Recent years have seen renewed interest in vegetable gardening everywhere, but perhaps nowhere is this more pronounced than inside our larger cities. Despite the challenge of growing in the densely populated confines of city spaces—and subject to the often intense growing conditions within these microclimates, some New York City gardeners appear to embrace their limitations. […]
You water, you feed, you cajole. But despite your best efforts the limp leaves of red and green relax into their juvenility. You estimate the time it will take your baby lettuce to reach salad size. Five, six, seven weeks! By then your crop will be “wise-beyond-its-weeks lettuce,” battle-weary from encounters with aphids and whitefly, […]
The first time I tramped a trail in a Costa Rican rain forest, while being buzzed by hummingbirds as thick as mosquitoes in Michigan, I looked at a vine clambering over a nearby tree and realized: Hey, that’s a philodendron. It was the same plant with heart-shaped leaves that can be found in greenhouses, fern […]
It’s not every day, nor is it everywhere that a brand new botanic garden opens, but the city of Santa Fe New Mexico recently became home to one. Although the garden opened its gates just this past July, only two months later in September when I visited the gardens looked remarkably filled in. The Santa […]
Peterborough, New Hampshire, is one fortunate town. Between the Contookuk River and Nubanusit Brook, it was a thriving mill town in the nineteenth century. The home of the MacDowell Colony (the first artist’s colony in the country) since 1907, the town is thought to have been the model for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which he […]
In the colder months, birds bring color and motion to gardens at rest, whether you watch them from a kitchen window or enjoy their antics through the glass of a cozy greenhouse. When I have questions about feeding my winged denizens, I turn to Dan Gleason, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Eugene. Dan taught […]
