Sow no harm: if you grow insect-attracting flowers from seed, you will reap nothing but delight. I love you, my dearest dahlias – I really do. And it’s on hot, comforting days like this, when we’re lulled by echoes of ebbing summer, that I adore you more than ever. Today you brought an airborne frenzy of […]
If my plants were toddlers, they’d start doing one of two things right now: melting down in fiery tantrums or sitting still with drooping eyelids. Either way, I’d know it’s close to bedtime. No more roughhousing, or the kids will be too excited to sleep. It’s the same in the garden and the greenhouse. My […]
I really enjoy fresh figs, but here in New England they can be difficult to grow because of the long, cold winters. To combat the deep-freeze time of year, New Englanders often dig their fig trees up each fall, wrap them in burlap, and bury them in a trench covered with mulch for the winter. […]
I know that autumn is looming. The French partridges have started sunning themselves on my low stone walls and they’re so tame and plump, having been reared in cages for dare I say the shooting season, that they only fly off when I’m feet away. They’re the Liz Taylors of the game birds, with exotic […]
German bearded irises are ideally suited to dry conditions in bright sun; they’re easy-to-grow perennials, with a fleeting but fabulous early-summer blossom time. Each May for the past few years, I accompany my best-beloved to MahlerFest, held at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado. It’s taken me a more than a moment to […]
Gardens are great for allowing us to live in the present moment. Certain jobs, like weeding, can bring us vitally into the here and now. See weed, pull weed, drop in bucket—repeat. The world has no past or future, only the interval where I wrestle with dock leaves or Russian thistle, intertwined among the roots […]
One week, I had a pot of purple petunias sitting in the summer garden, adding a spot of bright color in a groundcover bed. Days later, it was compost. The pot had become a muddy, stinky lake with some dead stems straggling out of it. It was a textbook case of what happens when you […]
From mid-summer until November, rhododendrons and camellias are forming flower buds for next year’s display, so it’s essential that the compost or soil around them doesn’t dry out at any point, if it does they simply won’t form buds or will demonstrate their disapproval by shedding the ones that have already formed. Check your plants […]
This May was a season of firsts. It was my first time attending the fabled Chelsea Flower Show in London. And it was Hartley-Botanic’s first time building a display garden on the Main Avenue. I met up on Press Day with Catherine MacDonald, the garden’s award-winning designer. She invited me to experience their magical woodland […]
Eastern European ways with rock garden design have changed how we garden with alpines. Once upon a time, the alpine glasshouses at RHS Wisley, the famed display gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, south of London left me in speechless awe. It was like visiting an art gallery: Nano-tufts of rare aubretia, doll-sized clumps of […]
One recent sunny day I forgot to open my greenhouse doors and windows in the morning, and by noontime the temperature inside had reached 108˚. The plants were sadly wilted, so I quickly misted the entire greenhouse to lower the temperature and raise the humidity. Fortunately, by late afternoon, the sagging plants had recovered, but […]
California gardeners are in the phalanx of water conservationists who are working to stem the effects of drought in the Golden State. While we gardeners in Colorado are just a little excited that the state’s legislature has finally spiked the law against the residential collection of rainwater, which served to resuscitate heated discussions about rainfall and […]
