Gardening Southern Style
In Gardening Southern Style, Rushing’s down-home manner and his practical philosophy that urges a harmony with nature and the value of local resources for solutions have made him a household name in his region. Whether it’s trouble with "southern blight," noxious weeds, nematodes, or aphids, or sage advice about what, how, and when to plant—when question arise about problems or maladies in the garden, many immediately say, "I’ll ask Felder!"
Having lived in Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi, Rushing is a horticulturist whose knowledge is linked to the Magnolia Zone, a region shaped, he says, somewhat like a sweet potato, with Austin on the western border and Shreveport, Jackson, Montgomery, and Richmond on the east. Gardens just a few miles north of the Gulf Coast, from Houston to Pensacola, fall within this zone.
Rushing focuses each chapter on one aspect of gardening south of the Mason-Dixon Line: Planning the Successful Landscape, Choosing and Caring for Trees and Shrubs, The Well-Kept Lawn, Fruit in the Landscape, Vegetables Year Round, Annuals, and Perennials Indoors and Out, and Southern Gardening Month by Month.
Felder Rushing is an eleventh-generation American gardener, a nonstuffy horticulturist who travels the world looking for simple garden approaches, which he promotes in his newspaper columns, books, magazine articles, and NPR radio program. The author of over twenty books and founder of Slow Gardening, he was named by Southern Living as one of “25 people most likely to change the South.”
