Pressing flowers...

It's been a busy week here as Garden Walk Buffalo gets closer and the National Buffalo Garden Festival enters its second week.

I participated in an event named Spotlight on Buffalo Successes, that was part of Buffalo's Citybration, an event that started out as Buffalo Old Home Week -- encouraging expats to come back for a visit. It has now morphed into a weekend of job fairs, housing tours, receptions, speakers and myriad of educational and social events. You can see the video interview they made about Garden Walk Buffalo, and a brief podium talk afterwords here (you'll want to skip to the 19:00 mark): http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7892594

A brand spankin' new realty magazine, 2 Find Your Home, published an interview in their inaugural issue with me on the success of Garden Walk and how it has been the catalyst for this larger National Garden Festival. You can read it here: http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/2FindYourHome/
You'll have to go to "Back Issues" in the menu bar, click on Friday, June 18 and then "turn the page" by clicking in the right hand margin to the Article titled, Garden Walk Buffalo: Turning green into gold for Western New York.

I participated in a study titled Rusty Gardens: Urban and Civic Revitalization after Deindustrialization. Randy Hohle, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at D'Youville College, sat me down for an hour-plus interview on  "...the importance of gardening in the context of voluntary associations and civic responsibility, and the effects of those efforts have on the civic image and revitalization of Buffalo, NY." His words, not mine. This was right up my alley though. He'll be interviewing many garden volunteers, organizers and leaders throughout Buffalo and its suburbs. As a researcher he's hoping to find how (and why) Buffalo has emerged as a city with a strong garden culture, seemingly without any preconceived plan to do so, out if its industrial past. The hope is that patterns and events will emerge that other post-industrial communities, nation-wide, may be able to learn from. Really anxious to read his final report.

A couple weeks back, I did an interview on a local WECK radio show, Buffalo Style with Christina Abt, which is now posted. Other guests included local garden guru and coordinator of the National Garden Festival, Sally Cunningham, and garden book author, Stephanie Cohen. It can be heard here: http://wnymedia.net/weck1230/2010/06/buffalostyle-monday-june-14/

Buffalo Spree magazine did an interview with me that was published this week (photo at top of post). Ostensibly it was to feature my penchant for volunteerism, but of course I made Garden Walk Buffalo the focus of the interview. Yeah, I know, Elizabeth Licata, a friend and fellow garden blogger, is the editor. But it was actually the writer, and good friend, Kelly Hayes McAlonie, an architect, that suggested, and championed, writing the article. And my friend KC Kratt took the photo -- even made me look decent, which is no small task. I'd have done way more Photoshop work to it. (If you're a garden blogger coming to Buffalo the weekend of July 10, KC will be shooting your photo too!) You can read that interview here: http://www.buffalospreemagazine.com/current/070810qa.html

And today is Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants at the Buffalo Library. It's supposed to rain so that may drive people from their gardens to the Library's auditorium.

And after Amy, it's the Garden Walk Buffalo Rally Party, where Garden Walk gardeners pick up their maps & posters and have a nosh & glass of wine and kvetch about the heat, rain, bugs, and how everything's peaking already and will be spent by Garden Walk (July 24 & 25).