Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside by Roger Marshall

Snow crunches under foot, and a white quilt covers the landscape, reflecting and refracting bright sunlight across the wintery scene. Animal tracks show that squirrels, rabbits, and deer are still foraging, but miraculously your plants are alive and safe from them. This is because your entire garden is concentrated inside a 220 Square foot Hartley Lodge […]

Indoor Gardening Gifts – Unusual Ideas for Holiday Presents

Whether gardeners bring favorite houseplants to a sunny windowsill, or retire them to a greenhouse for winter enjoyment, the act of gardening still goes on in the colder months. So here are some practical—and often overlooked—indoor gardening gifts to add to your list. Cachepots: Humble pots can be slipped inside these beautiful containers. Choose them […]

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A Retort for Winter’s early roar

Winter has raged into Chicago. It was down in the teens a week before Thanksgiving, the kind of weather that freezes the soil like concrete and drives even diehard gardeners like me to the shelter of a greenhouse. I can’t quit gardening yet, though, because I have a problem: Some 300 bulbs I didn’t manage […]

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Art Glass for Glass Houses—Tuck colorful pieces among your indoor plants for added cheer

Glass and gardens are great partners. The dynamics of blown glass capture the echoes of plant growth. I love to see the gleam of glass—small colorful float balls tucked into containers; robust spears stretching upward as focal points; bright dishes spreading open like lilies to capture rainwater among the foliage. But it wasn’t until I […]

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Growing Something Beautiful from Wastewater

The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York—most often associated with yoga and alternative philosophies — decided to apply mindfulness to a very practical matter. The Omega Center for Sustainable Living (OCSL ) opened in 2009. At the heart of the OCSL is the Eco Machine ™, designed by John Todd Ecological Design. This water reclamation […]

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It’s high composting time in Chicago

The trees are abandoning their leaves, the perennials are giving up on their leaves and stems and I’m dumping out my pots of annuals. And all the abandoned plant debris from the yard, garden or greenhouse ends up in the compost. I’m amazed every March to find a bounty of compost in bins that started […]

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Gardens as an Emotional Experience

Colin Cabot was standing at the edge of a steep ravine in the gardens of Les Quatre Vents (The Four Winds). A swaying Nepalese-style rope bridge hung in a downward arc between the ravine’s precipitous banks. “Who wants to go first?” Colin was leading forty of us garden writers and photographers on a private tour […]

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Meadowbrook – A Study in Plant Artistry

Meadowbrook, a 25 acre-estate in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, was designed and created by the floral artist, J. Liddon Pennock, Jr.  Mr. Pennock grew up in Philadelphia, where his family had operated a florist shop for over 100 years. He attended Cornell University, but was called home to help save the family business in 1933. That business […]

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A Waterwise Irrigation Hybrid—Why You Need Sprinklers and Drip Combined

The summer’s too dry, or the summer’s too wet—weather swings across the U.S. are dramatic. Now more than ever, gardeners should consider steady and efficient water delivery for the times when plants need it. In the past, a permanent installation involved a choice—either underground pipes with sprayer heads, or drip with flexible half-inch pipe and […]