In the lush landscapes of Door County, where the horizon brings together the great blue lake, an expansive, pristine Midwest sky, and golden beaches and rolling bluffs bursting with nature’s vibrant palette, something new reemerges. You might call it a beautiful dream, growing from our hopes for the future, for Nature, and for all of us together. But this dream is a physical reality too, a beautiful place grounded in the soil and roots and water, just outside your door, just within reach whenever you have the energy to reach out. Every garden truly is an amazing place…
Welcome to Door County Gardening, a blog and podcast dedicated to the soulful exploration of gardening in a unique, extraordinary land. Today, we begin a journey—an ancient and new journey that starts and ends with beauty: the beauty of gardens, the beautiful creatures that inhabit them, and very importantly, the beauty that resides within each of us. Together, we can transform our green thumbs into greener souls.
The Essence of Beauty
Door County Gardening will explore and discuss the how-tos of planting and cultivation, but it will also celebrate the intrinsic beauty that gardens, the physical act of gardening, and the wisdom of garden art represent. It will explain, with the help of local experts, which invasive plants we need to be wary of, but it will also nurture the quiet moments of joy found in the morning sunbeams and the glistening dew hovering on wildflower petals and vibrant leaves of grass. We will highlight the gardening news we need to know, but also embrace the symphony of colors at sunset and the serene companionship of plants. Here, we will recognize and promote the truth: gardens provide sustenance and are a sanctuary for the soul, a place where life in all its forms intermingles in a dance as old as time.
This beauty is not reserved for the flora alone but extends to the fauna that gardens nurture, from the smallest insects to the visiting birds and mammals, to us—humans who find solace, joy, and a deep connection to the earth through our labor and love. Together, we will know better the bumblebees of Door County and the honeybees in our own backyards (I’m delighted to report that all my hives survived the winter; I’ll share more later.) We will know better the hummingbird moths who return year after year to our ever-growing patches of bee balm and Russian sage and English lavender and Door County light. And we will know better the chickadees and eagles too, the orioles in spring and the fledgling Cooper’s hawks in early summer, the glorious cardinals who maintain our hope throughout the year and the first golden bellied robins who signal the start of spring (I saw my first robin yesterday, May 3rd.
Yes, no matter what, no matter where, beauty lives in everything, for everyone.
Art of the Garden
Our gardens, both nurtured and natural, are living art, but Door County Gardening will also appreciate the artists and visionaries who have captured, created, and gifted this beauty to us, with words and pigments and forms, through the ages. We draw inspiration from esteemed garden writers like Beverley Nichols and Vita Sackville-West, whose words have grown from the soil and stem and flower of their gardens, capturing their essence and spirit. We admire and rejoice in the delicate botanical illustrations of Mary Delany and the influential garden designs of Gertrude Jekyll and Claude Monet, who saw gardens as a canvas for creative expression and soulful growth.
Our journey will explore how gardens inspire artistry and creativity, serving as a muse for works that resonate with wonder and the profound connections between humanity and nature.
The Romantic View of Gardening
As silly as it may sound in this year of the machine, I am a lingering Romantic in a very unromantic world. I experience gardening as an expression of the sublime—a way to engage deeply with the natural world, to celebrate its untamed beauty, and to reflect on our place within it. Emerson taught us all clearly that great things happen when Imagination—one of our greatest instinctive gifts— merges with Nature. This Romantic view of the world encourages us to approach gardening with an exploration of our hearts and soul as much as the science of soil, helping us to see it as a path to discovery, reflection, and great billowing mountains of joy.
Please, Join Us in A New Garden
Door County Gardening invites anyone and everyone who finds or wants to find beauty in the earth and its cycles and wants to understand them better, who delights in the act of digging in the soil and watching a seed you planted slowly fulfill itself to become a great and mighty thing, a great and mighty oak tree or a great and mighty marigold, anyone who seeks to create spaces that nourish both body and soul.
But in order to keep myself from waxing poetic too much, each month we will strive to meet three main goals:
1) Listen to Nature: Each month’s episodes will be carefully planned to be listened to (if possible) in a garden as you work the soil or on a hike through the carefully crafted trails of Crossroads, Peninsula State Park, or along the Door County Land Conservancy’s beautiful trails. Who knows, together we might rejuvenate the art of deep listening and hear something we don’t expect, something extraordinary.
2) Balance Science and Beauty: Each month’s episodes will be choreographed to balance science (expert interviews, plant reports, nature updates) and beauty (ambient sounds of Door County, readings from the greatest garden writers, images of amazing garden art, and personal reflections from me, and hopefully, you). Happiness is usually found somewhere in the middle.
3) Grow and enhance garden life. As much as possible, each episode, article, video, etc. will strive to enhance the gardening experience. Somehow, some way, which might very well be different for each of us, we will grow as much or more than our flora and fauna. Our souls will strive… they will seek… and they will grow until they too flower in moments of billowing joy. This, I promise.
So, please join us on this journey, to celebrate the stories that grow from within. Together, we will share the joys, challenges, and inspirations of gardening in Door County and beyond. Please subscribe to the Door County Gardening podcast, and spread the word. Please also check us out on Facebook (Brett Hanson) and Instagram (doorcountygardening).
Until next time.
