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Branching Out: In a North State Garden Is Growing!

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Northstate Public Radio – KFPR 88.9 FM Redding, CA and KCHO 91.7 FM Chico, CA is in the midst of their Fall 2009 Membership Drive and the theme of the drive is: Branching Out! During the drive, regular programming is replaced with special programming and I will be hosting a special one-hour live call-in edition of In a North State Garden Thursday, Oct. 22, from 10 – 11 a.m., featuring two special North State guests talking with us about trees in the North State garden. While you can only touch on a tiny amount of information pertaining to such a vast topic in the course of an hour, our conversation will try cover some basic ideas on how to choose your trees, how to place and plant your trees and how to care for them over time, including how and when to water, feed and prune. So if you have questions, please feel free to tune in and call in at the time, or send me questions by email prior to the show and I will ask our guests during the show! Send questions to: Jennifer@jewellgarden.com. (Photos for this essay are all attempts at a Branching Out and/or Up visual metaphor.)

With the idea of the membership drive in mind, I thought it would a perfect time to look back at how this tiny four-minute radio program about gardening in our region grew to be and how it has grown and branched out in the two short years since its inception. I also think this is a perfect moment to enthusiastically point out that without Northstate Public Radio, little seedlings like In a North State Garden and other regional programming such as The Blue Dot Report and Nancy’s Bookshelf, among others, simply would not exist. So, along with Fresh Air and Car Talk and the BBC and All Things Considered and Selected Shorts, and whatever your favorite NPR programs might be, if you also find your local programming to be valuable, please consider making a donation in support of the station’s ongoing programming, small and large, international and hyper-local. Donations do not go back to individual shows or hosts, but even the smallest donations help make ALL the programming you hear available. To make a donation, click here.

I first came to the idea of my little gardening radio program in the fall of 2007. I had already been a national and international garden writer for more than 10 years, and as much as I loved it, I was increasingly frustrated with the lack of forums for good garden writing about the kind of gardeners I wanted to write about: the everyday, dirty-fingernails, love-their-gardens gardeners whom I met and chatted with and was inspired by regularly. Much as I enjoyed them and their stories and their personal takes on what gardening and gardens are and what they should be, these gardeners did not always fit the pages of House & Garden magazine and the like. I did not want to re-invent the wheel and create another how-to program, I just wanted to keep telling the stories of these most interesting gardeners. So I approached Joe Oleksiewicz, program director at Northstate Public Radio, about a gardening program made up of a series of profiles of people and organizations doing interesting things in gardening in the North State and… he liked the idea!

It saddens me (but gladdens him, I am sure) to tell you that Joe O, as he is affectionately known, is retiring with the end of this Fall Membership Drive. I, for one, will miss him. He has been fun, funny, kind and enriching to work with. He has made me rewrite, re-record, rethink and repronounce sometimes endlessly and I hope it shows. Joe O: Thank you for liking the idea of In a North State Garden, and thank you for all the time and effort you have personally put into making this one little garden grow stronger.

Joe’s one question to me before he and I began working on the beginnings of the program was: “Do you really think you can find enough information to fill at least one year of weekends?” The answer to that was a resounding YES, and in many ways it was because you — readers, listeners and gardeners throughout the region — have welcomed me into your gardens, have talked to me at length, and almost to a person have generously passed on the names and contact information for other interesting gardeners, growers, teachers and organizations. My list of prospective profiles remains long, so please keep sending me thoughts and ideas. Every one of them is fun and fascinating to follow up on.

While In a North State Garden started with weekly recordings supplemented by the weekly essay and photographs, in its first year it expanded to include the online calendar of regional gardening events and the 2009 In a North State Garden wall calendar.

In this, the program’s second year, we have branched out further to include the weekly garden posting at anewscafe.com, an online source for news and information from around the region and based out of Redding. It is great to have my work published alongside Doni Greenberg, Kelly Brewer and Steve Brewer, to name just three of the excellent writers, thinkers and community members involved in that resource. If you have not checked it out before, take the time to wander around their website. It’s way cool and FULL of personality that is very North State.

This second year also saw the program grow to include support from the Gateway Science Museum, which helps to manage a weekly email sent out to let people know about the topics for upcoming In a North State Garden shows as well as regional gardening events and workshops. People tell me they enjoy getting the weekly email and being able to click a link right to the podcasts (and, by the way new podcasts are now up) on the website or the weekly essay, but mostly they say they like that little shot of cheer provided by the new photo on each week’s email. It’s part of adding to the Gross National Happiness Factor.

