About Garden Moxie

Garden Moxie is built on the belief that gardening is a serious creative discipline. Gardens unfold over time, through observation, revision, and care. Your site should direct your plant selection. The goal is to create a garden that doesn’t require excess irrigation, fertilizers, or human labor to survive.

The work

I’m Sue Libertiny, a mechanical engineer who stepped away from a career to build a garden on twenty acres of Kentucky land.
This is long-term work.

The land my husband and I are building, Sugar Hill, will take years to become the garden I see in my mind. That timeline, which once felt daunting, now feels like the whole point.

In the meantime, I work at Rabbit Run, a smaller, temporary garden where I test ideas. Rabbit Run is where I am learning what grows in the Kentucky clay soil. Everything is documented. The failures as well as successes.

How It Started

My love of gardening began with a handful of perennial divisions from a friend. I was newly married, with my first garden. The plants were familiar. I watched my mother and grandmother garden, but this time, the choices were mine. Those plants grew and sparked a passion for growing.

A Turning Point

That early curiosity deepened when I visited England. I visited the gardens at Hidcote, Sissinghurst, Kiftgate Court.

These are not simply beautiful places. They are complete worlds. Each shaped by someone who was committed to making something extraordinary.

As I walked through those gardens, I kept thinking of one question: Why aren’t more gardens in America made this way? That question shapes my work at Garden Moxie.

In The Tradition

The gardeners I return to are those who treated gardening as a serious craft:

Each approached the garden differently, but they each created work that still holds meaning. Their ideas are still studied. And they hold the inspiration behind the work happening here in Kentucky.

Garden Moxie Field Notes

If you’d like to follow this new garden as it unfolds, Garden Moxie Field Notes is a letter that arrives every other week. Each issue records what is happening in the garden in real time as well as the ideas and traditions that shape my work.