When Mary Anne Thornton's father passed away after a long illness during which Thorton cared for him, her friends in horticulture didn't send flowers. They came to her house to work in her yard. Thornton, who is president of Botanica, a non-profit organization that promotes horticultural education in the Louisville area, has been gardening for 30 years. She taught herself to garden and took the Master Gardener course offered by a University of Kentucky county extension office. Now, in addition to working with plants, she travels to various conferences that focus on landscaping, perennials, botanical gardens, and native plants.
Gardening is a lot of trial and error.
For Johnson, who is the treasurer of the Kentuckiana Herb Society, gardening is a way of life. While gardening clubs offer the chance to exchange ideas and plants in person, one area gardener exchanges ideas with gardeners around the world. Though Denny has been writing the online column for two years now, she was not born into a gardening family. I developed an uncontrollable urge to dig and plant and plan gardens. Today Denny lives with her husband and their young daughter on three acres of land.