making mosaics: my video on underplanting

Another wet and rainy day and all I can think about is the compost heap (well may be not all). We all slip up, drop clangers and get it wrong so I thought I would list some of my own compost errors or lash-ups.

A rock garden is a grand place to display your alpine plants. You can shade them with rocks, provide deep root runs and provide rain cover with perspex roofs

Every winter I am on the Oregon trail for garden scent. My best hope is the Mahonia (aka Oregon grape) which grows very well in various shady parts of my garden and flowers profusely in winter. Regrettably I find the much acclaimed scent is hard to detect but smell is not the only thing that gets up my nose! The rigid leaves have several vicious points on  the arrayed leaves and catch me out many times a year. This is partly due to a 6 foot shrub near my Japanese garden path. I don’t know what made me think Mahonia was suitable in a Japanese garden but there you go. As a deterrent to uninvited visitors the prickles make it as good as Holly and a close second to Berberis.

I know I can use all sorts of materials as a mulch but I like the organic versions. Here I have piled it high well before it is ready as a mulch much less a compost

The Barbie Dreamhouse has stood as an aspirational symbol of the ideal home ever since Mattel debuted it in 1964. With its cheerful pink hues and bounty of furniture accessories, it evokes feelings of comfort, happiness, and pure reverie among the youngest members of each generation. If you want to channel a bit of that light-hearted fun and nostalgia into your everyday life, here are 20 of our favorite Barbie-themed home goods that should do the trick.

In an earlier blog post, we discovered how easy it is to grow luffas. Making soap from luffas is a fun and easy craft project for all ages.

Like all of Ken’s 18 books (!!!), “Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of Propagation” is rich in instruction, but also visually arresting, since he’s an award-winning photographer, too.  It covers the botany of propagation—the why’s behind how you can make more plants of a particular species sexually or asexually or both—because as Ken says:“It is not essential to learn about botany to garden well; it’s inevitable.”Then in words and intimate pictures he covers virtually every tactic for doing so, from seed-sowing to leaf and root cuttings, to layering, grafting, division and more.  The photos are so beautiful, and Ken’s obvious enthusiasm so evident on every page, that I want to try everything. (Just what I nee

IN OUR CHAT on my public-radio program, I learned why not to till when prepping a planting; how to help a desired species outpace an unwanted one by learning to manage and influence natural processes; and what the word “naturalistic” means today.what’s ‘naturalistic,’ anyway?Q. How did the native and natural become your specialty, Larry—did the education in landscape design come first, or the nature and science?A. My first experience in the landscape world was working in traditional horticulture—first a job, and then going to school for it. However my interest in it always came from the naturalistic end.As a kid, I grew up in the urban Philadelphia and I don’t think I even knew there was such as thing as a garden designer, until I got a job with a landscape firm, in the summer between high school and college.But the thing that always interested me was na

LIKE CLOCKWORK THEY START TO APPEAR ABOUT NOW: A first harvest of cucumbers, and also one of Japanese beetles. Into separate and quite different “brines” they go as fast as they develop, one a vinegar-salt formula, the latter a bit bubbly.

I AM CULTIVATING PATIENCE, THANKS TO MY TROUBLED TOMATOES, learning to wait between sadly small outbursts of red fruit. Even my quick red sauce—normally made in hasty batches that overflow two spaghetti pots at a time—is an exercise in restraint, more meditation than mass production.

DESPITE THAT 1940s Harry Truman-ism, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen,” that’s exactly where harvest time sends us, especially if we grow our own edibles. Who better to ask for inspiration now than Deborah Madison—often called the Julia Child of vegetarian cooking? Listen to our conversation (my newest podcast) about her latest book, “Vegetable Literacy.” Along the way you’ll get wisdom on her must-have garden herbs; a recipe for her versatile, rich-in-a-good-way Romesco sauce; and even Deborah’s unexpected secret weapon for gopher control.Madison’s massive 1997 volume “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” (Amazon link) is probably on your shelf, or should be, and this year she published her 10th cookbook–another comprehensive, beautiful must-have. It’s arranged not in the usual manner (appetizer to dessert) but taxonomically, by plant family.  (Remember my story about it, and her recipe for cauliflower pasta with red pepper flakes and more?)

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.