If you would like to be included on the weekly email list, just send your name and email address to me at: jennifer@jewellgarden.com. I don’t sell or otherwise share your information with anyone, and I do not forward non-gardening related information.

This year also saw the expansion from the single format 2009 print wall calendar to a whole line of Note Cards and TWO styles of the 2010 calendar – a wall and a desk/garden journal – both featuring good native plants for the North State Garden compiled by a panel of regional plant experts.

I get so many compliments on the look and feel of these cards and calendars that were developed with the simple idea of trying to offset my expenses with material I was producing anyway. And while it is true that all the raw material is created and produced by me, the real credit for the actual look of the website, the logo and all printed materials should go to the team of creative graphic artists (geniuses) at Truax & Company who work magic with what I give them. They do not alter significantly, there is no computer animation voodoo (well, there is all that code that Becky writes) but their ability to see what I give them and then arrange it and back it and embellish it with a flourish is … art and magic. Charles and Becky (website) and Tiph (printed materials) make everything I do look one-thousand times more lovely.

And speaking of the website, Jewellgarden.com has just branched out again! In response to many people inquiries and requests the website has some fabulous new and improved features.

First and foremost, Jewellgarden.com has PayPal! Hurray. Now, if I were you, I would buy my In a North State Garden 2010 calendars and cards at one of the lovely North State Retailers who are carrying them: Click here for a full list. But if you live far, far away from one of these little shops, then you now have another option. To see and/or buy your 2010 In a North State Garden calendars and cards, click here.

We have also recently made a big push to exponentially increase and improve our Links and Resources section so that it is a far greater North State Gardening resource for you – the North State Gardener. While it is by no means 100 percent complete, it is a start. I have been working hard and I hope that as you all look it over and mull the concept you will send me more information — additional small nurseries or growers in out-of-the-way places, additional online sites that you have found helpful to our region, additional open or demonstration gardens that would benefit all of us to know about. It’s these kind of contacts and connections that gardeners make with one another… and they tell two friends and so on. Please send additions, deletions or corrections to me: Jennifer@jewellgarden.com and I will try to corroborate the information and add it. It is not a review site per se, but a directory of sorts.

In the coming year, there is more growing to be done. I am constantly aware that I have a lot more of the North State to get to — the high country, the southeast, the northwest. I want to feature more home-gardeners having fun and being creative, I want to feature more small garden shops not as a commercial plug for them but to highlight the ways they can teach and inspire us all.

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If you’d like to meet me and chat gardening and see the calendars and cards, I will be at the following locations for calendar signings and meet-and-greets, and I would love to have you come by and say hello.

On Wednesday,  Oct. 21, I will be at the General Member Meeting of the Chico Horticulture Society at the Chico Library from 9 – 12.

On Sunday, Oct. 25, AND THIS IS A CHANGE OF DATE, I will be at Turtle Bay Gift shop in Redding from 2 – 4 p.m.

On Monday,  Nov. 2, I will be at face salon on Rio Lindo Avenue in Chico for an evening reception and special fundraiser for the Gateway Science Museum from 6:30 – 8 p.m. For more info or to RSVP: 530-342-3223.

On Thursday, Nov. 5, I will make a presentation on the development of the Native Plant calendars and cards at the Mt. Lassen Chapter Cal Native Plant Society 7:30 p.m., Butte County Library, Chico. I will be available to sign, and will have calendars and cards for sale; 10 percent of all sales made to active members of the CNPS Mt. Lassen Chapter will be donated back to the chapter. More info: Jim and Catie Bishop: cjbishop1991@sbcglobal.net

On Friday, Nov. 6, I will be in Red Bluff at Discover Earth from 5 – 7 p.m. for its Holiday Preview. Call for more information: (530) 529-3856, or visit discoverearth.us.

On Nov. 21, I will be at Wyntour Gardens in Redding from 10 – 11:30 a.m. More nfo: 530-365-2256, Wyntourgardens.com, 8026 Airport Road, Redding.

Next weekend, I will publish a summary of the call-in special on trees, and regular programming will resume on Saturday (Oct. 31) and Sunday (Nov. 1). Until then, enjoy life in your North State Garden!

In a North State Garden is a weekly radio- and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region. It is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell – all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio Saturday mornings at 7:34 a.m. Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 a.m. Pacific time and is supported in part by the Gateway Science Museum on the campus of CSU, Chico. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com, a regional news source that is positively North State.

Jennifer Jewell

In a North State Garden is a bi-weekly North State Public Radio and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in Northern California and made possible in part by the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State and on the campus of CSU, Chico. In a North State Garden is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In a North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio Saturday morning at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time, two times a month.

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