If you're like me, every spring you walk around the garden looking at the fresh leaves of emerging perennials, thinking that you should really plants some spring flowering bulbs nearby to take advantage of the lovely foliage. But I never write down my ideas, and I always forget. Fortunately, researchers with the Horticulture Department of [...]
Design
Home Outside, Creating the Landscape You Love: Book Review
April 7, 2009 – Posted in: Book reviews, DesignJulie Moir Messervy opens Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love by remarking, Most of us feel less confident about creating outdoor living spaces than we do about our interiors. Inside, we happily paint walls, choose finishes, and buy rugs, furniture, and fixtures, but when we step outside we're unsure of how to begin. Maybe [...]
Designing with Native Plants: Creating Sustainable Landscapes for the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York
January 19, 2009 – Posted in: Design, Events, Habitat gardening, Native/InvasiveJust learned of a fabulous workshop on designing with native plants for the Finger Lakes and upstate New York. Here's a brief synopsis of the offerings: Creating Habitats for Birds on Properties Large and Small Stephen W. Kress, National Audubon Society and Lab of Ornithology Learn how to attract birds using the native plants they [...]
Write your garden’s mission statement
December 31, 2008 – Posted in: DesignMany of us write goals or resolutions for the new year, but have you ever considered writing your garden’s mission statement? Helen Yoest of Gardening with Confidence encourages us to do just that. Many of us have named our garden, but I think a mission statement goes further. It forces you to think about what [...]
Margaret Roach’s Way to Garden
August 25, 2008 – Posted in: DesignI have to say that blogging has brought more surprises to my life than I ever imagined. For instance, I had long enjoyed Margaret Roach's book, A Way to Garden, and had dreamed, no, fantasized, that I might one day visit it on the Garden Conservancy's Open Days. Yeah, right. The other side of New [...]
Native Plant Resources for Central and Upstate NY
March 4, 2008 – Posted in: Book reviews, Habitat gardening, Native/InvasiveIn 1878, Sherman Stowell sold to Elizabeth Brockett 30 acres of land which he had earlier purchased from George Jennings. I now live and garden with my family on some of that land, which Jennings or Stowell, or perhaps Ms. Brockett, had cleared of trees to make pasture. The forest is growing back, but it’s [...]
Fallscaping: Book Review
January 28, 2008 – Posted in: Book reviews, DesignInspiring Ideas and Photos Take the Autumn Garden to the Next Level I'd read several books by Piet Oudolf and by Wolfgang Oehme, but I never really "got" the fall garden until I read Fallscaping, by Nancy Ondra and Stephanie Cohen. Somehow those two American women made gardening in the fall accessible to me in [...]
The transitory rustic garden arch: Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop
January 24, 2008 – Posted in: DesignI have long fantasized having a substantial arbor dripping with roses. Ignoring the fact that there aren't too many repeat-blooming climbers hardy enough to take my climate, I realize with dismay that my most favored place to site an arbor turns out to be on a slope every time I leave my dream world and [...]
Five views of one path: Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop
November 27, 2007 – Posted in: DesignPerhaps it is a bit extreme to say "Paths make the garden," but ever since I was a child paths have been an emotionally significant element to my enjoyment of a garden. I didn't realize this until we moved to the rural 15 acres where we now live, when I struggled with how to turn [...]
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
July 14, 2007 – Posted in: DesignLong-time readers of my blog know that I have never shied away from being honest about the poor upkeep of my garden. Sometimes I find beauty in the weeds, and sometimes they depress me, but I've never pretended they didn't exist. I agree with Colleen that fear of "not doing it right," or "not being [...]
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