The New Year is well begun. New plants will be available at every nursery this spring. The Perennial Plant Association (PPA) chooses and honors one plant every year. This year they chose the ‘Sun King’ Aralia as its Plant of the Year. Another name for Aralia is spikenard, or nard suggesting a long and ancient history. When ground up its roots can produce a fragrant and beneficial oil. Centuries ago the Egyptians stored the fragrant oil, the Hebrews…
Every year new flowers show up in the catalogs and garden centers. These new plants may get us thinking about ways we can design our plantings, help us find flowers that will thrive in challenging situations, or help support pollinators. I will list a few of these new annual flower varieties that I found particularly appealing. The first place I check to see what is new is the All America Plant Selections website. Many of us have noticed…
My New Year's Resolution is to keep a better record of the weather, and the changes in the garden over 2020. We enter the year with a snow covered garden. By January 12, 2020 the back and front gardens are melting, melting, melting. Of course, snow will melt, but we did not expect so much melting this quickly by January 17, 2020 Note the flooding on the north side of the garden. Although there had been more snow,…
Houseplants have never been a big part of my life. When I moved to a big old house on Grinnell Street with my five children in 1971 I had never grown houseplants. I had hardly grown any plants at all. However you may remember that in 1971 organic gardening and the value of gardening was all the rage. I was ready to join the crowd. The house had a large sunny living room. I had not brought a…
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy One of the best books in my collection is Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens by Douglas W. Tallamy (Timber Press $27.95). Dr. Tallamy, a professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, explains the importance of native plants in even in a small suburban garden. In an area that is as open and wooded as ours we…
I love watching the birds in my garden. Which is not to say that I know them by name or type. When I look at the birds outside my window I see big birds and little birds. I see blue jays and robins, just about the only birds I can identify. I can also identify hummingbirds because the only hummingbird I am likely to see is the ruby throated hummingbird. I can hear the woodpeckers. I enjoy having…
On the first day of January 2020 there is a view of foot or more of snow all around the house Frigid. Temperatures slowly rose to 60 degrees. Snow melting and leaving a flood on the north side of the garden all the way to the house. There is still a little snow in front of the house because this is a very shady area. But even here the warm temperatures melted much of the snow. The weather…
It seems like the whole town of Greenfield has been making New Year’s Resolutions to work energetically with trees and plants to make this a more beautiful and more environmentally sensitive town. The Greenfield Tree Committee has been at work since it was founded in 1998 by Carolyn MacLellan. In 2002 Greenfield was designated as a “Tree City” by the Arbor Day Foundation, a distinction renewed every year since. Nancy Hazard has been involved with the Tree Committee…
Emily Dickinson (1830-1883) and Collingwood Cherry Ingram (1880-1981) were both gardeners, but lived at different times with very different gardens. Two new books, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life by Marta McDowell(Timber Press $24.95) and Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of The Planthunter Who Saved Japan’s Cherry Blossoms by Naoko Abe (Knopf $27.95) take us into different worlds.
Here we are on the first day of 2020. What will the year bring? You can't tell from the photo of the backyard garden because it is early and the sun isn't there yet. The three inches of sleet, snow and ice came falling over the past couple of days, but now the sun is beginning to shine and at 10:30 am the temperature is 45 degrees. This is a good way to start the new year. The…