Growing a Garden City

  • Post published:03/22/2011
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Sometimes a garden is more than a garden. Sometimes a garden is comfort, safety, job training, real good food for  the hungry and a supportive community. Growing a Garden City by Jeremy Smith (Skyhorse Publishing $24.95) has an all inclusive subtitle - How Farmers,  First Graders, Counselors, Troubled Teens, Foodies, A Homeless Shelter Chef, Single Mothers and More are Transforming Themselves and their Neighborhoods Through the Intersection of Local Agriculture and Community and How You Can, Too. Whew!…

Growing at the MG Spring Symposium

  • Post published:03/21/2011
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There was a great crowd at the Master Gardener's Spring Symposium on Saturday. The arrangements were wonderful with a delicious and energizing breakfast buffet, fruit, muffins, juice, coffee and tea - all free.  And later a yummy lunch and great conversation with our fellow gardeners. There were all manner of workshops from fruit tree pruning to roses!  Naturally I went to hear Tracey Culver, who is a head gardener at Smith College, talk about the roses she grows…

Orra White Hitchcock

  • Post published:03/19/2011
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Orra White Hitchcock was a college president’s wife, a mother of eight, and an artist. The art she created, drawings and watercolor paintings of flowers, grasses and other plants, were scientifically accurate yet transformed by a lyrical delicacy and artistry. An exhibit  of her work, Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863): An Amherst Woman of Art and Science, co-curated by Daria D'Arienzo and Robert L. Herbert, will run through May 29 at the Mead Museum of Art at Amherst College.…

Garden of Fresh Possibilities

  • Post published:03/17/2011
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Fresh Possibilities are just what I am looking for at this time of the year, so it is no surprise that I have been spending happy evenings with Kim Smith's beautiful book that includes so many of her own delicate paintings of flowers, birds and butterflies. Kim Smith gardens, and paints, in Gloucester.  Over the years her garden has grown, as has her concern about conservation and her delight in the roads to literature and art that her…

Grow the Good Life

  • Post published:03/13/2011
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Why do we garden?  Each gardener will have her own list that might include loving flowers, wanting a beautiful yard, loving to eat sun warmed tomatoes, wanting to save money, liking the exercise, wanting to care for the environment, wanting specialty vegetables for gourmet cooking, wanting to save money on the food bill or just plain liking to play in the dirt. Michele Owens lays out her reasons in the title of her new book, Grow the Good…

Planting the Wild Garden

My friend Kathryn Galbraith and I met inNew York City more than 30 years ago when we were both taking a writing class at the New School. She was working on her first novel for children, Come Spring, about Rennie, a little girl who is moving (again) to a new house, not just an apartment, and looking to put down roots. Kathryn has a special insight and understanding of the hearts of children, and this is a tender…

Constance Spry in the 21st Century

  • Post published:03/04/2011
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Recently I was able to find a used copy of Constance Spry's book Flower Decoration which includes a few black and white photos of her arrangements. Actually, she did not use the word arrangements, but decorations. If you look really closely at the decoration on the cover of this book you can see that it includes fruits, seed heads, and grasses in an almost invisible vase. I suspect this is not one of her own arrangements by a  painting…

Mary McClintock’s Gift

  • Post published:02/26/2011
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Many of us know Mary McClintock as a writer who delights in good local food, celebrates the farmers who raise it, and brings us advice from the cooks who really know what to do with it. I know I have enjoyed her Wednesday food column, Savoring the Seasons, ever since it began  nearly four years ago. I’ve learned a lot about vegetables unknown to me including the gilfeather turnip. During her California youth McClintock probably didn’t spend any…

Win a Garden Starter Kit from Timber Press

  • Post published:02/17/2011
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Having told you all what an informative and inspiring book Andrea Bellamy has written, Sugar Snaps and Strawberries, I want you to know that Timber Press is now holding a contest that will have three lucky winners. First Prize winner will receive - A garden starter kit with all you need to start your own vegetable garden wherever you live, including: A copy of Sugar Snaps and Strawberries A gardening container, watering can, gloves, and a garden journal from…

Two Garden Styles – Two Books

  • Post published:02/12/2011
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Every gardener is an individual with different dreams, desires, skills, interests – and constraints. Thus every garden is unique reflecting those differences.  William Robinson (1838-1935) was a British gardener who propounded a new flower garden aesthetic, away from hundreds of annuals being bedded out each season, to a wilder, more informal planting of perennials, shrubs and trees, many of them natives. He wrote several books, most notably the influential  The Wild Garden. That book went through several editions.…