My Personal Hobbies: I love to cook and eat delicious food with friends and talk and talk and talk. I love to hear stories.

My First Memories of Gardening: When I was six, we moved to a new house, which had an acre of newly plugged zoysia to weed. Before Daddy would take us swimming, we had to fill up a brown paper grocery bag with weeds. In the fall, we had to fill up a bag with pinecones. We didn’t mind it, since we were all out there together and we got to go swimming afterwards. On the well-trodden path between our house and Aunt Liza’s, there was a dog cemetery with four o’clocks growing in it. Daddy worked at the Palmetto Building on Main Street in Columbia and walked through Kennedy’s Florist to reach the interior parking lot. When we lost a dog, he would often bring flowers home for the funeral service. Momma would walk around the yard with me sometimes and crush anise leaves for me to smell. I planted anise as soon as we started having children, so I could do that with them.

My Favorite Plants: My favorite plants need to be thick-skinned, as the list changes with the seasons. Pine forests where the wind sings through their needles. Wild azaleas when you come upon a hillside of them in bloom. Bloodroot since it signifies spring to me and the blossoms and leaves are so charming. Hickory trees, which have fall leaves like almost burned butter.

Plants I Like To Grow: My wild azaleas are my favorites, as I can stare daily at the fattening buds and watch them begin to separate into what will be showy petals. Dogwoods with red berries that mockingbirds love. Sweetbay magnolia with its intoxicating fragrance – sophisticated, like Bellodgia perfume.

My new passion is growing vegetables (started seriously about four years ago). I have a new (for me) variety of okra that doesn’t get woody and pole beans from Alabama that produce in our hot summers. Cucumbers for cucumber soup and ice cream (with a little ginger) to cool us on hot nights. I like to grow trees for shade and flowers. Native crabapples are great favorites, but they get rust and I never seem to get the ladder way out back to spray them.

I love to grow plants I can cut and use in arrangements. From Hydrangea paniculata ‘Tardiva’ for its flowers to winged elm for its branches.

My Least Favorite Things to Do in the Garden: There isn’t a chore I particularly dislike, but I dread being in the garden when it is so horribly hot and you sweat so profusely that there isn’t a dry spot on your tee shirt, front or back, to wipe the sweat off your eyeglasses.

Things that Interest Me in Horticulture: Plants that have a feature that you wait for and then can exclaim over,  once it arrives, are my favorites – could be a flower, a fruit, or the leaf color. 

My Biggest Mistakes in My Garden: My biggest mistake was not hiring a professional designer to help me lay out my yard when I began planting, so the yard would have more balance and connection between different areas. Would have been money well spent.

People Who Inspire Me in Gardening: Tony Melton inspires me. He is indefatigable – works scouting crops all summer long, grows vegetables, and loves and knows landscape plants and flowers. 

My Personal Hobbies: Kayaking (no white-water, thanks), tinkering around with the German language, South Carolina history. I really like to collect plants for the Herbarium and usually end up doing this even during vacation or travel time.

I’m really not much of a gardener. I think I’m a better “garden appreciator,” and I love to be thrilled by walking into someone’s carefully tended backyard, or a botanical garden or greenhouse. I have grown a few things, though. My greatest accomplishment in gardening, I think, was growing gourds. I still have some great big bushel gourds that I grew several years ago. Hot peppers are pretty fun (and easy) to grow, too.

My First Memories of Gardening: One of my very first memories involving plants was when I was a little kid, probably four. I remember crawling around outside, and marveling at the beautiful little hairy purple things on the ground. Of course, I was looking at the flowers of henbit, Lamium amplexicaule. I still think that this species, despite its weediness, has one of the most exquisite flowers of all. Small, but exquisite. (Maybe I was already a botanist!)

I didn’t get really fired up about botany and plant life until I was a senior undergraduate, a biology major, at USC. Up to that point, a lot of the biology courses were pretty boring for me. But I managed to squeeze into Dr. Wade Batson’s “Fall Flora” class, and it was a real life-changer. I then knew that whatever I did later on, career-wise, was going to involve plant taxonomy. Fortunately, I was able to keep this spirit going when I started grad school at Clemson, working under Dr. John Fairey.

Personal Hobbies: I spend a great deal of my free time helping animals. I volunteer with two humane societies and a wildlife rehabilitation center. I like scuba diving, baking, and just enjoying the outdoors.
 
