The scenario goes something like this…A child wants a dog. All his friends have dogs and he is the only one without a dog. The child’s busy parents, wary of another long term commitment won’t agree to get a dog. The child chips away at the parents’ resistance until they finally give in—as long as … Read more
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
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
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 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
