IT WAS THE MORNING AFTER, WHEN THE CONVERSATION finally turned to confessions about our first times—the morning after my longtime garden mentor and I attended a garden lecture and dinner together, I mean. Back at my place the next morning, over toast and coffee, we made our confessions one by one: plants we’ve lusted over, and the first time we’d laid eyes on each seductive creature. Sigh.
We’d been to hear another old friend, Dan Hinkley, speak at nearby Berkshire Botanical Garden’s annual lecture with several hundred other winter-weary types, and afterward gone off with Dan and friends to eat.
We didn’t really talk plants at the meal; nine crazy gardeners traded pet stories. I know—insane. Either we are getting old and soft, or have spent too much time on Cute Overload. But the next morning my breakfast guest and I shifted from zoology to botany, stirred up by a few of Dan’s slides, including one of Mukdenia rossii ‘Crimson Fans,’ a shade plant Dan’s helped bring to market as part of his relationship with wholesaler Monrovia nursery.
My breakfast companion remembered his first Mukdenia…but he knew it by another name.
It was 1967ish, and the plant was then Aceriphyllum rossii. “I remember sitting by a stream in the New York Botanical Garden rock garden and seeing it for the first time,” said Marco Polo Stufano. “A good plant.”
At that moment I was feeling preoccupied with the one-trick genus Sciadopitys, and just finishing up a post on the umbrella pine.
“When was your first umbrella pine?” I asked, suspecting Marco’s “first” had been the same individual plant as mine. Yes, indeed, he’d been taken in by the same specimen at Planting Fields Arboretum as I, though we would have been strangers and seen it separately, years
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Yes, we’re talking about mint! The breath-saving, tummy-taming, taste-boosting mint. At Fantastic Gardeners, we love this refreshing plant, and why wouldn’t we? It is fragrant, easy to grow, and has many beneficial uses in culinary arts, medicine, and cosmetics.
Sometimes as gardeners, we place all the emphasis on plants. However, a few well positioned ornaments and focal points can heighten the interest and drama within a garden.
With so many types of art pieces to choose from for your home, it may be daunting to think about starting to shop for prints, posters, originals, or other works. However, filling your home with art should be an enjoyable process, and it isn't quite as complicated as you might think, either.
The study of native plants, the ecosystems of South Carolina, and sustainable landscaping practices form the focus of the South Carolina Native Plant Certificate Program. A partnership between the South Carolina Native Plant Society and the South Carolina Botanical Garden, this program gives participants insight into South Carolina’s rich and complex botanical heritage, and offers ways to bolster the states’ biodiversity. This program began in July 2015, and to-date over 300 participants from all over the state, from all walks of life, and of all different ages, have enrolled in the program.
We all want eye-catching plants—but we also want (and need) plants with a purpose.Ken and I invite you to a free webinar showcasing the real standouts they recommend that combine both form and function in sometimes unexpected ways.To just
With nearly 2-foot-wide, light green leaves on hairy stems that can approach 4 feet here, Astilboides tabularis is no shy thing, though it’s not a spreading thug at all. The stems attach in the middle of the leaf, so the foliage is held aloft like a small, round pedestal table—or some people say an umbrella.But its name is so descriptive, if you think about it: the tabularis part (meaning flat-topped, like a table), and even the genus name, Astilboides, since its flowers look like a giant creamy astilbe plume of sorts. Its “common” name (though I’ve never heard anybody say it) is shieldleaf. Make mine Astilboides.I brought my first clump home from a plant sale at the nearby Cary Arboretum, as it was then called, now the Cary Institute of Ec
The boys and I extend a huge thanks to Adrian, whom you can meet in the videos he’s been creating on The Post’s website. I loved this video about tomatoes, in which he combined visits with DC-area community gardeners and with our mutual friend Amy Goldman, the heirloom tomato queen who lives not far from me. Adrian’s recent story on Amy is a must-read as well.Also thanks to my very dear friend Erica Berger, who performed trick photography during the Washington Post photo shoot, so that (finally) a photo of Mother of the Frogboys that’s more recent than me at age 3 appears here. I didn’t see any of Erica’s photos that ran in the paper, or others from her shoot including this one, on The Post’s website…just the story itself is there…
THE LATEST BOOK GIVEAWAY–which was a smashing success–ended at midnight Sunday, but there’s a “win” for everyone, it turns out. Collaborator and author Katrina Kenison and I asked commenters to tell us about books they’d relied on in times of transition…and wow, did they ever.
DID YOU KNOW that robins can count, or that food (not paper or plastic) is the biggest single source of fodder for U.S. landfills? Those stories, and more, are among the latest links.
By choosing seed farmed in conditions like my own–without chemicals, and if possible, in a geographically similar environment–I can contribute less to the pollution caused by conventional seed growing, and also make a happy “match” between the seeds and my garden. Read the “New York Times” story, and if you feel inclined, share it. My latest public-radio show, produced with Robin Hood Radio, digs into the subject, too.Categoriesedible plants from seed organics vegetables.
This next week I’ll recap some best-of highlights of the website, and the public-radio show and podcast that came a few years later, and who knows what else of a celebratory nature (like maybe some giveaways). But for now just this:Scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page to say hello in the comments and tell me something you’ve enjoyed in that time, or some subject you’d like more of. Tell me how long you’ve been reading, if you like.a little backgroundTHOSE OF YOU who didn’t know me then might not know that starting the we
FOR THOSE who cannot read one more headline of world despair or political madness, a recent “New York Times Magazine” story on what happens when combat veterans and damaged parrots connect is a certain antidote. A must-read: Charles Siebert’s “What Does a Parrot Know about PTSD?” (Photo of blue and gold macaws under Creative Commons license from Marcel Burkhard.)size-xl coyotes: woyote, coywolf, or what?THE OTHER NIGHT at a dinner, someone said that they’d seen a wolf in a local cornfield. No, I said, we don’t have wolves in the Northeast, but we do have really big coyotes (60ish pounds, rather than the “usual” 35 or 45). To refres