Although summer will not officially start until June 20, it's already under way in the garden.
Advertisement
Like most everything else in life, plants are subject to the whims of the ages. What's fashionable today is passé tomorrow.
At a recent class I was teaching, one of the students said she was looking forward to fresh eggplant.
It was mid-March and I was waiting in a line at a big-box store. A man pushed his oversized cart next to me. In it was a tomato plant, its trunk the size of a screwdriver handle.
For gardeners, compost is like money. There's never enough.
Shade gardening presents a unique set of difficulties and delights. Serious gardeners faced with the prospect of a shady garden for the first time are happy to embrace a new palette of plants that includes some of the most beautiful and bizarre they can grow.
Summer means a lot of things to a lot of people: lazy days at the beach, going to the mountains or swimming at your favorite spot.
"The Landscape Art of John Newman" achieves a difficult task with grace. It moves the intimate work of a local landscape team indoors.
If you're a gardener, you've probably run into the Arbor Day Foundation. These are the folks who are always giving away trees.
Before email and Facebook, back when a handwritten letter was the common currency of communication, Diane Ott Whealy and her then-husband, Kent, formed a few bonds that would become the nucleus of the Seed Savers Exchange.
The devil is in the details.
In 2008, I wrote about the volunteer efforts of Wake Forest University employees Bev Nesbit and Dan Johnson. She is a dietitian and researcher; he is a senior lecturer in biology.
You might not want to listen to me today. I'm about to suggest that you give your Valentine something other than a dozen roses. It might get you in trouble.
Connecticut may not be the first place that comes to mind when the topic is tropical fruit — unless you know about Logee's Tropical Plants.
You may not be thinking much about spring, but you should.
Madagascar. The name rolls around in your mouth with a lyrical exoticism.
Growing up in Maryland, there were two things that could be counted on as indisputable evidence that spring would soon arrive. The first was the return of robins, a bird that doesn't seem to bother to migrate from our area. The second was the flowering of Japanese or flowering quince, Chaenomeles speciosa. It was usually about March or the beginning of April when these rosy-pink flowers started to unfurl, the first suggestion of color in the landscape.
Gardening events for 2012 start out with a bang when Slow Food Piedmont and Old Salem Museums and Gardens combine for a community seed swap on Jan. 14.
The garden is sleepy and cold, and as the year ends, it's time for quiet reflection and celebration. In the garden, we can seek both.
If you're riding down Country Club or Reynolda roads, and you are suddenly taken with the urge to kiss your driver, blame it on the mistletoe overhead. The celebrated, pucker-inspiring holiday plant is thriving in the canopy overhanging these roads.
The movement toward growing your own food continues to gather momentum. This is reflected in this year's selection of gardening books.
Even seasoned gardeners fall under the spell of orchids.
At first glance, one might mistake Ben Sunderman's farm for some sort of training grounds for acrobats. Twenty-foot utility poles are buried 4 feet in the ground and crossed by wires. Strings plummet from these to the ground. But closer inspection reveals that this apparatus supports a vine known as hops.
Soon the winter will put this garden to bed, but for now it has ignored the little bit of cold weather in November. It has been a wonderful fall, and I have been thankful for every minute of it. Gardeners, for the most part, are a gracious bunch.
Lately, my garden has resembled LaGuardia Airport at rush hour. There has been about as much bee traffic as there has been air space to handle them. A constant hum has filled the air as the bees search for nectar.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement