Greenfield – It’s a Beautiful Town

  • Post published:08/30/2019
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To my eyes Greenfield becomes more beautiful every year. Many homes have less grass and more flower gardens that bring smiles to passers-by. There are flowering trees everywhere in the spring. Baystate Franklin Hospital, Greenfield Savings Bank and others have beautiful public plantings. One new public garden is specifically designed to support pollinators, the birds and the bees. This Meadow Garden was planted and is being maintained by volunteers in front of the John Zon Community Center on…

Garden Books – Gardens Around the World and in Our Imagination

  • Post published:08/23/2019
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Gardenlust by Christopher Woods The first of the garden books I've been reading is Gardenlust: A Botanical Tour of the World’s Best New Gardens by Christopher Woods (Timber Press $40). Gardenlust is a beautiful book with stunning photographs of amazing gardens. Woods has very specifically chosen fifty gardens created in the past twenty years. There are gardens from North America, mostly the U.S., then on to the other Americas, Europe, Africa, India, Asia and Australia and New Zealand.…

Mysterious Mutant rudbeckia Blooms in Orange, Massachusetts

  • Post published:08/18/2019
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In mid-July I received an email from Peter Guertin in Orange who told me about the mutant rudbeckias he had growing in his garden. He included several photos of those mutant rudbeckias. One looked like a smile in the middle of the flower. One looked like a fat caterpillar growing across the center of the blossom. One blossom had two black eyes, almost back to back creating two attached blossoms. They were very odd flowers indeed. I was…

Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day – August 15, 2019

  • Post published:08/15/2019
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It's been quite a year in the garden here in western Massachusetts. A long wet spring has led to a hot dry summer. I dug out our sprinkler and put it to  use. The butterflies and bees have been visiting the cardinal plants which made me happyl The Aesclepius is  right next to the cardinal flowers and they are very  good friends. The daylilies are nearly done in this bed but the rudbeckia and phlox will get us…

Green Man Has Watched Over the Green World for Eons

  • Post published:08/11/2019
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Many of us have seen an image of the Green Man, his face made of hawthorn leaves and acorns, symbols of fertility. Many of us have no idea of why such an image might exist. And yet this ancient symbol was found in cultures older than the Roman empire, expressions of birth and death. The carving of a Green Man in what is now Iraq may date from as early as 300 BCE (Before the Common Era). There…

Christin Couture – Nearest Faraway Place Exhibit in Northampton

  • Post published:08/03/2019
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The title of Christin Couture’s Nearest Faraway Place exhibit might sound confusing to many people. For Christin Couture that Place is about more than a shadowy woodland, and rushing river water. “The view is like a theater. A theater is always changing. This view I have is of the changing seasons and weather.  I never tire of this scene. The location is the anchor of all the paintings. Everything else is changeable,” she said. For nearly 15 years…

Review and View from the Office on July 29, 2019 Renew in Process

  • Post published:08/01/2019
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I have not been keeping up with my monthly view from "the office." My plan was to keep track of the weather, and the growth and changes in the garden. When we bought out house the view was very much like this, so we knew there was a lot of wet in the backyard. We are still learning how very wet and flooding it can be. We did not welcome snow in March. We were glad to watch…