July 15 Column: Gardener Profile – Julie McElroy

During the summer months, I enjoy profiling local gardeners because I believe we can all learn from each other. For the first gardener profile, I interviewed Master Gardener Julie McElroy. Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: McElroy encourages making plan, but not being married to it.

You can also find this week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video at the bottom of this post.

Some of you might know her from watching KHQ-TV’s “Garden Report,” which airs on Saturdays during the garden season. She is really knowledgeable and has a fun, easygoing nature that works well with reporter Matt Rogers.

Julie heads up the committee to coordinate the other Master Gardeners who appear on the “Garden Report” and she is the lead for the KHQ Connect Center phone bank, in which Master Gardeners answer all manner of garden questions.

Julie and her husband, Bill, live on 11 acres in southwest Spokane County. It was a real pleasure to explore their beautiful garden and visit with their exuberant Lab, Rose (you’ll get a kick out of her in the photo that I took for the newspaper article — Rose didn’t want to sit still! But hey, she’s still a puppy so that’s perfectly OK.

Here are some additional photos from my visit. Thanks so much, Julie, for inviting me to see your wonderful garden!

In the photo above, you can see the stream that heads down the slope to the pond seen in the photo directly above it. I would LOVE to have a steam going to my pond!

   

Above right, an excerpt from the landscape plans Julie started with.

And here is Miss Rose, who was so excited about discovering a turkey feather!

Finally, here is this week’s video, which is about July garden tasks: