This month is filled with memories, no matter how you observe the holiday season. For me, Christmas meant spending a week in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin at my grandmother’s home, where my Dad was born and grew up in a small house on N. 63rd St. Food was the main feature: Grandma was a stunning cook in […]
Oddly enough, in my neck of the woods, the dead of winter is one of the busiest times in my garden year. Sheltering in my ersatz greenhouse aka sunroom, when the snow is lying heavy on the ground (19 inches heavy, and even heavier further south, while I won’t mention Wyoming), I have all the […]
“If you can read a book, you can do anything.” Short of embroidering it on a cushion, that’s a mantra I’ve lived by since my best friend in high school wised me up. I’ve packed in a lot of reading since then, researching the history of garden design and landscaping for the books I’ve written, […]
There was an unforeseen delay in my getting this letter written – the peaches on my elderly tree were ripe and the weather was due to change overnight from 90° and bluebird skies to 55° and sodden grey. Welcome to the Front Range. With the right kind of greenhouse this wouldn’t be a problem: the […]
In a corner of England, long, long ago, a young woman with visions of the epic garden she was planting, sowed seeds of milk thistle, Silybum marianum. HUGE mistake! Little did I know (yes, moi) that the enchanting, fresh young foliage, shimmering with silvered veins in the Norfolk sunshine, would age to old boot leathers […]
Heat extremes, aka the Heat Dome, such as we’ve been experiencing this past month is not something any gardener would wish to entertain again. Weather conditions are always the no.1 topic of conversations having to do with horticulture, and, clearly, I’m no exception to this rule. Not only have the plants not tended within the […]
In what should have been the busiest time for a gardener in the steppes of the Front Range, this one has, for the past six weeks, been sitting on the sidelines thanks to a knee replacement. Yes, the right leg that has powered the spade for the past few decades has finally given up the […]
Does designing your garden ever cease? Or is it an ongoing process, and just like any work of art, it’s never really “finished”? Do you find yourself tweaking planting schemes, altering plans to changing growing conditions…or interests, eliminating this, adding that…I’m certain few gardeners set their patch in stone. Except, literally, when setting paths through […]
Three days from now it’ll be Earth Day 2024, and thoughts turn to the climate, which of late can be described–at best–as uneven; right now, snow is forecast for tomorrow, but on Earth Day, the sun will shine, and the snow will water the garden as it melts. My one lonely daffodil will be pleased. […]
Sowing seed is the triumph of hope over experience, especially when seasonal conditions are wildly variable: Getting started takes a knock on the head as spring’s promise turns back to dour winter on a random schedule. Yet, growlights, warming pads, warm sweaters and other scientific advances aimed at greenhouse growing encourages us to get on […]
“…every time I take up my pencil to try and write I feel confused by the mass of things I want to talk about, and more than half decide that it would be better to leave it all unwritten.” — Marion Cran, Joy of the Ground, 1928 Have you noticed at all how current news […]
The holiday season is upon us and in the Clarke residence it shows its face with the resurrection and plugging in of the Psychedelic Christmas Tree. As a couple of old groovers, this totem has particular significance, marking our first Christmas in Iowa in a rental and not knowing a soul in the state. […]
