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.

Renegade Planet

07-02-10 – WOW! A mere 30 days after instituting the new E-Mail Alert function on this website (thus thrusting its technology into the ‘90s), we’ve registered Renegade Gardeners from 25 states, eight USDA growing zones (two through nine), seven Canadian provinces and six foreign countries (Canada not being foreign in my book—unique, gorgeous, exotic, yes). To those who signed up for e-mail alerts from beyond the North American continent, may I say cheers, merci, grazie, tusen takk, g’day mate, and however one says “thanks” in Bulgarian.

If you sign up (see button bottom left), all we’ll do besides keep the list private is shoot you an e-mail when this site is updated (about every 30 days). November through April I publish new articles on the site each month. In summer, during my busy landscaping season, the updates are wimpy, like this one, where I dig through the archives of articles on the site and point you toward Suggested Readings, such as these:

Every Curb is a Shoreline  
Mistakes to Learn By  
Essential Gardening Tools  

Except that now, with this being the first update where we’ve sent out the e-mail alert, my Norwegian guilt is kicking in, tusen takk, and even though I’m leaving early tomorrow morning for a long, long weekend in Northwestern Ontario, I feel as if I should write something original that might help you become better gardeners in some small way. So here’s a quickie:

- MORE -

Current Column will be updated August 1