Gardening with Kids – Fun and Learning

  • Post published:05/24/2014
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Gardening with kids is being taken to a whole new level at the HawlemontElementary School. They have received a grant that is allowing them to establish themselves as an AgricultureElementary School. This means that the schoolyard will have a variety of raised vegetable and flower beds, including a story garden that is being sponsored by the school library. But the schoolyard will also become a farmyard with a cow, sheep, goats and chickens. And yes, that means a…

Plant Sales in the Spring

  • Post published:05/17/2014
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The Bridge of Flowers Plant Sale is Today, Saturday, May 17, 9 am - noon.  Don't Be Late. Plant sales are a sure sign that spring is here. When spring arrives plans and projects to spruce up our outdoor spaces, in our yards and in our towns, are set in motion. The Bridge of Flowers is a big beautiful public space, but other public spaces are getting their spruce up, too. The Bridge of Flowers is one of…

Seeking Spring at the Leonard J. Buck Garden in NJ

  • Post published:05/11/2014
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  I went to New Jersey, the Garden State, to search for spring and found it at the Leonard J. Buck Garden in Far Hills. My brother Tony and his wife Joan took us to the 29 acre garden which was originally part of Mr. Buck’s estate. In the 1930s Buck began working with Zenon Schreiber, a well-known landscape architect, to create a naturalistic garden that incorporated the various rock outcroppings, the sinuous Moggy Brook and two ponds.…

Groundbreaking Food Gardens by Niki Jabbour

  • Post published:05/05/2014
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Groundbreaking Food Gardens is a great book to take new vegetable gardeners into an exciting and varied garden world this very long slow cold spring. The snow is finally gone, even here in Heath, and bulbs are blooming and tender shoots are evident all through the perennial beds. I can finally think about the vegetable garden. I actually have two vegetable gardens. One is very small. The Front Garden, or Early Garden, as I sometime call it, is…

Fancy Foliage for the Ornamental Garden

  • Post published:04/19/2014
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  When people think of the ornamental garden their first thought is of flowers, but it is foliage that holds a garden together. Flowers on naked stems would not be as lovely as they are when surrounded by foliage, leaves of various shapes and in various shades of green ranging from almost white, to almost blue, to almost red, as well as deep green. We take foliage for granted, but it can be used to increase the interest…

CSA – Community Supported Agriculture is for You

  • Post published:04/13/2014
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For some people the initials CSA are just another of those annoying acronyms that can make our conversations sound like an unintelligible inter-office memo. For some CSA means Community Supported Agriculture which encompasses delicious local food, help for the farmer, and a community of like-minded folk who enjoy fresh food, and enjoy knowing they are supporting farmers and farms, and the very land and environment that surrounds us. Small farmers never think they are going to get rich…

Epimediums and Hellebores Thrive in Dry Shade

  • Post published:04/06/2014
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Dry shade is a challenge in the garden, but epimediums and hellebores, two very different plants, both turn dry shade into an opportunity. For years I admired epimediums in other gardens, always asking the name of the beautiful low plant with heart shaped leaves. Sometimes I got no answer, but even when I did I was incapable of remembering the word epimedium. I finally saw a pot of this plant at the Blue Meadow nursery in Montague and,…

Five Plant Gardens by Nancy Ondra

  • Post published:03/23/2014
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  Nancy Ondra has been gardening for over 20 years and she has ten books to show for it and  Five Plant Gardens: 52 ways to Grow a Perennial Garden with Just Five Plants (Storey Publishing $18.95) is her latest. This book has something for everyone, but it takes garden design to a new level of ease and understanding for the novice gardener. Even an inexperienced flower gardener understands pretty quickly that you put tall plants in back…

Cabbage – Here and There – Beijing

  • Post published:03/16/2014
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  Cabbage. Such an ordinary vegetable. We don’t give it much thought. We shred it into a salad, dress it into coleslaw, or boil it up with corned beef, but there are many types of cabbage in the world, and many ways of serving it up. Think of corned beef and cabbage!             I began thinking about cabbage this week when, while sorting through some old photographs, my husband and I found a few shots of the ai…

In the Pink at the Lyman Plant House, Smith College

  • Post published:03/09/2014
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Banish the winter blues and get In the Pink at the Annual Bulb show at the Smith College Lyman Plant House. This annual show, always fabulous, is running from now until Sunday, March 16. It is no surprise to me that the powers that be would choose In the Pink as the theme for this year’s show. I love pink, as anyone who strolls down the Rose Walk can attest.  But there is something spring-like about all shades of…