As long ago as 1945 I had an opinion about hydrangeas. In 1945 I was five years old and living with my parents, and my two younger brothers, in the Bronx. When the weekend weather was fine my parents often took all of us on a stroll through the neighborhood. We lived in an apartment building surrounded by cement, but there were many houses on our street that had tiny front yards that often showed off one or…
Using shrubs is one way to take up room in a garden, but it is also possible to have tall perennials serve the same function. I have several tall perennials in my garden that I realize are not well placed, partly because they are overcrowding each other. I will be reorganizing them in the fall. In the meantime I want to suggest some tall, dare I say statuesque, perennials that can make quite a statement in a flower…
I was very happy to learn that Stone Meadow Gardens is a daylily farm near me, less than half an hour away in Ashfield. After checking out their online catalog I zipped right up there this past Sunday. I knew that I would find more than the three daylilies I needed from among the 500 varieties Phil Pless and Linda Taylor have growing. Stone Meadow Gardens is open on Friday through Sunday until August 5. However, you can…
Daylilies seem like a quintessential American flower, its orange blossoms blazing as they do along the edges of summer byways. And yet daylilies have an ancient history beginning in China about 5000 year ago. Chi Pai wrote a materia medica for Emperor Huang Ti dating back to 2697 B.C. when the flowers were more used medically than for ornament. By 1500 C.E. the daylily had travelled to Europe. In 1793 Linneaus, who introduced the binomial system of nomenclature,…
The hellstrip has been ready for Bloom Day for a while. Astilbe is ready to finish, but the Achillea, yarrow, coneflowers and daylilies have just begun their bloom days. Daylilies are the major stars right now. The week of days in the high 90s have not bothered the daylilies one bit. Daylilies are used to heat, and dryness. I do have a list of my daylilies but I never seem to get the name and the flower attached…
You never expect your perennials to proliferate when you are a young gardener You carefully plant your first perennial bee balm or Siberian iris or coral bells. You set out your plants neatly and sigh with accomplishment and pleasure expecting that these perennials will look just as they do that day forever. After caring for flower gardens for the past 40 years you would think I had outgrown this daydream. But, alas, as I evaluate my Greenfield garden,…
The garden bloggers Austin Garden Tour took us to a variety of gardens but when you pull up to a purple and pink house, you know you have come to a remarkable and outrageous garden. Lucinda Hutson named her house La Casita Moradita, or the little purple house, and it is filled with many references to lands south of the border. The Casita sits on a small urban lot that is probably a little smaller than my own…
I was so happy when my garden won a Bee Spaces Pollinator Award given by the Franklin County Beekeepers Association and the Second Congregational Church, and presented by Representative Stephen Kulik. The awards are intended to promote gardens that will feed and support many of our important pollinators. I thought I would make a list of the most important pollinator plants in my award winning garden. It might help you get more pollinators in your garden The Foam…
It’s June and I am looking forward to the Hawley Garden Tour on June 30. Kim Fitzroy will host just one of the gardens on this special tour. She set her garden at the base of a sunny hill but she created “her own bit of heaven” in the shade. Fitzroy began planting her garden about 15 years ago. Except for two old birches there were no trees, but now a thornless honey locust, four sumacs, a magnolia,…
In 1975 Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy accepted seeds of her grandfather’s morning glory, appropriately named “Grandpa Ott’s” morning glory, and “German Pink” tomato seeds. Thus the Seed Savers Exchange was begun. It was Diane and Kent’s intention to form a network of gardeners who would take these seeds, and thousands of others, sharing them and keeping them growing. The Seed Savers Exchange began in Missouri, but the Heritage Farm and Orchard now exists on 890 acres…