July 2004

Mary, gardening in Virginia, is hardly ever contrary, can't say no . . . to plants, and loves dark chocolate. Worth checking out, wouldn't you say?

Normally I'm a big fan of Target, but this time they've got it all wrong. Fifty bucks for the Sarah Hilton Folk Art Garden Tools? I don't think so. We're talking one flimsy looking trowel and a hand cultivator (does anyone really use those things?) "hand painted by artist Sarah Hilton." We real gardeners know [...]

On Saturday I thoroughly weeded the Juneberry bed in front of the house, in preparation for putting in three delphiniums that have been patiently waiting in pots. Didn't quite get to planting them before darkness set in, which is a pity, as we are supposed to get rain today and tomorrow. (Went to the zoo [...]

I recently learned that the area around my house that the kids play on is not a lawn but a cropped meadow. Ken Druse, writing in The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration for a Lifetime, describes a cropped meadow as "simply the grasses and non-grass plants (or forbs) that were already there, cut short (and never [...]

The author of Sunny Side Studio knows how to translate gardenspeak. Here's a sampling of the wisdom to be found in his most recent post: Wild life garden – an area that has been completely neglected. Bog garden – a badly drained area that it is impossible to cultivate in any way. Wild flower meadow [...]

What's your favorite tool? I've found that I can't garden without a garden fork. It is absolutely indispensable. It goes into the ground much more easily than a spade or shovel, though a small spade is handy for digging out plants for trans-planting. Now I've found a hand fork is almost as indispensable. Mixing soil, [...]

1. Oriental and asiatic. And species. Every form & color (except not the lollipop ones that look like little stop signs.) 2. Out here no-till means mega herbicide and slit seeding; not for me. I hand till the raised beds when I set them up and then renovate occasionally. Anyone telling you 'Nature doesn't till', [...]

Someone once called me "the patron saint of garden bloggers." That seems to overstate the case, but I am very interested in seeing garden blogs succeed. I live a somewhat isolated life, and garden blogs help fill the void left by not having a regular source of garden chitchat in my life. Nevertheless, I have [...]

Before: June 2004 After: July 2004 This is the bed I was talking about earlier. The two photos weren't taken at the same angle, but you can use the white-variegated grass (bulbous oat grass, Arrhenatherum elatius subsp. bulbosum 'Variegatum') and the hosta 'Francee' to help orient you. The weeds in the first picture are primarily [...]