MINNEAPOLIS — Three tiny hairless dogs guard the entrance to Lamar Peterson’s garden. Bea, a 7-year-old Xoloitzcuintli and Chihuahua mix with no teeth and a pink tongue, is the smallest but barks the loudest. The other two pups, Daisy, 6, a Xoloitzcuintli, and Moo, 8, a Chinese Crested, try to overtake Bea’s bark, but to no avail.
“They’re extremely protective and Bea, she’ll bark when I walk her ...
well, she’ll just bark all the time,” Peterson said. “It’s funny, me walking with this multi-pronged leash.” Peterson cares for the luscious, wonderland-like garden with his partner, Michael Templeton, in the backyard of their south Minneapolis home.
Variously colored pots spill over with greenery, oval-shaped silver raised planter beds with seedlings just hatching and satchels piled high with dirt cover the ground, making any grass barely visible. Peterson is a painter with a fierce gardening hobby. The two are intertwined, particularly in his recent paintings that focus on gardening as an act of self-care.
A native Floridian, Peterson moved to Minneapolis from New York in 2011 to teach at the University of Minnesota. Now, he’s associate professor of art and director of undergraduate studies and is more rooted here than ever. This spring, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship for $65,000.
He’ll head to Georgia, where his dad, Jesse “Pete” Peterson, painted many murals, like one of a Black Jesus on a church in Quitman, Ga. His dad was a prolific painter but.