Urban Farm Magazine is Awesome

The people at Urban Farm magazine sent me a stack of recent issues to check out, much to my delight.  I've always loved Hobby Farms, the magazine that is sort of the parent of Urban Farm, and of course I adore their Chickens magazine.  A whole magazine about chickens?  Hell, yes! What's so great about [...]

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Posted by on October 5, 2011 at 4:56 am   This post has 9 responses.

A few final words on Weeds

Since it is the most interesting book I’ve read on renegade plants—OK, it’s right up there with the most interesting books I’ve read on any kind of plants—I thought it would be good to wind up our coverage of Weeds with a Richard Mabey interview. I sent Mabey a...

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Posted by on August 29, 2011 at 5:00 am   This post has 9 responses.

Aziz Ansari’s Nomenclature

Thanks to Andrew Pulte for sharing this.  Happy Wednesday, y'all.

Read more in: I Don't Have a Garden, but I Watch One on TV, Unusually Clever People
Posted by on August 17, 2011 at 2:03 pm   This post has 3 responses.

The garden of Linda Chalker-Scott

I've long been a fan of Hort and Extension Professor Linda Chalker-Scott, whose jobs it is to teach horticulture to regular gardeners – a job she accomplishes by writing award-winning books and on her  Garden Professors blog, in addition to her usual duties. But my fandom reached new heights...

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Posted by on August 2, 2011 at 4:00 am   This post has 8 responses.

The Garden Bloggers Gather. And Blather.

A whole bunch of rambuncious garden bloggers (64, if I'm counting the blogroll right)  are convering on Seattle for the–what, third? fourth? fifth? annual gathering of garden bloggers?  Let's see, we had Austin, Chicago, Buffalo…I guess this is #4. And I have yet to make it to one, but...

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Posted by on July 20, 2011 at 10:29 am   This post has 5 responses.

Wicked Plants in the Conservatory with RadioGarden

Andrew Keys invited the staff at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers to create a RadioGarden podcast about the making of the Wicked Plants exhibit.  He assured us that any ordinary audio recorder would work; in fact, he's done interviews on his iPhone.  So, equipped with exactly that sort...

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Posted by on June 30, 2011 at 11:39 am   This post has 3 responses.

Creepy or cool? You be the judge!

Actually I would rather have this than a star named after me. Bios Urn.

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Posted by on May 16, 2011 at 12:03 pm   This post has 19 responses.

We Heart RadioGarden, and You Should, Too

We've sung the praises of Andrew Keys' RadioGarden podcast before, but it's time to do it again.  Really, it's the coolest thing out there, and we should be shouting from the rooftops every time a new episode goes live, but somehow they slip past us. So.  Right now.  Go...

Read more in: GardenRant Airwaves, Unusually Clever People
Posted by on April 17, 2011 at 11:56 am   This post has 2 responses.

Q&A With the Gardening Deejay

Last week, I had the great fun of interviewing Graham Rice for Kirkus Reviews' new book blogger network. Please say hello to Graham, author of more than 20 gardening books, including the American Horticultural Society’s  Encyclopedia of Perennials, one of the most frequented books in my gardening library.  The...

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Posted by on April 14, 2011 at 8:48 am   This post has 4 responses.

Wicked Plants Swag–Oh, and the Exhibit, Too.

I spent last week in San Francisco at the opening of the Wicked Plants exhibit at the Conservatory of Flowers. They've been working on this thing for over a year, and although I was very eager to help make it happen, in the end my role was pretty minimal: ...

Read more in: Taking Your Gardening Dollar, Unusually Clever People
Posted by on April 13, 2011 at 4:58 am   This post has 9 responses.

The Founding Gardeners: An Interview with Andrea Wulf

  This is the latest in our series of bookish posts for Kirkus Book Reviews.   And yes, we have a copy to give away!  Comment to win–all comments considered, we'll choose at random. Andrea Wulf is following up The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire, and the Birth of an Obsession...

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Posted by on April 7, 2011 at 4:23 am   This post has 46 responses.

Growing a Greener World: Season One Wraps

  26 episodes.  8 months. 18 states.  36 cities. 254 stations. 4,058 tweets. Joe Lamp'l's PBS show Growing a Greener World has wrapped up its first season, and they've got a cool summary reel that looks back over their first year on the air. (It'll be worth watching through...

Read more in: I Don't Have a Garden, but I Watch One on TV, Unusually Clever People
Posted by on March 23, 2011 at 4:53 am   This post has 12 responses.

Michelle Obama, Garden Writer

Before Michelle Obama was a garden writer, she was First Lady of the United States. Look out for a garden book from Obama next spring.  It will "explore the much-covered patch on the White House grounds where the First Lady has focused on bringing the public a broader message...

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Posted by on March 19, 2011 at 10:04 am   This post has 16 responses.

Robert Frost, Poultryman

Before Robert Frost became Robert Frost, he was a chicken farmer. In 1899, at the age of twenty-five, he rented half a farmhouse for himself, his wife, his first two children, and several dozen Wyandottes. He soon ran out of room and moved to a larger farm in New...

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Posted by on March 16, 2011 at 4:36 am   This post has 11 responses.

Jeff Gillman on Invasives

JEFF:  There are some general definitions.  But a really good working definition that separates out the different plants into categories by how much they really do to our native ecosystems that you're talking about – in my opinion we really don't have that right now. AMY:  So it's really...

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Posted by on March 2, 2011 at 3:50 am   This post has 30 responses.

Acres of annuals—now? In Buffalo?

Last night, I taught a blogging workshop to an adult horticultural class, which was a fun and enlightening experience for a few reasons, but one of the most rewarding parts of it was the setting. It was held at McKinley High School in Buffalo, a public school where there...

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Posted by on March 1, 2011 at 10:21 am   This post has 5 responses.

Mark Ruffalo – Gardener and Activist for Clean Water

 Somewhere in Upstate New York (Sullivan County in the Catskill Mountains), an impossibly cute, Oscar-nominated actor gardens with his family.  In a recent story he said, “I know all my neighbors. It’s beautiful and healthy, and in the winter there are blankets of snow covering the rolling hills.  But...

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Posted by on February 21, 2011 at 4:50 am   This post has 20 responses.

We have 2 winners for our most popular book giveaway ever!

Lynn Rosenberg and Dave Glasebrook will receive copies of Michele Owens' Growing the Good Life. The rest of you (all 102 of you), please—buy your own copies, preferably at your local independent bookstore or online here. Or at a chain bookstore that is not yet bankrupt.

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Posted by on February 16, 2011 at 1:54 pm   This post has 3 responses.

Five cool things about Michele Owens’ new book

1. It’s called Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise (Rodale). Note the statement—GROW the good life. Not “Here’s how to grow the good life.” As Michele says in the first chapter, “The problem is that many how-tos refuse to...

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Posted by on February 15, 2011 at 6:05 am   This post has 110 responses.

Landscape architects I’ve known and been
intimidated by

For a plain-old home gardener and gardenblogger, I've gotten to meet an amazing assortment of landscape architects with marquee names in their profession.  Like Laurie Olin, who redesigned the grounds of Washington Montument, and the late Lawrence Halprin, whose Roosevelt Memorial (photo right) is a local favorite. And Jim...

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Posted by on February 7, 2011 at 5:16 am   This post has 14 responses.
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