Brown Thumb Mama is a mother of two, garden writer and corporate world escapee who wields her superpowers from a suburban Sacramento home.
With her Brown Thumb Mama website (brownthumbmama.com), weekly newsletter, social media sites, videos and TV appearances, Pam Farley recently exceeded a website milestone—more than 1 million annual readers.
When Susan and John Skinner purchased their 3,200-square-foot Carmichael ranch home in 1990, they knew they had a house with good bones.
“It had been built in the 80s by a builder for his own father,” Susan says. “It was solid. There were no cut corners.” The house also had deep political roots: The owner was a Capitol lobbyist who loved to entertain. The newly married couple saw the immediate potential.
“But the home was very dated inside with multitudes of conflicting patterned wallpapers and carpets. That was the first thing we changed,” Susan says. The Skinners installed oak hardwood floors, updated to a neutral carpet and added new neutral paint.
Psst. Want to know a secret? Snuggled between J Street and a parking garage is the University Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Yup, a petite parcel of trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials on the Sacramento State campus.
Easy to miss, the arboretum is a surprisingly tranquil retreat from modern mayhem. The Sacramento Tree Foundation, which awarded the arboretum its “Legacy Award,” says schoolchildren call it the “Forest in the City.”
