Hartley Magazine

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

Heirloom Apples Tell a Story

‘Laxton’s Orange Pippin’, ‘Worcester Pearmain’, ‘Arthur Turner’, ‘Oxheart’ are just a few of the named antique apple varieties that grew in my English garden. A neighbor gave the young trees to me when we arrived in the village; he’d grafted them from his own orchard trees, ones planted by his father when he returned to […]

Garden travels, past and present

A few years ago it was all about Millennials and how they travel to collect experiences, selecting destinations because of the stories they can later tell,  and prefer to acquire skills – like gardening — through hands-on learning. Like that’s something new? But if that’s the case, I’ve been a Millennial all my adult (Boomer) […]

New Directions in Garden Living

This Spring of self-isolation has been, for many people, myself included, unnervingly productive. So many missions accomplished: like sorting through old photo albums and hundreds of 35mm slides and waking memories of my first encounter with Hartley Botanic and their sturdy greenhouses. I recall how charmed I was by their display at the Chelsea Flower […]

Social Distance in the Garden

Whatever the outcome of this current deadly disruption, corona virus has certainly focused many minds on the meaning of life–and on getting stuff done. Without the opportunity to procrastinate, tasks and projects in the Clarke household are being completed in record time; like clearing up the greenhouse, sorting the seed from the dust, the compost […]

Reading About Gardens — any time, any place

What is a greenhouse to you: a hive of activity, or maybe a science lab? A place to grow strange and exotic plants, or an ER for houseplants that you really truly hope will revive in the moist humid enclosure where sunlight is abundant? And how about conservatory? Does that word conjure warm, quiet corners […]

At Home with Houseplants

Haven’t you always made a practice of sharing your plants with friends or rooted extra cuttings to sell in support of your favorite organization? My windowsill cum greenhouse seems to always have a cutting or five on the go. And it’s how I’ve obtained “something special” from friends throughout my gardening life—especially houseplants.  Books have […]

Gardens for Moonlight and Memory

The first full moon of 2020 fell on January 10. It was quite spectacular, like every full moon in the Southwest, from low desert to high plains, foothills to mountain tops. Sitting in my sunroom cum conservatory, peering out into the garden on a mild winter night, I was enchanted by the ethereal glow the silvery light […]

Winter Gardening (and wool-gathering)

At the advent of solstice as I sit in my sunroom/conservatory, staring out over a snowy landscape that’s framed by a sapphire blue sky, with the sun beating down on the Rockies and the neighborhood buried under a foot of white fluffy stuff, thoughts turn to the coming year’s gardening: Will the Woodward junipers that […]