Meet Our Community: Christopher Carrie, blogger, gardener, mountain man

 

Let's get to know each other!

Since we're not able to meet up in person this year, let's meet online. Every week we're introducing a member* of our Fling community here and on Instagram, in their own words. We're excited to see what everyone's talking about and sharing with their followers!

(*Any garden blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or Instagrammer who follows our Instagram or is a member of our Facebook group. If you'd like to be considered or recommend someone for a Meet Our Community profile, email us.)

Christopher Carrie

I’m a long-time peasant gardener for the well-to-do. What that means is I have been a working gardener doing design, installation, and primarily maintenance in private gardens for the last 33 years. The first 20 years were spent gardening on the island of Maui. My focus has always been on the plants that make a garden, not the lawn.

Today I live in the middle of nowhere at 4000-ft. elevation in the mountains of western North Carolina. I started a garden blog in 2006 while on Maui and have been blogging ever since. I was part of the planning team for the Asheville Fling in 2012. That is about as far as I’ve gotten with social media. Most people would be appalled by how slow my satellite internet speed is, and there is no cell signal at my house. Besides, I am a gardener, not a garden communicator.

My blog Outside Clyde is mostly a personal photo diary and ponderings on the 3+ acres of wild cultivated gardens deep in the forest that I share with my mother, known as Bulbarella, who lives next door. At home, the longtime maintenance-gardener turns wild.

Stone sculpture creation in late February, "the barren time"

The land here is planted in, added to, and maintained as flowering meadows lapping right up to the trees and shrubs using many of the native plants and wildflowers found in these mountains. That works for the growing season. Coming from Maui I needed more. The barren time is a good five months here. In my own part of the gardens I’ve planted an evergreen under-garden that comes out from hiding in November and takes me into March, when thousands and thousands of spring bulbs rise from the earth to bloom. That is Bulbarella’s doing.

Currently in September, my favorite plants are Angelica gigas and ironweed. I have everlasting fond memories of Cochlospermum vitifolium ‘Florepleno’. It’s a tropical flowering tree with a trunk like a baobab and the flower of a peony.

I’ve had many favorite gardens over the years, but my current favorite is the Inn at Tranquility Farm in Waynesville, NC, one of the newer proper gardens I planted and tend. It is a nice thing to garden with a healthy budget.

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Thanks for sharing your work and your gardening passions with us, Christopher! You can follow Christopher at Outside Clyde.

Photographs courtesy of Christopher Carrie.