Learning how to harvest rain and manage water use is an urgent topic in California where I have been visiting, but it is a big topic for all of us. It is important for us all to manage our use of that precious resource – water. My husband Henry and I have been visiting friends. We have also been visiting wonderful gardens like the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden, and the Huntington Library, Art Collections,…
Fallscaping is a way of thinking about our autumnal landscape. After the heat and riotous color of the summer garden, things can start to look a little tired, but we can include plantings that will bring fresh color and life to our landscape even as the days grow shorter. As we enter the autumnal season we can take advantage of the color changes among the plants we already have. Do we have trees like kousa dogwoods whose foliage…
On September 27, 2015 there was a rare eclipse of the super 'blood moon'. On that night the moon was at its perigee, the closest it gets to the earth which makes it look larger when it rises. Fortunately the blood moon eclipse took place before my bedtime. This was taken at about 10 pm EST. As the eclipse drew near to totality, the 'blood' became apparent. This was nearly 10:30 pm EST. It has been quite a…
Most of us know that pollinators are important. Without pollinators many of the ordinary foods we eat would not be available. We hear about Colony Collapse Disorder which affects honey bees, but there are thousands of other types of bee and many other insect and animal pollinators including bats. These pollinators are also dying. What to do? This past June the National Pollinator Garden Network (NPGN), an amazing collaboration of gardening and conservation organizations, launched the Million…
Bloom Day in Heath Bloom Day in Heath has wild asters and cultivated asters and autumn is in full swing. The photo above shows a tangle of Japanese anemone 'Robustissima', annual cosmos and Achillea The Pearl. But there is more. I will let dependable the Thomas Affleck roses that are blooming less floriferously - The Fairy, the Meidelland roses, and Champlain, one of the Explorer roses. I couldn't resist including this photo of a surprise foxglove -…
Julie Abramson now lives with a graceful shade garden, but it was not always so. Like so many of us, Julie never had much interest in her mother’s garden when she was young, but over the years she has tended three very different gardens of her own. Her first garden in Albany was cheerful. “I was inexperienced, but this garden was very floriferous. I knew nothing about trees and shrubs,” she told me as we sat admiring her…
The Heath Fair is over. Facebook is full of photos of kids going off to college and kindergarten for the first time. You can hardly get into the supermarkets for the ranks of rigidly potted containers of mums by the doors. It must be fall. Time for an autumnal arrangement. Chrysanthemums are certainly the iconic autumnal plant, but other plants can also perk up our summer weary gardens or containers. I took a tour around the area…
Salvia 'Hot Lips' seems to be a really hot plant this summer. Several of these flowers are in bloom on the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, and I have a couple blooming on my hellstrip in Greenfield. Visitors to the Bridge have written and asked the name of this beautiful shrub. It took me a while to identify it because I think of it as an annual and not a shrub. However, Monrovia Nursery calls it a…
My drought tolerant perennials: Russian sage, cosmos, coneflowers, and phloxI need water loving plants, but I have not forgotten that many need drought tolerant perennials. Some gardeners have soil that drains quickly, and we all fret about summer months when no rain falls, or have periods of very hot weather of the kind we’ve enjoyed recently. Fortunately there is a long list of plants that do not mind long periods of hot and dry weather. Some of them…
View from the Bedroom Window in HeathThe views from two windows show what we are leaving and where we are going. Over the past couple of years I have been documenting the view from our bedroom in Heath, marking the changes in the seasons. These photos of the foreground view of the lawn gardens, the mid-ground view of the fields and the background view of the hills are what we have enjoyed living with, admiring and working with…