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[...]
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’s still cold here. And we’ve got an unseasonably cool week ahead, and that means I have wait even longer to get my tender seedlings and other heat lovers into the ground. So I’m even more happy about owning what has become an indispensible tool for me in early spring: A pop-up greenhouse. I set the[...]
I was in Long Island over the weekend, to give a lecture in Southampton. Luckily, I had an intrepid host who took me garden touring even though it was a near monsoon. We went to a Long house Reserve, a private garden in the midst of making the transition to a public space. It was a[...]