An acclaimed Austin author and blogger educates gardeners in a new, engaging way.
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Story by Pamela Price
Pick up a popular home decor magazine at your local grocery store in April, and odds are good that you’ll find gardening tips. Trouble is, most national magazine editors are situated on either the East or West Coast—places with very different environments than the Texas Hill Country region.
Thus, it can be a frustrating experience for newcomers or new homeowners to discover that pretty posies often on offer in the big box retailer nurseries aren’t suitable for our blazing summer heat, periodic droughts, or rocky native soil.
That’s why savvy
After years of running a successful blog (“Digging”), fostering in-person connections between garden bloggers, and writing a couple of books on low-water gardens, Penick found herself craving something new.
“In the places where you have a high concentration of garden bloggers, shows, and magazines, there’s a greater emphasis on design,” said Penick in a telephone interview. “In the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast, they also have great garden shows with amazing speakers, authors, and others. But Austin doesn’t have design talks, and our garden shows tend to be more focused on products, less on design.”
Even the local nurseries in the area, which do a much better job than national chains at providing plants suitable for our region, are more focused on teaching the basics of selecting, planting, and tending ornamental and edible species.
“Nurseries offer practical how-to talks and information. That’s helpful, but once you move past that point, then what?”
Drawing inspiration from her daughter’s experience with small house concerts—private gatherings that provide vocalists and musicians with intimate performance venues, Penick launched a ticketed, design-centered series of talks under the brand name “Garden Spark” in her home.
Through the program she features authors, landscape designers and other notables at several events sprinkled across the year. For 2019, she scheduled three speakers. Her February speaker was Christine Ten Eyck, founder of Austin’s Ten Eyck Landscape Architects. In September Penick will host Virginia-based ecological landscape designer Thomas Rainer. Come November, Jackson Broussard of Austin’s Sprout will be in the spotlight.
“I wanted to create a conversation here about gardens and garden designs, and our featured speakers are contributing to that conversation.”
To Penick’s surprise, tickets started selling out within the first hour of release. Soon demand outstripped seating in her home. This year she moved the talks to another venue, one that can accommodate up to 60 attendees.
“Clearly there is an interest here in more than just the basics of gardening. I tell people the cost to attend is about the same as two tickets to the movie with popcorn, but with the seeries you get to hear people you wouldn’t get to hear anywhere else.”
Subscribers to a special email list get first dibs on tickets. “The events are all open to the public,” she said, “but access to ticket sales are only available by invitation through the newsletter.”
Penick noted that the Garden Spark series demographics demonstrate that Millenials want to engage with plants, trees, and design as much as older audiences.
“The big talk in the garden world is how to attract young people to gardening. There’s this consensus out there that they only want homestead-type gardens. And they are interested in those kinds of gardens, absolutely. But are they interested in design? From my experience, indeed there is interest there, and they will come out to hear these kinds of talks.”
Explore More
• To subscribe to Penick’s newsletter—and to have a chance to purchase tickets for upcoming Garden Spark talks, send an email to gardensparktalks@gmail.com or follow this link.
• For folks wanting to step up their garden game in the Hill Country, we can’t say enough positive things about Penick’s blog, Digging, and her books.
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