Last fall’s big planting effort was a big raised bed of perennials, shrubs, bulbs, a tree fern and a tangerine tree, most of which went into the ground over the course of two months. While I don’t strive for total… Read More »nothing yellow
Color of course needs to be an important consideration in planning the garden. You may be familiar with Gertrude Jekyll’s important book devoted just to the subject, Colour Scheme in the Flower Garden. If you don’t know it—or if you… Read More »garden color
I quoted recently from Robert Pogue Harrison’s recent Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition. Here are a couple more passages that I liked. …[I]n the final analysis we must always remember that nature has its own order and that… Read More »more thoughts about gardens
I have a number of plants in the garden that reseed one year to the next, things like alyssum, violas, California poppies, some ornamental grasses, as well as the lettuces that I’ve written about. Another of these hardy reseeders is… Read More »plush lush
The number of examples that I have in the garden of the sage genus, Salvia, is growing. The latest addition is a tiny little plant of white sage, Salvia apiana, that I put into a hole in the front yard… Read More »my newest sage
I had no idea planning a wedding required making so many decisions. Like, do you go down to the County Building and do the paperwork and ceremony before going to the watch repair shop? And how do you fit grocery… Read More »a june garden wedding–mine!
Most of [Czech author Karel] Čapek’s commentators consider The Gardener’s Year a minor work, but as Verlyn Klinkenborg remarks in the introduction to the Modern Library English edition of 2002, “most students of Čapek believe gardening is a subset of… Read More »humility 101
Realtors have their location, location, location mantra that they recite as the factor that contributes most to a property’s value. A similar thing could be said for predicting how well a plant will do in the garden. Even if you… Read More »barbie's excellent garden adventure
Maybe a year ago I was reading about a parking lot in town, at the local Kyocera corporate headquarters, where they’d installed what they were calling “Solar Trees.” (They actually trademarked the name, but really aren’t all trees solar?) The… Read More »a cool idea for garden shade
Happy [American] Independence Day, everyone. Here’s a souvenir of my last trip to Home Depot, a tribute to the good old red, white and…um, purple? And what could be more American than commerce? This was taken a couple days ago.… Read More »home depot patriotism