From Margaret Roach to Niki Jabbour, I’ve been asked to do many podcasts and radio shows over the last few months due to the publication of Tropical Plants and How To Love them – opportunities for which I’m extremely grateful. I’ve enjoyed each one of them tremendously. My kids would say that this is because [...]
At the top of my driveway, slightly hidden on a south-facing slope that could less generously be termed a rocky mound, there is a small gathering of snowdrops and eranthis that in a few short months will poke up amongst the stones and the chickweed. This grouping is visible only to those that pass our [...]
I like to bend the rules once I’ve learned them. It makes me a better gardener – even if it ends in failure. And through hard experience, I’ve learned a few unconventional things about planting bulbs that I’d like to share with you. Apart from one or two of them, the following ten tips aren’t [...]
October remains my favorite month. No doubt I have said that of May -- and might do so again during a particularly charming spring, but October will always possess a deep resonance that May cannot muster. At once it immerses us in the sights, scents and bounty of the growing season, and then just as [...]
Ever ready to object when I hear the word ‘pretentious’ used to condemn something that might warrant a deeper conversation and a bottle of wine, I have recently found myself defending the practice of naming one’s garden to [apparently] less pretentious gardening friends; and I thought that it might be worth throwing out the topic [...]
Effusive, late-season displays of color become harder to come by as the days become cooler, which is why I enjoy growing the bright, carefree wands of windflower in my garden, and always make room for their clumping foliage between other spring and summer flowering perennials. Paired with berried shrubs, reddening foliage, maturing tropicals, and other [...]
I can't resist a challenge. And neither, apparently can Scott Beuerlein of Horticulture & Garden Rant. Thus, my rebuttal to his rebuttal to...well, you get it. She-devil? Me? Somewhere near the bottom of every writer's artistic license, a clever wordsmith will find the following recommendation: "Comically exaggerating the position of one's opponent is encouraged in [...]
September has suddenly turned. Last night on the deck we ate an al fresco dinner of bratwurst, sauerkraut and apples with heaps of coarse mustard on warmed plates and I found myself thinking out loud about a large fire in the hearth on the other side of the window. My husband stared at me wordlessly [...]
It’s Thanksgiving morning. What have you forgotten? You’ve thrown the turkey in the oven, the stuffing is made and on its way to being glorious, and your sister is bringing the rolls and jello. In a few minutes the game and/or parade will start blaring from the living room and you can start to relax. [...]
“We lost too many plants in our impatience to possess them, because we had not achieved the proper growing conditions.” - Beth Chatto, The Beth Chatto Handbook _______________________________ If ever a sentence deserves a garden writers' gold medal for excellence and simplicity, it is this one, written decades ago by gardener and garden designer, the [...]
Gird your loins with a bit of Under Armour and tuck in a Hot Hands pack. The forecasters have consulted the Oracle and it looks like those of us in the Mid-Atlantic may be in for a cold, snowy winter. Or not. It’s tough to fault them for throwing something out there, no [...]
Well, we're square in the middle of the autumn season. I hope you’re enjoying your garden right now and not thinking too much about the end of it. These last little drops of fall are to be savored – after all, they are what we will remember when the January banshees start to scream. [...]
In a corner of my office under a table sporting a large philodendron and other miscellaneous greenery, there sits a large, gifted stack of ‘70’s era Horticulture magazines waiting quietly for a rainy day and the resident gardener who finds enjoyment in such things. That metaphorical day arrived last week – for the literal one [...]
Fresh from an exhaustive three weeks driving 1800 miles to tour British gardens and their associated tea rooms, I am full of ideas and inspiration for next year’s planting schemes. The British know how to do it. The hype is real. But what exactly is that ‘it’ comprised of? Cottagey color? Architectural hedging? Jam covered [...]
Pumpkins. Cinnamon. Wood fires and Robert Frost. With familiar regularity, autumn evokes in us an emotional response and draws us back to center as winter approaches. It softens the knowledge of what is to come and gives us time (if we choose to take it) to reflect on what has been. I think this is [...]
Peering out of the windows of my office, I see the two-story blackened, shredded tips of a hardy banana (Musa basjoo), and I am reminded of the work to be done this week to its less hardy cousins. Is it really that time already? Musa basjoo, the night before frost. In my weaker [...]
For reasons that are at once both simple and ridiculous, I recently managed to injure my foot in the middle of a four week walking tour of British and French gardens. Occasionally in this life, the devil seizes the wheel, and one must laugh heartily at the abrupt change of plan or find oneself bested. [...]
There are no adventures quite as adventurous as reclaiming the garden after a long absence abroad – and during the height of the growing season no less. From bewilderment to bloodshed to tears, it has been an interesting week. Moreover, there are still miles to go before I sleep, and the winter is not drawing [...]
By the time you read these words, I’ll be gone. I might add, “to a higher place,” but that wouldn’t sit very well with those who consider American gardens to be the best in the world. I don’t necessarily think of any country’s gardens as ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than those of any other, but it [...]
“Plant for foliage!” is a term you have probably heard a great deal over the last few years. But then you’ve probably also heard “Plant for pollinators!” and more than likely you’ve heard both slogans here (though I do try and stay away from the excessive use of exclamation marks in my proselytizing). But if [...]
