Once upon a time, plant merchandisers offered only one mandevilla variety, ‘Alice Dupont’, known to botanist friends as Mandevilla x amabilis ‘Alice Dupont’. Cultivated and studied for 30 years at Longwood Gardens, home of its wealthy namesake, ‘Alice Dupont’ was officially named and introduced to the world in 1960. The original Alice and her husband, … Read more
Years ago, I planted three garden beds at my family’s summer cottage in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Each bed presented a different set of soil and light conditions. One was adjacent to a shale beach, sunny and exposed with free draining soil. Another was partly shaded, surrounding the stump of a … Read more
It is almost axiomatic that children tend to rebel in some way against their parents. The offspring of nonconformists buy houses in the suburbs and fret about their perfect lawns. Children of traditionalists pursue alternative lifestyles in ways guaranteed to alarm their parents. I rebelled with geraniums—specifically hardy geraniums. I came from a family that … Read more
The plants that botanists sometimes call “spring ephemerals,” including trilliums, common violets and hepaticas, always seem magical to me. They push up through bare earth when warmer weather is still a vague suggestion, and proceed to flower, set seed and disappear, all in manner of a few months. Intellectually I know that ephemerals are always … Read more
Last week a major change happened in my garden. For many years four giant holly shrubs dominated the south side of my house. Two were probably planted deliberately by a previous owner, and two were likely self-sown, including one that was too close to the house. I am quite sure that the hollies started as … Read more
