tree peonies, with jeff jabco of scott arboretum

Vandiver L Chaplin

Andrew, who is now assistant director of the Chicago Botanic Garden, is past president of Magnolia Society International’s board of directors, and remains a member of the society’s board. In his tenure over 20 years as curator at Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Andrew built the magnolia collection from about 50 to more than 200 cultivars. That’s a lot of magnolias.Now Andrew Bunting is author of a book on the queen of flowering trees, called “The Plant Lover’s Guide to Magnolias,” just out from Timber Press as part of an ongoing series on various distinctive genera of plants.We talked magnolias on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along while you listen in to the April 25, 2016 edition of the podcast using the player below (or at this link)–and even learn how to train a magnolia or any w

If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it

Brushwood Nursery, aka gardenvines [dot] com, was founded in 1998 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, out of a Lord and Burnham greenhouse Dan rented for $5 a year plus upkeep. (Such a deal!) Dan, a University of Delaware horticulture graduate, used to teach at nearby Longwood Gardens and worked with Conard-Pyle, where he got fluent in the propagation of Clematis, which most nurseries call “a nuisance crop,” he says, with their particular trimming schedules and rambunctious intertwining tendencies.Enter a business opportunity: a high dollar-per-square-foot greenhouse crop, and one that not everyone is good at–enter Brushwood. He started selling vines over eBay, eventually launching his own website, and recently outgrew the climate and space in Pennsylvania and moved to Athens, Georgia.The Brushwood collection now numbers more than 500 climbers, with Clematis as the main event—including ‘Omoshiro,’ top photo, which may be the first large-flowered one I ever buy (it’s more than 7 inches across, and fragrant). There are climbing roses, jasmines, passionflowers and more–but let Dan tell

Thanks to Lisa, I got helpful advice about shopping for bulbs, and the importance of choosing perennial companion plants that work well with them—creating dramatic backdrops, or hiding faded bulb foliage—plus tips for making our tulips last longer and more.  We also talked about gardening by subtraction—the essential process of editing, especially in a looser “wild garden,” as the Gravel Garden style represents.Lisa, at Chanticleer since 1990 after graduating from Longwood Gardens’ Professional Gardener Program, is also one of the co-authors of lavish book about Chanticleer called “The Art of Gardening.” (Enter in the comments box at the very bottom of the page, after the last reader comment, to win a copy.)Read along as you listen to the Aug. 29, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the

Whether you get technical or go generic with your terminology, it’s time to tuck tubers and corms and tuberous roots and rhizomes and yes, even some true bulbs into the soil for years of enjoyment. But which ones, and how?With help from horticulturist Jonathan Wright of Chanticleer Garden, who joined me on my public radio show and podcast, we’ll learn some less-than-expected uses of bulbs, like massed in lawns [photo below, at Chanticleer], and layered in containers. Plus: tips such as which bulbs are more animal-proof tha

A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-

Read along as you listen to the June 26, 2107 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).evaluating monarda with george coombs of mt. cubaQ. We’ve talked before on the show about your past trials of other native plants like Baptisia and Heuchera—and native plants are the mission of Mt. Cuba, which is both a garden for visiting and a research center, right?A. Mt. Cuba Center is actually a former du Pont family estate, the Copeland family estate, and they left their estate to become a public garden. What kind of sets us apart from others in the area is that we focus on native plants. We broadly define our nativity region as the Eastern United States.We do a lot of work promoting plants in a display capacity in the gardens itself, and then we also do research like what I do, trying to help

Maybe the best answer to that question is one I found on page 28 of the new book “The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer,” where it says:“It is a garden for the sake of being a garden.”Bill Thomas (above photo, back row, far right), came to Chanticleer Garden in 2003, as director and head gardener, after 26 years at nearby Longwood Gar

You may ask: Now why would I want to go to a talk about a historic and grand National Trust property situated in another climate altogether, a place long on fantastic walls and fountains, connecting outdoor “hallways,” magnificent topiaries, and hedges of box, hornbeam and yew? (As is probably the case in your garden, I have not one of those things here.)On a visit maybe 20 years ago, Hidcote was the initial place I saw such formal lines contrasted against a “jungle style of planting.” Even though each garden area is clearly enclosed and its shape well-defined, as in the famed Red Border up top, the plants in individual beds within each area were invited to just have at it, to spill out into the paths here and there, and to spill into one another in a riot of color, texture and intimate connection that’s both restrained and unrestrained all at once. Delightful.And then, it was this that made me perk up at news of the upcoming lecture:On Garden Conservancy Open Days at my

Entomologist Doug Tallamy and his wife have spent 14 years coaxing back to life 10 acres of what had been farmland for nearly four centuries: achieving more diversity by adding layers to its once-flat botanical architecture. Today 54 species of birds nest on their Delaware property, and acorns the couple planted have become 20-foot trees–so many that now editing is required.Tallamy, professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware-Newark, has been called the “guru of the habitat gardening movement.” He is co-author with Rick Darke of a recent book, “The Livin

David Mattern, who oversees the vegetable garden at the splendid public space called Chanticleer in Pennsylvania, is my latest target. You may recall that last fall, David helped us take a critical eye to our vegetable gardens as we took them apart during cleanup, and challenged us also to consider tilling less in the year to come for improved soil health and fewer weeds.David is a graduate of Longwood’s Professional Gardeners Training Program, and after that interned in England at some prestigious spots including West Dean Gardens in West Sussex, with its famed walled vegetable garden.He rejoined me on the January 9, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to h