Primeau became the founding editor of Canadian Gardening Magazine in 1990 and hosted Canadian Gardening Television for many years on HGTV.
Tonight, the long-time local resident will be signing and selling copies of her garden memoir, My Natural History: The Evolution of a Gardener, at 7 p.m. at the Mississauga Central Library.
In an interview at the Applewood Acres home where she and her husband have lived for the past 30 years, Primeau said she got her feet wet in journalism in the 1950s when she was a member of the women's auxiliary at the South Peel Hospital. She submitted reports on the group's activities to the Port Credit Weekly and The Mississauga News.
Linda Reed, an editor at The News, liked her work so much that she was soon a "community correspondent" for the Orchard Heights community. But Primeau wasn't satisfied writing social notes about parties and visiting relatives that were the standard fare of the day.
"My first story was about the crossing guard at Lakeshore Rd. and Dixie Rd. and I did stories about things like the new traffic lights at Applewood Rd. and the South Service Rd.," recalls Primeau.
The experience whetted her appetite for magazine journalism. She eventually worked for many of Canada's top publications, including Toronto Life and Chatelaine before the launch of Canadian Gardening, which has proven an enduring success.
Writing her memoirs was something she had never even considered until her agent suggested the idea. It was unlike any previous writing experience. "I found it revealing. It was like writing your life's journal in three months."
The book explores the personal crises of Primeau's early life: her father's premature death, her severe anxiety attacks and the breakdown of her first marriage and blends them artfully with her emerging passion for gardening. Her ever-reliable horticultural confidante, her Uncle Ren, is a dominant presence in the volume.
Author and editor of numerous gardening books, Primeau is probably best known for her pioneering Front Yard Gardens: Growing More Than Grass which promotes tearing out mundane front lawns in favour of planting a diversity of native plants that promote healthier natural environments. That principle, called biodiversity, "makes people's eyes glaze over," admits Primeau.
But people understand the principle when they see it in action. When she and her husband Chris Zelkovich replanted their entire front yard a decade ago, there was consternation from many neighbours.
Now, there is a parade of similar treatments in the front yards of her neighbourhood. That makes the garden writer smile with pride. "Once it starts to happen," she says, "the ball rolls faster and faster."
jstewart@mississauga.net
