The Gardeners' Apprentice YELLOW CLIVIA The small plant nursery on top of my microwave oven has a new resident. The yellow clivia that I have coveted for years finally arrived last week. As befits its horticultural importance and stature as an object of desire, I have potted it up in a four-inch terra cotta pot made by … Read more
HARDY CYCLAMEN I am a great advocate of getting down on your knees and weeding. It’s very bad for the weeds, because there is no escape for them when a gardener gets so close to the earth. It’s very good for you because it provides a completely different perspective than the one you see … Read more
MILES TO GO When I started on my personal garden perfection project last February, I gave myself one year to make the garden so lovely that I wouldn’t be ashamed to take a page from garden writer Beverley Nichols’ book and invite anyone and everyone to see it. In between then and now I’ve … Read more
REVIEW–THE $64 TOMATO William Alexander is in love with his garden. His book, The $64 Tomato (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007), is awash in the kind of passion, frustration, irony and jubilation that you only experience while in the thralls of an ongoing affair. Of course, Alexander has a life outside the garden, … Read more
GROUNDHOG Groundhogs are pests, but they have inspired a lot of fine writing. Michael Pollan, in his wonderful book Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, includes a very funny section on futile strategies and stratagems for groundhog elimination. William Alexander, writer, gentleman farmer and author of The $64 Tomato, wrote “You may be smarter, but … Read more
