By any measure, Anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ is a citizen of the world. Descended from several Chinese species and long cultivated in Japan, the plant’s parent was hybridized in England. That English hybrid found its way to France and, once established in the French garden of a man named Jobert, produced a white-flowered sport, or spontaneous … Read more
The scenario goes something like this…A child wants a dog. All his friends have dogs and he is the only one without a dog. The child’s busy parents, wary of another long term commitment won’t agree to get a dog. The child chips away at the parents’ resistance until they finally give in—as long as … Read more
I used to mope over the advance of fall, lamenting the loss of my beloved garden flowers, morosely plucking the last roses, and generally carrying on as if horticultural Armageddon was just around the corner. I felt as if the Grim Reaper had stepped away from the neighbors’ lavish Halloween display to walk hand in … Read more
We have just passed the autumn equinox, which marks the official end of summer and the start of fall. We are also halfway to the winter solstice, which is the shortest and therefore darkest day of the year. Many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere celebrate the harvest around the time of the autumn equinox. In … Read more
The countryside around my family’s summer cottage in Central New York State is studded with former farm sites. Sometimes buildings or their dilapidated remains are evident on the overgrown lots that were once the hubs of working family farms. More often, all that remains are the horticultural memories of those farms—garden plants once tended by … Read more
