topics to floral design and flower farming. It was a natural segue.

“ Diversifying is the secret sauce that helps anyone succeed. We see it with food growing / preserving, with tourism / travel, with family / parenting topics and other themes with an affinity to gardening,” Debra said.“ If you can layer related topic expertise over garden writing and connect with like-minded peers, it greatly enhances the garden writing journey.”

Debra served as GWA president from 2011 to 2013, and emphasized the importance of professional communications skills.“ I wanted to support our members’ growth and development skills in communications,” she said.“ If you follow the logic that good writing skills equip one to write about anything, as long as one knows how to research and report, then you may agree with my point of view.”

PHOTOGRAPHY

ROB CARDILLO

© PHOTO PAM PENICK

MEMBERSHIP CONNECTIONS Her biggest takeaway from GWA is the idea that the writing profession is all about relationships. It was through GWA that she met Paul Kelly and Catherine Dees of St. Lynn’ s Press, who published The 50 Mile Bouquet and Slow Flowers. It was how she met James Baggett, editor of Country Gardens, and others who were open to her flower farm story pitches. She connected with people she wanted to interview, people who invited her to speak at their flower shows and botanic gardens, as well as those who interviewed … her as an expert.“ It’ s all interrelated,” she said.“ Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’ s putting those ideas in motion that makes them truly valuable.”

“ Debra worked with selfless determination to bring GWA into a new age of mass media communications,” said Kirk R. Brown, president of GWA.“ Her leadership set the organization onto a course of accountability of our management and for our fiscal responsibility, leadership within the green industry and the highest return on investment to our membership. Without her foresight and strength, nothing of where we are today as a non-profit organization could have been possible. I count her as one of my oldest and truest friends in the world of ornamental horticulture.”

Jean Starr has been growing plants for 30 years, writing about them for 26. Her work has appeared in magazines and newspapers, as online web content, and as gardening presenter and radio host. Jean’ s plant repertoire now includes hundreds of genera in both indoor and outdoor settings. She also blogs at petaltalk-jean. com.

Rosie stands sentry as Rob Cardillo disposes of memorable slides.

It’ s New Year’ s Day and while half-watching the Mummers Parade down Philadelphia’ s Broad Street, I’ m tossing out 20-year-old slides. The time has come to downsize my rarely opened filing cabinets of film to make room for something else.

My slide collection served me well. When work was spotty the first few years of freelancing, I would spend days shooting the plant world at nearby gardens and arboreta, building an archive along with my own botanical knowledge. I bought 20-roll“ bricks” of Velvia and Ektachrome vs, the favored emulsions of garden photographer for their richly saturated and fine-grained beauty. They lived in the refrigerator until the night before a photo shoot; afterwards they were processed at a nearby professional lab where the owner’ s mother would deliver boxes of plastic-mounted slides the next day. Editing was done on a big bright lightbox with a powerful loupe. Was the image sharp? s Did I nail the exposure? Did I balance the ever-changing color temperatures correctly?

TEDIOUS ORGANIZATION I would edit each angle down to the best four or five frames and then enter the botanical name and other data into a funky PC program to build a catalog. Tiny peel and stick labels were generated on a dot matrix printer and attached carefully to the slide frames before they were filed by genus and location. It was

tedious, eye-straining work.

But to earn their keep, the images needed to be seen by publishers. So, for book and magazine want lists, I hand pulled and shipped my precious babies off to the harsh world of careless editors and ham-handed printers, hoping for a sale and their safe return. And then the endless hours of refiling.

Once the digital world came up to speed, my slide collection became unprofitable. I moved cautiously at first, like my clients. Some still wanted film, some wanted electronic files and a few wanted both. But the digital world won out for its ease, cost and speed.

ADIEU OLD TIMES So it’ s time to say goodbye to these tiny magic frames. But the recollections are rich as my eyes scan each slide page. Here was the image where I finally finessed a new lighting technique or was in the warm company of a generous gardener who opened up their paradise for me. I recalled hot afternoons, impending rainstorms and first conversations with folks who later became dear friends.

And while others are watching the bowl games, I toss memories into trash bags, aching with guilt for not finding a creative way to recycle these polystyrene frames and acetate chips that were once a vibrant world to me. Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

Rob Cardillo is an award-winning photographer and a member of GWA’ s Hall of Fame.

© PHOTO COURTESY ROB CARDILLO

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