I have been writing about and photographing gardens and plants since I was in my 20s. Whenever I have met others outside of gardening and garden writing, I got the impression that people were often surprised by the amount of gardening knowledge I knew and how I communicate it to others. "He's so knowledgeable," I've heard people say. Sometimes they commented on how "young" I was, as if being young and knowledgeable were mutually exclusive traits. Honestly, sometimes I wondered if there wasn't some kind of racial or ethnic bias behind the surprised at my "youth" and experience.
