New York Times story features Fairey’s Peckerwood Garden

The New York Times [featured] (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/garden/a-texas-gardener-looks-to-mexico-for-inspiration.html?emc=eta1) Texas A&M architecture professor John Fairey's beloved [Peckerwood Garden] (http://www.peckerwoodgarden.com/) , a 39-acre living repository of rare and unusual plants from the southern United States and Mexico, in its April 18 issue.

The [article] (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/garden/a-texas-gardener-looks-to-mexico-for-inspiration.html?emc=eta1) , "Growing From His Mistakes: A Texas Gardener Looks to Mexico for Inspiration," recounts Fairey's trials and errors since first establishing the garden, located near Hempstead, Texas, in 1971, and talks about his numerous expeditions to the mountains of northern Mexico to secure rare and interesting plants that thrive in Texas' often extreme climate.

The Times’ Anne Raver writes that Fairey settled at Peckerwood because it reminded him of his childhood home in the rolling hills of South Carolina.

Among the gardens’ many varieties are groves of magnolias, oaks, sycamores and maples, natives of the mountains in northern Mexico, where Fairey and fellow plant hunters have gone on plant gathering trips.

Although Fairey, wrote Raver, had no formal training as a botanist, he learned from nurseryman Lynn Lowery the basics of collecting, germinating, packaging and identifying seeds.