How has your garden changed in 30 years? How has your life changed in 30 years? As a person who moved every two or three years (on average) for the first four sevenths of my life, I was stunned to realize that Henry and I have been in Heath for 30 years! And that means, that on May 22, today, I celebrate my 30th anniversary as garden columnist for The Recorder. It was a happy day for me…
The bumbleebees are buzzin' in the wisteria blossoms, and all kinds of bugs are biting me around my eyes, behind my ears and in the middle of my back where I can swat or scratch. It got so bad that in the heat of the day yesterday, I retired to the house for iced tea and a dip into Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles (Knopf $29.95). I was entranced the first time I picked up this book and began…
A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King, But God be with the Clown-- Who ponders this tremendous scene-- This whole Experiment in Green-- As if it were his own! Emily Dickinson Spring madness was in the air when I trekked to the New York Botanical Garden for the special exhibit Emily Dickinson’s Garden: Poetry in Flowers. Two rooms of the stunning Enid E. Haupt Conservatory were given over to interpretations of the gardens…
Yesterday my husband, Henry, and I went out to The Curtis House in Ashfield to film a session with Gloria Pacosa of Gloriosa & Co. and Trillium Workshops fame for the Shelburne Falls Cable TV show Over The Falls. The subject was how to make beautiful container plantings. Mine is the red arrangement and Gloria's is one of fifteen herbal containers that she is making for a wedding next weekend. The show will be aired first on May…
The weather is wretched here today. No need to pretend, and I go window shopping with Le Flaneur. Pretend the weather is impossible and while away some time perusing these sites – no need to buy a thing, but it’s always beneficial to have a notion of just where you might find something when the need arises: Seibert-Rice offers a vast and expensive array of pots. What appeals is the robustness and visual strength of their designs. Pot rims…
The Flaneur du Pays continues his disquision on Containers. Materials Pots and containers are available in all the materials that a sculptor might employ: woods, metals (zinc seems to be the current favorite), clay, and recently fiberglass and synthetic resins. The natural materials remain the most aesthetically pleasing, but utility, lightness of weight and weather-durability all have their virtues as well and this is why the newer materials must be considered. These materials have, like the plants they’ll…
My friend, the Flaneur du Pays, is an architect and claims to be more of a vicarious gardener than a knees in the dirt type, but he has a lot to say about cachepots, jardinaires, urns and plain old pots. He will be guest posting from his cottage moderne set amid a grove of trees, in sight of a salt marsh and Long Island Sound, for a couple of days while I put my knees in the dirt.…
Last Sunday was muddy and dreary but the group that gathered in front of the blazing fire at Curtis House in Ashfield was as bright and sunny as a summer day. We had all gathered to have Jeff Farrell, Gloria Pacosa and Lisa Newman, the newly formed Trillium Workshops, teach us how we could all have cutting gardens to fill our houses with fresh flowers while leaving our flower borders intact. These three friends came together hardly more…
April 5, 1974 The air was soft, the ground still cold. In the dull pasture where I strolled Was something I could not believe. Dead grass appeared to slide and heave, Though still too frozen flat to stir, And rocks to twitch, and all to blur. What was this rippling of the land? Was matter getting out of hand And making free with natural law? I stopped and blinked, and then I saw A fact as eerie as…
Probably the first thing I knew about Beatrix Farrand is that she was the niece of Edith Wharton, and designed the approach to Wharton's home, The Mount, in the Berkshires. Although she did not have anything to do with the rest of the gardens, I cannot believe that Aunt and Niece did not sit together and talk about what might be done during the years she lived there, 1902-1911. When you have talent in the family, surely it would be…