This red Austin rose is climbing the fence at the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden. It is just one of the more than 3000 roses growing in the newly designed garden with the goal of showing all visitors what roses can be grown in that climate without a lot of fuss. I got to spend the afternoon with Peter Kukielski, the Curator of the Rose Garden, who arrived in New York from Atlanta…
The city is left behind. I'm home and the first trip out to visit friends we see a porcupine in front of the house eating an apple falled from our old apple tree. We had a delicious lunch of homemade tomato juice (with a few additions) carrot and parsnip soup, little chicken salad sandwiches and tiny fruit tarts. One of the best things about having a wonderful lunch at this house is having a tour of the vegetable…
My friend Peter and I drove into Manhattan for a day of wandering and listening to the symphony of the city, so it was appropriate and easy to park under Lincoln Center. I got to see all the changes and new construction. Then we were off to the subway and downtown. We saw lots of flowers . . . flowers on clothes, flowers on silk brocades (lots of flowers at Pearl River), flowers on pillows, and flowers on china. As…
The week of rain and wind have blown all the trees nearly bare, but the rain was much needed, and mild weather in between allowed the garden clean up to continue. Now that so much is bare I can notice and admire details. The few leaves left on my weeping birch can be seen individually, the color and form better admired. I also have to wonder about the brain of this birch. Surely it has a brain, or why else would…
"Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, and are then prepared to ignore them until the spring. I am quite sure that a garden doesn't like to be ignored like this. It doesn't like to be covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter. Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen…
Happy Halloween! One way to strike terror into this night of goblins and ghosts is to think of the fears that plants have generated over the centuries. Deadly nightshade was rightly understood to be a poison, but other members of the family, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and peppers were less deadly and more delicious. The large pale flower of datura, another member of the family, is beautiful but equally deadly. Not all peas (Lathyrus sativus) are benign, or all members…
While at the Shelburne Farm and Garden shop the other day, a woman stopped me to ask if it was too late to plant tulips. Absolutely not! I had gone into the shop myself to pick up a package of Angelique tulip bulbs, a beautiful pink double tulip that is one of the most popular bulbs sold. Fall is bulb planting season and it will last pretty much until the ground is frozen. However, it…
In my youth I only admired brightly colored maples. I don't think I am alone. When people talk about the New England fall and set off leaf peeping, it is the brilliance of the maples that they are looking for. But even maples cannot be counted on to be consistently scarlet. Now that I am older, and spend so much time driving up and down Route 8A which winds through woodlands and along a stream, then onto Route 2,…
When I called Old House Gardens to order some bulbs last week I feared I might have missed their shipping season, but they reassured me and on this perfect morning I found my order in the mailbox. It took only a few minutes before I was out in the garden. I knew just where to plant the ivory Beersheba daffodils - right under the Miss Willmott, a white flowered lilac Jerry Sternstein gave me last year. To say under…
“The Creator may be seen in all the works of his hands; but in few more directly than in the wise economy of the Honey-Bee.” Lorenzo L. Langstroth 1853 Lorenzo L. Langstroth was Pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Greenfield between 1843 and 1848. His memorial on Bank Row, placed in 1948, includes an image of the hive with moveable frames that he invented. For the first time beekeepers, who had been gathering honey since…