One whiff of fragrant plants in winter and I’m transported far beyond the gray and white landscape outside my windows. The exotic aromas, redolent of the tropics, develop fully when captured within the enclosed walls of a greenhouse or sunroom. But I don’t want clashes of strong scents – think how your nose reacts when […]
I live with a family of non-gardeners. As the holiday time approaches, I can see my husband and grown children looking at me speculatively, gift-buying puzzlement in their eyes “What shall I get her that she’ ll really like?” So this year, instead of making them guess, I’m sharing my wish list. And I hope […]
Best Begonias Combine Beauty and Easy Care On a recent visit to Texas, I got lucky at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden (www.fwbg.com). I had the good fortune to tour the Begonia Bank’s collection of rare and endangered plants. Affable begonia curator Deborah Garrett explained that their mission is to preserve begonias from around the […]
A Preview of the 2011 Winners from the Far West Show Ladies and gentlemen, start your plant lists! I’m a big believer in lists. After all, you wouldn’t plan a large party and then go to the store without a shopping list. Yet we arrive at nurseries on the first warm spring day without a […]
September is often touted as the month when you can plant hardy perennials, shrubs and trees, giving their root systems a good start while the soil is warm. Even if you’re already thinking about restocking the greenhouse, you can still prepare your outdoor garden by adding amendments, and loosening the ground to get a jump-start […]
Summer’s horticultural bounty makes it easy to decorate your home with the contents of your garden and greenhouse. But annual and perennial flowers are not the only candidates for the best displays. Alongside your favorite black-eyed Susans, lilies, and bunches of sweetly scented roses, consider adding colorful foliage, boughs and berries from shrubs and grasses […]
Each year a moment arrives when your garden calls out to be photographed. Suddenly those cascading branches of ‘Snowmound’ spirea create a colorful explosion next to vivid yellow daylilies and bright purple sparks of chive blossoms. Get out the camera! But how can you create a shot that rivals those fabulous magazine photos? Over the […]
Grafted what? OK, as home gardeners, most of us are familiar with grafting apples, roses or grapes for disease resistance and vigor. But right now, around the world—from Japan to India, Israel to Greece and New Zealand—commercial growers are grafting hybrid rootstocks (bottoms) to single-season scions (tops) like watermelons, eggplants or tomatoes. Within a few […]
Just imagine, box loads of free plants from major growers arriving on your doorstep each spring. Oh boy. That’s my favorite garden writer’s perk—the chance to trial new plants a year or two before they hit the market. However, when I first started writing about gardens, I was uncomfortable receiving what some term “swag” from […]
Think of the delight of stepping into a greenhouse, surrounded by the sights and scents of flowering plants. Now, I invite you to expand that greenhouse experience into a field walk, moving through acres of flowers that spread to the horizon like a colorful sea. It’s a gardening joy like no other. But growers rarely […]
I’ve never met an indoor garden show I didn’t like. From Philadelphia to San Francisco, Boise to Atlanta—each show floor is like a huge greenhouse, creating garden magic in the middle of winter. I love the smell of bark mulch in the morning, the scents of early-blooming shrubs, the color and drama, both in the […]
In wintertime, the greenhouse is in its glory with colorful and glowing plants. It takes good care—water, heat and light—for these greenhouse beauties to survive. But just beyond the glass, the landscape stretches in patterns of gray and brown, every branch and drooping evergreen leaf outlined in a thin casing of ice. What mechanisms make […]
