The yupneck meets Felder Rushing at the Antique Rose Emporium

This weekend I got to meet one of my gardening heroes.  The Antique Rose Emporium  was holding its annual Fall Festival and the featured speaker was FELDER RUSHING!!!  (http://www.felderrushing.net/)  Now, if you are not familiar with Felder you are missing a treat.  Felder Rushing is a highly educated, highly respected and highly unusual MASTER of HORTICULTURE!  Felder is a very accomplished horticulturist and a very enlightening and entertaining speaker.  When he is not on the road extoling the virtues of gardening, he lives in the Fondren neighborhood of Jackson, Mississippi in a very interesting and cutting edge house (horticulturally speaking).  He is also the host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on Mississippi Public Broadcasting (http://www.mpbonline.org/radio/programs/GestaltGardener/index.htm).  In addition to his radio gig, he writes gardening books and travels the country evangelizing the masses on the virtues of “Slow Gardening” in his “truck garden” (I am not kidding here.  He really drives all around the country in an old truck that has a garden growing in the back of it!)

The yupneck and Felders truck garden

Felder is as much philosopher as he is horticulturist.  His talks and books are full of his Southern hertitage, humor, charm and wisdom.  If you like stuffy talks about how to properly prune your hybrid tea roses, then Felder is probably not going to be to your liking.  But if you enjoy listening to and learning from someone that admires a man that wore shoes spray painted silver with yellow lightening bolts on them while doing “wheelies” on his tractor through the middle of town, then Felder is all the gardening resource you will ever need.