hot stuff: welcoming summer with fiery new coneflowers

My name is Stephanie Stewart, and I live in Averill Park, New York.

Can’t travel right now to see the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona? Come for a visit to the South Carolina Botanical Garden to see selection of the interesting native plants at the Chihuahuan Desert Garden Display.

The saying “Be careful what you wish for,” came to mind more than once in the three weeks since the email from Anne, with whom I started my garden-writing career when we worked at Newsday newspaper in Long Island nearly 20 years ago. The journey from that email to today’s Times article has been something like a season of “Survivor,” particularly the photo-shoot day.When I heard from Anne, I’d been busy getting ready for June 14, my first Garden Conservancy Open Day of the year, with a large reception for the Conservancy scheduled here that same evening. But she suggested coming 10 days earlier…only 4 or 5 days after her email…way ahead of the day we’d targeted to have it “all together” (if a garden can ever be “all together”), and way too so

FIRST, A LITTLE SCIENCE LESSON: Fungi don’t have chlorophyll, so they cannot make their own food (like plants do), nor can they ingest it (like animals), except through absorption from their surrounding environment. Most fungi are saprophytes, meaning they feed on dead or decaying material, like the leaf litter of the forest floor—or the debris in your compost heap. Their second critical role: Most of the plant kingdom depends on symbiotic fungi called mycorrhizae, which inhabit the plants’ roots, to live. (Thank you for patiently listening to that.)I MADE PIZZA THE OTHER DAY (no, not a mushroom pizza), something I do a lot from scratch, and when the yeast acted oddly I did what any 21st century human does: I looked for an explanation online. I still don’t know what caused my yeast to misbehave, but here’s what I learned: The kind of yeast you bake with (or make beer or champagne with) are unicellular fungi, technically sp

ICAN’T IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT THEM. The frogs, I mean.

You may recall my previous conversations with Thomas, the co-author with Claudia West of the provocative 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” Even though we both have worked around plants for many years, it’s as if Thomas sees them differently from the way I do, in a sort of super-savvy botanical 3-D. He doesn’t see them as mere decorative objects, but astutely reads their body language for clues to who they want to grow with (or not) and how to put them all together successfully.I love how he sees, and thinks, as you can glean from our lively Q&A, where he says things like this:And this:Though not intentionally so, the Times article turns out to be especially timely—and not just because it’s early spring, and we gardeners need to make smarter choices

THE FIRST PERSON to photograph snowflakes did so in 1885, harnessing the combined power of a camera and also a microscope given to him as gifts by his parents. Then 20-year-old Alwyn Bentley of Jericho, Vermont, came to be known as the Snowflake Man for his lifetime of work, which also included years of close examination of raindrops. A fascinating tale of Bentley’s life, and more photos, via DomainReview [dot] org. Image above from the Smithsonian Institution collection. And yes: Bentley is responsible for the “no two are alike” lowdown on snowflakes.fresh as a frog’s skinA BIT OF RUSSIAN folk-wisdom that calls for keeping milk fresh by putting a live frog in the milk bucket has led to the examination of chemicals secreted from the frog’s skin. Apparently they are powerfully antifungal and antibacterial…but will they have implications for new drugs

That’s Lee with his trusty scythe, above, which doesn’t figure into composting, but into how he cuts his meadow-like fields. Impressive, and mesmerizing! I’ve included a couple of his great how-to videos on composting and no-till soil preparation, along with links to the audio of our entire conversation.I was especially excited to visit Lee Reich’s New Paltz, New York, “farmden”–that’s half garden, half farm–since it’s fruit harvest time. Lee is a longtime friend and author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening,” and “The Pruning Book,” among others.Read the show notes from our discussion on the October 21,

Dan Long–proprietor of Brushwood Nursery aka gardenvines.com–is celebrating 15 years of selling an impressive assortment of hundreds of vining and climbing plants. He joined me from Athens, Georgia, on the latest radio show and podcast, to give us a tour through some upwardly mobile choices in the world of scented things. (Details on how to listen and subscribe free to the program are at the bottom of the page.)my fragrant-vine q&a with dan longQ. I mentioned the recent headlines of new fragrant Clematis–so maybe let’s start there before we talk jasmines and honeysuckles and even some passion flowers and climbing roses, among the many delicious possibilities. When I think fragrant clematis I think of C. mo

The selection is unlike in the early 1990s, when Ken published his first big shade-garden book and most people knew maybe two, hostas and astibles. Then, gardeners cursed shady areas of their yards as a liability to be eliminated instead of a refuge to be celebrated and expanded upon.Ken has been called the “guru of natural gardening” by “The New York Times,” but I just call him my old friend and the longtime master of the shade, and I’m was glad to welcome him back to my public-radio program to talk about making gardens in th

In late winter or early spring phrases like “slow to establish” are heard from frustrated gardeners seeing maybe 2 of the 200 they planted last fall actually doing anything.Years ago I recall reading upstate New Yorker Kathy Purdy’s frustration on her Cold Climate Gardening blog, and how she’d since learned about soil pH and its effect on winter aconites, as Eranthis are commonly called. In a vintage how-to column in “The Telegraph,”

It’s a staggering number. That would be a lot of holes to dig, or drill, as the Garden begins to enhance and expand its historic Daffodil Hill display first planted in 1920.What didn’t surprise me was the involvement of Brent Heath, a longtime bulb merchant and daffodil hybridizer himself, who’s acting as an adviser in the ambitious undertaking. Brent, whose grandfather began the family bulb business in 1900, joined me on my public-radio show and podcast from his B