Chasing the Rose to Heaven in Your Own Garden

  • Post published:07/05/2014
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Chasing the Rose: An Adventure in the Venetian Countryside (Knopf 26.95) is Andrea di Robilant’s quest for the name of a rose that grew on his family’s former estate near Venice. His journey took him from the wild overgrown park on the estate that had left his family decades before, to Eleanora Garlant and her rose garden, the largest in Italy with 1500 roses, as well as tales of his great-great-great-great grandmother Lucia with her love and knowledge…

Greenfield and Hawley Garden Tours – Saturday. June 28

  • Post published:06/27/2014
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Tomorrow, Saturday June 28 is Tour Day! Next weekend will be filled with an embarrassment of garden riches. On Saturday, June 28 the Greenfield Garden Club and the Sons and Daughters of Hawley will be hosting unique garden tours. The Greenfield Garden Club Tour includes gardens where lawns have been removed, pollinators have been welcomed, fruit trees have been planted, perennials bloom lushly, and water and sculpture create a beautiful space. There is also a special opportunity, for…

The Annual Rose Viewing – Sunday, June 29

  • Post published:06/22/2014
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Preparations for the Annual Rose Viewing got off to a slow start. May was so cold that the roses weren't leafing out on schedule. I knew there would be winterkill, but I couldn’t tell where it began. Then June arrived and the roses must have felt they needed to put on some speed.  Leaves, buds and even a few blossoms arrived almost at the same time. Now I am pruning out winterkill. One of the mysteries of pruning…

A Paradise Garden in Turners Falls

  • Post published:06/20/2014
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Ed McAvoy (88) and Lynn Hoffman ('nearly 90') are peeking into their paradise garden in Turners Falls. When Lynn and Ed built their little suite in the house belonging to Ed's daughter, they knew they had to have a garden. When I saw it I was reminded that the word paradise originally came from the old Persian word for a walled compound. This small walled garden shows that paradise can exist at any size. There is room for…

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day – June 15- 2014

  • Post published:06/15/2014
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On this sunny, cool (72 degrees) but breezy, Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, bloom is beginning to arrive. These stocks are in the Herb Bed right in front of the house, where there is also an array of potted geraniums, petunias and such. They are not doing terribly well because the weather remains so cool. Calsap will stand in for all the plants in the corner that have gone by, the 2 tree peonies, as well as Boule de…

Winterkill – Despair or Hope

  • Post published:05/21/2014
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Lilacs seem to know nothing of winterkill. This long harsh winter was as nothing to these ancient lilacs. The same cannot be said for the wisteria. Winterkill in its most serious form has hit here. There is always a little winterkill, but there should be some sign of life by this time in the spring. No such luck. This might very well be the end of the wisteria as the provider of shade on the piazza. The Thomas…

Applejack Rose – A Hardy Griffith Buck Rose

  • Post published:04/11/2014
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Applejack is a wonderful rose, growing on a graceful bush about 7 or 8 feet tall with single pink flowers. It doesn't begin blooming until mid-June but I had to cheer myself up with a post and picture of a pretty pink country rose because winter is not relenting easily. The weatherman teases and promises 60 degree days and sun, but each afternoon I finally give up and build a fire in the wood stove. Griffith Buckwas a great…

Peter Kukielski and the Sustainable Rose

  • Post published:03/27/2014
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The April 2014 issue of Fine Gardening magazine has an article by Peter Kukielski, former curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden titled Easy Picture Perfect Roses.  Peter knows all about 'Easy' roses because during his tenure at that garden he ripped out 200 or so of the roses in the garden that needed pesticides and fungicides to survive and then replaced them with 693 roses that did not need that kind…

A Heath Calendar for 2014 – Some Flowers

  • Post published:01/14/2014
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My Heath Calendar cannot begin with flowers. The only flowers at the End of the Road are a few Christmas cactus blooms and a wonderful pink cyclamen. February is still cold and snowy. This 'possum found shelter and a snack in the compost bin next to the hen house. March and still no blooms in Heath. Still the Talcott Greenhouse at Mt. Holyoke College and the Lyman Plant House at Smith College are full of bloom and hope…

Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day – October 2013

  • Post published:10/14/2013
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  On this Garden Blogger's Bloom Day in my Massachusetts hilltop garden we have  come through only one good frost, but the garden is slowly falling to sleep. Thomas Affleck is still blooming, and sporadic blossoms are still being thrown out by The Fairy, Meideland red and white, Hawkeye Belle and Knock Out Double Red. Grandpa Ott is a morning glory that is still blooming, in front of the house and down in the Potager, as we grandly…