What would be your favorite plants to use in either a green roof or living wall?

Depends entirely on where you are. There is a lot of potential i should think in smaller native American bunch grasses like Stipa tenuissima, as they are drought resistant. Thrifts, armeria species do well and are very decorative. Dwarf alliums, ie. garlics do well, are very colourful and spread by seeding.

I’m going to talk about facadegreening, ie. using climbers. there are few, unfortunately which are evergreen. If you live in the south you can do fantastic things with evergreen ‘jasmine’ type things, not jasmines per se, but species with white and heavily scented flowers: holboelia, stauntonia, trachelospermum etc. Otherwise there are deciduous but much hardier species, a lot of native vines, ie. vitis species or other related Asian species have attractive foliage and fantastic autumn colour, and of course all your parthenocissus species which self-cling to walls.

Bonus IF question – If you could be transformed into any kind of plant in the world, which would it be and why?

Maybe an English oak (Quercus robur), stand there for a very long time and watch the world go by.