Congratulations to Pennsylvania gardener Kimberly Furry, whose Spooky Tree pumpin wins top honors in Fine Gardening‘s Jardin-o-Lantern Contest. Her prize is a collection of garden idea books from The Taunton Press. We asked her to tell us a little about her gardening activities, and here’s what she sent.

I am a Penn State master gardener and have been for almost five years now. My first love is teaching youth in our community about horticulture. I’ve been gardening since I could walk. My mother and grandmother always had flower and vegetable gardens while I was growing up and they instilled the gardening bug in me. My husband and I love to garden with our two girls, aged 2 and 5. All of the gardens at our home are kid-friendly. We have gigantic pines surrounding our property that shade the girls when they play in their sandbox. We love to start plants from seed in the springtime and make sunflower houses to hide in during the summer. Our little girls love to help planting peas and tomato plants, and they cannot wait to pick cherry tomatoes and peas pods from the vine and devour them! We have a huge trumpet vine that climbs up our back porch in the summertime so the girls can watch for hummingbirds.  Needless to save, gardening is pretty important to me and my family!

Visit the Jardin-o-Lantern photo contest gallery….