secret_garden

I 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 [...]

Perhaps 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 [...]

Yes, I know the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day was yesterday the day before yesterday. I didn't get finished in time. So just pretend this is May 15th, okay? (As always, hover your mouse over any thumbnail for a caption, and click on any photo for a larger image.) Narcissus Let's start off with the narcissus. [...]

Sunday, October 8th, was a gorgeous autumn day, sunny and warm. I decided to go up the hill for a walk in the woods, camera in hand, and you get to share the results. (Be forewarned: this is an even longer than usual post.) But first, a little bit about where we're going. Our family [...]

Old Roses has won the snowdrop race, but IBOY made a fine showing. Me? I won't even start looking for snowdrops till February, but I'll be lucky to find any before March. And what about the Southerners? How far south can one go and still grow snowdrops? These snowdrops were blooming in the Secret Garden [...]

Today is my grandma's 98th birthday. I originally wrote this essay for a Fine Gardening contest (which I didn't win), and decided to revise it and share it with you in honor of her special day. It's funny how gardens are such emotional things. You enter some gardens and feel as though you are in [...]

The snowdrops in the Secret Garden are all blooming now, the same ones I tried to will out of the ground earlier. These are my most rapidly increasing snowdrops. I got them from a friend who found them growing in a field near her house. Presumably there was once a house and garden where she [...]

In my post of October 31st, I told you how Rundy started clearing a path through the Secret Garden and the woods. Since then he leveled some areas of the path with a mattock, chain-sawed some trees that were in the way (including a huge dead pine that had toppled across a path since the [...]

I'm so psyched! Rundy finally started mowing a trail through the secret garden with the DR Brush Mower. It has been my dream for years to have walking trails through our acreage and it's finally coming true. Ever since I walked the paths in my Grandma LaFemina's Long Island yard, and followed my Uncle Jimmy [...]