Garden shows are crowded. That’s what I remember most about the first time I met Susan Calhoun. It was nearly 18 years ago at the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival in Seattle, and as an exhibitor, she had built a beautiful exhibition garden. After jostling with dozens of people to look through her portfolio, I was convinced that one of her projects would be perfect for Beautiful gardeningThe following spring, I found myself boarding a plane, renting a car, and hopping on a ferry to meet Susan and photograph one of her beautiful designs for our publication.
So anxious.
I was a new assistant editor, convinced that I would embarrass myself by mispronouncing a plant name or fall asleep at 4am and ruin the entire photo shoot. But none of that happened. (Yes, I may have messed up a plant name, but Susan was kind enough to point it out.)
In the nearly two decades since then, Midfielder I’ve worked with Susan on many feature stories. What really amazed me was the diversity of spaces she created—from a hillside rainforest to a wooded native oasis; from large, multi-acre projects to small coastal yards. But regardless of size, scale, or budget, they were all accessible. Even my then-20-year-old self felt at home in that first garden because there were moments during the process when I truly thought, “Wow, I could do that in my yard.” And that’s the most important tenet of good garden design: It has to have commonalities. 
Every now and then we get letters from people lamenting about a garden we’ve featured. “That looks amazing—now I just need a million dollars and 15 acres,” someone will write. Let me reassure you: I don’t have a million-dollar gardening budget or a giant plot of land. But there’s rarely a space we feature that doesn’t contain something interesting for me to replicate in my own humble flower beds.
In this issue, you’ll get to see part of Susan Calhoun’s private garden for the first time in Beautiful gardening. It’s a modestly sized border with ornamental grasses at its core, created by Susan to provide privacy and year-round interest without having to plant an obtrusive (and expensive) evergreen wall. And in addition to being gorgeous, the space is actually very relatable. I can picture a similar design in both my home and a tech entrepreneur’s estate.
Every garden has a lesson to share, whether it is built on the floor of a convention center or along a pristine coastline. We just need to be open enough to recognize it for what it is.
– Danielle Sherry, executive editor
Issue 219 will be published online on August 7, 2024.
