Author James Dodson Shares His Beautiful Madness
 On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, August 17, at 9:30 PM

Beautiful Madness author James Dodson was an award-winning regular columnist for Golf Magazine for almost 20 years. Yet, during an amazing year of living botanically and on hiatus from golf, Dodson went behind the scenes of the world's two most important garden shows (the Philadelphia Flower Show and the Chelsea Garden Show in England); spent time with the Botticelli of Bulbs; attended a rare-plant auction with high rollers; sneaked into a Hosta convention; communed with the kindred spirits of Thomas Jefferson and John Bartram; met a man smuggling exotic daylilies; learned the inside poop on ten or twelve of the Western world's most influential gardens; swiped cuttings from a Founding Father's shrubbery; hung out with ten or twelve of the most accomplished gardening fanatics on earth; built three new gardens of his own; and wound up hanging perilously from a limb on the side of a cliff in Southern Africa, the birthplace of an estimated one-third of the world's flowers, and capped off a year of incalculable learning and discovery by tagging along with four of America's leading plant hunters on an expedition into the rugged jungles to find the exotic new species of tomorrow.

In the latest episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Friday, August 17, at 9:30 PM, Dodson shares Beautiful Madness — his true tale of shared gardening obsession that burrows deeply into the story of how Americans became such fanatical gardeners and are today, in fact, at the forefront of what everyone agrees is a new Gold Age of Gardening.

“This is my dirty little secret…I’m a fanatical gardener myself who’s basically investing his kid’s college funds in his yard,” jokes Dodson. “And this book was a salvation for me…I needed to get away from the world of golf.”

Dodson’s horticultural chronicle addresses the unprecedented growth in gardening's popularity that has—according to a recent Gallop poll—an astonishing 80 percent of adult Americans claiming to be primary hobby gardeners.

“There’s never been a book devoted to the passion and madness that grips people and makes them gardeners,” says Dodson. “So, the title came from the beautiful madness that grips people—the desire to beautify the world with this kind of natural splendor.”

Dodson, a father of two, divides his time between Maine and North Carolina and is currently Writer-in-Residence at The Pilot Newspaper in Southern Pines, North Carolina.  He is also presently serving as Artist-in-Residence at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, where he teaches advanced writing.

Don’t miss DG Martin’s all-new interview with James Dodson on North Carolina Bookwatch, Friday, August 17, at 9:30 PM, with an encore episode airing Sunday, August 19, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 20-week, 10th anniversary season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests also include: J. Peder Zane (The Top Ten), Gov. Michael Easley (Look Out, College, Here I Come!), Michele Bowen (Holy Ghost Corner), Neal Thompson (Driving With the Devil), Joseph Bathanti (Coventry), Joanna Catherine Scott (The Road From Chapel Hill), Dan Heath (Made to Stick), Margaret Maron (Hard Row), James Peacock (Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World), Tim Madigan (I’m Proud of You), Melton McLaurin (The Marines of Montford Point), Kathryn Stripling Byer (Coming to Rest), David Guy (Jake Fades),  Georgann Eubanks (Literary Trails of the North Carolina Mountains), Zelda Lockhart (Cold Running Creek), Mike Lassiter (Our Vanishing Americana: A North Carolina Portrait), Joe and Terry Graedon (Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy), Fred Hobson (Off the Rim), and William Powell (Encyclopedia of North Carolina).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to the Bookwatch blog and online book club, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.

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