February 18, 2018 – Being Christy

The last we interviewed Christy Webber on The Mike Nowak Show was on one of the strangest radio days of my life. It was July 24, 2016 and Peggy had been with the show only a few months. We were still at “Pirate Radio,” aka Que4, and that morning we were scheduled to do the show live from Christy Webber Farm & Garden, which was then still at its old location on Grand Avenue.

Peggy and I needed to stop at Pirate Radio to pick up some equipment before the show, but when we got there, we found out that there had been a flood in the building overnight. A pipe had burst, and even though the radio station was on the second floor, the control room had been flooded. In fact, the station was off the air.

We got the station manager to come in and get things powered up, while we headed over to the Farm & Garden. With about ten minutes to spare, the station went back on, and we actually started the show on time. Unfortunately, because of the chaos at the station, there was no recording of the program and, hence, no podcast. It was a one-off live broadcasting event, never to be heard again.

The next time we did an interview, it was on April 13, 2017, just before the grand opening of the new Christy Webber Farm & Garden, which had moved a few blocks down to 2833 West Chicago Avenue, in Chicago. This time, it was a quick Facebook live tour of the new facility and, thankfully, that video still exists.

Fast forward to today, and we’re happy to have the one-of-a-kind Christy Webber back on the program, this time in the 1590 WCGO studios in Evanston. As usual, we have no idea where the conversation will go. However, we know that, like us, Christy is getting ready for the 2018 Chicago Flower & Garden Show.

Peggy and I will be involved in the event in several ways. We will be doing Facebook live videos during the opening night charity event Evening in Bloom on March 13. Then, on Friday, March 16, we will do a joint presentation called What’s Important and How To Find It at 11:30 a.m. That’s basically a primer on how to find good, reliable sources for gardening information. Finally, as we did last year, we we will broadcast The Mike Nowak Show live from Navy Pier on Sunday, March 18, at our usual time of 9-11am.

Meanwhile, you’ll be able to find the work of Christy Webber Landscapes in a garden called The Story of Diversity, which is Garden #15 at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show. According to the show program,

Our design intent is to capture Chicago’s broad diversity through a unique expression of cityscape and neighborhoods.

The overarching design concept is to demonstrate Chicago’s varied landscapes as places that bring people together.  The places we experience everyday include the public realm of Urban Streetscapes, Public Parklands, Residential Neighborhoods, and Industrial Zones.  Running through all these areas is the underlying grid of complex infrastructure, including our water, gas, and electricity, provided by NPL.

We’ll find out more about that design and it’s execution during our conversation with Christy this morning. We should also mention that she will be speaking at the Spring Garden Symposium 2018 on March 3 at Fernwood Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve in Niles, Michigan. That will be alongside her colleague Annamaria León, who manages the Edible Landscapes Division at Christy Webber Landscapes.

Regardless of where the conversation goes, it will always be interesting. You don’t want to miss this one.

In the second hour we welcome Adam Federman from The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, who was on the show a couple of months ago. At that time, we talked about an investigation he did with the Investigative Fund, a series of stories including The Plot to Loot America’s Wilderness, which shines a light on a little-known bureaucrat named James Cason, who is reshaping the Department of the Interior; This Is How the Trump Administration Gives Big Oil the Keys to Public Lands, Federman states, which details how the Bureau of Land Management is opening previously off-limits areas to oil and gas drilling; Exclusive: Interior Department Scrubs Climate Change From Its Strategic Plan , which reveals a leaked draft of a five-year plan that reveals how the DOI will prioritize “energy dominance” over conservation, and Donald Trump and Ryan Zinke Are Purging Climate Scientists for Telling the Truth, how senior officials have been reassigned at the DOI in a continuing attack on science.