Chris Quinn, Editor, cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer
Why gardening? I send out a text message each weekday morning to just under 1,000 people who subscribe for free, discussing stories we have in the works and questions we seek to answer. Sometimes, I ask for help, as I did a few weeks back. I noted the signs that people were burning out on all the bad news around them and asked what kinds of content people would like to see for relief from the news.
As it happened, we had a candidate at the ready. Last year, we put out the call for people interested in writing freelance Metro columns for us, and one of the people who applied discussed gardening in her letter. When we interviewed her, she said she would like writing a Metro column but in a perfect world, she would write a gardening column. She said she would approach gardening the way our travel editor, Susan Glaser, approaches travel writing, by taking people along for the journey.
What we like about Susan is that she is a hobbyist gardener, like many of us. The aim here is a tour guide in the Greater Cleveland garden, someone who knows a lot but is still learning, just like you and me.
Are you sure about this? Seems to me that a gardening column by a “Brownstein” will see your summer’s toil and joy be overrun quickly by parasitic weeds and invasive species in the name of “biodiversity.”