Media Mentions

  • top-10-gardening-on-toolversedChosen by Toolversed.com as one of their top ten gardening bloggers. “Her blog is filled with pages of information on cold climate gardening, including the best plants suited for colder conditions as well as the best merchants who supply those plants. And if you’re from upstate New York, there’s even a tab filled with local resources to help you with your gardening questions. Her blog has a great community feel!”
  • The 21 Best Sites for Men You Should Know About by Dan Price on MakeUseOf.com July 14, 2015. “If you live in the US, the UK, or Northern or Central Europe, the sad reality for most of you is that your summer will feel like it’s six days long and your winter will feel like it’s six months long. With the tagline “Hardy plants for hardy souls”, the Cold Climate Gardening website aims to help people who aren’t blessed with tropical weather maintain a vibrant, interesting, and lively garden”
  • Force Bulbs to Grow Indoors for the Holidays author Julie Bawden-Davis quotes Kathy Purdy as an expert: ‘Freelance garden writer Kathy Purdy of ColdClimateGardening.com gardens indoors during the winter months in Upstate New York. “What I like best about forcing bulbs inside is watching them grow over the course of weeks, all while it’s snowing outside with no possibility of watching plants grow there,’ she says.” and “‘For a gardener facing a long winter, forced bulbs are equally cheering in January, February, and even March, so if you don’t get them to bloom for the holidays, you’ll enjoy them when they do bloom,’ says Purdy, who was surprised in March 2012 by an amaryllis she’d been coaxing to bloom that suddenly flowered and grew especially large.”
  • “Gleaning the Garden Blogs” by Colleen Plimpton for the Danbury, CT NewsTimes. “Kathy Purdy’s Cold Climate Gardening, Hardy Plants for Hardy Souls, (www.coldclimategardening.com) aims at those of us who relish the challenge of growing plants in treacherous northern climes. Kathy resides in the southern tier of New York state, at least a zone colder than my garden. Yet her photos, advice and vivid prose are Johnny-on-the-spot in terms of hardiness, interest and beauty.
    One of the pioneers of garden bloggers, Purdy’s experienced in the ways of web logging, and freely admits that her 9-year old blog contains not only information on plants she’s grown, but also knowledge distilled from others. Her specialties are narcissus, colchicum, cottage gardening, native plants and gardening with children.
    This is a real ‘get your hands dirty’ type of blog; nothing highfalutin about it. But if you’re up to the challenge of growing in unpredictable winter temperatures, check out Cold Climate Gardening. And for further adventures in blogging, be sure to peruse her blog directory.”
  • Top 10 . . . Garden Blogs by Tom Antebi for The Ecologist. “Run by veteran American blogger, Kathy Purdy, Cold Climate Gardening is a must-read for anyone finding the UK’s miserable weather a serious hindrance. From plants that can handle regular deluges of rain to weeding when the mercury doesn’t even make it past zero, the tidbits, insights and good advice make Purdy’s blog an invaluable gardening tool.”
  • Quoted by Karen Bussolini in “Winter Stalwarts,” published in the November/December 2010 issue of The American Gardener, p. 39.
  • Quoted extensively by Sarah Asp Olson in “The Warmth of a Garden,” published in the December 2010 issue of Country’s Best Cabins, pp. 20-23
  • Top 10 Garden Blogs of 2010 by Lizanne Nolan for Yahoo! Associated Content “This blog is dedicated to all aspect of cold climate gardening. Using their gardening experiences in upstate New York, the contributors provide lots of helpful advice for those gardening in cold climates. Two especially helpful features of this website include their list of online forums and their list of other cold climate gardeners.”
  • Ten Gardening Blogs for All Your Gardening Needs by Jeanne Rose for Yahoo! Associated Content “a great gardening blog if you are someone in a colder climate. This gardening blog has a lot of useful information about plants and flowers that thrive in the colder weather. If you live in a cold climate and do not know what types of items you can put into your garden then you need to check out this gardening blog. This gardening blog has a lot of various tips to help your cold-weathered plants and flowers grow in the cold weather and will ensure you do not waste your money.”
  • The Garden Journal 2.0 by Patty Craft Horticulture magazine’s Top 20 Favorite Garden Blogs
  • If you rely on winter weather to kill pests, you may be left out in the cold by Susan Reiser, writing in the November 29, 2008 edition of the Baltimore Sun. “Kathy Purdy, who blogs on Cold Climate Gardening and lives north of Binghamton, N.Y., says temperatures are in the teens most days during her winters and the ground freezes to three feet. She hasn’t found that to be much of an advantage when it comes to insects and disease. She thinks drought – and that can include the lack of snow in the winter – has made plants more vulnerable. ‘You might not see it that year, but you will see it the next,’ she said.”
  • Garden siteseeing around the U.S. by Judy Lowe, writing in the Christian Science Monitor garden blog, Diggin’ It. “The end of July seems an excellent time to be dropping in on Kathy Purdy, who writes about Cold Climate Gardening. In her upstate New York home, winter temperatures can fall to minus 30 degrees F., which obviously is challenging to plants as well as people.

