LOVE LETTER TO A GARDEN, DEBBIE MILLMAN OF DESIGN MATTERS
- Jennifer Jewell
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
22
Debbie Millman has written love letters before. Her 20 years creating and hosting the popular podcast Design Matters is just one such love letter through which she has interviewed scores of creatives and luminaries over the years. Her many books, several of them established reference books in the design and branding worlds, are among other love letters of sorts. And, I am guessing she’s written a few to her wife, the author Roxanne Gay, who contributed recipes to Debbie’s newest book.
While I enjoy all good love letters, Debbie’s newest love letter is her newest book (launching next week - April 15th), entitled "Love Letter to a Garden". And this is a love letter that definitely caught my eye and ear. It's dedicated to all that she has learned and all that she loves in tending plants and a garden in her life.
Debbie is a gardener by calling since she was very young, when her grandmother introduced her to the idea of an apple, and an apple tree, all coming from a tiny apple seed in her backyard in Brooklyn.
I am gonna wager that Gardeners, young and old, new and longstanding, all feel that quickening of their pulse with Spring, sap rising, bulbs blooming, the new season is all a bright, shining, blank page of possibility…. It is a distinctive and palpable kind of love.
With April and the season’s annual returning sense of rejuvenation, resurrection, and regeneration, Debbie Millman’s new book–"Love Letter to a Garden"–captures that particular passion many of us will recognize of falling in
love with gardening every single season.
Debbie has accomplished in one beautiful, seed-like book so much of what I have hoped to capture in 10 years of Cultivating Place–the WONDER of what it means to identify as a Gardener in our world, the EVERYTHING that Gardens bring to our lives.
Debbie has been named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company and “one of the most influential designers working today” by GDUSA. A multi-hyphenate, Millman is an illustrator, author, and Chair of MPS Branding Department at the School of Visual Arts.
This will be a landmark year for her: in February, On Air Fest awarded her their 2025 Vanguard Award in recognition of audio storytelling excellence and thought leadership. Design Matters podcast is also celebrating its anniversary throughout 2025 with special programming and events, including a live show at Symphony Space in NYC on April 17 that featured Chelsea Clinton and past Design Matters guests.
I am so pleased to sahre Debbie's Garden Love with you all on CP this week! Enjoy.
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All Photos courtesy of Debbie Millman. All rights reserved.
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JOIN US again next week, when we look to a gardener of the past to each us still in the present and the future. We are in conversation with John Stempien, emeritus Director of the LIberty Hyde Bailey House and garden outside of SOuth Haven, MI. John shares with us so much of Bailey's garden-variety philosophy shared in his extensive garden writing during his lifetime (1858 - 1954), including The Holy Earth, The Nature-Study Idea, and much of his garden writing collected in The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion, of which John was a co-author/editor. That's right here, next week. Listen in!
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Thinking out loud this week...
Hey, it's Jennifer-
Discovery, magic, wonder, the common everyday miracles that plants are… I love this idea that we can design our lives better with them as a result of them, for them. It’s all about decision-making and what we want our lives to both look like and grow. The unity of opposites of those perceived the unity of those perceived opposites every day as miraculous.
Because every damn day is miraculous, every plant is miraculous every human is miraculous and the more we design our lives to honor that, the better our lives will be.
In this season of April and the annual returning sense of rejuvenation, resurrection, and regeneration, I also want to parse a little bit of Debbie’s wonderful sense of getting something from nothing–or everything from nothing–in her planting of the apple pip and finding the dollar bill.
And I want to remind myself mostly that we don’t get or grow anything from nothing….rather it’s that everyday miracle again in which what we sometimes perceive to be nothing – the air, water, soil, LIFE of the world around us – is actually everything. That’s the faithful understanding of the big G gardeners in our world.
So much joy from the idea of Gardening and a Garden–a vision of what
could be. Don’t you love that?
And little note on "Gardener Eileen", Debbie's cousin/friend who mentors Debbie's gardening impulse and her generosity of time and talent to help Debbie's garden path: This is what gardeners do. This is part of our job description and mandate when we are the recipients of this gift ourselves, in my opinion, it is our responsibility and our joy to pass this gift for work. To answer all the questions to help with all the new gardeners so that they find their feet and they find this joy.
That is the mandate of Cultivating Place in many ways: to illustrate and give voice to all the different ways a person can become a gardener, all the different ways people are gardeners. We are multitudes.
Which brings me to Public Growing Announcements for this week, first up, Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, outside of DC, is not only a sacred place of remembrance, but also a stunning showcase of horticultural expertise. Their team of skilled horticulturists works behind the scenes to maintain the cemetery's beautiful landscapes, honoring the service and sacrifice of our nation's veterans and their families, while creating a serene and dignified environment for visitors to pay their respects.
Their Spring 2025 Horticulture Tours kicked off on March 28th and are running through May 9th. If you’re visiting the area, check these beautiful gardens and grounds out.
UC Davis Conservatory is having a plant sale on Saturday, April 19, 2025!
A new book was recently launched by Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's Director of Horticulture, Andrea Delong-Amaya, "The Texas Native Plant Primer: 225 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden". It's outstanding - GO Andrea.
From the UK–a favorite artist of mine–also has a new collection: Angie Lewin’s "The Book of Garden Flowers", is her latest and in collaboration with writer Christopher Stocks Published by Thames & Hudson, for a limited time, those based in the UK can order a signed copy from Bookshop.org, which
supports the work of local bookshops across the UK.
In this artful project, Stocks tells the fascinating tales of nineteen cultivated flowers and their journeys from distant corners of the world to British gardens. In this new book, which features more than sixty of Angie’s prints and paintings.
And of course, with April being Earth month, most gardens open to the public, as well as plant and garden societies, have programming around
our best hopes and actions for a well-grown future–check out your
local resources. I have gotten updates from Theodore Payne down in LA, from Bloedel Reserve up in the Seattle Area–if you hear of events or Earth Day programming, we should share forward–send it to us by email: Cultivatingplace@gmail.com, and we’ll do our best to share in a weekly show notes PGA’s.
And, if you’d like to keep up with all of CP’s programming, make sure to sign up for our mailing list updates–we will begin sending out a newsletter again once a month starting April 27th (new moon newsletter), in preparation for May - which is, of course, National Gardening Month.
Looking forward to being back in regular communication that way, too!
Happy April, and Keep Growing Gardeners. We really do grow the
world better.
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