GARDENERS LIKE TO COMPLAIN about the weather, so I will: Looks like my Garden Conservancy Open Day tomorrow (Saturday, June 2 from 10-4) will be a very soggy one, adding to 1.7 inches of rain that fe...
I KNOW, I KNOW: Why can’t it just last; why does it all have to start to flop and fade and fall apart? The spring garden, that is. June is the month when spring turns to summer—often well before the ...
THE OTHER NIGHT a newt ambled in after supper as if to join us for dessert. That morning, a pair of garter snakes had poked their heads up, periscope-style, from a stone wall. And nonstop frogpond ma...
THE ALLIUMS WERE OFF THIS YEAR HERE (too wet last summer and fall when many summer-dormant kinds want to be dry), but I’m having a good peony crop in 2012. What about you? If your peonies are l...
MY BEANS AND LETTUCE replant themselves most years, and when some sprouted recently—volunteers, but who knows what they’d produce in the end—it got me thinking: I ought to learn to save seed in a sli...
I WENT SHOPPING SATURDAY at a giant annual plant fair nearby, making a beeline to the bromeliad department, a.k.a. the booth of Dave Burdick’s Daffodils and More. I know, bromeliads are not related t...
TWO CLASS SESSIONS FULL OF YOU visited yesterday to talk about container gardening, but for those who didn’t take the workshop in person, a recap seemed in order since it’s that time: everything into...
IT FEELS LONELY IN HERE, or at least it will by the end of the week when the last of the children (some larger than I am) are all outdoors at summer camp. You’re absolutely right, Andre Jordan;...
I AM ALWAYS FASCINATED to hear what visitors comment or ask about on Garden Open Days, the first of which was Saturday and bought 275 new and old friends. I make a bet with myself on which plants it ...
FOR YEARS I HAVE WANTED to be able to see your gardens, too, and the to-do item labeled “get public photo-uploader plugin” has been on my website wishlist forever. (Don’t you love i...
SOME PARAGRAPHS NEED PUNCTUATION, and my garden’s like that–in need of the occasional exclamation point, specifically. So for the first time in 30ish years of gardening, I’ve gone and done it: ...
SATURDAY, MAY 12, from 10 AM to 4 PM is my first Garden Conservancy Open Day of the season, and I’m hoping to see lots of you. As further enticement, I’m pleased that Broken Arrow Nursery will be her...
I BROUGHT THEM HOME (WITH PERMISSION!) from Wave Hill, the public garden in the Bronx, a couple of decades ago: a few delightfully fuzzy, fat seedpods of celandine poppy from plants that brightened t...
IT’S HARD TO THINK OF ANOTHER TREE that gets more appreciation here from me and the birds. (And don’t forget: I know what birds like, even beyond crabapples.) This last week has been crabapple time o...
IALWAYS SAY THAT MAY IS MULTIPLE-CHOICE MONTH, but in 2012 I’m renaming it Mayhem Month, since that’s what it feels like after the hot-windy-dry-then-frozen April From Hell. It will be mayhem getting...
WE CALL IT ‘CONTAINED EXUBERANCE,’ the container-garden workshop that garden designer Bob Hyland and I do in May each year at my garden in the Hudson Valley of New York. You can buy a ticket for one ...
I WAS HONORED (AND A LITTLE STARTLED!) to see myself on top of the front page of the Garden Conservancy’s April newsletter–where they wrote about our history together and my plans for exp...
I DON’T RECALL A STRETCH of weather as erratic as the last year: nonstop 2011 rain; violent storms; nearly 2 feet of October snow but no winter precipitation; a dry-hot-extra-early spring, and ...
I AM ON THE ASPARAGUS DIET, because that’s what the garden has to offer at the moment: beautiful spears of tender asparagus. I like them tossed in olive oil and sea salt and roasted till nearly crisp...
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR: Everything seems to be coming up weeds. It can really help to know your opponent–and also, sometimes, simply to commiserate with other gardeners who are facing the...
I HAD WORD FROM OUT SOUTH DAKOTA WAY today that my friend Andre Jordan, master doodler, is soon to become a beekeeper, too–that he’s thinking meadow more than manicured backyard, and yes,...
I DON’T RECALL HOW I FOUND THEM—maybe it was while fixing something, or painting the house all those years ago. But for some reason I was down at ground level, peering under the floor of the front po...
IT PUSHES UP OUT of the ground all crazy-colored and not green, the way some of my favorite early-arising native woodlanders do presumably to disguise themselves from hungry awakening herbivores. And...
MULCH IS NOT A DECORATIVE ITEM, like carpeting or paint! If chosen carefully and applied properly, it’s the most important soil-building, plant-sustaining tool a gardener has. At this time of y...
I LEFT HOME LAST WEEK (without telling Jack first!) for a lecture in Baltimore, the farthest I’ve been from here in more years than I can recall. Besides a great crowd at the event held by the ...
THE ANNUAL RITUAL BEGINS: At tax time in the Northeast, we start our tomato seeds indoors, though many of you may be putting your seedlings out in the garden already or otherwise way ahead of me. Wha...
UNDER THE BRONZE FROG ‘PAPERWEIGHT’ (actually a door knocker that never met up with a door), there they are: The last week’s garden to-do lists, scrawled by a certain madwoman on re...
I KILLED, OR AT LEAST MAIMED, ITS UPRIGHT COUSIN. TWICE. But the prostrate-growing Japanese plum yew, Cephalotaxus harringtoniana ‘Prostrata,’ just keeps happily stretching its legs—and arms—on my ba...
THIS SIMPLY MAKES ME HAPPY. Talk about up close and personal, huh? Thanks as ever to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for letting us see such intimate views of the avian world. You may recall that the ...
IF IT EVER RAINS PROPERLY here, I know what I plan to do: divide and conquer! (Conquer beds, that is, with divided-up groundcovers.) A recap of some favorites that I rely on: 2 Ferns With More Lastin...
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