HARD TIMES GARDEN In the past few months I have read scores of articles in gardening and shelter media about gardening in “these times”. With banks collapsing, mass layoffs taking place and the stock market headed steadily downward, the green-fingered pundits have been just as busy as the political and financial experts. Every … Read more
MOURNING WIDOW I have to admit that it is hard to recommend that people spice up their gardens with a plant nicknamed “the mourning widow.” To add insult to injury, the authoritative guide Hortus Third, describes the species’ flower color as “sordid lilac.” Both those phrases sound positively Victorian and completely uninspiring. In reality, … Read more
SPRY ARRANGEMENTS Between the current recession and the high cost of cut flowers, many florists are relying on alternative plant materials to make up arrangements. Curly willow shows up in all the best places, along with ornamental cabbage, dried seed pods and interesting branches plucked from dormant shrubs and trees. Fruit–especially green apples, oranges … 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
MISS WILLMOTT’S GHOST Every gardener has an inner Ellen Willmott. An Englishwoman born into wealth in 1858, she was bitten early and hard by the gardening bug. In her prime she gardened, read, studied, patronized fabled plant hunters and employed hundreds of gardeners to tend her plants. She eventually lavished so much money on … Read more
