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What’s a Weed?
Announcing a new blog series: Ask the Green Thumb. Short videos will answer common gardening questions posted by readers in the Boston/Metro-West area. And will also be posted in the resource section of my website: http://www.mariavonbrincken.com Here’s the first: How do I tell the difference between a Weed and a Plant? Hope this helps you make… Read more
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Masses of Yellow: Antidote to a Gloomy Day
Winter seems to be dragging along. It’s late April, but feels and looks like March. The antidote to the gloom appears to be the bright yellow of the massed planting of the Forsythia shrubs. It adds a glow to these driveway gardens that I designed when one psychologically needs it most–in the drab days of… Read more
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Eary Spring Flowering Bulbs Add Much Needed Color
It happened this morning. I noticed it. Blue tones of black, white, and a range of grey. Textured shapes of sky, clouds and evergreen trees softly back-lit by the sun rising below the trees. Fleeting beauty framed by my bedroom window. Engrossed, I just watched. And then, the thinking crept in. I realized that I… Read more
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Contemporary Ikebana–Yuji Ueno Style
Not my mother’s Ikebana! That was my first response as I beheld the cover of japanese ikebana for every season by Rie Imai and Yui Ueno with photography by Noboru Murata. You see I lived in Tokyo as a toddler. A US Army Officer’s wife, my mother took classes in Japanese Flower Arranging. When we… Read more
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Revisiting Alan Chadwick’s Organic Garden
Last year (2013) Paul A. Lee published There is A Garden in the Mind: a Memoir of Alan Chadwick and the Organic Movement in California. Paul inspired me to join that movement and I apprenticed with Alan Chadwick in the Student Garden at UCSC way back when. For more about Chadwick, visit the website Alan Chadwick,… Read more
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Winter Festival in my Garden
Every year I find magic right in my garden after a snowfall. Saturday’s snow was just the right consistency for creating “snow flowers” that last awhile. A little wet so it lingers and when you shovel, you have to pause. What are “snow flowers” you ask? I learned about this concept in a novel I… Read more