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!

Nature Was Only Kidding

05-06-08 — That stuff I wrote last time about it being April and the bell going off and how it was all warm and sunny and how we’re all ready to garden? Lies, balderdash, hallucinogenic mewlings from a man who should know better. Very cool nighttime temperatures are keeping the ground chilled, we’re getting some rain, which is good, but I spent the better part of today cruising the nursery wholesalers in an attempt to procure potted shrubs and perennials for my first landscaping job of the season, and everything is about two weeks behind.

May through October 31, this dear, dog-eared, ramshackle old site reverts to Archive Mode, whereby I stick my head in on the first of each month, say hi, give a brief pictorial report on whatever landscaping project I and crew are slogging through, then leave you with a pertinent article from the archives to click on. Like this:

The 10 Tenets of
Renegade Gardening

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.