Cold Climate Gardening

If, as a cold climate gardener, you have a tendency towards envy, you would be better off not reading British gardening books. Take A Country Life: At Home in the English Countryside by Roy Strong, for example. A book of columns that he originally wrote for the British magazine Country Life, it is a pleasant enough read, good for a doctor’s waiting room, since all the pieces are interesting but short. But the author continually alludes to facts that, when mulled over, make one realize that Roy Strong lives in another gardening universe altogether, and doesn’t even realize how good he’s got it.

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It’s official: today’s Wall Street Journal calls it “the worst drought across the central U.S. since 1988.” My location only rates an “abnormally dry” designation according to the US Drought Monitor, but we’re definitely getting nervous about our water supply. I briefly sketched some of our family’s experiences with drought in this post, but I’d like to point out two essays recently added to the sidebar that go into greater detail on this topic. A few things have changed since then. We have a different clothes washer that uses less water per load, but we have two more family members. We have a new, supposedly water conserving toilet, but it doesn’t work right. And, of course, everyone’s …

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