[gtkmm] Gtkmm2.2 on Debian stable alongside gtk2.0

[Jonathan Brandmeyer <jbrandmeyer earthlink net>]

I have a Debian woody system with gnome2 installed.
I want to do some programming work with gtkmm2, so I built 2.2.1 and all
its dependancies, and installed them in /usr/local.

When I build the textbook examples using their makefiles, everything
goes OK, but building them manually using pkg-config fails at runtime. 
Namely, none of the widgets are shown and the programs exit
immediately.  Some fooling around with gtkglextmm suggests that the
windows are not being "realized".

The only difference that I can see between pkg-config's output and what
is in the makefiles is that the makefiles seem to link directly to what
was built in the source tree, and not what is installed on the system.

Can my install of gtk2.2 in /usr/local live side-by-side with gtk2.0 in
/usr (installed by debian)?  Or should I just clobber my
debian-installed gtk2 by using --prefix=/usr?  Or is something else the
problem?

Thanks for your advice,
Jonathan