Gardening Memories: I don’t think I have a first, but I have lots of gardening related memories. One of those is sitting on the screened-in porch with my great grandmother (Great Nana) trimming and snapping the green and yellow beans to be canned. We grew tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, green and yellow beans, asparagus, rhubarb, zucchini, and raspberries. There may have been more, but that is all I can remember. We didn’t grow our own strawberries but it was a summer ritual for my grandfather (Popa) and me to pick strawberries at the local farm. I think I may have eaten more than I put in the flat, but that is what makes strawberry picking fun when you’re a kid. My grandmother (Nana) was a fabulous cook and she would turn those strawberries into jam, strawberry shortcake, and strawberry rhubarb pie.
 
Favorite Plants: I love lilacs! We had a hedgerow of lavender and white lilacs on the path to our garage. The flowers were so pretty and had such a lovely fragrance.
 
Plants I Like to Grow: I like to grow things that are beneficial to wildlife, such as lantana, coneflower, and butterflyweed.
 
My Least Favorite Thing to Do in the Garden: Weeding
 
Things that Interest Me in Horticulture: I am especially interested in eco-friendly landscapes. This includes the use of drought-tolerant plants, as well as those that do not require lots of fertilizers and/or pesticides. 
 
Biggest Mistakes in My Garden: Purchasing plants without considering if I have a suitable place for them in my home landscape

Inspiration for Gardening: I have so many cherished gardening-related memories from my childhood: picking fresh corn on the cob to have with dinner, growing pumpkins to carve at Halloween, having canned vegetables from our garden nearly all year long – I think it is that close connection to gardening from early in life that has inspired me to continue gardening as an adult. It can be challenging, but it is so rewarding.

Personal hobbies: Freelance writing, riding on the motorcycle through the mountains, driving, skydiving
 
First memories of gardening or doing anything ag related: My best friend and I saved up our quarters to go to the local Co-Op to buy some seeds and start our own secret garden in the back yard. Sadly, we didn't tell our parents we were going all the way across town on foot to purchase said seeds. We got in a butt load of trouble and our seeds were confiscated.
 
My favorite plants: The entire family of Viburnums have always been my favorite. It seems like the variety is so vast there is a Viburnum for all places and needs. 
 
Plants I like to grow: I have a yard full of random plants. I'm a big perennial gardener, with hopes of someday having an entire cottage garden full of blooming beauties
 
My least favorite things to do in the garden: Least favorite? Easy. Anything Rose related.
 
Things that interest me in horticulture: I've always been intrigued with all of the new cultivars of plants that come out and how the old ones have been improved. Just when we thought things couldn't get much better, they do! It just takes a little research and work and voila, new spectacular plant!
 
Biggest mistakes in my garden: I thought I wanted a pond...that was a mistake.

Hobbies: swimming, kayaking, music, digging in the dirt

Some of my earliest memories were of my grandparents doing yard and gardening work.  I spent weekends with them and they loved their yard.  My grandmother hummed in a very sweet voice as she planted petunias, pansies, and tended her African violets.   She had nice fingernails and always wore gloves to garden.  My grandfather did all the heavy work mowing and raking, and I remember his using an old bedspread to get up the pine needles.  They also rooted azaleas and Camellias in my old sandbox with window frames on top.

My favorite plants are: Coontie palm-Zamia pumilla,Sabal palmetto, sweet grass and longleaf pine.  I love ferns and plants with spikey foliage.

I like plants that take care of themselves.  I have some 12’ Camellia sasanqua’s that bloom every year on my birthday with only leaf mold- no fertilizer, pruning, or irrigation.
There isn’t much about gardening that I don’t like.  I believe that Gardening is a metaphor of life and you have to do it all, eventually.  The benefits far outweigh any “unpleasant” tasks.

I have been interested in the therapeutic benefits of gardening since the first time I pushed a lawnmower.  I get so much pleasure in the practice that I forget all my cares and woes at least for a while.  I am also interested inSustainable Agriculture, ‘’Farm to Table’’, community and schoolyard gardens.

My biggest mistake is trying to do too many things at the same time.

I am sure that the list is too long to include all of the people who have inspired me to garden.  I have known a lot of really good gardeners!

