Hi,
I live in Saranac Lake, NY, moved here in 2020 from Brooklyn where I lived for 40 years. My gardening was limited, as you can imagine, but I was fortunate to learn everything I know from my mom who lives in Buffalo, NY. The country's oldest and largest annual Garden Walk is in Buffalo, and the inspiration I have mostly comes from visiting every year, it is amazing and if you've never been, I highly recommend it!
Currently, I am an adjunct culinary professor and taught full time last semester in Baking Arts at Paul Smith's College near Saranac Lake (and the VIC, where we're meeting on 10/3). I've mostly been into planting flowering perennial gardens but with my culinary background, I'm interested in planting food and creating companion gardens to ward off pests, etc. Sally Cunningham from outside Buffalo wrote a wonderful book called Great Garden Companions: https://shop.seedsavers.org/great-garden-companion.
Here's a picture of my garden from the summer, the rhubarb was the first thing to go in and then I kept adding :) Because the first summer there is no harvesting of rhubarb, I assumed that it didn't matter what other plants shared that same space.
My sister who was originally going to take this class told me about training, unfortunately had to drop because of time constraints. I'm super excited to learn alongside and from you all over the next year.
See you tomorrow,
Erika
