My great backyard in Great Backyards magazine!

The back deck, with grill, hot tub, espalier & tables, gets a two-page spread.

The greatest benefit of working on the Garden Walk Buffalo committee, for me, is spreading the word about the great gardens in Buffalo. When a magazine calls me, looking for photogenic gardens with an interesting story, that also comes with high-resolution photography, there are only so many to choose from. Fortunately for our group, we have a professional photographer on the committee. Because of this, we have a large collection of stellar, high-resolution garden photography.

The back patio, with vine-covered arbor/trellises, purple smoke tree and checkerboard steppable grasses gets another two-page spread.

And because of that, Buffalo is represented with an unprecedented 12 gardens in the current issue of Great Backyards magazine. Ten of the gardens are 2-page and 4-page spreads with interviews, two gardens are represented with photos used to illustrate gardening techniques.

That's twelve gardens in one issue. There are 50 gardens in the issue total. That's pretty good.

I try to spread the "wealth" of publicity to as many of the great gardens in the city as I can. I do not try to push my garden as any more special than the other 300-plus gardens on the Walk. But I had submitted my garden for inclusion as well as about 20 others. They chose mine to use! Although, I must say, I am as proud to have the other Buffalo gardens published as I am my own.

Here is the list of Buffalo gardens in the magazine:
Gardens with 2-4 page interviews with photos:
39 Granger Place (table of contents, pages 19, 20-23, 138)
16 Rabin Terrace (pages 19, 24-25)
75 Lancaster Avenue (pages 33, 34-37)
72 Lancaster Avenue (table of contents, pages 33, 40-41)
215 Lancaster Avenue (page 91, 92-95)
378 Summer Street (pages 38-39)
84 North Pearl Street (table of contents, pages 33, 44-45)
587 Breckenridge Street (pages 51, 52-55)
531 Linwood Avenue (pages 66-67)
20 Norwood Avenue (pages 102-103)

Additional photographs used to illustrate garden techniques:
44 Irving Place (page 32, 50)
42 Orton Place (page 70)

If you're out and about, Great Backyards, published by Harris Publications, is available currently at all major bookstores that sell magazines, as well as Home Depots and Lowes across the country. The magazine is $9.95, which seems like a lot for a garden magazine, but this is jam-packed with 50 great gardens and landscape & garden planning tips and just a handful of ads, which can't be said about other garden magazines.