I was given two subscriptions to garden magazines this year.
I like them both but if you can only afford one how do you choose?
I would say if you a bloke ie. male the Kiwi Gardener might be more up your alley. The magazine used to be called Weekend Gardener and always had more DIY and information about veges with regional tips than NZ Gardener.
NZ Gardener features more large gardens with lush photo spreads and I would say is for the more artistically inclined. One column has Xanthe White talking to plants. It also has a column by Joe Bennett who, by his own admission is a whinging Pom and hardly has any useful gardening tips but wry observations about himself like how slack a gardener he is. Maybe they put that in there to try and attract the non-gardeners to the magazine!
You can win another shed if you enter the NZ Gardener competition with pictures of your own shed (if you already got one why would you really need to win another one? don't ask me) and if you write them a letter and it gets published you win extra copies of the magazine special editions - that you probably already have.
Kiwi Gardener gives you a $40 bulb voucher if you write in to them and their giveaways include tickets to the Heroic Garden Festival, special edition magazines, basic Gardena hose set, and $30 go gardening gift cards.
There's a Young Horticulturalist of the Year 2017 competition for people under 30 employed in the horticulture industry. I'm intrigued with this competition as it seems to have a lot of sponsors is it like Masterchef and why isn't it showing on TV? Do these young horticulturalists have to prune trees in one hour or given a challenge like plant a bed in a day and impress the judges with their planting prowess? Or maybe its they give out prizes for the best compost heap, most giant pumpkin, biggest potato yield, or most ingenious way to climb a tree?
Looking at the ad in the magazine gives me no clue.. just shows a bunch of people in suits standing in front of logos of corporate sponsors. Is it like Miss Universe where you have to make a speech on how you believe you would change the world?
How I would change the world, horticulturally speaking, I believe plants are the most important things we can grow...if we don't grow them, we would run out of oxygen and die, and um, dying is not a very good way to live.
APPLAUSE.
I tell you am no good at public speaking. Oh the shame. However Karyn and I have been having good chats about herbs on Book Chooks. Grow rosemary! Listen to us here
