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A talk with C. Colston Burrell

Naturalist, garden designer, photographer and prolific author C. Colston Burrell talks about his favorite plants, why he's not a purist and why pretty counts in plants.

January 16, 2008 at 7:31PM
(Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Q I tried to tally the number of garden books you've written or edited, but I lost count. What's the number?

A Ah, I don't really know. I generally use the number 12.

Q You have books on hellebores, water gardening, shady borders and organic gardening, to name a few. Did you ever feel the need to specialize?

A I call myself a chlorophyll whore. If it's green and noninvasive, I'm interested in it.

Q Do you have a favorite group of plants?

A Native and woodland plants are my first love, but I also am very interested in tropicals.

Q Tropicals? That's something of a surprise for a native plant enthusiast. How did that develop?

A As a kid, I always dreamed of going to a tropical forest. I was interested in the birds and I'd see pictures of colorful birds perched on a tropical plant. So I guess I came to plants in an illogical way.

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Q Then you must not be a native purist?

A I can see the point of having natives only. And there are some places where that's appropriate. But, no, I'm not a purist. I do think that if you're going to plant natives, you should know something about them.

Q Like what?

A Native plants aren't maintenance-free. And they aren't the only plants best adapted to a given site. If they were, there wouldn't be invasives. But there are great benefits to native plants. They're restorative -- they can help with rainwater runoff, shoreline retention. They provide the underpinnings of support for insects and pollinators. And they're beautiful.

Q Is being beautiful all that important in the native plant world?

A If it isn't beautiful, no matter how functional it is, most people are not going to buy into a plant.

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Q Judging by its title, I'm guessing your talk is aimed at the experts.

A Oh, no. It's human stories. It's about the people who discovered these plants and named them, who learned about them and wrote about them. It's also about societal changes, attitudinal changes, but it always comes back to the people.

Q What makes native plants a movement? Is growing tropicals also a movement?

A I think the interest in tropicals is a craze. Natives go beyond gardening to me. It's how and why these plants are grown and the environmental benefits they offer. And it's about 100 years of people following their passions.

Q Are you following your passion and working on another book?

A Oh, yeah, there's a book I'm supposed to be working on, but it's going very slowly. But one of my favorite books, "Perennial Combinations," is coming out in paperback this February.

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Q Though you're a Richmond, Va., native, you earned your degree in landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota. Do you get back here often?

A Usually once or twice a year.

Q Before you agreed to come in January, did you look up the forecast?

A No. I'm trying not to think about it.

Connie Nelson • 612-673-7087

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about the writer

about the writer

Connie Nelson

Senior editor

Connie Nelson is the senior editor for lifestyles for the Star Tribune. 

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