I don’t know if Robert Burns – he of “the best-made plans…” fame – was a gardener, but sometimes I feel as if more things are “going agley” than usual. That is how I recently came to have three baby-size dwarf Lagerstroemias rather than the teenagers I’d originally planned on. It occurred to me that…
Today we’re all too familiar with PPE: face masks, plastic shields, disposable gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. Hopefully, we’re all stocked up on those – but what about the other kind of PPE? I’m talking about Plant Protective Equipment, which is something else I never needed until that fateful year, 2020. In this case, my enemy…
This year’s progress in The Great Garden Renovation (a/k/a/ TGGR) can be summed up in only two words: “not much.” You’d think that the pandemic-enforced stay-at-homeness would have resulted in a windfall of weeding work, a torrent of tidiness, and an overall “Let’s get this done” attitude. Somehow, that’s not what happened. Part of the…
Have you ever made such a stunningly stupid, colossally clueless and yet breathtakingly basic planting-plan error that the only thing you can do is keep repeating to yourself “How in the world could I have ever failed to…????!?!?!?” I’m not talking about deciding to take a gamble on something that the left side of your…
Never let it be said that nature allows us to get bored or complacent when it comes to gardening! In addition to ‘surprises’ like alphabet-busting hurricanes and ravenous rabbits (more about those in an upcoming post), there are also those seemingly innocuous things that she sneaks in on us and dares us to try to…
“I’m going to be as big as you, someday!” says little Picea pungens ‘Ruby Teardrops’ to ‘big bro’ across the way. (Actually not, of course: ‘Ruby Teardrops’ only attains a size of about 3′ x 3′, but a conifer can dream, can’t it?)
Sooner or later, most gardeners who have more than a couple of planting areas will reach a point where referring to a plant’s location simply as “front yard”, “back yard” or “side yard” just won’t do anymore. This is where the Naming of Beds – which may not be quite as elaborate as T.S. Eliot…
My son is growing alliums in his garden for the first time, and apparently two of the ‘Globemaster’ bulbs were delivered by a UFO rather than by UPS, judging by the ‘antennae’ they decided to produce … in order to ‘phone home’, no doubt! I was immediately reminded of a favorite sitcom back in the…
