Two of Southern Living’s best-known garden writers, Linda Askey and Steve Bender, will be giving separate presentations in Mobile in the coming weeks.

Linda Askey, who was the face and soul of Southern Living gardening during the1980s and early 1990s, will be speaking at the Mobile Botanical Gardens on Feb. 24 on the secrets of successful container gardening.

And one week later, on March 3 at the Spring Hill Baptist Church on McGregor Avenue, Southern Living’s current garden editor, Steve Bender, will take a tour of some of the South’s “great, great gardens” during his presentation to the Mobile County Master Gardeners.

Both presentations are open to the public, though reservations are required. The Mobile Botanical Garden presentation costs non-members $20, and the Master Gardeners are charging $25 for non-members. The Askey lecture starts at 10 a.m.; registration for the day-long Master Gardeners program begins at 9:30, and lunch is included.

Linda, I’ll confess, was one of those garden writers whose experience I stole freely from in the days when I first started writing about gardening. Because she’s very good at what she does, she’s going to be bold enough to demonstrate container planting and design right there on the spot.

Steve Bender is the snappy writer who directs Southern Living’s gardening doings nowadays. He may be best known as the companion writer, with Felder Rushing, of Passalong Plants. His talk will focus on his experiences over the past 25 years as a Southern garden writer.

James Miles will follow Bender in the afternoon with a talk on turf management.

For more information on Bender’s talk, call 607-9392. For information on Askey’s talk, call 342-0555.

source : www.al.com