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, [...]
Muttering to oneself in the garden must have been at an all-time high this week. Quite apart from the fact that it is July and there is mandatory muttering to be done after the expensive party that is spring, having to endure day after day of high heat and cloudless skies is enough to coax [...]
Temperatures are rising, and motivation to cultivate the garden around us is dropping – even if such cultivation is as simple as waving a hose over a tasteful assortment of patio pots. Verbascum thapsus colonizing the site of a crumbled bank barn. You are no doubt seeing the beginnings of stress [...]
“I’ve got a column for you,” said my well-dressed host as we toured his garden not so long ago. I gave him my full attention – Calliope isn’t consistently cooperative each week and one must seize upon inspiration whenever it is offered. “How,” he said, inserting a dramatic pause, “can we make August exciting?” [...]
I can’t remember which of the many gardening books I was reading the day I jubilantly came across the statement, “If you can garden in the Mid-Atlantic you can garden anywhere.” My self-satisfied smirk widened further when I realized that the author wasn’t even a Mid-Atlantic gardener himself. This gave his words great gobs of [...]
