Two Garden Styles – Two Books

  • Post published:02/12/2011
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Every gardener is an individual with different dreams, desires, skills, interests – and constraints. Thus every garden is unique reflecting those differences.  William Robinson (1838-1935) was a British gardener who propounded a new flower garden aesthetic, away from hundreds of annuals being bedded out each season, to a wilder, more informal planting of perennials, shrubs and trees, many of them natives. He wrote several books, most notably the influential  The Wild Garden. That book went through several editions.…

Ice Persists

  • Post published:01/20/2011
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Icing on the Lawn Beds. Iced lilacs. The long road to home. It's a long time til spring.

Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

  • Post published:12/24/2010
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The need to find symbols for eternal mysteries lies deep in the human family. At this time of the year the landscape is bare and frozen. All the life of nature seems to be frozen and dead. Gone is the verdant green, brilliantly colored flowers, rushing waters. The days grow ever shorter; even the sun seems to be failing. Ever since the beginning of time humans have faced the terror of this seeming death and looked for hope.…

Three Shades of Autumn

  • Post published:11/04/2010
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The brilliant colors of fall have blown away, but there is still a richness to the autumnal woodlands that I drive through every day. The sun was warm and low in the sky when I took these photos yesterday, but I know that warmth is ebbing. The day began with the lowest temperatures, 26 degrees,  so far this season. And yet, even though the cosmos and salvias finally gave up the ghost, there is still a bit of…

Heath School Gardens

  • Post published:09/02/2010
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Over at Garden Rant Mary Gray's guest rant bewailed the state of many school grounds, all concrete and lawn. I am very familiar with the school grounds that she describes, but I feel fortunate that the children in our small town have a very different school experience. The Heath Elementary School, which opened in 1996, was built in a pasture surrounded by woodland. When the school bus pulls off the dirt road onto the driveway it passes a…

A Search for Shade

  • Post published:07/10/2010
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Gardens can change overnight, as many people learned after the great May storm that took down so many large trees.  Those who had treasured their trees for the serene shade they provided, and the cooling they often brought to the house, found themselves in a new situation that could not soon be remedied. Marty and Jan McGuane’s cool shady garden became a hot sunny garden  less dramatically, but with the same result. “We had a beautiful and very…