Two weeks in, welcome to 2022!! A very Happy New Year to you all. Of all the of the canned New Year's wisdom that comes out between December 26th and the first week of January, my favorite one casts the upcoming year as an autobiography with 365 pages to fill - and encourages us all [...]
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 [...]
I have received more than a few emails from readers wondering why I haven’t been more active on this blog over the last three months. And for some reason – guilt perhaps – the latest, thoughtful, “Is everything okay?” once answered, did succeed in provoking a painful but involuntary spasm in somewhat atrophied blogging muscles. [...]
Three warrior species are battling for dominance on the hillside outside my kitchen window. It is a cliched phrase in the garden writer’s book of spells, but it is nonetheless apt. Tiny, passive – but aggressive – moves are made every minute under the soil while I wash dishes or sip my coffee or water [...]
The gardener will be busy this month, and find that the available hours to work bear no relation to the amount of work that needs to be done. That is the hallmark of the June garden. In the Northern Hemisphere, we officially transition in June from the spring garden to the summer garden with the [...]
Over the last two winters, I’ve been engaged in a curious pursuit which has baffled some visitors but thrilled others – precisely the way I love to garden. I’m building habitat nests – and it’s one of the most satisfying and artistically fulfilling projects I’ve worked on in some time. The newest nest (still [...]
“What’s up with your book?” I’ve fielded this question from many readers lately. If you pre-ordered Tropical Plants and How To Love Them because you either read this post, or this article, or listened to this interview, or found out the book was ranked as Amazon’s number one new release in cool-climate gardening for many [...]
It’s the first day of spring and the bees are dead. After a long yesterday assessing the winter garden hangover – the deer-nibbled evergreens, the chicken-uprooted polygonatum, the muddy mess that will someday house new garden beds, but currently looks like the Somme in 1916 – this news hit me the hardest. Give me [...]
Spring or Winter? March is of two minds. I understand completely. Although this month marks a significant change in the weather going forward, that change brings with it many tasks for the gardener. Sometimes we feel up to hitting them hard and sometimes we could use a few more weeks of winter to prepare for [...]
There are few things more magical than a snowfall, and few terms more overused to describe it. Nonetheless, the cliché communicates the outright miracle of slowing a world that refuses to slow itself. As the flakes fall, and the cardinals and Jenny wrens bob back and forth from feeder to trees, I am entranced. 24 [...]
Much work, much love and not a few moments of sheer panic have gone into the beautiful book that you now see up on the website and on Instagram and Facebook. The industry reviews from both the US and the UK are in, and they are wonderful -- and humbling! But I'm not so humble [...]
The symbolic promise of a new year is not enough for me this time around. Normally happy to raise my glass and cheerfully throw out The Old as the clock ticks towards midnight, this year I am not so simple-minded as to think that the Fates look at December 31, 2020 and January 01, 2021 [...]
To walk through a young garden in winter is a courageous act when the garden is your own, and the budget, diminutive. We forget how much frosting the active growing season naturally spreads over an imperfect cake – or indeed, how much frosting the resourceful amongst us can whip up with the aid of dramatic, [...]
At this time of year there is much advice floating around to “use natural materials” to create amazing holiday decorations cheaply. Indeed I’ve floated much of it myself. However, for the average suburban or urban dweller with little land at his or her disposal, it might not be second nature to make the most of [...]
December is a month of transition in the temperate gardener’s mind. I look at it like a well-deserved break and savor every second. It is a resting month in the Mid-Atlantic garden, which is certainly convenient as it is not a resting month in any other part of our lives. The holiday season – frantic [...]
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. 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 suddenly, releases [...]
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 [...]
