The Gardeners' Apprentice 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
PAPERWHITES I have a love/hate relationship with paperwhites, those non-hardy narcissus whose bulbs are on sale everywhere starting about now. When they bloom, these relatives of the common daffodil are lovely and winsome–a harbinger of spring at a dark time of year. Buying them always seems like a good idea in October, which is … Read more
