Pat Quinn and the author, Clare Al-Witri, meet the morning after a damaging storm to talk and work side-by-side to clear debris. Photo: Ryan Tuttle
This conversation happened last winter when the author chatted with a fellow professional gardener as they worked side by side in the San Francisco Botanical Garden. This is the third in our series of interviews with working gardeners in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
I meet Pat Quinn at the front gates of the San Francisco Botanical Garden in mid-January; the day after the Bay Area was hit hard by rain. This morning, the skies are clear and the weather is mild; wet plant foliage glistens with water. Sections of the garden are closed off due to unsteady trees, and Pat has already been at work for hours, sawing and clearing fallen branches and cleaning up damaged herbaceous plant material. He leads me to his corner of the garden, the Mesoamerican Cloud Forest collection. As we talk, Pat makes cuts with his loppers and passes me branches that I put into piles to be hauled off later.
Pat Quinn,...
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Voices of the West; New Science on Life in the Garden by Frederique Lavoipierre
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