JASMINE The other night I was watching director Richard Lester’s 1973 version of The Three Musketeers. It is one of my favorite films and every time I watch it I am struck by the way Lester captured the feel of mid-seventeenth century France–complete with lechery, debauchery and dirt, not to mention livestock in the … Read more
YELLOW CLIVIA The small plant nursery on top of my microwave oven has a new resident. The yellow clivia that I have coveted for years finally arrived last week. As befits its horticultural importance and stature as an object of desire, I have potted it up in a four-inch terra cotta pot made by … Read more
HARDY CYCLAMEN I am a great advocate of getting down on your knees and weeding. It’s very bad for the weeds, because there is no escape for them when a gardener gets so close to the earth. It’s very good for you because it provides a completely different perspective than the one you see … Read more
MILES TO GO When I started on my personal garden perfection project last February, I gave myself one year to make the garden so lovely that I wouldn’t be ashamed to take a page from garden writer Beverley Nichols’ book and invite anyone and everyone to see it. In between then and now I’ve … Read more
REVIEW–THE $64 TOMATO William Alexander is in love with his garden. His book, The $64 Tomato (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007), is awash in the kind of passion, frustration, irony and jubilation that you only experience while in the thralls of an ongoing affair. Of course, Alexander has a life outside the garden, … Read more
