Perhaps I've lost my mind

"Perhaps I have lost my mind" is how I started an email to the owner of private botanical garden in Kansas.  It seems that a potential project that has haunted me for a year or so is not going to go away.  I've tried to ignore it by opening a little shop and busying myself with it in my spare time.  However, the idea popped up again when a friend mentioned that she would like a book of my photographs.  Thanks Laura! 

This afternoon I emailed the owner of private garden that is only open for weddings, concerts and special events for permission to take photographs this spring and summer.  It's a garden with a wonderful past, fascinating owner, and great plans for the future.  If you like gardening, you'll love the story. 

That is the way it is with many gardens.  There are stories behind the gardens that few know about.  I have a friend who was a POW in WWII that has created a lovely garden of conifers and traveled about the US finding these plants.  There is a woman in town who had a garden built to be handicapped accessible so she could continue gardening.  In addition to the private gardens, we have wonderful public gardens and those stories should be told too.  A bride to be that plans her wedding in the rose garden at Loose Park.  And, the community gardens just south of Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.  Who gardens there?  What are they growing?  Who are they feeding?  Who created the garden?  The story of the team of gardeners who designed and care for the Monet Garden at the Arboretum. 

Whenever I visit a public garden, I always go to the gift shop looking for a book that tells about the garden.  Usually, I come up empty handed.  So, here I am.  Sitting at a computer in winter when my full time job is slow and I have time to think and dream.  My dream is a book of gardens, our gardens, public and private, and the stories behind them. 

Will the owner of the garden I emailed this afternoon say yes and send me off on a journey of contacting and photographing the close to 25 gardens on the list I made today at lunch?  And, lead me to contact a friend that is a writer with a national magazine to see if she wants to be the author?  Or, will the owner of the garden say no and, with that, I'll think it wasn't meant to be and move on?  

One door opened - what happens next in my journey of writing a book of garden stories.