doodle by andre: the plant wars

If you love plants but don’t like the mess of handling the soil they come with, then don’t worry! For people who hate dirt in their homes, these are the best Houseplants that Grow Without Soil!

Are you frustrated because there are dandelions and other weeds in your lawn? Did you know that dandelion flowers provide one of the first springtime sources of pollen for bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects?

No, I have still not met Andre, though we’ve been in contact for more than a year. But we grow a little closer every week when the latest stash of doodles-in-progress arrives, and I get glimmers into the thought process that is behind them, just like I did when I read his memoir, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” (There is no better book to give your shrink; it should be on the curriculum of psychoanalytic institutes and departments of psychiatry in teaching hospitals and schools of social work, I swear. Insurance companies should mail it out to all patients using mental-health coverage, so they know they are not alone.) Some week

ANDRE THE DOODLER IS ALLOWED TO PUT DOWN HIS PEN every now and again, and this is one of those weeks. If you can’t live without your weekly Andre fix, try browsing through the image-driven archive of every last doodle he’s created here in the last two years.

MY GARDENING LIFE STARTED with a hedge—cutting one back hard, specifically. It was the threadbare, tall old privet surrounding my childhood home, and I was determined to “rejuvenate” it, after reading about the process in a book. No artful hedge has ever been created by my hands, though—a fact that feels all the more lamentable after watching Sean Conway’s video tour (above) of designer and nurseryman Piet Oudolf’s garden in the Netherlands. What magic.

Andrew, who is now assistant director of the Chicago Botanic Garden, is past president of Magnolia Society International’s board of directors, and remains a member of the society’s board. In his tenure over 20 years as curator at Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Andrew built the magnolia collection from about 50 to more than 200 cultivars. That’s a lot of magnolias.Now Andrew Bunting is author of a book on the queen of flowering trees, called “The Plant Lover’s Guide to Magnolias,” just out from Timber Press as part of an ongoing series on various distinctive genera of plants.We talked magnolias on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along while you listen in to the April 25, 2016 edition of the podcast using the player below (or at this link)–and even learn how to train a magnolia or any w

YES, PLEASE; HAVE YOUR WAY WITH MY LAWN, TOO; I hear you, Andre. As much as I basically like to mow, I don’t like it as much as the grass apparently liked to grow this wet, cool year.

NO SMART-ASS COMMENTARY FROM ME TODAY, not on this one. As doodler Andre Jordan paints a very clear picture of, there is more to life than meets the eye. Shall we look a little deeper?

WE GARDENERS HAVE SPOKEN OUR FEELINGS OPENLY together here about mowing, but I guess The Andres hadn’t had the talk yet–the talk about how some lovers with macho names like Toro and Snapper are fair-weather friends. Uh-oh, the mower’s about to go into cold storage, and *she* isn’t ready for the separation.

HOW MANY -PEDES DOES IT HAVE, I ASK? CENTI- OR MILLI- OR ??? All I know is that they creep me out, too, my dear friend Andre Jordan–or at least startle me when they come pedaling prehistorically in my direction out of nowhere.

UM, I GUESS OUR FRIEND Andre Jordan got a peek at the way we really order seeds, huh? Trouble is: I’m still stuck on Step 1, that “Bloody Brilliant Big List” thing.

APPARENTLY MANDATORY DRUG-TESTING will now be required in the arenas of the county fair and harvest festival, where our able correspondent Andre Jordan reports that the use of performance-enhancing substances is growing as rampant as crabgrass. I wonder if the rotten carrot is being held in the crisper–or the clinker–awaiting trial? Doubtful that the drug-dependent root was a match for the world-record holder, at 19 feet 1.96 inches–I kid you not.