For years, one of the highpoints of my gardening year was the annual arrival of the lush print catalog from Klehm’s Song Sparrow Nursery in Avalon, Wisconsin. The book was plump, rife with beautiful illustrations and featured a stunning array of gorgeous, romantic plants, especially peonies, daylilies, hostas, lilacs and flowering crabapples. Paging through the … 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
When I was much younger and had very little life experience under my belt, I lapped up elegiac poetry. I am pretty sure that many bookish teenage girls did the same thing before the advent of 24/7 texting. Elegiac poetry also paired nicely with the hunger pains engendered by the tea and strawberry yogurt diet … Read more
Back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before plant breeding was the domain of huge conglomerates, the breeding and nursery business often ran in families. The Lemoine family of Nancy, France was one of those multi-generational concerns, breeding and selling plants from 1849 through 1960. Victor Lemoine, his wife, Marie Louise, their son, … Read more
It is amazing how far afield you can go on a rainy day when you are trying to order garden phlox. In my case I went all the way to Long Island in the 1920’s, with detours that went even further back. All of this started as a quest for information about a particular tall … Read more
