Don’t Hymn Tim in
Timothy Morton is a professional gardener who doesn’t like being hemmed in. He is also a musician who doesn’t blow his horn, an accomplished actor who shuns [...]
Allen Bush
Gardening and diminishing returns
I am half way around the back nine and stuck on a recurring theme of what my last garden might look like. I can only imagine— smaller. Is gardening [...]
Reasons to Celebrate Yew Dell’s Holly
I have favorite gardens for reasons that include history, design, variety, enchantment, sense of place, purpose and sentiment. Yew Dell Botanical Gardens, in Crestwood, Kentucky, checks all the boxes, [...]
The Bagel Garden and Beyond
A carved wooden sculpture was mysteriously placed next to our Louisville mailbox last week. The figure looked like a hybrid between Tecumseh and Jingles. Tecumseh, the legendary Shawnee warrior, orator, [...]
Ministry of weeds
I doubt our neighborhood hillside is in immediate jeopardy of an uprising or a landslide, situated as it is, on top of a massive fortress of Ordovician limestone. Our exiled, [...]
The love of a neighborhood and a yellowwood tree
A yellowwood narrowly avoided Louisville’s 1974 catastrophic tornado that devastated portions of nearby Olmsted-designed Cherokee Park and toppled trees in our part of town. The tree is big for a [...]
The Gun or the Garden? Give peas a chance.
Allen handles a 357 Magnum at the 2008 National Rifle Association’s convention during prime-time gardening season The trigger-happy were in Louisville, Kentucky, last weekend for the 2008 National [...]
Doomscrolling and the future of gardening
Garden Rant cultivates readers who have a thirst for gardening and an appreciation for outspokenness. Good writing draws curious readers, but signs on the horizon don’t look promising. Doomscrolling [...]
Hell-BORES No More
I have been piddling along on the Lenten rose slow lane for years. My garden is not well stocked with new breeding. Possession of my old hellebores—with downward facing [...]
The Silver Seas, Fairchild Garden and the Pot of Gold
Rose and I were in Miami in late February. It had been 20 years since we’d last visited the Magic City. On the drive to nearby Key Biscayne, and [...]
Never a dull moment when the river and daffodils are rising
The Salt River started acting up last Saturday morning after overnight rain. The ground was saturated. The forecast did not look good. The governor declared a state of emergency across [...]
Truculent gardening and make believe
Have you heard or read the word truculent used as a gardening reference? Garden Rant is often, by its nature, argumentative. They don’t call it Garden Rant for nothing. I [...]