We started off at the Erie Basin Trial Gardens for the All America Selections (AAS). The AAS helps gardeners by rating seed varieties so they can find some of the best flowers and vegetables to plant from seed. We all loved this brilliant red dahlia. Then it was off to the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens which has a fabulous glass conservatory, modeled after the one in Kew Gardens in England. This building opened in 1900. The Orchid…
How has your garden changed in 30 years? How has your life changed in 30 years? As a person who moved every two or three years (on average) for the first four sevenths of my life, I was stunned to realize that Henry and I have been in Heath for 30 years! And that means, that on May 22, today, I celebrate my 30th anniversary as garden columnist for The Recorder. It was a happy day for me…
And I beg your pardon by Wendell Berry The first mosquito: come here,and I will kill thee, holy though thou art. If the Harrison's yellow is blooming the mosquitoes will not be far behind. In the meantime I am making do with deer flies that have bitten and bitten. They are not as easy to swat and kill as mosquitoes that land and take their time to suck blood. Wendell Berry is a wonderful writer - and poet.…
Saturday I went into Greenfield to buy plants at the Greenfield Garden Club Plant sale, but also stopped at the Greenfield Farmers Market to buy beautiful lettuce from The Kitchen Garden for Gourmet Club, and I bought a pot of beautiful double white petunias from LaSalles. The Farmers Market was full of vegetable starts, flats of annual seedlings, as well as the first greens of the season and huge bouquets of peonies from Hadley where spring has sprung…
And buy! Gardeners are allowed to browse the hundreds of perennials laid out at the Bridge of Flowers Plant Sale - but no touching! Not until the starting bell rings out. This year the young woman in charge of the Annuals from LaSalle's in Whately said for the first time she had two women poised over a single flat of gorgeous rich purple geraniums. They did not come to blows; they shared, half and half. The sale runs…
On Tuesday, my friend Le Flaneur and I went to the New York Botanic Garden in the Bronx to see the exhibit Emily Dickinson's Garden: The Poetry of Flowers. Two large rooms in the Enid Haupt Conservatory were given over to an interpretation of Emily Dickinson's garden at The Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is only about 45 miles from us in Heath. There were wonderful plantings of the flowers that grew in her garden, some of which…
So many groups hold plant sales in the spring. They give us a chance to expand our gardens AND often support any number of worthy community organizations. Nasami Farm of the New England Wildflower Society is now open in Whately on weekends, Thursdays through Sundays from 10 am - 5 pm. until June 13. Nasami sells native plants that will thrive in our area, support birds, bees and butterflies - and our whole eco-system. Friday, May 7 9…
Yesterday my husband, Henry, and I went out to The Curtis House in Ashfield to film a session with Gloria Pacosa of Gloriosa & Co. and Trillium Workshops fame for the Shelburne Falls Cable TV show Over The Falls. The subject was how to make beautiful container plantings. Mine is the red arrangement and Gloria's is one of fifteen herbal containers that she is making for a wedding next weekend. The show will be aired first on May…
Tulips of many colors and hues are in full bloom on Shelburne Falls' Bridge of Flowers. It's enough to make one stop - or at least slow down - to enjoy the day and be grateful to live in such an area where going about one's duties and errand running brings one this kind of pleasure. And don't forget you can add a little bit of the Bridge to your own garden by buying a plant or…
Last Sunday was muddy and dreary but the group that gathered in front of the blazing fire at Curtis House in Ashfield was as bright and sunny as a summer day. We had all gathered to have Jeff Farrell, Gloria Pacosa and Lisa Newman, the newly formed Trillium Workshops, teach us how we could all have cutting gardens to fill our houses with fresh flowers while leaving our flower borders intact. These three friends came together hardly more…