Design

Cornell Site Helps Match Spring Bulbs With Early Perennials

– Posted in: Design, Recommended Links

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 [...]

Designing with Native Plants: Creating Sustainable Landscapes for the Finger Lakes & Upstate New York

– Posted in: Design, Events, Habitat gardening, Native/Invasive

Just 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

– Posted in: Design

Many 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

– Posted in: Design

I 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 [...]

Fallscaping: Book Review

– Posted in: Book reviews, Design

Inspiring 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 Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

– Posted in: Design

Long-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 [...]