DELPHINIUM STAND-INS If you live in a place with short unpredictable springs and hot sticky summers, you probably have issues with delphiniums. You can buy them, you can plant them, but you can’t expect them to give you joy forever. In fact, you frequently can’t expect them to perform beyond the first season. This … Read more
DOUBLE OR NOTHING My trade association, the Garden Writers of America, refers to its members as “Garden Communicators”. As a veteran “garden communicator” I receive a boatload of mail order plant, seed and garden equipment catalogs every year. The flow started before Christmas, and now every day I can expect to find a catalog … Read more
TOOLS OF THE EARTH Jeff Taylor is a man who loves tools. He is also an enthusiastic gardener. The twin passions come together in Tools of the Earth, (Chronicle Books, 1998). Taylor, who lives in Oregon, is a professional carpenter as well as a freelance writer whose columns appeared regularly in This Old … Read more
TWO GARDENS I am lucky enough to have two gardens. At home in New Jersey I grow hundreds of plants, a full compliment of weeds and a daily dose of satisfaction. My summer garden in central New York State is much smaller and less ambitious. I tend it for three weeks a year at most, … Read more
Gardening is dying. Reports of this sad phenomenon are all over the media. Not long ago, “The Avant Gardener,” a monthly horticultural newsletter, reported that lawn and garden material and equipment sales have been on the decline for several years. Publishers’ Weekly, the publishing industry bible, recently dedicated many pages to a feature on the … Read more
