Spring Longevity

The countryside around my family’s summer cottage in Central New York State is studded with former farm sites.  Sometimes buildings or their dilapidated remains are evident on the overgrown lots that were once the hubs of working family farms.  More often, all that remains are the horticultural memories of those farms—garden plants once tended by … Read more

Tale of a Swale

This year, some parts of the United States—and elsewhere in the world—were besieged by wildfires of historic proportions.  In my part of the world we have been drowning in an abundance of rain, culminating last week in devastating flooding as the end of a hurricane roared through.  It made me wish that we could somehow … Read more

Rose Rosettes

If you aim to strike fear into a rose breeder’s heart, all you need are three little words—“rose rosette disease.” Rose rosette disease is an insidious rose killer.  Spread by microscopic eriophyid mites, the virus affects only roses.  There is no cure and it is almost invariably fatal.  To make matters worse, no rose species … Read more

August Lilies

August makes me think of green things, like the giant luna moth, which I have sighted on August evenings, and peridot, the green-shaded August birthstone.  But I think the best green thing in the August garden is the “August lily”, or Hosta plantaginea. Why is this hosta, sometimes also know as Corfu lily, white plantain … Read more

Draped in Crape Myrtle

Growing up in the wilds of western New York State, crape myrtles were as foreign to me as winters without snow.  I had a vague notion that they were nearly as important in the South, as camellias, but even northeastern greenhouses that were chock full of winter-flowering camellias were devoid of crape myrtle. I was … Read more