On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA February-March 2016 | Page 25

McDonald’s route to Iowa
McDonald was born at home on a farm in the
Oklahoma Panhandle during “the last of the bad
dirt storms” and remembers being interested in
plants by the age of three. He joined the GWA
in 1951 at age 14. His mother put him on a
train two years later so he could attend a GWA
meeting in New York City where “they took me
into the bars and ordered me Coca Cola.”
After high school graduation in 1956, McDonald
co-founded Flower & Garden magazine in
Kansas City. In 1958, he became the editor of
outdoor books at The Macmillan Company in
New York. He returned to Flower & Garden from
1960 to 1967, and then back to New York to
become garden editor for House Beautiful.
Because the magazine covered lifestyles of the
rich and famous, McDonald met celebrities,
including his longtime friend, New York socialite
C.Z. Guest, who dubbed him her gardening
husband. Any conversation with McDonald is
likely to contain what may seem like namedropping, but to him is just a recounting of his life.
“I remember walking down Madison Avenue one
afternoon and encountering Oscar de la Renta
and Kitty Carlisle and they said, ‘Oh it’s Elvin!’ ”
he recalls. “How could they know that? Because
of C. Z.”
His prolific writing – including a syndicated
gardening column between 1975 and 1990 –
garnered public exposure and many opportunities, such as stints as Al Roker’s sidekick for an
NBC home and garden show, primary consultant
for the Emmy Award-winning TV series Gardens of
the World with Audrey Hepburn, and as secretary
of the American Horticultural Society.
In 1985, McDonald became a gardener at the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden and then director of
special projects, creating exhibits for the New
York Flower Show and more.
At age 55 in 1992, he uprooted to Houston,
Texas, where he served as garden editor at
the Houston Post, created a weekly television
program, and managed The Compleat Gardener, an upscale garden center. “I also worked as
a gardener for hire and kept my first Mac busy
creating a half dozen new books.”
Three years later, he was hired as garden editor
at Traditional Home, a Meredith Corporation
magazine headquartered in Des Moines. He later
became a garden editor at Better Homes and

Gardens until his retirement in 2009. The move
to Des Moines proved to be a perfect melding of
McDonald’s Midwest roots, East Coast sensibility
and global enthusiasm for horticulture.

Do you know?

In 2008, two days before his 71st birthday,
McDonald became director of the Friends of
the Des Moines Botanical Center, and helped
shepherd its transition to the Greater Des
Moines Botanical Garden.

Elvin McDonald

The GWA honored McDonald as a Fellow in
1983 and inducted him into the Hall of Fame in
1998. The Garden Club of America named him
an Honorary Member in 2012, and the Business
Record in Des Moines recently dubbed him a
“Sage Over 70.”

Education: Opera voice,

Young Norris’ old soul

Norris has only one more year to be a “20something award-winning author and plantsman” (to quote his own bio), but his list of
achievements is already longer than his age
indicates.
After earning his master’s in horticulture from
Iowa State University in 2011, he wasn’t sure
which direction his professional life should take.
Luckily, as Norris was writing magazine articles
and his second book, A Guide to Bearded
Irises: Cultivating the Rainbow for Beginners
and Enthusiasts (winner of the 2013 American
Horticultural Society Book Award), community
leaders were crafting the vision to transform the
Des Moines Botanical Center into a world-class
botanical garden. He was already a popular
speaker for the Learn on Saturday’s classes,
which have become a staple for winter education
at GDMBG.
Untested though he was, in November 2012
Norris was the clear favorite for the job of
leading a team of horticulturists to design,
curate, program and manage the new Greater
Des Moines Botanical Garden. He edits Bloom,
the GWA Media Award-winning member
magazine and will spend the next couple of
years making plant collection trips around the
Midwest, thanks to a 2015 Chanticleer Scholar
Award.

Birthdate: Feb. 17, 1937
Middle name: Dee
Hometown: Gray, Oklahoma

Mannes College of Music
in New York City,
Latest book: A Garden
Makes a House a Home,
2012, Monacelli Press.
Besides an autobiography,
he plans to write The Joy
of Okra: from Slime to
Sublime.
Family: Partner John
Zickefoose, two sons and
a daughter and five
grandchildren
Something you don’t know
about him: To honor

McDonald’s retirement from
the GDMBG with a nod to
his background in music,
a daffodil from Brent and
Becky’s Bulbs was named in
his honor: ‘Elvin’s Voice’.
Quote: “My mother taught
English and my father
forbade slang. Otherwise,
writing comes naturally and
readers tell me my voice
has changed little since I
sold stories to the New York
Times as a teenager.”

Norris is a sought-after speaker, but knows that
writing and public speaking alone aren’t enough.
He’s out to touch hearts. “I’ll talk to anybody
about plants,” he says. “In this profession, we
have to do more than just talk to people through
our columns and on the stage and through our
lectures. We have to meet people where they’re
at, challenge them and teach them.”

P H O T O C O U R T E S Y B R E N TA N D B E C K Y S B U L B S . C O M

Among the many awards each has garnered is
recognition from the Des Moines Public Library
Foundation: McDonald in 2011 as Iowa Author of
the Year, Norris in 2013 as Special Interest Iowa
Author, the youngest Iowan recognized.

Norris has assumed the mantle of gardening
futurist, a movement he says that GWA (which he
joined when he was 14) must lead. “This is an era
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