Felder Rushing

Felder 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 a cover of Southern Living), and includes a huge variety of weather-hardy plants along with a collection of folk art. There is no turfgrass, just plants, yard art, and "people places."

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. Felder currently cohosts a call-in garden program over public radio with his longtime friend Dr. Dirt called The Gestalt Gardener.

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.