“Mighty oaks from little acorns grow” is an old adage loaded with meaning, but one with special significance, I think, for us gardeners, knowing as we do that every garden begins with a seed. Seed can be “seed money” that lets us purchase a plot of land or rent space in a community garden. Seed […]
Who watched the Royal Wedding? Who felt a tear in their eye as we learned that Meghan Markle’s simple-bunch bouquet contained flowers that were favorites of Princess Diana, picked – and here’s the kicker – in the castle garden by Prince Harry? Now that is saying something! Flowers have long had all sorts of symbolic […]
Gardening in the steppes of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region is a constantly rising learning curve. I dream of a garden-enclosing greenhouse along the lines of the Eden Project, or maybe a dome like the one at the fabulously revived Des Moines Botanical Center. May has been a particularly trying month, with an endless […]
A conservatory or greenhouse can be a heavenly – and heavily – scented environment when crammed full with perfumed flowers like jasmine, citrus, and countless other plants that hold fragrance in their petals and foliage. Pot pourri is an amalgam of plant parts preserved by drying and blending that will conserve the scent of garden […]
Question: do you garden by memory? By that I mean is the gardenia on your windowsill a remembrance of a scent-filled conservatory visited on a rainy day? Or are the geraniums on the patio the same sort as your mother grew? Hands up: mine is the one waving frantically in the corner. Once I had […]
The Mid-Century Modern Landscape is the title of my recent book. It’s rather misleading because it’s about gardens: I’m old school and I think of landscape as the natural surroundings in which we build or shape our dreams: The Parthenon is set in a dramatic landscape; my greenhouse is part of my garden. Oh, well, […]
High elevations and low waterfall mean gardening in the southwest depends a lot on what you might call “mechanical intervention”; glasshouses and tunnels for season extension and irrigation to compensate for shortages are the chief tools at the gardener’s disposal. Developed by the ancient Romans, adapted by the Moors in pre-Christian Spain, aqueducts fed water […]
Glasshouse and conservatory construction have come a long way since the days of ancient Rome, when Pliny the Elder wrote about the Emperor Tiberius’s love of cucumbers. Such was the regal passion for the vegetable that he had, as Pliny described, “raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of which the cucumbers were […]
Pomegranate, Punica granatum, is a small tree native to the Mediterranean reaches of the near east, and so in zones where the temperature drops below 40F, is a pretty and productive addition to a conservatory garden. Otherwise it will be happy outdoors in regions with arid hot summers and cool winters. In either situation, pomegranate […]
The aspen trees have moved from shining beacons on the mountainsides to puddles of gold beneath the trees; greenhouses — retail and residential — are being cleaned out, and pumpkins, turkeys and sugar plum fairies are dancing in shoppers’ heads. The holiday season is upon us. In 1574, Nicolas Monardes, a Spanish man of letters, […]
Gardening in the intermountain west and high plains is not for faint hearted; even with a greenhouse to coddle plants along, the climate conditions here are tough so plants need to be strong. When temperatures can drop from 85 degrees during a summer day and plummet to 50 – or less – at night, that’s […]
It may be old news, but only in parts; continuing research is revealing even more about the benefits of green as in “green space“. Turns out that you don’t need acres of green to feel the benefit of plants and nature; even a small patch of grass or a houseplant on your desk has theraputic […]
