James Golden – A View from Federal Twist

James Golden, born in Mississippi though resident in New York City for most of his adult life, was a writer in the corporate world. Nearing retirement and embarking on what he happily calls la vita nuova, he moved to a property near the Delaware in western New Jersey to make a garden. When he began the garden, he also began a now well-known blog, The View from Federal Twist. Over 20 years on, James is a celebrated garden maker and thinker whose garden, Federal Twist, has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Gardens Illustrated, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Horticulture, Elle Décor, Better Homes and Gardens, and in several garden books. On visiting Federal Twist for the American Gardens BBC TV series, Monty Don, the British gardening celebrity, said “after over 50 years of gardening and visiting gardens, it made me rethink what a garden can be and do.” James recently published a new book on his garden—The View from Federal Twist: a New Way of Thinking about Gardens, Nature and Ourselves.

He fell in love with the house, a modernist 1960’s structure—long, low, the color of bark, with floor-to-ceiling windows all around. But the land outside the house was appalling—a waste of derelict woods, shade, and heavy, wet clay. As Golden thought his way through his site’s constraints, he learned the harsh ecology and wildness of the place could reveal astonishing ideas of what plants and landscape can do. The emerging garden led him to a new way of thinking about gardens, nature and himself. Golden will tell us about this new way of thinking, and how it changed his life.