Hartley Magazine

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

Heritage Gardens in Sandwich, MA

This spring I visited Heritage Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts, to see the rhododendrons in bloom. These 100 acres were formerly the estate of Charles Dexter, who, beginning in 1921, spent years propagating and raising thousands of rhododendrons.Ā  He gave many to friends and neighbors without keeping records of these gifts, which is why new Dexter […]

Trees have it figured out

Weā€™re having some character-building weather in Chicago. The thermometer got all the way up to zero today (Fahrenheitā€”thatā€™s 17.5 below zero for you centigrade folks). I was bumbling down a sidewalk wearing layers of leggings, multiple socks, gloves within mittens, and so much headgear I could hardly peer out. I passed a nonchalant tree, standing […]

Slow water, fast.

High elevations and low waterfall mean gardening in the southwest depends a lot on what you might call ā€œmechanical interventionā€; glasshouses and tunnels for season extension and irrigation to compensate for shortages are the chief tools at the gardenerā€™s disposal. Developed by the ancient Romans, adapted by the Moors in pre-Christian Spain, aqueducts fed water […]

Written in United Kingdom

The sound of rubbing stems and Doveā€™s dung

Amongst the benefits a glasshouse offers can be year round flowers for cutting. Cut flowers are more expensive to purchase than most fruits and vegetables so really deserve some attention. And one of the best cut flowers for sheer endurance once cut is the Chincherinchee. Ornithogalum thyrsoides is a bulbous plant of the Lily family […]

Fascineā€”An ancient hill holder for modern gardens

I love when I come across a new (to me) gardening term. Iā€™d never heard the word fascine, until I talked with Vanessa Gardner Nagel, award-winning landscape designer and author. She mentioned she was building fascine to stabilize the slope in her Pacific Northwest ravine garden. A fascine, she explained, is a bundle of sticks […]