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SPRING ORDERS Spring is leaping up from the pages of the catalogs that arrive by snail mail every day. The e-mail traffic from the plant vendors is also surging, with new offers and enticements appearing on an hourly basis. My head spins at the color and the variety. My heart sinks—but only a little—at the thought of what my garden fantasies would cost if allowed to go unchecked. But now I have to get serious. The ... (click here to read the full article)
IZNIK We are currently enjoying a mild winter, but even so, I miss my garden and the flowers that provide me with inspiration during the growing season. My front beds are full of clusters of emerging daffodil tips, but instead of giving me joy, their presence this early worries me. The holly trees are bright with berries and there are flashes of color from other fruiting species, but those flashes are only tantalizing pinpoints. I need more. Last ... (click here to read the full article)
BOOK REVIEW: Mr. Marshal’s Flower Book I love garden books so much that my bookshelves are listing under the weight of my collection. Reference volumes have always been in the minority on my shelves because I favor books that go beyond the “how” of gardening, to the “why” of gardening. After all, I can do an internet search and find five thousand articles on how to plant a tomato, but I find it infinitely more enlightening to ... (click here to read the full article)
MOTHS IN FLIGHT For years I turned my back on the seductive charms of orchids. Though clearly beautiful in color and form, they also seemed exotic to the point of being unnatural. On the practical side, I have never been sure that I could sustain the level of commitment required by orchids. Maybe it was my imagination, but every time I came face to face with a lush cattleya or dendrobium, I thought I saw the shadow of ... (click here to read the full article)
Born into a gardening family, Elisabeth Ginsburg grew her first plants, a healthy stand of hollyhocks, as a young child.
Her experiences range from container gardening on a Missouri balcony to mixed borders in the New Jersey suburbs and
vacation gardening in Central New York State.
She has studied gardening at the New York Botanical garden and
elsewhere and has also written about gardens, landscape history and ecology for years in publications including
The New York Times Sunday "Cuttings" column, the Times Regional Weeklies, Horticulture, Garden Design and Flower & Garden.
The "Gardener's Apprentice" weekly column appears in papers belonging to the Worrall chain of suburban northern
and central New Jersey weekly newspapers. She lives with her husband, teenaged daughter and feline "garden supervisors"
in northern New Jersey.