My behemoth quince bush has been taken over by a plant that has had more names than a check forger, is bound and determined to run completely out of control, and makes regular, unscheduled appearances in respectable gardens everywhere. Sweet autumn clematis is the plant, and if America’s Most Wanted had a plant list, this … Read more
My daughter loves a new plant—especially a tropical plant. Because of her I grow rambunctious cannas, lovely plumbago, ornamental ginger and tropical hibiscus. Now we have added a new member to the domestic plant family—Mexican petunia, known variously as Ruellia brittoniana, Ruellia simplex, Ruellia tweediana and Ruellia spectabilis. That is a lot of Latin names … Read more
I love all kinds of roses and have as many in my garden as I can cram into the limited sunny space. My “favorite” is usually the one in bloom at the moment, though I do have a few that are especially dear to my heart. Rosa ‘The Fairy’ is one of them. You have … Read more
At high summer, no respectable flower garden should be without garden phlox or Phlox paniculata. Strange to say, the suburb where I live is somewhat short on phlox. This is probably because it is long on easy to grow annuals like impatiens. There is nothing wrong with impatiens, but a well-established clump of brilliantly colored … Read more
Someday I will write a garden book and the title will be My Garden in Twenty-Five Mistakes. Each chapter will detail one of my particularly egregious garden mistakes and the steps I took to rectify it. My book will be the perfect antidote to all those garden books that detail how the garden owner inherited … Read more
