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 helping you become a better gardener.

     Originally designed to help gardeners banished to the forgotten USDA Zones 2-4, bold 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 2013
national speaking schedule

Check out these Renegade Gardener videos.


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.
Searching for Summer

Our current job (Click for more photos).

06-11-13 – I saw the sun today, popped out for ten minutes while we were at our current job site in St. Paul. It’s been eight days since the shy orb last made an appearance. Felt nice.

From a landscaping standpoint, we lost a month (April) at the start of the season, and are now a week-and-a-half behind schedule due to rainy days in May. That’s my excuse, by the way, for this quick update being more than a week late. We even worked a full Saturday this past weekend, and the Renegade Gardener never works on a Saturday. Ah well.

At least we have a lot of work lined up, and are nearing completion of a neat terraced wall job. The clients’ simple request was, “We want the coolest, funky stone wall in St. Paul.” Happy to oblige. Some pictures of the wall appear below, but first, here are this month’s suggested readings from the Archives:

From “Design:”
Why Beautiful Landscapes are So Odd (11-1-11)

From “Myth of the Week:”
“Annuals bloom all summer long”

From “Plants:”
Let the Sun Shine (6-18-04)

Click to see pics of our current stonewall project. I’ll see you for a quick update next month, with pics of this wall finished, and with the landscape plants installed.

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Current Column will be updated July 1