growing annual poppies, with marilyn barlow

Phlox can be an easy grown half hardy annual suitable for any garden situation particularly a cottage garden. It’s compact bushy habit makes it ideal for planting as drifts of colour, as border edging or in containers. This Phlox differs from the perennial varieties that grow taller and have more scent. Never the less annual Phlox is worth the little effort that is required

I got my first glimpse of what have become my seasonal favorites almost 25 years ago, in the Connecticut garden of Marilyn Barlow, when she was starting Select Seeds (which I’m proud is an occasional advertiser on A Way to Garden). Then, the “nursery” was Marilyn’s yard, and the “office” was her kitchen table. And then, I hardly knew any of the vintage plants, climbing or otherwise, that Marilyn was collecting.Though Select Seeds’ focus is on oldtime plants or ones with an oldtime look, the nursery has taken an increasingly forward-looking approach to environmental practices.On the path toward organic growing, says Marilyn, use of neonicotinoids and other systemic chemicals has been completely eliminated. “Right now we’re growing naturally, with the plants and with the seeds that we do grow here,” she explains. “We use predator insects as the main

IKNOW IT’S TOO LATE FOR HELP with the freakish October storm that flattened the woody plants here last weekend, but I have a hunch those of us in snow country will be needing tips for helping the garden through storms to come. After all, winter hasn’t even started yet (evidence outside my window, where it hasn’t melted yet, to the contrary).

I doubt that Broken Arrow, founded by Dick and Sally Jaynes in 1984 in Hamden, Connecticut, needs much introduction—especially lately, as they were just featured in a “New York Times” piece by my former colleague Anne Raver. As Anne mentioned in that article, Adam (now 33 years old) used to buy plants at Broken Arrow as a teen-ager; now he’s their Propagation and Plant Development Manager.In the latter role, he’s the kind of particular guy who goes looking for a winterberry holly that shows off even without its fruit on (gold-splashed foliage, anyone?); who has such a passion for witch hazels that the nursery now offers 45 cultivars; who tracked down a pink-flowered Stewartia and….but let him tell you:The Q&A With Adam WheelerQ. So what does it take to catch the eye of the guy whose job is to go around looking for new things to add into Broken Arrow’s already very sophisticated product mix? You must see a l

The pre-Columbian Indians of the Andes domesticated more starchy root crops than any other culture, but only the potato caught on as a staple worldwide.“The others have seldom been tried outside South America, yet they are still found in the Andes and represent some of the most interesting of all root crops.…” said a 1989 report called “Lost Crops of the Incas: Little-Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation” from the National Research Council.“They come in myriad colors, shapes, and sizes,” the report added. “T

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

THANK YOU DEB PERELMAN OF SMITTEN KITCHEN, who cooks up a giant food blog from her tiny, 42-square-foot New York City kitchen. Just in time for peak pickling season, Deb unlocked the riddle that had been puzzling her (and me) for years: why recipes come out too salty sometimes and not others. Turns out that not all brands of Kosher salt (shown above, in my Grandma’s glass salt cellar) are created equal. The scoop from Deb (thank you, thank you).WANT TO USE LESS CHEMICALS in and around the home and garden? Who doesn’t? Beyond Pesticides dot org is an essential resource to help in the plight. Just look at this list of factsheets (each a PDF). I love the one on “Reading Your Lawn Weeds,” for instance, a tactic that will really help you think before dumping on some needless toxin; you can find it partway down this page of theirs, at the link

Many visitors have asked me to take it to the next level. Now Broken Arrow Nursery—they always do plant sales at my big Open Days—and I are offering smaller, ticketed, workshop-style events and sales on September 17, lasting a half-day each, with lots of individual attention. Our spring version sold out fast; space is very limited. Ticket includes $25 Broken Arrow shopping credit at the plant sale.Tour with me, Margaret, focusing on how I made a garden for the birds (60-plus species visit yearly); my maybe-too-crazy obsession with gold foliage; my passion for great groundcovers; the pollinator- and bird-enhancing “meadow” I’ve cultivated by observing carefully and mowing differently; and most of all, my intimate relationship with the place that goes wa

Background: Barry Glick–a serious plantaholic who’s even a vegan and is sometimes also referred to in mock botanical Latin as the Glicksterus maximus–is a native of the Philadelphia area, and has been gardening since childhood.  In 1972, he purchased 60 acres of a 3,650-foot-high mountaintop in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, that became Sunshine Farm and Gardens (which you can stroll though and shop from at sunfarm.com).  Barry’s a garden writer and a longtime lecturer—but most of all I love how he was described in one magazine article I read recently:“The Flower Child Who Became the Flower King.”snippets from my q&a with barry glickIN THE TEXT BELOW, I harvested just the briefest details from conversations with Barry before, after and during the show taping, so be sure to listen in as well as read (the podcast player is just above), for extra unexpected goodies. Examples: the fact that a Number 8 “camel-hair” brush—which Barry uses for hand-pollination of hellebores—is actually made fro

‘THE SMALLEST NPR STATION in the nation,” Robin Hood Radio, just got bigger, which is good news for them and also for my garden podcast, which we began doing together each Monday morning around 8:30 in March 2010. The station, headquartered in nearby Sharon, Connecticut, has expanded to reach about 150,000 residents, up from 40,000 previously, by adding a signal from the frequency at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.