We lived in Northern Indiana on the edge of the muck lands—those fertile, deep black soils that glaciers deposited as they retreated—in a county dotted with Amish mint farms. My three older sisters and I helped our parents grow and put up much of what we ate. Still, my mother's passion was her flower beds: lilacs, black-eyed Susans, peonies, Dutch iris, yarrow, four-o'clocks, summer phlox, petunias, and many "passalongs." I dreaded those hot afternoons of hoeing, weeding, and deadheading, not to mention putting down composted manure from neighboring farms. But when I was 23 and owned my first house, I suddenly understood my mother's obsession. Sixteen years later, restlessly approaching middle age, I went back to school at George Washington University in Residential Landscape Design to learn how to make gardens for other people. Since then, a million things have influenced my work but the strongest ideas still remain my mother's love of flower beds and the simplicity of Amish farms. Now twenty-eight years have passed and I'm again in a new phase. I've resigned my landscape design position with a design/build firm and started my own company, Carex: Garden Design by Carolyn Mullet. I want to do spare, lean, sustainable modern gardens (back to the aesthetic of Amish farms). Along with that I want to keep exploring the delight that plants bring to client's lives and my own. Can't ever give up plants.
