Tramping through a collage of browned and yellowed tulip poplar leaves on my way to the front door today I realized I have absolutely no desire or plans to sweep them up. Though they are testament to a very dry summer in my part of the Mid-Atlantic, they also symbolize the end of a busy [...]
There are just a few days of August left, and though it almost seems futile to discuss the month in terms of its garden life, I find myself finally with an hour or two to do just that. And, as Christopher Lloyd once said, the time to do a thing is when you have time [...]
July. The exuberance of spring is over, and gardeners are looking at the remains of a pretty good party. But whether your garden looks hungover or not depends on the planting you did in the spring. Let's hope it included some flowering heat survivors such as echinacea, black-eyed susan, liatris, pelargonium, goldenrod, verbascum, daylily, [...]
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 [...]
One of the most popular talks I've been giving lately deals with maintenance and balancing one’s life with one’s garden – more specifically, not taking on a project that creates six new maintenance projects in the foreseeable hereafter when the lifeboat is already taking on water. And to those watching me bounce around the podium, [...]
It’s disconcerting to realize your plants are bigger. A lot bigger. When a tree or shrub finally grips the earth with a committed heart and gets down to the business of seriously growing, the gardener can instinctively feel the change. And it’s frightening. This Edgeworthia chrysantha doesn't look like much its second [...]
By the beginning of April, seed starting has been featuring heavily on the gardener’s weekend to-do list, claiming what little time we have between catch-up laundry and filing the dreaded 1040. By the time we finally draw breath and look around at the new life perhaps springing out of hedgerow and front walkway, it has [...]
The wind storms of late have added substantially to workloads out here. I’d only just finished with the last of the planting when toppled pots forced me to dig two large holes yesterday to house now homeless dwarf arborvitae. I resented every minute of it – not least of all because there are two far [...]
