Category: Uncategorized
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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,…
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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…
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Arranging Foliage for Colorful Winter Containers
Here in New England, our gardens and entries can get pretty bleary as December slides into the Winter Solstice. We know that the March Equinox is a long psychological distance until we might see some color in the landscape. In my garden it’s the early blooming Witch Hazel (Hamamelis) often in February. For weeks now, intent…
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Transformation: A Parking Lot becomes a Paradise
Let me tell you the story of a plot of land in Carlisle, MA. Mostly a parking lot, there was some open grass, miscellaneous woodland, a fence to prevent you from driving in, and trash barrel. It wasn’t a place you were likely to hang out. Nothing to draw you in-it was basically a…
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A Leaf Lover’s Fall Foliage Combinations
I’m loving our New England Autumn. The leaves have been turning one by one– here and there– for weeks. Now it’s clumps of yellow, orange, and scarlet, and green gearing up to an amazing crescendo sometime soon. Here’s a few photos taken from my back garden. The garden’s fall foliage design shows off. Enjoy. And…
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A Slice of Heaven at Old Frog Pond Farm–Organic Apple Orchard
Last Saturday I got to spend some time in a heavenly spot. An orchard called the “Old Frog Pond Farm” www.oldfrogpondfarm.com . It offers organic apples to pick. And a slice of heaven. The day ‘s weather flickered between warm mild and cool mild—sun or cloudy– as the weather front moved this way and that.…
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September Time of Year
It’s mid September in New England–almost the Fall Equinox– the gardens are very dry and we’ve had several nights in the 40’s. We missed the frosts of the southern coast. Ornamental grasses, shrub roses, hydrangeas, summer annuals, and sedum are the stars of the late summer landscape. Highlights in my garden include the ‘Sweet Autumn’…
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Mellow August Garden
It’s August and the mid- season daylily party is over. Sitting in my shady retreat on the chaise on the patio I built under the deck, I’m enjoying the mellow August garden. A few of the late blooming hemerocallis varieties still contribute to the color, but the riot has ended. Stems have been clipped and composted, and…
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July Daylily Party
Daylilies, botanically known as hemerocallis, fill my July gardens with color and joy. The back gardens have a good twenty different varieties that bloom mid-summer. All the joyful colors make a happy garden. And, it’s not only the daylilies in bloom, but the hostas as well. Plus, you’ll notice the blue ballon flowers adding…
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Gardens — antidotes to the news
The garden is always there. You break your arm–struggle to keep up with work. But the garden is always there. The headlines here still speak of the Boston Marathon bombings, a broken Congress, terrible hurricanes in the Midwest, floods, and general mayhem. Those thoughts whirling in my head–I realized I needed to take time…