This past weekend I was in Gilford, New Hampshire at a reunion of my mother's side of the family. Larsons everywhere. One of our projects for the past few years has been videotaping each family branch. Getting all the members of each branch together is never easy - like herding cats. We barely get nearly everyone together and they begin to disappear again. We are trying to get my cousin Jennie's family together here - and almost succeeding.…
Last year I bought 3 golden Henryi lilies and 3 white Henryi lilies from Old House Gardens. The reason is obvious. My husband's name is Henry. When I was in Buffalo I saw a golden Henryi in Elizabeth Licata's garden - but I didn't recognize it because it was at least 6 feet tall! I guess I have a lot of work to do on my soil. My lilies are barely three feet tall and the stems are…
Ev Hatch will never forget the seed salesman who talked to him about his upcoming retirement. Instead of selling seeds, he was going to plant a lot of vegetable seeds, tend the plot and donate all the vegetables to food pantries. Over his career Hatch has planted a lot of seeds, in the ground, and in the community as he worked for the Cooperative Extension Service and 4-H. After his retirement in 1977 from these agricultural state enterprises …
I have to say how happy I am that my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has just installed its first Rain Garden. It is 150 feet long, 20 feet wide and 18 inches deep. It is near the new (and very green) Studio Arts Building, below North Pleasant Street. The rain garden will collect run off from the street, protecting the wetlands and Mill River on the west side of the campus from pollution and…
Here is part of the crowd of 70 garden bloggers at the Buffalo Botanical Garden. I was familiar with the blogs of some of these gardeners like Frances (lower left) of Fairegarden, and Susan (center in blue with hat) of Sustainable Gardening Blog, and Helen (in white under the camera) of Toronto Gardens. Susan is one of the Garden Ranters; she and I worked briefly for an Australian organic gardening website Organic Gardener which made us virtual colleagues!…
Rosa setigera, otherwise known as the Cherokee rose or Prairie rose is the only climbing rose native to North America. Its range is from Canada to Texas, as far west as Nebraska and Kansas. I bought my plant at Nasami Farm in Whately last year. My rose collection was calling out for a native American rose. I was told that although this is listed as a climber most people let it just grow into a mounded tangle. I didn't really…
Netting the blueberries was the big garden task of the weekend. Between the heat, the thunderstorms, adventures with visiting grandson Tynan, picking raspberries and preparing to host the Heath Gourmet Club on Saturday night, this job kept getting postponed. Finally, on Sunday, with the sun shining and a deliciously cool breeze blowing, we set to. The berries are just starting to ripen here at the End of the Road, but the birds are starting to circle. We planted our blueberry…
In 1985 (could it be that long ago?) Elsa Bakalar, my Heath neighbor and friend, and I started writing an article about color in the garden for Horticulture magazine. One summer day in 1986 the brilliant photographer, and gardener, Garry Mottau arrived in Elsa's garden at dawn. That's when I learned about the importance and desirability of that early morning light for photography. I even got to hold a piece of shiny Thermax to throw some gentle light on Elsa's…
After days of talking to the 70 other bloggers who gathered in Buffalo for a preview of the Buffalo Garden Walk I have a whole new appreciation for Bloom Day, created and hosted by Carol (who I got to meet!) of May Dreams Gardens. For other mortals talk about the weather is banal chit chat, but for us bloggers, and all gardeners, it is shop talk. It is a topic filled with endless fascination - and we see…
One of the gardens on the Buffalo Garden Walk had many dahlias - familiar varieties in familiar colors. But this dahlia is a doozy! I'm going to have to research a source. Has anyone seen this in a catalog?