Built a planter box out of an old crate and volunteering at the Deep Roots Habitat Gardens Tour I haven’t posted in a while because not much was going on, but now so much is happening I’m having trouble selecting what to tell you about. I’ve decided to focus on two events, one in the […]
Author: mywildgarden
Remembering Eleanor Perényi, who was more than a garden writer
Why then presume to write a book about gardening? The simplest answer is that a writer who gardens is sooner or later going to write a book about the subject—I take that as inevitable. One acquires one’s opinions and prejudices, picks up a trick or two, learns to question supposedly expert judgments, reads, saves clippings, and is […]
Reviewing The Gardener’s Year, by Karel Čapek
Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. The second book from the Modern Library Gardening series that I read last fall was The Gardener’s Year, by Karel Čapek. This little book follows the gardener’s […]
Paper gardening: a look at a garden writing classic
Margery Fish’s We Made a Garden describes the process, area by area, of creating a garden with her husband, Walter. The garden is interesting, but Margery’s tussles with Walter are even more so.
Assigning grades: the best native perennials for a front yard
The garden has peaked. The milkweed has faded, the rudbeckia is shriveling, and while a few flowers power on, the climactic moment has passed. The big show is about over. This is a good time of year for taking stock, as people do. Did projects go as planned? Did I get the results I wanted? […]
What killed my lawn? How to make organic lawns look good
New gardeners who wonder why their lawns died and what to do about it might be especially interested in this post
Dreams come true: visiting the chateaux of the Loire
A what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation post: visited some Loire Valley chateaux
A conversation withTalis Bergmanis
Have you ever passed a private garden whose interesting street edge told you it was hiding something special? I knew about Talis Bergmanis’s garden long before I met him and was able to see it in person. The plantings along the street are so striking, almost other-worldly, with chartreuse ‘Tiger Eye’ sumac standing out against a […]
Still waiting…(It’s spring, but doesn’t feel like it yet)
I feel like I waited all winter for March. Now it’s here and all I want is for it to be April.
Wintry mix: first signs of spring
Welcome 2023! For so long winter has felt like it just wouldn’t budge. Then, all of a sudden, it budged. Birds are back. Finches are at the feeder. Yesterday I saw a dove. The first green spikes of daffodils have poked through some brown oak leaves. Today is dreary and cold, but the sky is […]