    This time of year, though, the short growing season means that so many things are blooming at one time that in a warmer climate might be spaced over several months. (And I’m jealous about her great crop of lettuce in July!)

  • “Gardening Goes Digital: Blogs are blossoming as gardeners turn to online journals to share ideas and progress” by Pam Adams in the Peoria Journal Star, April 5, 2008. “Garden blogging is growing so fast it’s disconcerting for Kathy Purdy of upstate New York, one of the pioneers of garden blogging.

    Purdy started Cold Climate Gardening – www.coldclimategardening.com – in August 2002 for several different reasons. She wanted to share lessons she had learned about growing ‘hardy plants for hardy souls,’ as her Web site states.

    But she also wanted to connect with other gardeners. As a homeschooling mother with a large family, it was easier for her to start a blog than to find a sitter and drive 15 miles to a garden club meeting.

    The gardening blog directory, Blotanical, www.blotanical.com, now lists more than 500 garden blogs, Purdy says via e-mail. ‘That’s close to a hundred-fold increase from when I got started almost six years ago.’ ”

  • “How Does Our Gardening Grow? Green thumbs are proliferating from an unexpected source” by Juan Martinez in Publishers Weekly, February 25, 2008. “‘Blogs such as GardenRant and ColdClimateGardening are making it easier for young gardeners to share information and experiences. As new gardeners appear, they have an easier time finding how-to information through these routes.'” (quoting Jeff Gillman)
  • “Put down the shovel and blog” by Jane Milliman in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 16, 2008. “For our area, the clear standout is Kathy Purdy’s coldclimategardening.com. Purdy lives in Chenango Forks, near Binghamton, and works full-time to fill her site with articles, opinions and book reviews that are well-written, well-researched, and well-read, judging by the number of comments left behind.”
  • “The Grounded Gardener: What’s growing? The number of garden blogs” by Marty Wingate in Seattle Post-Intelligencer (online). last updated December 5, 2007.
  • “Virtual Gardening in the Blogosphere” by Doug Green in The American Gardener November/December 2007, pp. 19-21. “Garden blogs have sprung up like weeds over the last few years–here’s what you need to know to tune in to and participate in this worldwide online community.” Besides Cold Climate Gardening, blogs profiled include Doug Green’s Garden, Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas, Garden Rant, May Dreams Gardens, This Garden is Illegal, and You Grow Girl.
  • Fourteen Garden Bloggers to Watch Stuart Robinson of Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas writes: “There are garden bloggers and then there are the movers and shakers in the garden blogosphere. People who go beyond their own blog and can create something more of value within the blogosphere that either adds more value to it or makes it easier to be part of it. . . . All this thought has challenged me to create this list. These are the true movers in our category and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next…”
  • Site to See” in Northern Gardener March/April 2007, p. 11:
    Thousands of garden blogs lurk on the Internet, and like blogs on other subjects, most are too personal or too neglected to be of much use to anyone who is not on a first-name basis with the author. But the cold climate gardening blog, maintained by New York gardener Kathy Purdy and friends, is worth visiting.
    For those who are not Internet junkies, a Web log or blog is an online journal. The author–and anyone can be an author in this format–writes entries and posts the mini-essays to the blog, which is open to any and all Web wanderers. Bloggers discourse on politics, music, entertainment, and yes, gardening.

    Coldclimategardening.com does blogging right. The essays are intelligent and on-topic. They are real essays, not rants. They also are rich in references to other sources, which are just a click away. If a book or Web site is mentioned, Purdy provides a link. For instance, an entry on the history of hardiness zone maps allows readers to link to the scholarly article that prompted the post as well as to an alternative zone map. The blog is personal. Readers learn that Purdy is a neglectful seedstarter, has 12 children (who has time for seeds!), and has gardened for 15 years. But it’s not too personal-no health reports or political opinions. Her fellow contributors live all over the United States but garden in USDA Zone 4.
    Purdy describes the site as a virtual garden club. While not as much fun as a real garden club, these are gardeners you might enjoy meeting. -M.L.S. (reprinted with permission)

  • In connection with the garden blog directory, I was quoted by Dean Fosdick in an article for the Associated Press on gardening and computers. This article was published in various newspapers in late January 2006 and can be found online here, among other places: Garden doctor is always in when you have a computer
  • Sowing on the Web,” in People, Places, Plants Early Spring 2005, p. 56
  • Web Finds,” in Horticulture Spring Bonus Issue 2005, p. 27