What is Brunette Gardens?

A garden of healing 🌱 from autoimmune conditions and the trauma at their root ❤️‍🩹.

I originally launched this Substack in 2022 with the intent to share my knowledge based on many years of gardening with native plants and trying to homestead on a quarter-acre backyard in the city.

The archive’s still there if you want to peruse all that content. But what happened along the way is that I rediscovered an essayist I’d abandoned decades ago when I needed to write for a living and essays didn’t pay the bills.

Readers loved those essays, the vulnerable ones. You know them: the writing that feels scary, risky, sure to stir up trouble. You all flocked to those, and two of them got picked up by other publications: “Losing the lucky frog” appeared in GreenPrints, and County Highway has claimed “The year of dying” for print publication this year.

I also burned myself out trying to run a homestead and several businesses while my “autoimmune” condition only worsened, despite the great pains I took to make sure everything I ate was clean and unadulterated. I went to an extreme, growing much of my own food, soaking and grinding grain, raising chickens for eggs, and more.

All of this was commonplace for most of human history, and the hard work is baked into the process, no doubt. But our ancestors enjoyed real community and strong family and tribal bonds, so there was help when it’s needed. What we have in place is the added stress and distraction of days spent sitting in front of screens. Despite all the shiny promise of AI, it can’t give us back what we’ve lost, what we truly need.

Recognizing my burnout, I had to pause this Substack and heal, and in that time I learned that healing does not mean going back to the way things were before.

As I continue to write about plants and food, I’ll also share my experiences as someone who’s worked for nearly half a century to heal from the trauma I lived through in the first two decades of my life. That’s at the root of the condition that drove me toward gardening and healthy eating in the first place, and I think trauma might be at the root of most modern illness.

Perhaps this honed focus speaks to you. If it does, I extend to you a fond welcome.

Top essays and podcasts from the archive

• 🧺 How to homestead when you don’t have a homestead. In the midst of neighborhood shootings. 🎧 Listen here.

• 🥗 Salad days. A no-recipe recipe for going from garden to table with ease.

• 🐦 How we fill our nests. Searching within and finding yourself without. 🎧 Listen here.

Free, paid, and founding memberships

✅ Free members receive my right-to-the-marrow essays and videos 2-3/month + my companion-planting guide

Paying members get that plus:

✅ Weekly posts

✅ Two-plus years’ archive content (200+ posts) on backyard homesteading in the city

✅ Easy, ancestral recipes as printable PDFs individually and as a 35-page booklet

Founding members receive this additional perk:

✅ A PRINT copy of any of my books (US) or an ebook boxed set (international)

With your paid membership to Brunette Gardens, you’re showing you value and understand the time and effort spent on research, image creation, and writing for this publication. You’re also acknowledging the many years my guests and I have put into cultivating our soil, as well as our talents.

Memberships cost just $5.99 per month, and you can cancel anytime.

My background

Through a lifetime of frequent moves—a military brat childhood and nomadic adulthood—gardening has been one of my constants. Whether working a community tomato patch in the inner city or accepting a platinum award for my current garden, my love affair with growing things has been lifelong… and complicated. A wordsmith by trade, I’ve published journalism, books, and games, often winning awards.

Guests

I sometimes feature other voices besides my own: guest writers, podcast interviewees, fellow Substackers, and book authors. My husband also writes on occasion.

Connect with me

I often hang out at Permies.com and am part of the commentariat at Ecosophia.

You can always reach me at brunettegardens[at]gmail[dot]com (replace what’s in the brackets with the symbols).

🌱 🌱 🌱 🌱 🌱

I wish you health and happiness, whether you got your hands dirty today or not! 😉