A novice gardener’s journal of triumphs and disappointments
- Why are native plants important?
If you’re new to native plant gardening or curious about it, start here. - Is your neighborhood a toxic chemical hotspot?
Just say no to Mosquito Joe! - Simple past, present progressive: What I did and am doingBuilding a planter box out of an old crate and volunteering at the Deep Roots Habitat Gardens Tour.
- Remembering Eleanor Perényi, who was more than a garden writer
Almost every list of classic gardening books includes Eleanor Perényi’s Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden. The third of the reissued Modern Library Gardening series I read last fall, it was my favorite. - Reviewing The Gardener’s Year, by Karel Čapek
The Gardener’s Year, by Karel Čapek., follows the gardener’s progress, month by month—although often this amounts to little progress, or no progress. Čapek pokes fun at the gardener’s hubris, helping us laugh at our own obsessiveness and making us feel less alone. - Paper gardening: a look at We Made a Garden, 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: native perennials for a front yard
Taking a moment to review and remember to inform my decisions as fall planting approaches. - 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… Read more: A conversation withTalis Bergmanis
Categories
- Advocacy (6)
- Native Plant Gardening 101 (1)
- Nuisances (9)
- Plants (10)
- Reflections (25)
- Visits (13)
