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 and look beautiful.

My gardening philosophy requires an understanding of our site, choosing plants that belong, designing with intention, and allowing the garden to evolve over time.

The work

I am Sue Libertiny, a mechanical engineer who left a career to build a garden on twenty acres of Kentucky land.

Sugar Hill is our long-term project. We are building a house and garden from the ground up. Rabbit Run is the temporary laboratory where I am learning what thrives in the Kentucky clay. Everything is documented: the plants that thrive, the ones that fail, and the design decisions.

How It Started

My love of gardening started with a handful of perennial divisions from a friend. It deepened in the great gardens of England like Hidcote, Sissinghurst, Kiftsgate, and Gravetye Manor. Those places are not simply beautiful. They are complete worlds, shaped by people who wanted to make something extraordinary.

As I walked through those gardens, I kept thinking of one question: Why aren’t more American gardens made this way? That question continues to shape 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 has something to teach us. They inspired by the values of the Arts & Crafts movement: a respect for craftsmanship, the beauty found in ordinary materials, and nature as a source of inspiration.

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.