This past Sunday I attended the Local Environmental  Action conference 2017 in Boston. One of the two keynote speakers was Kandi Mossett, a leading voice in the fight against climate change and environmental justice.  Unlike my experiences at most conferences I did not come home with a load of paper. I came home with a list of links which I will share. The Conference was organized by toxicsaction.org  Since 1987, Toxics Action Center organizers have worked side by…

The coming of spring has me looking at garden tour inspirations from the past. I love this shady Japanese scene in a garden in 2014. This water bowl in another garden shows that even a small garden with less piping and infrastructure can have  this Japanese feature with it shade loving ferns and other plants. I have always felt the serenity of green Japanese gardens which are designed for looking at, and quiet meditation. A garden tour in…

  The Beatles sang out “all you need is love, love, love”, an ancient philosophy not created by the Beatles, and it can play out in our gardens. As Valentine’s Day draws close the song is playing over and over in my head, combined with visions of Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate, otherwise known as Polygonum orientale. Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate is a fast growing five or six foot tall annual, loaded with graceful pendant pink flowers. This is a bushy sort of plant that…

Art in the garden. Art has had a place in the garden for centuries. Archeologists found pools, fountains and statuary in the ancient gardens of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Nowadays it would be hard to find any public garden or park that does not include art. We home gardeners have also found that we desire art in our gardens. Water is considered by many to be the most basic artistic element. By definition the Chinese garden includes water and…

Attractive and colorful seed packets are blooming in garden centers. The constant promise of seeds is that they will germinate and grow providing us with healthy foods, zesty herbs and colorful flowers. Some  companies like Burpee have been around for over 100 years. Others are newer. Stories about beginnings are always fascinating and today I have stories about three newer seed companies. When we lived in Maine in 1974-5 I learned about Johnny’s Selected Seeds when I was…

The new year, 2017, has dawned. The blank pages of the calendar and the buried garden await the challenges and pleasures of the new year. All best wishes to all.

It  was on a snowy December 6 in 2007, the feast of St. Nicholas, that I inaugurated my Commonweeder blog. On this anniversary I'm taking a  look at the last nine years, on the blog, in the garden, and in my life. That first post gave a hint that I was not only a gardener but a reader. I mentioned Eleanor Perenyi's wonderful book Green Thoughts, and a chapter that talked about the house and garden that was…