Carolyn Hestand Kennedy

Though I've always loved flowers (who doesn't?), I first got interested in plants in college, at the University of North Texas, while studying graphic design and printmaking. Wandering clueless around a Wolfe Nursery, I selected a billowing hanging-basket of hot pink petunias. I was thrilled and wrote out a check for $14, which later bounced. No matter, this plant made me happy for months. I told my parents how delighted I was and they offered me some cuttings of coleus. When I realized that you could make new plants from pieces of plants, I was completely hooked!

During my last few classes at UNT in 1993, I got a job at a nursery just outside of Denton, TX, where I met my first garden friend, Leslie Finical Halleck. The Green Fiddler taught me all the basics of Texas nursery stock. A small family operation, we selected flats from grower trucks that stopped by at random, loaded bags of mulch and ran the register. At the time, I was obsessed with the foliage of tropicals and succulents absolutely blew my mind.

Later I did some work as a indoor plant technician, maintaining plants in Dallas office buildings, from which I learned a great deal, though I felt like a plant janitor. The office environments were stifling and the plants often covered in insects. Falling back on my art training, I began working in photo labs and learned computer graphics.

In early 2000, I moved to New York City, where a number of close friends lived, and worked as a graphic designer in corporate communications at the Associated Press. For my 30th birthday, I bought myself a weed wacker and started working on my little yard in Brooklyn. During a visit home to Texas, I met my husband, Brandon, an artist and book collector, who moved to New York to live with me in 2003.

Among other projects, I designed a magazine for the AP staff. Our wonderful director, Kelly Tunney was unforgettable, but she retired and soon after in 2004, I was laid off. During a brief meeting they told me my position had been eliminated. Feeling frustrated with office politics, earlier I had signed up for a class called soil management at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It started that evening and, when introducing myself, I blurted out that I was considering a career change.

After months of unemployed searching and uncertainty, I landed an internship at Wave Hill in the spring of 2005. I was honored to work at this beautiful place and I couldn't have been happier. The basis of knowledge I had allowed me to absorb some of the more advanced lessons available at this botanical wonderland. The next year they hired me as a full time gardener. After a year on the grounds working alongside John Emmanuel, I took over the mixed shrub and perennial Flower Garden, under the direction of Scott Canning.

Brandon and I got hitched in 2007 at the courthouse in Brooklyn and our son, August, was born in 2009. After 10 years of ups and downs in NYC, I missed my family in Texas and wanted them to know my son. Leslie offered me a job as a garden adviser at North Haven Gardens, where she is the general manager. By that point, I figured I knew a thing or two about gardening. However, my knowledge expanded even more from answering relentless customer questions. Happily, I'm still learning every day and enjoying my satisfying connection to the world through gardening. Though I miss details about NY, I love being a Texan again. Puttering in the yard close to my family is my greatest pleasure.

Since I was 16 years old, I have kept a journal of one sort or another. Most of them are long-winded personal ramblings, but during the period when I had a long subway commute to Wave Hill, I began an overly detailed garden journal. This blog is an edited extension of my lifelong habit. In the same way I write journal entries, I post not on a schedule, but when I have the time and inclination. Brandon named my blog after a novel by one of his favorite french authors, Raymond Queneau.

Thank you for visiting!

Email me: carolynhestandkennedy at gmail dot com