While shopping at the Greenfield Farmers Market last year I met Danielle Smith at her Wild Rose Flower Farm booth. I found the name of her farm, Wild Rose, irresistible, of course, and she was always surrounded by a bounty of lovely spring bulbs, and later an array of dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers, delphiniums and all manner of other annuals. At the Winter Market I bought a wonderful wreath to hang on our new front door. All this summer…
There are more autumnal blooms in my garden than I expected. I am trying to capture many of them for my climate record. We expect autumnal blooms like asters, but surprises are like the roses and zinnias. Asters and beesBy the time the sun came out and warmed the garden the bees came out to forage. There are still plenty of pollinators in the garden when the sun is out. Other blooming plants include coneflowers, geraniums, cardinal flower,…
Do you have a favorite chair? Is it near a window? Does your dining table sit near a window? Do you enjoy the view from your window? Oddly, our new house in Greenfield does not have many windows that look out at the garden. Only one upstairs window (in my office) gives a view of the back yard. The kitchen window is too high to see much of anything except the most westerly area of the garden. Fortunately…
The view of the new garden from the office at the beginning of May shows a good recovery from April snow and frigid temperatures. You can see the nearly wood filled hugel at the back border. A big May project was collection logs for the hugel at the west end of the garden. This load came one of the two Hawley friends who donated logs to the project. We are so lucky to have good Hawley friends -…
Annual climbing vines add an important dimension to any garden. We have trees reaching for the sky and flowers and vegetables covering the ground. Climbing vines as simple as scarlet runner beans or morning glories and as elegant as clematis add something very special to our gardens. I have a friend who made a small arbor for herself in the middle of her garden, where she put a chair to give herself someplace to rest between bouts…
It is easy and fun to start seeds indoors. Seeds are just magical - tiny bits of stuff that can turn into a delicious fruit or vegetable or gorgeous flower with only the help of a little soil, sun and rain. That magic is available to us all. All of us can plant seeds, and wave our magic wands to keep ourselves busy while we watch the magic show produced by Mother Earth, Father Sun and Sister Rain.…
While browsing the web for information about plant hunter Augustine Henry I found a Daily Telegraph story about zinnias in space - space horticulture! Major Tim Peake, the UK's first astronaut has coaxed a zinnia into bloom in a micro-gravity environment. The seeds were planted by NASA's Scott Kelly as part of VEG-O1 to see what plants might grow in this environment. Lettuce was planted - harvested and eaten by the crew of the International Space Station earlier this…
The Heath Fair is over. Facebook is full of photos of kids going off to college and kindergarten for the first time. You can hardly get into the supermarkets for the ranks of rigidly potted containers of mums by the doors. It must be fall. Time for an autumnal arrangement. Chrysanthemums are certainly the iconic autumnal plant, but other plants can also perk up our summer weary gardens or containers. I took a tour around the area…
Salvia 'Hot Lips' seems to be a really hot plant this summer. Several of these flowers are in bloom on the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, and I have a couple blooming on my hellstrip in Greenfield. Visitors to the Bridge have written and asked the name of this beautiful shrub. It took me a while to identify it because I think of it as an annual and not a shrub. However, Monrovia Nursery calls it a…
My drought tolerant perennials: Russian sage, cosmos, coneflowers, and phloxI need water loving plants, but I have not forgotten that many need drought tolerant perennials. Some gardeners have soil that drains quickly, and we all fret about summer months when no rain falls, or have periods of very hot weather of the kind we’ve enjoyed recently. Fortunately there is a long list of plants that do not mind long periods of hot and dry weather. Some of them…