Chances are high that over the last two decades, you’ve been influenced at least once by Deborah Needleman, even if you’ve never heard of her. At different times over a long stretch starting in the early aughts, she helmed three of the most buzzy, trendsetting publications in the country: domino (which she founded), followed by WSJ (the Wall Street Journal’s monthly magazine), and later T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Before she was a style arbiter, though, she was a garden editor (House & Garden) and columnist (Slate). And now, she’s returned to her first love—the world of plants. “It’s been ages since I was a garden writer and constantly immersed in the world of gardening. But now my days again revolve around being immersed in nature and making things from it—gardens and baskets, including basketry things for the garden like plant tuteurs, cloches, and trugs,” says Deborah, who spends most of her time now at her country home in the Hudson Valley. “I’m just so happy to be back mucking around in the garden and in the woods.”
Below, she makes the case for non-natives in the garden (when they make sense), Okatsune secateurs (“better than Felcos”), and an all-white gardening outfit (we’re now converts).
Photography courtesy of Deborah Needleman, unless otherwise noted.
Your first garden memory:
Not a garden, but the wild woods at the edge of the newly built suburb where I grew up. It felt like entering the private, backstage area you weren’t supposed to see, because everything around it was neat and manicured and without drama or mystery. And years later, when I first heard the term “landscape architecture,” it opened my mind to the idea of designing spaces from the materials of nature. A total revelation. I wanted to make places that incorporated wildness and unpredictability within the bounds of a structure.
Garden-related book you return to time and again:
I most often go back to Henry Mitchell’s The Essential Earthman, essays from his old column in The Washington Post. He was a colleague of mine in the ’90s–erudite, hilarious, eccentric, and wildly opinionated. He was offended by the idea of “low maintenance” gardens, and adored ephemeral plants and flowers, as those are the ones that have the power to break your heart. He would take the day off work when his bearded irises bloomed.
Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.
Nature coaxed into atmosphere.
Instagram account that inspires you:
Plant that makes you swoon:
I’m crazy for spires like verbascum and foxglove. And I also love an umbellifer–Queen Anne’s lace, ammi, angelica.
Plant that makes you want to run the other way:
I don’t go in much for leaves that are red or yellow or variegated as they often look sickly or like they’re trying too hard to make a point. And I’ve often thought that if forsythia didn’t flower so early, probably no one would countenance that beastly yellow later in the season when there are so many other things to delight us. This season I realized I’d had enough of its shaggy demeanor and clashing jolt of brightness against the soft, subtle colors of early spring. They’re getting evicted as soon as I have a moment.
Favorite go-to plant:
Boxwood balls. They seem to solve almost every garden problem.
