Every year around this time, I get into a car with my husband and a couple friends and make the journey over hill and dale and White Marsh Shopping center to Longwood Gardens. The drive is a long one. But a day savoring A Longwood Christmas and the pleasures of conversation stimulated by thousands of [...]
Just before leaving for Great Britain three months ago, I threw an overnight case in the back of a friend’s overworked Prius and headed down to Raleigh to attend a lecture being given by Fergus Garrett, head gardener at Great Dixter, and the Chief Executive of its charitable trust. Many gardeners, especially those who read [...]
It’s Thanksgiving morning. What have you forgotten? You’ve thrown the turkey in the oven, the stuffing is made and on its way to being glorious, and your sister is bringing the rolls and jello. In a few minutes the game and/or parade will start blaring from the living room and you can start to relax. [...]
“We lost too many plants in our impatience to possess them, because we had not achieved the proper growing conditions.” - Beth Chatto, The Beth Chatto Handbook _______________________________ If ever a sentence deserves a garden writers' gold medal for excellence and simplicity, it is this one, written decades ago by gardener and garden designer, the [...]
Well, we're square in the middle of the autumn season. I hope you’re enjoying your garden right now and not thinking too much about the end of it. These last little drops of fall are to be savored – after all, they are what we will remember when the January banshees start to scream. [...]
Fresh from an exhaustive three weeks driving 1800 miles to tour British gardens and their associated tea rooms, I am full of ideas and inspiration for next year’s planting schemes. The British know how to do it. The hype is real. But what exactly is that ‘it’ comprised of? Cottagey color? Architectural hedging? Jam covered [...]
Pumpkins. Cinnamon. Wood fires and Robert Frost. With familiar regularity, autumn evokes in us an emotional response and draws us back to center as winter approaches. It softens the knowledge of what is to come and gives us time (if we choose to take it) to reflect on what has been. I think this is [...]
Peering out of the windows of my office, I see the two-story blackened, shredded tips of a hardy banana (Musa basjoo), and I am reminded of the work to be done this week to its less hardy cousins. Is it really that time already? Musa basjoo, the night before frost. In my weaker [...]
For reasons that are at once both simple and ridiculous, I recently managed to injure my foot in the middle of a four week walking tour of British and French gardens. Occasionally in this life, the devil seizes the wheel, and one must laugh heartily at the abrupt change of plan or find oneself bested. [...]
There are no adventures quite as adventurous as reclaiming the garden after a long absence abroad – and during the height of the growing season no less. From bewilderment to bloodshed to tears, it has been an interesting week. Moreover, there are still miles to go before I sleep, and the winter is not drawing [...]
