Community

Electric Scooters: Efficient Transport. Ridiculous Fun.

By |2019-02-10T15:36:00+00:00February 10th, 2019|

Three weeks ago while attending the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show (MANTS) in Baltimore and walking the streets of that city in between meetings and meet-ups, I noticed that teenagers were being careless and leaving electric scooters on sidewalks for responsible pedestrians like myself to trip over. After my fifth encounter, I peered a little closer [...]

Planting For Pollinators? Let the Neighborhood Know!

By |2018-08-09T16:11:31+00:00August 10th, 2018|

  Gardeners are proud of their gardens for a host of different reasons. Some gardeners spend a great deal of time blending or contrasting color schemes.  Others love creating secret rooms or impressive hardscaping. But if you’re a gardener that spends just as much time watching the creatures that pollinate your garden as planting the [...]

Nursery Spotlight: What’s Old Is New Again at Mar-Lu View

By |2018-07-06T20:07:00+00:00July 6th, 2018|

There’s something new on Frederick County’s plant scene. Perhaps you’ve seen signs in your neighborhood, pointing you in the direction of a garden center that you’ve heard about, but never visited.  Perhaps you’ve been driving along a country road in Jefferson only to screech to a halt in front of a wild and wonderful assortment [...]

Nursery Spotlight: Lilypons Offers a Cooling Start to The Summer

By |2018-07-06T21:55:16+00:00July 6th, 2018|

  As hot days and warm nights begin to color the pages of July, there are very few nurseries with display gardens that can boast of peak season. But then, there are very few that have devoted their businesses to the pleasures of the water garden – and July is National Water Gardening Month for [...]

Nursery Spotlight: Music, Inspiration and Retail Therapy at Surreybrooke

By |2018-06-22T13:19:23+00:00June 22nd, 2018|

Join me in this series as I visit some of Frederick County, Maryland’s finest independent garden centers to find out what makes them unique. Finding and buying plants that you love is often much more pleasurable than figuring out how to successfully incorporate them into your landscape once you get home.  We all struggle with [...]

Nursery Spotlight: Brews and Blooms at Thanksgiving Farms

By |2018-06-15T15:15:37+00:00June 15th, 2018|

Shopping for plants is good.  Shopping for heirloom vegetables is even better.  But when you combine those plants and veggies with a hand-crafted beer, then add a band, a food truck and a lot of loungeable patio furniture on a weekend in the summer, you have the makings of Heaven on earth. That’s the vibe [...]

Gokhale’s Got My Back

By |2018-05-17T17:01:47+00:00May 17th, 2018|

Over the last year, I have dealt with chronic back problems for the first time in my life. Over the last three months I have, for the most part, solved those problems with the help of a miracle-working book and its miracle-working author, Esther Gokhale.  So this week’s column is not a call for sympathy, [...]

Ashes to Ashes: The Legacy of The Emerald Ash Borer

By |2018-03-24T15:04:45+00:00March 23rd, 2018|

About two years ago in the early winter months, I spied three pileated woodpeckers on an ash tree outside my office window and immediately felt like an Audubon rock star.  These are large, colorful birds – the sight of which gives the amateur birder a feeling of accomplishment. The sight of three sent this ignoramus [...]

A Better Black Friday

By |2018-02-20T20:40:44+00:00November 20th, 2017|

Whether we have fully accepted it or not, the holiday season officially kicks off the day after Thanksgiving. You may reject the idea of Big Box lines at 2am for unnecessary gadgets and must-have technology (I do), but – completely against your will – you may also find yourself getting just a little excited at [...]

Gardens Bring Buffalo Back to Life: A Story of Urban Renewal

By |2018-02-20T20:40:46+00:00August 16th, 2017|

Are you struggling with the neighborhood in which you live?  Are the 'cons' besting the 'pros' no matter how long you make that list?  Are promises of 'urban renewal' by elected officials merely promises, or worse, unsophisticated attempts lacking vision and funding?  Most importantly, are you unable or unwilling to move? Maybe you have more [...]

Big Dreams, Small Garden

By |2020-09-07T22:46:33+00:00February 15th, 2017|

Over the last eight years, I have written many columns encouraging people to face the space in which they find themselves and to create the garden that lives within them. Particularly in the midst of the difficult economic period of the last decade. Disturbingly, one of the things that I often heard when I initially [...]

The Food-Waste Disconnect

By |2018-02-20T20:41:01+00:00December 8th, 2016|

A perfect storm of circumstance ended in a coffee-filled rant on Facebook on Friday, and while I stand by those words (many of which were capitalized, and none of which were sensitive), it is convenient to have the luxury of a newspaper column to formulate a more civilized, if no less provocative, response. The topic [...]

Urban Chickens: The bigger picture

By |2018-02-20T20:41:10+00:00August 18th, 2015|

Urban chickens a nuisance? I had four in this coop and no one ever knew... Well, the chickens have won. Not of course the literal chickens, exiled as pets by virtue of prejudice and ignorance, but the figurative chickens – our local leaders who would rather stand obstinately on a disintegrating platform than [...]

Title

Go to Top