We're Obsessed With Costco's Massive Grazing Board

Mario Tama / Staff

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

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

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

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

Where did we fail?Is it the wrong orchid for our conditions, or did we do wrong by the right orchid? Oh, dear.I sought advice from Greg Griffis, the orchid grower for Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where the annual Orchid

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.

Many of you, like I do, probably enjoy watching birds, but what prompts a person to set out to pursue a big year, as it’s called in the world of extreme birding? And what besides a possible record do they potentially gain in the process?On the occasion of the publication of his latest book, “Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World,” I wanted to ask Noah all that–and also for some advice on being a

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

Jeff is Director of Grounds and Coordinator of Horticulture at Scott and Swarthmore, where among the extensive and diverse plantings is a whole Tree Peony Garden area, one of the first collections established after Scott was founded in 1929 and now including more than 80 varieties of tree peonies. He is also vice-president of the Mid-Atlantic Peony Society.Why consider these plants? Tree peonies are deer-resistant, extremely cold-tolerant, long-lived and really don’t require a lot of complicated pruning. And oh, those flowers (that’s one of Jeff’s favorites, ‘Nike,’ up top.).Read along as you listen to the April 10, 2107 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or St

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