The latter half of the twentieth century produced a bumper crop of great gardeners, garden designers and garden personalities. I have been inspired by many of them, especially British born Beth Chatto, 1923-2018, who shone brightly in that horticultural pantheon. Now, an authorized biography, Beth Chatto: A Life With Plants, presents a fond, but unvarnished … Read more
Life is full of rules. Some, like “no wearing white after Labor Day”, arrived via well-meaning mothers and grandmothers. Others are rules that we impose on ourselves. One of the garden rules that has lurked in the back of my mind forever is “geraniums belong in pots”. The geraniums I deal with most often are … Read more
I love the stories of famous gardeners—past and present–and read as many of them as I can. When I noticed that veteran pop biographer Meryl Gordon had written a biography of Bunny Mellon, I had to get my hands on it. Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend is about a woman known … Read more
Novelist Virginia Woolf famously wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.’’ Some women have written fiction in the absence of one or both of those two conditions, but their presence makes it easier. I have always thought that a garden is the ultimate “room … Read more
I have decided not to be gloomy about mid to late fall. Yes, the leaves are coming down from the sugar maple in my front strip faster than I can get rid of them. Yes, if I think about it, I can envision all of the icy blasts, damaging storms and winter grayness that is … Read more
