When I began my blog, slightly more than three years ago, I had just finished reading The Uncommon Reader, a delightful short comic novel by Alan Bennett. I am a reader and understood the reference to Virginia Woolf's Common Reader essays so the phrase 'common reader' was whirling around in my brain when I thought of that most common of weeds - the dandelion. I thought the dandelion was a perfect flower to refer to me; I am…
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.…
With the snow so deep, the temperatures so low, and the winds so brisk I had to take a day to revisit summer in Buffalo and some of the beautiful gardens we toured. I have a similar arrangement of lilies and beebalm in my garden. It will be such a joy to see those shoots in the spring. These daylilies enjoyed a deep drink one night in Buffalo. My Daylily Bank should look pretty good this year, and…
Last May I went on a fabulous tour of some of NYC's parks beginning with Battery Park. There I saw Amsonia, which some bloggers had been raving about. I looked at this mass planting and did not see what all the raving was about. The flowers seemed inconsequential. I was not impressed. Now I read that Amsonia hubrichtii has been named the Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association. How could this be? The PPA…
Many of us probably don’t fuss very much when we are making a flower arrangement for our dining table. We run out into the garden and cut a little bit of whatever is in bloom and a few leaves, put them in a vase with little fuss and we are done. However if we are make a more important arrangement for a special party, for a friend’s wedding, or the church altar, we will need more flowers and…
My maternal grandparents immigrated from Sweden when both were in their teens. They rarely talked about their life there but did mention that all they had to eat was potatoes. When he was 70 my grandfather planned his first trip back to visit to his sister, but returned early. He said his sister did not like to cook, so she fried up a batch of potato pancakes every Saturday and parceled them out over the course of the…
It was a surprise to see Salvia on the front page of the NYTimes Sunday Styles section. Salvia has become stylish? However it was not Salvia officinalis, culinary sage, which is important in many holiday dressings and dishes at this time of the year that was getting this publicity, nor even the Christmasy red annual salvia (Salvia splendens) that is so common in many bedding plant projects. Unbeknownst to me, who does not keep up with Miley Cyrus…
I remember when I first learned about perennials and thought - what a great idea, I'll never have to replant again. LOL. Even if pernnials didn't have to be divided, or die, most of us still have to move plants, add plants or remove plants in our attempts to have a garden that pleases the eye and the heart. For my full review you can click here, but I can tell you briefly that The Perennial Gardener's Design…
Everywhere you go there are instructions on how to be more ‘green’. The Reduce, Reuse, Recycle logo shows up on recycling barrels, and on our clothes. We organic gardeners have certainly been recycling as we turn our garden and kitchen waste into valuable compost, but a whole new level of reusing and recycling is turning up in the garden. I’ve managed to rescue chicken wire fencing and cardboard from our transfer station, but in his new book The…
Yesterday I was visiting Sue Reed, author of the excellent Energy Wise Landscape Design, to talk about her book and our local landscape. You will be hearing more about our talk soon. Before I left we walked around the house to see how she had edited and added to the elements of her own landscape. More on that later, too. As we came around the southern corner of the house we saw this energetic bunch of Johnny Jump…