Armchair Gardener #3: A Walk Through a Tasmanian Garden

Ketzel takes us on a tour of a three-acre garden on the Australian island state of Tasmania. The catch is, she never leaves home.

Introducing Rachel Howell, Tasmanian gardener extraordinaire View the photo gallery

Sure, I would have preferred to be with Rachel Howell in her garden. Given the choice, where would you rather spend February: where it's the dead of winter or the peak of summer? But it was a much cheaper thrill (talk about understatement) to see it through her eyes, via the telephone, as I sat there in my living room with the heat turned up, imagining her Tasmanian garden.

Rachel took me past lilies, hydrangeas and her beloved Indian runner ducks, creating pictures that fed my fancy. But your audio experience of her garden was actually more vivid than mine. I only heard Rachel through a phone line; you heard her as she was recorded by an Australian Broadcasting Company engineer. He recorded Rachel's half of our conversation as she walked through the garden, then sent the tape to my producer Jane Greenhalgh. Jane then "synched it up" in the studio with my recorded half of the chat. The result: high fidelity.

Have I lost you? No matter. All that's important is that you sit back in your armchair, and enjoy.

Armchair Gardener Series:

#1: Let Them Read Books!
Morning Edition, January 4, 2002 The first part of a series for gardeners trying to weather the winter months without access to their favorite pastime. Ketzel stops by a Portland, Oregon, bookstore that's packed with gardening books... and brings several plant-lovers along.

Armchair Gardener #2: Charles Dudley Warner
Morning Edition, February 8, 2002
The series continues as Ketzel talks with writers Michael Pollan and Allan Gurganus about a little-known 19th century author who reinvented American garden writing.

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