Many of you know her; some of you may have seen her blog over on my sidebar:

It’s Marian St. Clair of
Hortitopia

Marian came here to speak to our Garden Club and she was a HUGE success!

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Marian and I had become friends through our blogs. I really admire and love reading her blog, Hortitopia.
She is a Master Gardener living in Greenville, South Carolina. I won’t detail here all that she does and is (it’s A LOT!); but she is not only a very accomplished professional, she is one of the nicest people you would want to know. I had, aside from being on-line friends, met her briefly last spring at the Davidson Symposium.

I knew that she gives talks to garden groups, so we invited her to speak to our group. And, because she and I were friends, I invited her to spend the night at my house. Maybe, just maybe,  a short tour of my gardens was part of my game plan and yes, indeed, she had some wonderful ideas for me! Thank you, Marian!

The title of her talk, “Growing Good Gardens….Finding Ideas & Inspiration in All the Right Places,” is just a hint at the multitude of pertinent and interesting points she made. Along with pictures from her trips to gardens around the world, she gave us lots of new information to work with. Marian leads garden and art tours two-three times a year…take a look at her blog and you will see some of the past tours. She spoke of how those gardens, whether we “like” them or not, can be instructive in our own garden design.

Here we both are enjoying a glass of wine with fellow gardeners, following the afternoon event and before a lovely dinner with friends.

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One of my personal takeaways from this entire event was that, once again, social media has given me so many opportunities I would never, ever have had. How would I ever have met, and become friends with, Marian if it weren’t for blogging?

Marian recently posted
“Why Garden, You Ask?”

If you are at all interested in gardening I highly recommend you take a look. It is a very thoughtful and thought provoking post (and she received so many wonderful comments and responses.)

I will be posting some last minute Thanksgiving recipes on Monday morning. Just in time if you are still wondering what to serve!

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