Sometimes, in a congested garden like mine, plants get overlooked. That is, until they announce their presence by blooming, spreading like weeds or exuding a bad odor. My little white Turk’s cap lily—Lilium martagon var. ‘Album’—was one of those overlooked plants. I think I planted it last year in a burst of whimsy. It was … Read more
I last thought seriously about Geranium phaeum, aka “the mourning widow,” about six years ago. I was in the first throes of a serious love affair with all kinds of hardy geraniums and was swept off my feet by the phaeum species, because it thrives so well in shade. I bought one and it died, … Read more
I find lots of inspiration in the works of contemporary botanists, designers, gardeners and plant lovers, but I also comb through history for role models. A few weeks ago, Skylands, New Jersey’s official botanical garden, held its annual plant sale. This year’s sale included a used book table and I found my dose of inspiration … Read more
My relationship with mulch has long been fraught with equal amounts of love, hate, drama and boredom, not to mention a lot of heavy lifting. Did I mention guilt? Guilt clings to mulch like barnacles on a ship’s hull. Around this time five years ago, I arranged for a truckload of shredded cedar mulch to … Read more
The daisy or Compositae family is so large—950 genera, 20,000 species and even more cultivated varieties and hybrids—that you could fill hundreds of gardens with family members without even thinking about plants from outside the clan. Over the last three decades or so, individual daisy genera, including coneflower, asters, Shasta daisies and blanketflower, have caught … Read more
