MOST BULBS TAKE UP LITTLE ROOM and give a lot in return. This slideshow includes some of my favorites, many of them animal-proof. Come along and see what they are. [Read more...]
a plant i’d order: hakonechloa ‘all gold’
February 28, 2009
IT GROWS IN SHADE, READS AS SOLID GOLD, and looks good from early May to a week ago, I think, though it was faded to wheat-color and partly hidden in snow. Even the cat agrees on this one: Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’ is Jack’s favorite snack pack among thousands of botanical choices here, apparently delicious fresh or (now) freeze-dried. It’s the latest thing I’d order if I didn’t already have it, a plant I cannot garden without. [Read more...]
slideshow: a garden walk in winter
February 26, 2009
BEFORE IT’S TECHNICALLY GONE, a look at winter in the garden, in words and pictures. Shall we take a walk together through scenes of the months just past? [Read more...]
doodle by andre: sad state of the union?
February 26, 2009
A MONG GARDENING COUPLES, IT’S OFTEN SAID that the secret to a successful marriage lies in having separate beds. We’re not clear that the union Andre the doodler has depicted here is thriving, exactly, despite the his-and-hers tactic. Yours? (Sorry, is that too personal?)
fruit-tree pruning: a future investment
February 24, 2009
TODAY DWARF AND SEMI-DWARF varieties of apples and other fruit trees are the norm, but when the half-dozen or so apple trees that remain from the old, old orchard I garden in were planted, the norm was full-size or standard trees. Their shapes were barely visible when I bought the property, overgrown with a combination of their own unnecessary, thicket-like growth and miles of multiflora roses and grapevines. Over a course of three years, the trees were brought back to some state of civility. This required aggressively employing two basic methods, which you, too, can use to improve the shape and yield of an overgrown fruit tree. The time is now. [Read more...]
plant lust: when was your first time?
February 23, 2009
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. [Read more...]
I WAS BLESSED TO visit many of the nation’s finest homemade gardens for 15 years for ‘Martha Stewart Living,’ first as garden editor and then as editorial director. The places we published included my upstate New York home. Take a tour of 
