Luther Burbank (1849-1926) sent this to my grandmother, an elementary schoolteacher who had her class write letters to the famed horticulturist. Burbank, though childless, enjoyed children—something I learned recently while touring his historic home and gardens in Santa Rosa, CA.
I’ve got one of those gardens where digging a five-gallon hole means removing ten gallons of rocks. I can’t sink a spade without hearing the clang of steel against stone. Gardening for me is sometimes more like mining. But I’ve come to an accommodation with stone. I had to. If I couldn’t find a way[...]
Okay, I know, I know. You either love orange or you hate it. It’s hard to be indifferent to a color as rollicking as this one. In case you were wondering, yes, the color orange takes its name from the fruit. The moniker comes from a sanskrit word, naranja, which is what the fruit was called in South[...]
We’re delighted that Panayoti Kelaidis, the Senior Curator and Director of Outreach at Denver Botanic Gardens, is the interviewee for this month’s Take Ten: Q and A. Panayoti has been an enthusiastic gardener since the age of 8 and has worked at Denver Botanic Gardens for the last 29 years. His great loves are alpine plants, trees, ferns, cacti, bulbs,[...]
It’s finally July, and time for a GBDW topic that I’ve been looking forward to for months: designing with bulbs. Thanks to Craig of Ellis Hollow for suggesting this month’s theme. The only problem is that there are so many ways to enjoy bulbs in the garden, it’s tough to know where to start! I[...]