Last week I described the wonders of the Biltmore Estate gardens in Asheville, North Carolina. Both formal and naturalized areas are glorious, with beautifully cultivated and maintained landscapes full of specimen trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. I am quite sure that the moment a petal drops in one of the formal areas; the petal is … Read more
I don’t like to abandon my home garden in spring, because there is far too much clean-up, cultivation and planning to do. But getting away is also a temptation, especially when the business of life threatens to spiral out of control and the spring weather is more wintery than vernal. In short, I just returned … Read more
The garden looks desolate right now because winter does not have the good sense to pack up its snowy bags and go away. Despite that, the foxgloves thrive. Even when wintery mix threatens in April, their lettuce-like basal rosettes spring up stubbornly from the earth, challenging the elements to a seasonal smack-down. Old man winter … Read more
Novelist Virginia Woolf famously wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’’ Some women have written fiction in the absence of one or both of those two conditions, but their presence makes it easier. I have always thought that a garden is the ultimate “room … Read more
The experts agree; Napoleon never uttered that famous palindrome, “Able was I ere I saw Elba”. It isn’t a palindrome in French, and even in exile, Napoleon probably never admitted that a comeback wasn’t waiting somewhere in the wings. Since any claim to Napoleonic authorship has now been discredited, I will feel free to alter … Read more