Personal hobbies: Gardening, harmonica, church softball
 
First memories of gardening/agriculture: growing strawberries with my mom and bringing in a worm that turned out to be a small snake
 
Favorite plants: peach trees ,strawberries, azaleas
 
Plants I like to grow: azaleas, camellias, peaches, strawberries 
 
My least favorite things to do in the garden: fixing small engine motors
 
Things that interest me in horticulture/agriculture: diseases of plants, helping start new successful farms
 
Biggest mistakes in my garden/field: use roundup around lantana
 
People who inspire me to garden or have inspired me: my mom, gramma rumph, gramma rollins

Personal hobbies:  Hunting and Fresh water fishing and vegetable gardening.

First memories of gardening: Helping my father and grandfather weed the family vegetable garden.

Favorite plants:  Ornamentals/trees (Sweetshrub, Dogwood trees)         

Plants I like to grow:  I like to grow sweet corn,  peas, watermelon, and okra

 My least favorite things to do in the garden:  My least favorite thing to do in the vegetable garden is picking/shelling butterbeans.

Things that interest me in horticulture/agriculture: I love to learn all I can about crop production (old ways vs new ways)

People who inspire me to garden or have inspired me: My inspiration for vegetable gardening and agriculture in general came from my grandfather.

Durant Ashmore Landscape Nursery in Fountain Inn, SC, durantashmore.com

Personal  hobbies:writing, hiking, watching sun rise with a cup of coffee in my hand

First garden memory: Family vegetable garden with my father, who was a surgeon, my sister who is the owner of Martin's Nursery in Greenville and myself. I was in college and my sister was in high school. It was the first project we ever worked on as equals, and it was rewarding to see what could be accomplished when working together as a team.

Favorite plants: witch hazel, edgeworthia, mexican anise

Plants I like to grow: I grow thousands of plants in my nursery, and love them all.

Least favorite thing: weeding

Things that interest me in horticulture: Knowing the history and origination of plant species

Biggest mistakes: "There are no garden mistakes, only experiments" - Janet Kilburn Phillips

People who inspire me:  Rudy Manke, Amanda McNulty, Rowland Alston, Sean Flynn

Personal Profile: Kimberly Counts

Personal hobbies: Gardening (of course), Anything paddle (canoe, kayak, surf, and stand up paddle board), Running, Bike, Soccer, Photography, Birding and Botanizing, and leisurely newspaper reading

First Memories of the Garden: Picking up pine cones, pre-Hugo. One of my most vivid memories of my childhood on James Island included my brother and I picking up the countless pinecones in our parents yard.  After the Hurricane, this was no longer necessary as we lost nearly 20 pine trees in our 1 acre yard.

Favorite Plants: Anything maritime, from Drawf Palmetto’s to Sweetgrass

Plants I Like to Grow: South Carolina Native Plants.

My Least Favorite Thing to Do in the Garden: Fighting encroachment of crabgrass on landscaped beds

Things that Interest Me in Horticulture/Agriculture: On the residential scale, I am very interested in utilizing native plant species to support ecological diversity in the home landscape. On a community scale, I am interested in community gardens and efforts to support local farmers.

Biggest Mistakes in My Garden:  Over planting! That is, planting for today as opposed to tomorrow.  I am beginning to compensate for this and learn from my past mistakes! Particularly when it comes to rain garden design. As rain gardens collect runoff from rooftops they often times receive excess nutrients and in turn grow in a rich environment, causing the rain garden to grow up tall and to grow up fast!

People who inspire me to Garden or Have Inspired Me: My family has and continues to inspire me. My grandfather was a farmer in Orangeburg County. Trips to the family farm serve as a reminder to our connection to the land. I honor my grandfather each time I pick a muscadine grape or get itchy hands in my okra patch.  Also, my parents instilled an innate connection to nature in me, much of which was formed while spending time outside as a child.  This appreciation of nature manifests itself in the garden for me, much as it has for them. The book I recommend most is Bringing Nature Home by Dr. Douglas Tallamy!

Personal hobbies: Guitar, bamboo flute-making, backpacking, snow skiing

First memories of gardening: Pulling weeds in a bed next to the road growing up in Greenville, S.C. As soon as I made it from one end to the other, it was time to start again.

Favorite plants: Hard to say; I haven’t seen them all yet.

Plants I like to grow:  Vegetables and ornamentals

My least favorite things to do in the garden:  Mow grass

Things that interest me in horticulture/agriculture: The relationships between living organisms. Discoveries through observation.

Biggest mistakes in my garden: Planting too many things in a small space, and growing a lawn.

People who inspire me to garden or have inspired me:  My mother for flowers and shrubs and my father for the love of vegetables.