Gentle Gardener Green Design is a farm-based landscape design, sustainable/organic horticulture and 'green' event/floral design business. Sustainable design with native and locally/sustainably grown plants and flowers---whether for the landscape or the bouquet---is the specialty of Gentle Gardener Green Design. In addition, Gentle Gardener Green Design uses organic and sustainable horticulture methods to care for gardens designed by Virginia R. Rockwell, VSLD.

Q: How did Gentle Gardener get involved in 'buy local'?

A: "The mission of Gentle Gardener Green Design (and the garden center we operated on Main Street in Gordonsville for over a dozen years) is to support our clients' stewardship of the Earth in her or his own garden. One of our guiding principles has always been to design with and promote the best of local and native plants, materials and craft. In other words, 'local' has been integral to our business philosophy for over 15 years. It's definitely been a bright and growing niche in the economy. It's finally catching on, thanks to writers like Virginia's own Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and support of Virginia Farm Bureau (www.saveourfood.org) and Piedmont Environmental Council."

Q: Why is it so important to buy local?

A: "It's so important to me that I started an entire business based on this 'buy local' stuff: In my past corporate career I worked for multinational corporations marketing and advertising really ephemeral STUFF transported long distances in packaging that could hardly be described as eco-friendly. Then, I set about reinventing what I market. I'm trained as a Permaculture designer, which means permanent, or sustainable, agriculture plus culture, or community. The ethics of Permaculture are threefold: first, care for the Earth; second, care for People; third, live within your means ecologically and economically so that you can reinvest in care of the Earth and People: that is, to SUSTAIN both, instead of sacrificing one to the other."

Lots of economic studies have demonstrated that when you buy local, you keep a much larger share of the money transacted, both retail and wholesale, in the local economy, to sustain and support more jobs, taxes and opportunities than if the items are manufactured elsewhere and 'inserted' into your local community by a 'category killer' chain store. In addition, when you buy the services of a landscape or event/floral designer working with native, locally and sustainably grown flowers and plants, you significantly reduce the use of nonrenewable fossil fuels used to grow and transport the materials. In the landscape, you get a much more enjoyable, lower maintenance and sustainable garden for you, your family and your water. Yes, your water, because the trees and plants you choose to plant significantly impact our water quantity AND quality around here."

Not long ago I was invited to chair a summer tour of 'green' gardens and landscapes for the Virginia Society of Landscape Designers. The tour was sold out to maximum capacity with designers from all over the midAtlantic region who came to this area to see innovation in green, sustainable landscape design here in the Piedmont of central Virginia. We used the tour to showcase locally grown food and beverages prepared by Beggars Banquet, arranged locally grown cut flowers, and rejected clamshell plastic packaging in favor of food served on bamboo trays. The entire itinerary for the tour was printed on a recycled cardboard hand fan like those from churches in the South years ago, and each person had their own recycled steel water bottle to refill from chilled local spring water rather than a flotilla of plastic water bottles. With some thoughtfulness, and thanks to the dedication and talent of local growers, farmers, vintners and brewers, it was not difficult or expensive to create a world-class event with local flowers and fare, and provide tools and challenge the thinking of our guests, the designers, in the process."

"Our entire family is committed to a way of life that sustains local family farms."

Virginia Rockwell helps support the 'buy local' movement by providing green design, horticulture and event planning to groups, professional associations, and families for their landscapes, weddings and events, and as a member of Piedmont Environmental Council (which publishes the 'Buy Fresh, Buy Local' guides), as an instructor/lecturer to garden clubs, Master Gardeners and at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, and by volunteering for Orange Downtown Alliance, which runs our local farmer's market. Her husband, Robert Bradford, is an Orange County Director for the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District, and is active in the Central Virginia Cattlemen's Association and the Cooperative Extension Leadership Council for Orange County. Their daughter Stella is a junior member of Orange County 4H Livestock Club. In 2004, the family won the Bay Friendly Farm Award for Orange County from the Culpeper Soil & Water Conservation District.