I used to mope romantically over the advance of fall, lamenting the loss of my beloved garden flowers, morosely plucking up as many roses as possible when hard frost threatened and generally carrying on as if horticultural Armageddon was just around the corner. The Grim Reaper seemed to step away from the neighbors’ lavish Halloween … Read more
THE TROUBLE WITH TULIPS Several friends who were more diligent than I about ordering their spring-flowering bulbs have already received their bulb shipments. I await mine, which should arrive any day now. Once again this year I have made every effort to order enough tulips for a stunning floral display next April. I know … Read more
I have started the great cut-back. The scores of tall aster ‘Alma Potschke’ have mostly finished their dramatic run of pink and purple fireworks and now stand ready to reseed themselves everywhere. Birds will take some of that seed, but if I don’t get ‘Alma’ under control, I will have lots of grubbing out to … Read more
Bulb planting in my garden is always a race against time. I invariably order more bulbs than I can reasonably expect to put in the ground and get hit by a spell of frantic activity about the time the bulb boxes arrive. The bulbs necessarily languish in a cool place for a few weeks, while … Read more
When it comes to gardening, there is one constant in my life—I never buy enough tulips. I don’t think animals eat or move most of them, nor do my bulbs have an uncommonly low success rate. It is just that the bag of bulbs that seems so large in the fall when I am digging … Read more
