Cold Climate Gardening

This photo was taken two days before the digital thermometer bottomed out in January 2005

Quite a while ago, someone emailed me, asking what was a cold climate. I never did answer them, because I thought it was obvious. A cold climate is any climate too cold to grow the plants you really want to grow. […]

[Read more →]

What I saw this morning [Photographer: Kathy Purdy]

Just in case there’s anyone reading this who doesn’t yet understand what a cold climate is (I’ve had Australian searchers looking for “hardy plants” arrive at this site), I thought I’d give an illustration. When I got up about an hour earlier, the outdoor temperature was 36 […]

[Read more →]

The Intimate Garden: Twenty Years and Four Seasons in Our Garden by Gordon and Mary Hayward belongs to the rare breed of landscape design book that is actually helpful:

One private residential garden–not little glimpses of a dozen gardens
The garden was developed over many years. (They figured it out as they went along)
They tell you the […]

[Read more →]

The trouble with that platitude is that Spring is so erratic around here that we often don’t recognize it when it comes. For the next eight weeks or so, every time we hit a spell of bad weather, we will repeat to ourselves, and each other, “Well, spring is right around the corner.” But we’re […]

[Read more →]

In my series on Garden Blog Pioneers, I reported in the final part that Notes From Zone 4 was MIA. Well, they’re back.
If you ever had doubts that a cold climate garden could look good, take one look at their banner image and doubt no more. Then, appetite whetted, browse through their gallery. A sight […]

[Read more →]

I don’t have any bare ground for crocus to be poking up through–we have at least 18 inches of snow on the ground. Is it because the crocus are near the heated greenhouse that they are coming up? I hope some time this winter you and Judy both can tell us what size and type […]

[Read more →]

I had always thought you were in Zone 4, Ro, but when I consult my most detailed copy of the USDA Hardiness Zone map (which I got in an old issue of Fine Gardening) I see you actually are listed as Zone 5. Not that the map is the last word on what zone you […]

[Read more →]