Sometimes the path of least resistance is the more difficult one to take. Circumstances change, not always for the better, and the easy way out doesn’t show its face until it’s too late to change course. This is true particularly when making a garden, and I’ve made six of them over so many years I […]
Interesting times lead to engaging decisions. The weather is unpredictable, blowing hot and cold like a moody teenager, and water restrictions are entirely the opposite, like an eternally staid and stern great Aunt that we all need when times get tough, what can one do, other than put on the thinking hat and reassess. C’est […]
Movie buffdom is not my realm; I watch, am entertained (or not), but a week later couldn’t relate the plot if you paid me. With one exception: the closing scene of ‘The Godfather’. The entire movie is iconic, I get it, but that final scene gripped me because of the size of the tomato plants […]
There are all sorts of good reasons to be happy about living in Colorado: sunny, warm, hardly-humid-at-all days fade into sweater-weather evenings. Of course, there’s the rainfall shortage, low-snowpack contributing to a scary wildfire season. But, hey…rough with the smooth, right? As a fervent gardener, one is used to that scenario. And as the (many) […]
Writing this during the May’s closing days, after winter’s final hurrah (I hope, but this is Colorado and it’s a bit dodgy to count on it), my neighbors and I have been digging out dandelions in the faint hope of eliminating them from our lawns and gardens. It would be nice if the flowers were, […]
It all depends how you look at it. Is your garden a demanding diva, that requires the constant attentions of the stylist, the groomer, the maid-of-all-work to keep the whole shebang tidy? Or is just plain fun to be with? A place that makes you laugh, mostly at mistakes that, to your eye, turn out […]
Having a wide-ranging collection of gardening books amassed over the decades of my writing career often provides me with ideas for this column and always gives me a lift when gardening gets tough. In those moments, my library reminds me that whatever the problem/pleasure/trend is in the world of the garden, it has all been […]
“If the last month was so severe that little work could be done in the garden, there will be a necessity for forwarding business in this, provided the season be favorable.” Thus wrote Phillip Miller, in his 1775 edition of the Gardener’s Kalendar, setting out the “work to be done” in every part of the […]
Winters in the southwest are at best variable to say the least. It may be the cold season, but weeks of warm, spring-like warm weather can’t fool us, we know it suddenly change overnight to unseemly arctic conditions. That’s the moment we gardeners swap the spade for a snow shovel, or possibly a broom since […]
As the year draws to a close, we garden writers begin receiving notices about the fresh trends for the garden in the coming year. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s list of all that is new for the New Year arrived yesterday. For nearly 200 years the PHS, as it is commonly known, shared its top 10 […]
Before you put this little book away Please promise me that will never say: “You should have seen my garden yesterday.” It’s been my good fortune to visit a great many gardens in my career as an author of books about garden design, history and, well, gardening in general. In so doing, I have also […]
Silly gardener! Summer goes, And winter comes with pinching toes, When in the garden bare and brown You must lay your barrow down. So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in A Child’s Garden of Verses, where youth (the child) admonishes an older person (the gardener) to lay aside their chores and woes, and play while the […]
