Hello lovely readers! I'm Abby, if you haven't guessed that already from the nifty little tab on the side of my homepage. I'm a student at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities where I'm a liberal arts girl turned horticulture major. My specific college within the university is the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Studies (aka CFANS) and my program of study within my major is Organic Horticulture and Local Food.Other than obsessing over plants, I'm a band geek (get me started on playing trumpet in a Big 10 marching band and I'll talk for hours), an avid reader and a lover of words, food and music. I'm constantly looking for new ways to approach old ideas or tasks and love crafting when I have the time and supplies.
But enough about me. Welcome to my blog! You've stumbled upon what I like to think is a somewhat unique blog as far as gardening blogs go. Here you'll find posts that, yes, all have to do with plants or gardening, but are slightly more varied than your average garden journal blog. That's probably because I don't really have my own garden. That's a little bit difficult to come by when you live in an apartment building on a college campus, eight hours away from home. I have an ever growing (pun intended) houseplant collection that I adore and dote on constantly.
But despite my lack of a garden, like to think the whole city is my garden. You'll find lots of pictures from around campus of the plants I find and posts about parks, garden centers and conservatories that I visit when I have the time to get off campus.
The College Gardener is a blog born out of the infatuation I had with my first college horticulture class. I came into college undecided, thinking I'd be maybe an English major or Anthropology major...then I took Plant Propagation. Every week we'd be in the greenhouse working on new projects and experiments and I began to think to myself "This is awesome! Can I do this all the time??" And thus, a horticulture major was born. So you'll find that I talk about classes quite a bit. I have references to class work and even whole posts about things I've learned in my classes that you'd find useful in your gardens.
I hope you'll stop and take a look around! I update more frequently as we roll into the spring and summer months and the city sheds it's ice and blooms start to come out. You'll find my past posts in the sidebar by date and I encourage you to take a look at some of the blogs I follow as well. There are lots of fantastic garden writers out there. Again, welcome, and if you have any questions feel free to leave me a comment or email. If you have a garden question that I don't know the answer to, I've got a few horticulture department friends who might.
