Bring On The Garden Gifts

By The Dirt Diva aka Annie Spiegelman

Last month, when my local plant nursery had its annual fall sale, the rain was pouring down nonstop, yet there they were, those wild gardeners shopping for plants... outdoors. As if this was normal behavior! Those people are truly hooked. But the ones to really worry about are the ones who stroll around a rainy nursery holding a plant encyclopedia in one hand and an umbrella in the other while pulling a wagon stuffed with plants,... and then they go home to write about gardening

Let’s face it. It’s a die-hard habit, so you may as well feed and nurture the dreamy, florally consumed mind of the horticulturally inclined.

Sometimes it’s okay to be an enabler. Trust me.

Here are some holiday gift ideas for the person in your life who must garden or DIE!

First off, fashionable garden gloves are all the rage! The fun paisley style garden gloves available at www.womanswork.com sell for $26.00 and are specially designed for women. They’re long lasting and high quality. This woman-owned company’s tagline reads “Strong women building a gentle world.” Vive la femme! Buy a few pairs for you and your fellow dirt divas!

For those obsessed rosarians, like yours truly, I always suggest The Rose Bible, a lavishly illustrated volume of 400 full-color photos by California horticulturist and leading authority on roses, Rayford Reddell. It even has a foreword written by none other than Martha Stewart, pre-jailbird status. Sometimes, when I’m having a bad day, I’ll open the book to the breathtaking photos of David Austen English roses and smile. My husband calls it “Flower Porn...”

You will be smitten enough to become a rose junkie, if you aren’t already. You’ll dream about planting more, more, more ROSES! Those people are tweaked!

Definitely check out Amy Stewart’s new book entitled “Flower Confidential: The Good, the bad, and the beautiful in the business of flowers.” Okay flower Junkies, get out your highlighters! This superbly written book is educational, exciting, breathtaking, a bit discouraging and very surreal. Amy carries you around in her flowery suitcase, as she travels the world exposing the global multibillion-dollar cut flower industry. Here’s one sad fact: In the last ten years 3,500 flower shops have closed. The flower-buying public needs to demand fair-trade standards for flowers, as we are finally doing with coffee and tea growers and their suppliers.

Speaking of fair-trade, how about ordering a bouquet of organically grown flowers for your holiday party? In 2002, Eco-entrepreneur Gerald Prolman started Organic Bouquet, his innovative floral company that grows flowers without one iota of nasty pesticide, fungicide or synthetic fertilizer and ships them worldwide. The organic end of the food and floral industry is growing fast. Get on the bandwagon! Stop contaminating the growers who work in enclosed greenhouses with poisonous chemicals, many of which are outlawed in the United States, just so we can have pretty flowers on our tables. Even Paris Hilton isn’t that shallow! Or is she...? Order at www.organicbouquet.com

With a slogan like “People against Dirty”, you gotta love’em already, right? Method cleaning products are naturally-derived and biodegradable cleaning products for your house and you! This way you can clean your home without flushing super-toxic chemicals down the drain and into our rivers and lakes. My personal favorite is “Pink Grapefruit Dishwashing Soap.” You can find Method products at many local stores including Target. If you purchase over $20 dollars of Method products at www.methodhome.com you get a free and oh, so hip “Plastic Rehab” bag.

Are you tired of using lotions and make-up with ingredients like Mercury, lead acetate, formaldehyde petroleum distillates and ethylacrylate? I was, so I did what any self-respecting diva would do. No, I didn’t give up make-up. Are you crazy? I cleared out my bathroom cabinet and went shopping! I found and love Juice Beauty’s Green Apple SPF 30 SHEER MOISTURIZER concocted with certified organic white grape and pomegranate juices, and other ingredients that I grow in the garden like sunflower, camellia, cucumber, mandarin and apple juice. Available at Sephora ($30.00) or www.juicebeauty.com.

Visit the Phantom Gardener website and purchase a gift certificate to this legendary East Coast nursery. This plant nursery is to a gardener, what a candy store is to a child! Visit www.thephantomgardener.com. Phone (845) 876-8606.

Or take a ride up to Rhinebeck yourself and drool over an eclectic selection of fairly- traded, locally grown or built garden gates, arbors, pots, birdhouses, organic soaps, Buddhas and a plethora of must-have-plants for your cottage garden!

For the kids, but my 78 year-old dad loves this as well, I recommend the Antworks. Don’t skip ahead because you don’t like ants. You’ll like these ants because they clean their room! Ants are actually tidy insects. Antworks is based on a 2003 NASA Space Shuttle experiment that studied animal life in space and tested how ants successfully tunnel in micro activity. You can watch ants live, work and tunnel in your own glass ant house filled with nutritious and nontoxic gel as they create a series of intricate tunnels. Price: $30 Available online at www.suburbanhabitat.com (877) 326-3935.

Lisa Ludwigsen is the owner of The School Garden Company, which creates natural healing products and shares the profits to build gardens in public schools. For $20.00 you can purchase a beautiful box filled with lavender, rosemary handhelper, a wild citrus lipchap, lavender bath salts and yarrow-comfrey super healer for scrapes and cuts. Promoting school gardens and supporting a chick run business is all good! Go to www.schoolgardenco.com

And finally, my favorite gift is GARDEN-OPOLY, “an organic property trading game that will grow on you!” This game will delight and educate kids 8 yrs. old and up in naming wildflowers, climate facts and soil textures. They might even be elected president of the Horticultural Society! (I’d be so jealous!) You can order it online at www.amazon.com. Price: $25.00 This game is so much fun that I had to get one for myself. Instead of going to jail, you go to “weeding.”

Visit Annie at www.dirtdiva.com, and bring your friends!