One thing I see less and less in gardens these days are gardeners that mix annual plants with perennials and shrubs. I’m not sure why, but it seems to be that fewer and fewer gardeners take the time to design border combinations using all kinds of herbaceous materials: annuals, perennials, and tender perennials like dahlias. [...]
Late winter in New England is never an easy time. The weather turns quickly, changing from frigid, to raw (a term I never used for the weather until I came to Connecticut), to warm, and then back again to cold or raw. Wet and heavy snow, like the kind we had a few weeks ago, [...]
There is an increasingly vocal group of garden writers making their name by proclaiming the ease of low or no maintenance landscapes, and while a no maintenance garden sounds good, it just isn’t realistic. The truth is that the real work begins after the plants are in and the landscaping crew has loaded up and [...]
After 15 years as a professional garden designer I feel confident that I know what it takes to grow healthy plants in the landscape. The variables of sun exposure, soil condition, availabilty of water, and seasonal climate are all factored into my plant selections because what each plant needs to grow and thrive is just [...]
This is the time of year, as the catalogs arrive in the mail and seed displays pop up in the garden centers, when experienced gardeners start to think about seeds. This is also the time of year when we will be subjected to at least one heart-felt missive from a magazine editor, TV show host, [...]
It’s winter time and what’s a gardener to do? Cold winds blow outside and snow covers the ground as night time temperatures drop into the teens and twenties. Snow and cold, however, is fine by me. I grew up in a Midwestern state where winter starts in early November and spring doesn’t show any sign [...]
Life at a nursery changes with the seasons. It begins with a flurry of activity in the spring followed by doldrums through the dog days of summer and then a final mad dash in autumn. In the temperate climate of New England winter has little to occupy a nurseryman unless he or she chooses to [...]
Tradition plays an important role in every holiday celebration, especially Christmas. It may be a special food, a family event, or beautiful decorations that represent the best of the season to you and yours. I can remember when as a child I used to help decorate our tree with tinsel, carefully placing each strand one [...]
Planting bulbs in the fall for spring flowers is a long standing tradition with many gardeners, but it is a tradition that has slowly declined in popularity. Many new homeowners–and therefore new garden owners–long for the spring show of tulips or jonquils (daffodils) that they remember from their mothers’ or grandmothers’ gardens, but most don’t [...]
Gardening, like most every other pastime, is an on going learning experience. Much of what good gardeners learn comes from what we read in books or magazines, which we then put to the test in our gardens. Yet, some of the best lessons are passed along to us from other gardeners. Simple lessons such as [...]