BETH CHATTO The fall clean-up has brought me face to face, once again, with the difficult areas of my garden. One of these trouble spots lurks in the front. It is home to an array of plants already, but it still looks flat, shady and uninteresting. Another bed, in the back, is slightly less … Read more
KNOTTY PROBLEM The other day I was looking at a print that resembled a Delft tile. The focal point was a quatrefoil enclosing a vase of stylized flowers. The symmetry, flowers and unbroken outline reminded me of a knot garden, a form of planting I have admired for years. Now that the gardening season … Read more
CHRISTMAS ROSE If you aspire to be fashionable in the world of horticulture, you must have hellebores. This year’s catalogs have more of them than last year’s, and last year’s had more of them than the catalogs that came out two years ago. The hellebore hybridizers and merchandisers have been very, very busy. … Read more
A SUCCESSFUL YEAR The summer of 2007 was the year of the garden imperative, as I worked nearly every day to get my garden ready for a mid-summer wedding and a late summer garden tour. The summer of 2008 had no such imperative, but in some ways it was even better. Results took a … Read more
LONGWOOD CHRISTMAS Sometimes you just have to get out of town. This is especially true when the skies, the landscape and the economy are all equally gray. Last week I felt as if I were stranded on an island in a sea of grayness. I decided that the only remedy for the situation was … Read more
