Sometimes you choose to make changes in the landscape. Sometimes the landscape does the deciding. In my case, the situation is a little bit of both. The wooden perimeter fence that bounds my backyard is decrepit and needs replacing. It was handsome once, but that was fifteen years ago. Weather and normal aging have done … Read more
It is spring and everything looks healthy—especially chickweed, onion grass or wild onion and dandelions. As all gardeners know, Nature abhors bare ground and works hard to cover it as soon as possible. Unfortunately the plants that cover the quickest are the aforementioned weeds. Dandelions are nice if you want to make salad from the … Read more
I am rereading The Morville Hours, a marvelous book, published in 2010 by English garden writer, Katherine Swift. The author, a scholar/gardener and former librarian at Trinity College, Dublin, describes the twenty-year process of creating an amazing garden on a National Trust property in Shropshire. The book juxtaposes the details of garden making with the … Read more
Now that the seasonal clean-up is underway, I am struck once again by the physicality of many garden chores. I am thinking of jobs like trimming the vigorous rose that clambers up our eight-foot tall arch, or pulling down the rampant ivy that threatens the mortar of our high stone foundation. Then of course there … Read more
When I am doing battle with the English ivy at home, I am convinced there is nothing worse. It inveigles its way into the garden beds, climbs the sides of the house and races up and over the perimeter fence. Some days it scales the trees faster than the squirrels. If you tear it off … Read more
