When you’re at the newsstand or in the grocery checkout line this month, grab a copy of Better Homes & Gardens Gardening for Health magazine. Inside you’ll find two articles I wrote: a guide to the tools most gardeners need, and a profile about an Austin couple with a backyard homestead garden.

Garden Tools You’ll Use

To help me cull my list for “Garden Tools You’ll Use,” I polled my gardening friends about their handiest, most-used tools and got lots of great recommendations. But I could only include must-haves! See if your essential tools match up with my list.

Growing the Dream

In “Growing the Dream” you’ll learn about Austin couple Robin Finlay and Adam Voorhes, who have an urban “farm” complete with vegetables and citrus trees, chickens and bees, plus rainwater harvesting and a seed-starting greenhouse. Their hardworking garden was designed by the talented B. Jane.

Happy reading!

Want garden coaching?

As a side note, Austin readers, if you need a garden-coaching session to help you bounce back from the February snowpocalypse, I’m offering coaching services again for a limited time. We’ve all lost plants, and it can be hard to know what to prune back, what to give more time for recovery, and what the best replacement plants for your yard might be. I’m here to help! Contact me to let me know what’s going on and what you need help with. Austin up to Cedar Park locations preferred, but I’m flexible so let me know where you are. Weekday mornings only.

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Digging Deeper

Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!

All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.