Late spring became blazing summer this past week, and temps in the 90s, coupled with a dearth of rain, put an early end to much of the mid-June bloom. But the show goes on, here’s a sampler: There’s a kind of faded glory to the going-by blooms of Ageratum ‘Blue Horizon’ that makes them hard [...]
You know how irritating it can be to hear people preach about low-maintenance gardening – as if we want to spend less time in our gardens? Now, talk to me about low-maintenance lawns, and I’m listening. At this point, I have only one patch of proper lawn-like space, though there’s still plenty of grass to [...]
Every year I struggle under the weight of our own precedent. “Chanticleer, the edgiest garden in the country” and other such terms applied to us are wonderful, but consider the maintenance of such a reputation. So I struggle, I obsess. While installing this year’s display, I am already considering next year’s options. This plant in [...]
Last month, I went to visit an old gardening friend of mine, Chris Woods, who has recently become the head of Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden. As you may recall, Chris was the visionary behind the transformation of Chanticleer from a private estate to one of the great American public gardens as we know it today. From chatting with [...]
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was springtime. The most difficult of times when the sun in the sky and the warm breeze said yes, but the calendar still said May 15th. Mid May is the commonly accepted frost free date here in the Delaware Valley. The date [...]