The ordering season for fall-planted bulbs, including daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, starts each year in spring when the flowers appear. It continues through the gardening season until about Halloween, with the few unsold bulbs languishing after that at the back of garden centers’ and nurseries’ display areas. Despite my best efforts at speed and efficiency … Read more
The daffodil or narcissus season has well and truly started in my garden with the arrival of the single-flowered early bloomers. I always plant odd numbers of bulbs in large holes so the blooms emerge bouquet-fashion into the early spring sunshine. I have seen miniature daffodils pop out as early as the end of February … 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
Right now it is gray, drippy and chilly outside my window. Even though the last roses are still shivering on the bushes, I feel starved for color. Grabbing at emotional straws, I peer hopefully through the mist for the new growth on the scarlet willow or Salix alba var. vitellina ‘Britzensis’—but the little tree does … Read more
Coronavirus has turned the world upside down. This is not the first time that the world has turned upside down, but it is the first time in just over a century that a contagious disease has threatened so many people. Gardening might seem frivolous in the context of a global pandemic, but in reality it … Read more
