Gardening projects and suburb farms

Our spring giveaway winner(s).

Winner Rebecca Saldanha and her son, Henry, pose by their raised-bed garden.

By Lisa Brunette

For each of the four seasons, we run a giveaway here at Brunette Gardens, featuring authors, creators, and others with something to share. Then we award one of our paid subscribers with their related swag. This spring, we featured PaperPie and their beautiful books, games, and other products.

Unfortunately, what I didn’t consider when I set up the giveaway was that PaperPie only ships within the United States. And of course, the paid subscriber I pulled from the list happened to reside in Canada. That’s 2023 for ya.

But my life’s been a series of lemons one must remake into lemonade, and this Substack is no exception. So I gifted our Canadian winner—the gracious Rebecca Saldanha, pictured above—with six months free on her paid subscription. And then I drew a second address from the hat. So now we have two spring winners!

Rebecca Saldanha

Rebecca has been a paid Brunette Gardens subscriber since March of this year. She says, “I think your Substack is wonderful and very informative.” She very graciously accepted the extension on her subscription in lieu of the gardening game award, and we thank her for her understanding.

Rebecca shares this tale from her own gardening adventures:

We have terrible urban soil, so my 10-year-old son, Henry, and I built our first garden box this year after being disappointed after one too many growing seasons. I am honestly shocked at how into this garden project Henry is—it’s great to have something like this to do together.

Both photos courtesy Rebecca Saldanha.

Erin Hanson

Many of you already know our second winner, Erin Hanson of

The Suburb Farm

. Erin became a paid subscriber to our Substack after she and I collaborated with guest posts on each other’s ‘stacks. Here they both are, if you’re curious.

Guest post: Brunette Gardens

When notified of her win, Erin said what about half the winners I contact say: “I never win these things!” The Bug Game was a huge hit at her house, and her daughter is planning to use it in her babysitting work. Here she is, with the family pet standing in for the babysat kid during a recent training session, ha ha.

Photo courtesy Erin Hanson.

Erin also recommends Brunette Games to her own readers officially, with this message:

These are my type of people: Midwesterners homesteading their yard! They publish frequently, lots of great content. Check them out, you’ll be glad you did.

We deeply appreciate Erin’s endorsement both in her kind words and the paid subscription. That karma totally came back to her when we drew her address from our list for this drawing.

Congratulations to both our winners, and to the rest of you, best of luck on our next giveaway!