Peter Kukielski knows how to grow roses without chemicals and I have learned a little about disease resistant roses over the past 30 years. One thing I love about our Annual Rose Viewing is the chance to tell visitors that you do not need an arsenal of chemicals to grow healthy, beautiful roses. I did not always know this. My rose education began when we moved to Heath in 1979. In my admiration for Katherine White, wife…
The day has been warmer, briefly, but windy and with an icy shower. I refused to think about it. I am thinking about Roses. I am thinking about Rachel's Rose which I wrote about here. Rachel's Rose is an old trouble-free farmhouse rose, name forever lost, but there are now new trouble-free roses available with a long season of bloom Peter Kukielski, former curator of the NYBG Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, is the man to tell you about…
There are many shades of white in this world. Snow white is what I have been looking at for three frigid months now, but I dream of shades of white for spring and summer. First come the snowdrops - as white as snow. A very welcome white. Rhododendrons bloom towards the end of May, but 'Boule de Neige' (Snowball) has a memory of the white winter. Somehow this pristine white seems prettier than the snow. High summer and…
We are not slaves to the calendar at our house. If you cannot buy any of these gift books for delivery before Christmas, who cares? I still want to remind you of three different types of books that would make great gifts. Groundbreaking Food Gardens (Storey $19.95) by Niki Jabbour will indeed give you 73 plans that will change the way you garden. If you have limited space or no land at all you can grow a container…
My first blog post went up on December 6, 2007, which means I have seven happy years to celebrate on this blogoversary. In that first post I wondered whether 67 was too old to begin blogging. I guess I didn't need to worry. I don't have statistics until 2010, but since then I have written 1582 posts and received over 6000 comments. I don't feel a day older and there are many new ideas and plants, and gardeners out…
The Roses at the End of the Road is a collection of essays written about our life at the End of the Road. We found our way to Heath in 1979 and located a tumbledown farmhouse at the end of a town road. My husband checked that fact many times. What people think is our driveway is nearly a quarter mile of town road, plowed and maintained by the town. After the big snowstorm in 1982 when the…
As I‘ve worked to put my gardens to bed this fall I’ve also been thinking about gardens and how they came to take this form, and how any garden takes form. Some people plan a garden in one fell swoop. Or have someone do it for them. But I think for most of us we begin slowly and one step follows another. Which is a good thing because we learn about our site, and about ourselves as…
Garden Blogger's Bloom Day arrives this October after two hard freezes. The trees are richly adorned adding most of the garden color at this time of the year. The roses are very nearly done, but Thomas Affleck, right near the door, has nearly a dozen blossoms left. In the rest of the garden there are a few scattered rugosa blossoms, and The Fairy is still making a bit of magic. This is the second year for Sedum 'Neon."…
Fantin-Latour was so famous for his paintings of roses that they named a rose after him. Ignace Henri Theodore Fantin-Latour was born in 1836 and died in 1904. He is known for his flower paintings, but he also did many portraits. Though many of his friends were Impressionists, he held to a more conservative style. Fantin-Latour, the rose, grows in my garden, not in an ideal spot, but he endures and blooms beautifully in late June. I saw…
On this July Garden Bloggers Bloom Day the Daylily Bank is just starting to come into bloom. By August my garden in the upper elevations of Western Massachusetts should be filled with gentle, but riotous color. At the same time there is still enough rose bloom to be enjoyed from our dining table. The Buckland rose bush began a little late and so is quite floriferous now. The same is true of the Meideland red, and white, as…