winter

When does the gardening season end for you? The first frost? The first snowfall? I find it hard to call it quits, and here's why . . .

‘More and more I am coming to the conclusion that rain is a far more important consideration to gardens than sun, and that one of the lesser advantages that a gardener gains in life is his thorough enjoyment of a rainy day!’ Margaret Waterfield, quoted in The Penguin Book of Garden Writing What kind of [...]

Hello, dear readers! I'll be speaking on Creating A Cabin Fever Bed this Wednesday, September 16th for the Manchester Garden Club at the Manchester Community Library at 1 pm. Would love to see you there! If winter starts too early and spring doesn't come soon enough, if you find yourself pacing indoors and gazing out [...]

It seems the snow will never stop. We haven't had the huge accumulations that parts of New England have seen, just another couple of inches one day, another couple of inches a few days after that. After a while it does amount to a whole bunch. The sun has been shining more (when it's not [...]

We've had plenty of cold (subzero Fahrenheit temps at night) and plenty of snow (pushing 18 inches at this point), and the only thing growing here is icicles. They grow when the sun shines, especially if we manage to hover around the freezing point, our new definition of a heat wave. And the sun hasn't [...]

What a dark fall and early winter this has been, cold too, now. Hal Borland was right when he wrote that ‘as the day lengthens, the cold strengthens.’ This morning is a brief reprieve, grey again but calm and mild, impossible to resist taking the camera into the garden.

A long winter is not for sissies. If you are new to the tribe of hardy plants and hardy souls, here are 10 time-honored ways to beat cabin fever. How many do you already practice?

I just read an interview with Piet Oudolf in the New York Times about designing a garden for winter. I was glad to see he was asked, "What do you do if you live in an area with much snow?" His answer was less than satisfying. When the snow comes down dry, it doesn’t flatten [...]

Most people living in a cold climate would probably tell you it isn't the cold that bothers them as much as the endless succession of dreary, cloudy days. (Heck, even people in the balmy Pacific Northwest complain about how dark it is in winter!) Well, today it was sunny for a change, so I went [...]