Felder Rushing: "Tough Plants and Cheesy Yard Art:
What All Southerners Share"

Monday, October 18, at 12:30 pm
Pleasants Family Assembly Room
2nd Floor, Wilson Library
UNC Campus

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments served.
Visitor Parking information here: http://www.unc.edu/visitors/parking.html

"Regardless of who our 'mama-n-them' were, we Southerners owe as much to shared plants for who we are as we do food, music, or religion." -- Felder Rushing

Felder Rushing is a 10th-generation Southern gardener who shares a cluttered cottage garden in Jackson, Mississippi, with his wife and long time best friend Terryl, and children, Ira and Zoe, plus lots of wildflowers, critters, and "yard art." His garden has been featured in Garden Design, Southern Living, National Wildflower Research Journal, House and Garden, Landscape Architecture, and others.

Rushing, a Masters graduate of Mississippi State University, retired after nearly 25 years as an Extension Horticulturist. He writes two weekly columns for the Clarion Ledger and twice monthly for the Commercial Appeal, and hosts a live, call-in radio program (24 stations) every Saturday morning on the Mississippi Network. He appears on the Discovery Channel, HGTV, ETV, and has taken a TV crew to European gardens.

Rushing, a contributing editor for Horticulture Magazine, has written and photographed for Garden Design, Fine Gardening, National Geographic, Better Homes and Gardens, American Homestyle, Country Living Gardener, National Gardening, Garden Design, Old House Journal, Organic Gardening, Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record, and many more.

His books include the award-winning Gardening Southern Style, Passalong Plants (honored in 1994 by the Garden Writers Association as the "best written" garden book in the country), Taylor's Guide to Landscaping in the South, Rodale Press Great Garden Shortcuts, Scarecrows, the Better Homes and Gardens Junior Gardening Book, and Growing Fruits and Vegetables in Mississippi. He edited Month by Month Gardening in Mississippi, and contributed to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Rushing is a national director of the Garden Writers' Association, national board member of the American Horticulture Society, advisor to the National Youth Gardening Association, and honorary member of the Garden Clubs of Mississippi. He lectures widely from coast to coast, including at Longwood Gardens, Carmel Flower Show, Williamsburg Symposium, Philadelphia Flower Show, Long Island Horticulture Society, Disney's Festival of Flowers, Atlanta Flower Show, National Wildflower Research Center, the Smithsonian Institute, and many more (he's even done the Texas Rose Rustlers). His off-beat garden concepts have been used in several garden shows around the country, including the top award-winning design at the 1997 Philadelphia Flower Show, and the Smithsonian Institute Folk Festival in Washington, D.C. He also helped design the Children's Garden at Disney's Epcot Center in Orlando, and the 3,000 square foot butterfly house at the Jackson Zoo.

Understanding that many gardeners feel intimidated by a crush of how-to books and experts ("We are daunted, not dumb," he says), Rushing delivers bottom-line points with a down-home style rife with humor, zany metaphors, and real-life anecdotes. In addition to his many accomplishments, Felder is very tall. No, really, he is.

This is the latest in the "Centering the South" Speakers Series, sponsored by UNC's Center for the Study of the American South.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of History with special thanks to Niche Gardens of Chapel Hill.
For more information, please go to: http://www.unc.edu/depts/csas/centering/index.html, or call 962-5665.