A dear friend of mine is trying to grow wisteria. For years she has coveted the feathery foliage and long, fragrant purple racemes of Wisteria sinensis, the traditional Chinese wisteria. One day she ventured into a garden center and fell in love with ‘Amethyst Falls’, billed on the plant tag as a purple-flowered wisteria. She … Read more
It is amazing how far afield you can go on a rainy day when you are trying to order garden phlox. In my case I went all the way to Long Island in the 1920’s, with detours that went even further back. All of this started as a quest for information about a particular tall … Read more
(Photo courtesy of Old House Gardens) When I walk around my garden I hear voices. Sometimes those voices come from across the street, where my neighbor is pulling weeds to the accompaniment of talk radio. More often though, the voices are inside my head, retelling the stories of each plant that I pass. Those … Read more
The deer in my suburban neighborhood are not numerous yet and have lots of vegetation to choose from. This is a good thing because municipal restrictions mean that eight-foot deer fencing is not an option. I have worked out my own system for dealing with our most frequent visitors, Mr. Antlers and his two-stag posse. … Read more
In the last two weeks I have gotten used to seeing tall garden phlox in the summer gardens in my neighborhood. This morning I walked farther afield and saw masses of another tall, old-fashioned favorite—cleome or spider flower. The cleome were part of a cottage garden planting scheme and when I saw it from a … Read more
