Welcome, comrades.
Day after tomorrow, the world!

    RENEGADE GARDENER is the Web's best site for gardeners seeking truth, hope, and one lousy sign that someone unfettered by industry prejudice is interested in helping you become a better gardener.

     Originally designed to help gardeners banished to the forgotten USDA Zones 2-4, bold, universal content has made it one of the Web’s most-linked gardening sites. Gardening is gardening, design is design, dumb is dumb, and truth conquers all!

Click HERE for Don’s updated 2010
national speaking schedule


The Renegade Gardener is Don Engebretson,
an award-winning Minnesota garden
writer and designer.

The Story of the Renegade Gardener

The 10 Tenets of
Renegade Gardening

Full version is required reading; CLICK HERE.

  1. Gardening should be challenging, relaxing, and fun.
  2. Renegade Gardeners are cautious and wise when perusing the plethora of products and plants sold by the commercial gardening industry.
  3. Gardening involves commitment.
  4. Renegade Gardeners learn the Latin names of the plants they grow.
  5. Gardening is not always easy.
  6. Renegade Gardeners come to realize that lawns are essentially a dumb idea.
  7. Gardening and rock music do not mix.
  8. Renegade Gardeners buy first from local growers.
  9. There is nothing wrong with cutting down a tree on your property.
  10. Irreverence is essential.

Planting on a Slope

Oh all right, one photo from my January vacation in Kauai.

02-1-10 –I launched this site eleven years ago simply to relate useful gardening information, as the hundreds of articles found by clicking any of the buttons to the left will attest. However, this fall it occurred to me that many of my winter updates in recent years have been devoted to self-indulgent slide shows from my travels, or most often my bemused comments on garden industry politics, trends, and buffoonery. The latter provide grist for the dilapidated mill that spits out my annual High Spot/Black Spot Awards each January, of course, but now that February is here, how about I get back to relating practical gardening advice?

Here’s a topic I’ve never touched on. We don’t always plant on flat, level ground, unless you garden in Winnipeg, come to think of it. Flattest city and suburbs I’ve ever seen. Makes Omaha look like Rome, no mild trick. Wonderful city, don’t get me wrong, just—flat. So Winnipeg aside, quite often it’s a slope of some degree on which we feel inspired to plant trees, shrubs or perennials. Here’s an important technique to know when planting on a slope.

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Current Column will be updated March 1