During the Mt Holyoke College Spring Flower Show the entryway to the Talcott Greenhouse is filled with the fresh and delicate fragrance from the plant room to the left. Before you even glimpse the oxalis and daffodils that embody the Emerald Isle theme you feel the arrival of spring in that heady fragrance. Gail Fuller is the captain of the Spring Flower Show. Her ship set sail last summer. It is Fuller who chose the Emerald Isle theme.…
These crocus were just beginning to bloom when my husband and I were visiting our across-the-street neighbors. This is our neighbors first spring in the house and the patch of crocus was a lovely spring surprise. I think these crocus are tommasinianus, fondly known as 'tommies.' They are known for spreading generously because they propagate by seed and offset. These purple crocus are growing in the garden of my down-the-street neighbor. She has quite a stand. Both neighborns…
The cheering Mt Holyoke Spring Flower Show continues. The Talcott Greenhouse is open every day from 10 am to 4 pm. This is a correction from my Between the Rows column in The Recorder. The show is a delight. Be sure to visit before 4 pm on Sunday, March 20. Remember open hours are 10 am - 4 pm.
Lilian Jackman is one of the presenters at this year's Western Mass Master Gardener's Spring Symposium, When Lilian Jackman was 22 she worked in the gardens of three elderly Vermont women. They each had their own way of gardening in their old age. One woman was very angry because she wanted the garden to stay exactly the same – and of course she was not successful. Gardens never stay the same. This made her critical, and unhappy. The…
The theme of this year's Smith College Bulb Show is The Evil Garden of Edward Gorey. There is more black and white in this show than usual, but the tongue-in-cheek tableaux next to various Gorey drawings, a dark but humorous look at the garden. The photo above is a reference to a Gorey drawing Great Uncle Franz being strangled by a snake. But I ask you - how evil could any garden be with all that fragrant pink?…
The Mt Holyoke College Flower Show, with its theme The Emerald Isle includes the fragrant spring flowers that we can enjoy in our own New England spring. The fresh fragrance that meets you as you enter the Flower Show greenhouse is the perfume of spring. I wonder why more of us, including me, don't think how easy it would be to enjoy that scent in our own houses. A few pots of hyacinths, and may a couple of…
Who knows what weather tomorrow will bring? We are living in New England. No telling what the weather will be from one minute to the next. All I know is that we are getting closer and closer to spring, which means thinking about how soon we can possibly get out into the garden, and possibly wondering how long it will take us to feel that all of a sudden we are way behind in our chore Charlie Nardozzi,…
I got a surprise when I dug around in my pantry - and found this sprouting red onion, reaching for spring in the dark. I hope it is a good omen, but today the temperature did not get above freezing and the breeze was bitter. Too much false spring this year. I am eager for true spring, the season for planting onion sets.
One of the goals we had for our new Greenfield garden was to make it lawnless. We certainly did not want a wild lawless garden, but we did not want large areas of grass that would need mowing. To prove his devotion to this goal my husband bought an inexpensive power lawn mower and said that it would probably last two years. He was giving me two years to design and plant a garden that would not include…
The reflections in the garden this morning make make concrete the challenge we face. Recently I gave a talk about The Making of a New Garden. I mentioned several times that the main challenge of this new garden is how wet it is. The soil is clay and the garden is slightly lower that the three adjoining properties. Lots of talk, but before I closed I showed a picture of one instance of flooding - there was an…