Life is full of ironies. A woman who used to live in my neighborhood loved gardens and gardening, but spent long days working as a nurse. Between career, family and other obligations, she never had time to create the garden of her dreams. Finally she found the money to hire a garden designer/installer who brought … Read more
Pity the poor common chicory or Cichorium intybus, a Mediterranean native that has made itself at home all over the United States, gracing roadsides, field edges and other untended spaces. The semi-double daisy flowers are the most beautiful shade of sky-blue, but the stems are gangly and scraggly, with rough-looking toothed leaves. On top of … Read more
The daisy or Compositae family is so large—950 genera, 20,000 species and even more cultivated varieties and hybrids—that you could fill hundreds of gardens with family members without even thinking about plants from outside the clan. Over the last three decades or so, individual daisy genera, including coneflower, asters, Shasta daisies and blanketflower, have caught … Read more
