The Chanticleer gardens were created by the Rosengarten family beginning in the early 20th century; in 1993 it became a public garden and is considered one of the grand gardens of our country. On these frigid and snowy days I am happy to share my memories of a great garden on a blistering summer day last June. The Master Gardeners of Western Massachusetts arranged a tour for those gardeners who are always looking for more knowledge and inspiration.…
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born into a prominent Amherst family so everyone knew who she was. She attended the Amherst Academy and went on to the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (as it was called at the time) for a period before she went back home, to garden and write poetry. She was more known for her gardening than her poetry in those days; now she is more known for her poetry and her reclusiveness. In the spring of…
My frigid winter garden is peaceful, blanketed with snow. Mysterious tracks speak of the creatures that wander across the landscape, leaving hints of their dancing in the bright moonlight, or shifting shadows of the breezy day. Tiny birds frolic near the Norway spruce, and seem to be feasting on the spruce seeds left for them on the snow. My town winter garden is small, and very different from the fields of Heath, where the snow danced with the…
New cultivars and old favorites plants are a part of every garden. When I was a Girl Scout we sang a song with the line “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver but the other gold.” As I look out at my garden and look at the dawning of a new year, I am thinking about the new things I may plant and use in the garden, but I know there are certain things that…
December celebrations for all. Today is December 23. The Hanukkah celebration has concluded, Christmas is two days away, and Kwanzaa is three days away. December is a month of celebrations with traditions that lead us through the days. As I prepared for our own family Christmas I suddenly realized that the celebration of each of these holidays involves plants, plants which are essential in one way or another. Hanukkah is a moveable feast because, like Christian Easter, it…
December is a season for new Books, great for gift giving. Shawna Coronado has shared her gardening expertise in many ways on TV, on lecture tours and in her books like Grow a Garden Wall: Create Vertical Gardens with a Purpose, but in her new book The Wellness Garden she shares her own history with painful osteoarthritis and how she learned to change her lifestyle for better health. The Wellness Garden: Grow, Eat and Walk Your Way to…
Houseplants: The Complete Guide to Choosing, Growing and Caring for Indoor Plants by Lisa Eldred Steinkopf (Cool Springs Press $30) has a cool green and white cover
The Secret Gardeners – Britain’s Creatives Reveal Their Private Sanctuaries by Victoria Summerley with photographs by Hugo Rittson Thomas (Francis Lincoln $45) is a glamorous armchair tour of beautiful gardens created such creative people as Sir Richard Branson, Julian Fellowes, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rupert Everett, Sting and 20 other familiar and not so familiar British stars. Most of us don’t think we are engaged in garden design when we go out to plant a perennial bed or plant…
There has been a lot of emailing and telephoning among the women in my family as we plan the Thanksgiving dinner. This year, for the first time, it will be granddaughter Tracy and her husband who are hosting the feast. I got to thinking about where the makings of our holiday meal had come from over the years. When I was very young we lived on my Uncle Wally’s farm and much of our food was produced on…
It is hard to imagine that any family with young daughters is not familiar with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books which include Little House in the Big Woods, Life on the Shores of Silver Lake and the Little Town on the Prairie. Now, Marta McDowell who has written Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life and Emily Dickinson’s Gardens has come along to tell us the story of the Ingalls family’s life in her new book The…