I love garden books so much that my bookshelves are listing under the weight of my collection. Some of those books are reference volumes, but they are in the minority. I favor books that go beyond the “how” of gardening to the “why” of gardening. After all, I can do an internet search and find … Read more
Years ago I drove up a long hilly road and an equally long, bumpy driveway in Austerlitz, New York, to visit “Steepletop”, the home of twentieth century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. One of the plants that grew on the Steepletop property, in Millay’s time and now, is the “poet’s daffodil” or Narcissus poeticus. … Read more
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
A few years ago, I bought several gorgeous ornamental cabbages to brighten up my late fall garden. I love cabbage and its relative, kale, in my borders, but I hate it on my plate. Because of that, I assumed that the resident varmints would feel the same way. I was wrong. Two days after I … Read more
Sometimes I think it would be useful to have an alias, or maybe even several. A false name allows you to try on other lives and opinions without scaring the people who know you best. The practice has certainly become increasingly popular. People on social media do it all the time. Alicia Amherst, who lived … Read more
