general interest

Peace

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PEACE             The other day I was getting ready to give a garden talk and thought about my father’s rose garden.  The garden is long gone, but I carry it with me whenever I pick up a trowel and go out into mine. My father, an obstetrician, thought of himself as a student of medicine … Read more

Hard Times Garden

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HARD TIMES GARDEN             In the past few months I have read scores of articles in gardening and shelter media about gardening in “these times”.  With banks collapsing, mass layoffs taking place and the stock market headed steadily downward, the green-fingered pundits have been just as busy as the political and financial experts.              Every … Read more

Mourning Widow

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MOURNING WIDOW             I have to admit that it is hard to recommend that people spice up their gardens with a plant nicknamed “the mourning widow.”  To add insult to injury, the authoritative guide Hortus Third, describes the species’ flower color as “sordid lilac.”  Both those phrases sound positively Victorian and completely uninspiring.  In reality, … Read more

Spry Arrangements

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SPRY ARRANGEMENTS             Between the current recession and the high cost of cut flowers, many florists are relying on alternative plant materials to make up arrangements.  Curly willow shows up in all the best places, along with ornamental cabbage, dried seed pods and interesting branches plucked from dormant shrubs and trees.  Fruit–especially green apples, oranges … Read more

Miss Willmott’s Ghost

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MISS WILLMOTT’S GHOST             Every gardener has an inner Ellen Willmott.  An Englishwoman born into wealth in 1858, she was bitten early and hard by the gardening bug.  In her prime she gardened, read, studied, patronized fabled plant hunters and employed hundreds of gardeners to tend her plants.  She eventually lavished so much money on … Read more