New Gardens for Cold Climate Gardening

September 5, 2011

We. Are. MOVING!!! After 21 years, 9 months, 11 days* in the same location, Purdyville is relocating twenty minutes further out to the middle of nowhere. We are just about doubling our floor space, with 167% more bedrooms and 250% more bathrooms. Total acreage will be less than we currently have, but, trust me, there [...]

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Nine Years of Blogging

August 27, 2011

Today, Cold Climate Gardening turned nine years old. My very first blog post was a list of goals for this blog. After that, I didn’t mention my blogiversary until 2006, when I wrote a six part series on Garden Blog Pioneers in honor of my fourth blogiversary. The following year I invited my readers to [...]

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New Flowers From An Old Friend: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day August 2011

August 15, 2011

Long time readers may remember Craig Levy, who wrote for this blog for a number of months, and then went on to other things. This spring he emailed me, asking, “Would you like more plants for your garden?” Knowing that Craig used to run a nursery when he and his wife lived on the western [...]

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Fields and Lane Glove Giveaway

August 4, 2011

Fields and Lane contacted me several months ago to introduce me to their new line of gardening gloves. Nadia Ceballos-McLeod, general manager of the glove division, sent me two different gloves, the Flex Gardener and the Forester. If you attended the recent garden blogger meet-up, Seattle Fling, then you received a pair of Flex Gardeners [...]

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Queen of the Prairie: Wildflower Wednesday

July 27, 2011

Queen of the Prairie was introduced to my garden. The Gentleman Farmer found it growing in a roadside ditch about a quarter of a mile from our house and brought it home for me. Shortly after that, the road crew mowed the roadside down. I had previously grown this plant in the front southwest bed [...]

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Seven Year Gold: 65 Bags of It!! And one to give away

July 21, 2011

Back in February, I got an astonishing email from John Stanton: Seven Year Gold is a 100% organic fertilizer made from horse manure which has composted for over seven years! Our composting process reaches temperatures over 130 degrees so all weed seeds and pathogens are eliminated, leaving gardeners with a pure, safe and very effective [...]

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Bountiful Blooms: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day July 2011

July 15, 2011

The plentiful rain and lack of frost that characterized this spring is still bearing fruit. I can’t remember ever seeing my daylilies so floriferous. The whole garden has a feeling of lushness that I soak up every chance I get. So it was tough choosing photos for this month’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. For the [...]

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Goodbye to the Perfect Spring: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day June 2011

June 15, 2011

If, in the middle of winter, you had told me my last frost this spring was going to occur on May 6th, I would have said, “Har-de-har-har” in my most sarcastic voice. But that is what happened. Furthermore, that lone frost of 29F (-1.7C) occurred after a string of frost-free weather stretching all the way [...]

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Time: The Essence of a Garden (Garden Notes, No. 5, 2011)

June 12, 2011

Herbert Butterfield’s essay (The Whig Interpretation of History) was an attack on liberal triumphalism [i.e., the 'Whig interpretation']…Whig history purveyed a concept of progress as the central theme of English history…It has become common among historians to speak of ‘whig history’ for any subjection of history to what is essentially a teleological view of the [...]

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Tour Brian Bixley’s Garden

May 12, 2011

As a result of reading my book review, Deborah of Garden Theatre wound up visiting Brian Bixley and touring his garden. Since her visit was in early spring, her photographs clearly illustrate the underlying design of Lilactree Farm. If you have been enjoying Brian’s occasional pieces here, you will want to go over to Garden [...]

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How Much Soil Amendment Do You Need?

May 4, 2011

Mud season is over and your soil is finally drying out, and you’re contemplating adding soil amendments to your vegetable bed or mulch to your ornamental beds. The question is: how much do you need? Probably more than you think. To get an even remotely accurate answer, you will need a tape measure. I like [...]

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Trailing Arbutus

May 2, 2011

I‘ve been trying to go for a walk up in our woods every day that it isn’t raining. (We got 8.55 inches of rain this April and our normal is 3.49 inches, so there haven’t been as many opportunities as in past springs.) During this time of year, when the native spring ephemerals are blooming, [...]

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Pussy Willow: Wildflower Wednesday

April 27, 2011

For Wildflower Wednesday, I try to feature a native plant growing wild on our property. I took a walk on Monday to see what was blooming, and found only one plant blooming, a shrub which looked to me like a pussy willow. I looked through my books and discovered that’s exactly what it was: Salix [...]

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