dragonflies and damselflies, with dennis paulson

If you have always wanted to know about the world of different Types of Dragonfly in the Garden, then this post is a must-read!

New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation by John Grimshaw, Ross Bayton and illustrated by Hazel Wilks. Amazon

Ornamental Japanese Maples are widely available for planting in your garden. The autumn colouring makes these trees spectacular when planted en mass in a woodland or Japanese garden setting.

Icon of the southwest, organ pipe cactus (Stenocereus thurberi) is one of the best known species of cacti in the United States.Reaching up to 26 feet in height and 12 feet wide, this slow

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

IF YOU ARE STILL USING any synthetic chemicals on your lawn, I hope you will stop. So does Paul Tukey. When he founded SafeLawns in 2006, Paul says, “It didn’t occur to people that their lawns could be dangerous.”“The sad reality is that we know that a lot of the chemicals used to grow the lawn (the fertilizers), or the chemicals used to control weeds or insects or fungal diseases—all  of these chemicals are designed to kill things, and they can make us very sick, and they make the water very sick, and the soil very sick, and the air very unhealthy.”Giving up chemicals doesn’t mean you have to pave over your front yard.“We will have lawns long after all these chemicals are banned in the United States, as they have been banned in Canada,” says Paul—explaining that more than 80 percent of Canadians cannot use weed and feed products, or glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide) because they are

I spoke about some notable natives with my friend Andy Brand of Broken Arrow Nursery, with whom I often hosting half-day workshops in my Hudson Valley, New York, garden, when we focus on upping the beneficial wildlife quotient in your own backyard with better plants and better practices. Andy has been one of the experts I’ve pestered for ideas as I’ve been doing that in my own garden in recent years to good effect.Andy is manager of Connecticut-based Broken Arrow, and he’s a serious amateur naturalist, and founder of the Connecticut state butterfly association. (That’s a photo by Andy of a red-banded hairstreak on a Clethra blossom, top of page.) Learn where many familia

Decades ago, I inherited the big old Clivia plant that had inhabited the sunroom of the home I grew up in for years before that. All these eons later we still live together, Clivia and I, as we have at several locations in between, though now there are multiple plants, each a division and each monstrously bigger than the one I started with.And then maybe 15 years ago I bought a yellow-flowered Clivia [above] at a botanical garden plant auction, and last year a young plant of a Clivia species unknown to me arrived in the mail as a gift from friends….so you get the idea. I like clivias. A lot.Alan Petravich, who a

In the fall of 2016, Dr. Connally won a $1.6 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control to fund a four-year study, in coordination with the University of Rhode Island, to gauge the effectiveness of various tick control methods in the areas around people’s homes. She’ll tell us more about the angles being pursued, and also about self-care topics, from treated clothing to the use of topical repellents and more.Read along as you listen to the Dec. 11, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).backyard tick research, with dr. neeta connallyQ. A little context first: You’re in the Northeast, where a lot of the cases of Lyme in the United States occur, but there are multiple tick species around the nation. You

On my radio show and podcast, we talked about why having extra-early and extra-later bloomers—from spicebush to Clethra to goldenrods and more—mean important insects and even birds will choose not just to stop by your garden, but call it home and raise a family.Read along as you listen to the May 11, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).read/listen: choosing native plants,a q&a with broken arrow’s andy brandQ. I know that when the subject of native plants is raised, peopl

LATEST LINKS: Too-hot-to-handle weather has had me indoors for a broad swath of each recent day, and that means more than the usual dose of web browsing—and a couple of new links to share. One (a video) is an extraordinary take on dragonflies; the other a moving essay on what I think is the garden’s most important and insistent message: that nothing lasts. The latter is delivered not by a gardener at all, but by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. Some decidedly non-horticultural but ever-so-moving links I think you’ll like:

http://vimeo.com/13985863 SOME OF YOU MAY KNOW Shauna James Ahern, the Gluten-Free Girl, who has participated in many Summer Fest and Fall Fest events here with me the last couple of years. Her extremely popular blog is for people who love food—and great writing.Don’t let the “gluten-free” part of Shauna and her chef husband Danny’s website or their new cookbook scare you off, if wheat and other glutens aren’t something you worry about eating because you don’t have the kind of sensitivity that prompted Shauna to go gluten-free in 2005. This is just plain delicious food, made from fresh ingredients—and (surprise! rapture!) there is plenty of baking in the mix, including carrot-ginger cake and focaccia–and a pear tart, made with Asian pears and a sorghum, potato and sweet-rice flour crust. There is even hom