When inspired to grow something that just is not suited to their climate, many gardeners are seized by a Rube-Goldberg-like creative fever to come up with any contraption that will get them to their goal. Often it goes beyond growing under glass, and has done so for generations. Enchanted by the idea of growing lemons, […]

Successfully raising seeds in a greenhouse for next year’s crop is just one of the many pleasures and contentments of gardening. But there are others. The garden year is ending and it’s time we took stock of our gardens and the successes and failures experienced from which we can learn what works…and what doesn’t require […]

German bearded irises are ideally suited to dry conditions in bright sun; they’re easy-to-grow perennials, with a fleeting but fabulous early-summer blossom time. Each May for the past few years, I accompany my best-beloved to MahlerFest, held at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado. It’s taken me a more than a moment to […]

Eastern European ways with rock garden design have changed how we garden with alpines. Once upon a time, the alpine glasshouses at RHS Wisley, the famed display gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, south of London left me in speechless awe.  It was like visiting an art gallery: Nano-tufts of rare aubretia, doll-sized clumps of […]

California gardeners are in the phalanx of water conservationists who are working to stem the effects of drought in the Golden State. While we gardeners in Colorado are just a little excited that the state’s legislature has finally spiked the law against the residential collection of rainwater, which served to resuscitate heated discussions about rainfall and […]

Water conservation and water-saving garden solutions have a creative edge in the Coachella Valley of south California, and in Palm Springs sheets of glass reflecting sheets of water give a refreshing fresh sparkle to arid gardens. Three months and two trips to California, from one destination south, to one north (which you can read about […]

Glasshouses, conservatories, and the mid-century modern enclaves of Palm Springs owe much to the invention of plate glass. Glass windows have been with us since at least the 3rd century CE, but they were dim little shards held together by lead seams, fracturing and distorting the view, but letting in more light than a sheet […]

The semi-arid steppes of the world can teach us ways to conserve water in our gardens and create sustainable landscapes. This year the North American Rock Garden Society, aka NARGS, is holding its annual general meeting in Colorado, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Chapter. Kicking off at the Denver Botanic Garden, it then moves to […]

“A room of one’s own… What [these words] propose to anyone who admits them into the space of a daydream, is a place of solitude a few steps off the beaten track of everyday life.” So wrote Michael Pollen in A Place of My Own. And he wasn’t talking about greenhouses. But he could have […]

To have made six gardens in five climate zones looks very like extravagance, but to have possessed a greenhouse in only one may be regarded as a misfortune. Particularly, as I realized with some shock, that greenhouse was in the garden where I least needed it – Norfolk, England; aka Britain’s Sunshine Capitol, and with […]