Coffee Talk with Felder Rushing at Four Winds Café, March 11

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Interested in gardening?  Need advice on how to make your garden more productive, beautiful or funky? Join author and master gardener Felder Rushing in the Four Winds Café on Thursday, March 11 at 3:30 pm.  Rushing is a 10th-generation American gardener whose pioneer ancestors settled across the Southeast, bringing many plants with them. Rushing’s overstuffed, quirky cottage garden has been featured in many TV programs and magazines (including on the cover of Southern Living) and includes a huge variety of weather-hardy plants along with a collection of folk art.

Rushing is speaking early in the day Mildred Sainer Pavilion (5313 Bay Shore Road) at 10:30 am.  His talk is entitled “Gestalt Gardening with Felder Rushing – Lessons in Horticulture, Landscaping and Conservation.”  The talk will take place in the Mildred Sainer Pavilion (5313 Bay Shore Road) at 10:30 am. Both events are free for New College faculty students and staff.

The author or co-author of 15 gardening books (including several national award winners) and former Extension Service urban horticulture specialist has written thousands of gardening columns in syndicated newspapers, and has had hundreds of articles and photographs published in regional and national garden magazines, including Garden Design, Horticulture, Landscape Architecture, Better Homes and Gardens, Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, and the National Geographic. He has hosted a television program that was shown across the South, and appeared many times on other TV garden programs. Rushing currently co-hosts a call-in garden program, The Gestalt Gardener, on National Public Radio with his longtime friend Dr. Dirt.

Rushing has served many years as a distinctly non-stuffy board member of the American Horticulture Society, national director of the Garden Writers Association, and member of the National Youth Gardening Committee. Felder gives over a hundred lectures a year, coast to coast at flower shows, horticultural and plant society meetings, and Master Gardener conferences. Believing that too many would-be gardeners are intimidated by a crush of “how-to” experts (”We are daunted, not dumb,” he says), Felder uses an offbeat, “down home” approach rife with humorous anecdotes and garden-irreverent metaphors, zany observations, and stunning photography and to help gardeners get past the “stinkin’ rules” of horticulture.

Mr. Rushing’s visit is sponsored by New College of Florida and the New College Foundation and is supported by the Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association (FNGLA)