If there must be monuments
Sculpture of Rachel Carson by David Lewis, installed at Woods Hole (photo by Laura A. Macaluso, Wikipedia Commons) To me, they are little more than hunks or granite [...]
Elizabeth Licata
My plants are happier without me
Like many, I’ve been working at home since March and, for the most part, enjoying it. But I do go to the office once in a while to pick up [...]
Frank Lloyd Wright gets his landscape back—and then some
As the gardening team at Buffalo’s Darwin Martin House—really a campus with seven structures on it—enters its second year of planting and maintaining the original landscape Frank Lloyd Wright planned [...]
Enabling annuals at Buffalo’s Erie Basin Marina trial gardens
There remains a certain snobbishness about annuals, partly because some perceive them as “common,” and partly because they’re, well, annual. (Many of us have seen the famous Plant Delights/Tony Avent [...]
Lilies bring remembrances of sanity past
Marcel Proust did not overestimate the power of the senses to recall the past. As soon as the first wave of fragrance from my ‘Garden Party’ orienpet lilies hits, I [...]
Is social distancing a natural thing for gardeners?
A better term is “physical distancing,” which is literally what I have to do when I am working in the front garden and anyone walks by. Rather than tread on [...]
In a pandemic liquor is essential. Is landscaping?
Hope I'll soon be able to make a haul like this again, but safely. That was the question yesterday, as local green industry owners and employees were discussing [...]
In a shutdown, the garden is never closed
Witch hazel in Central Park in March Nor, to a great extent, is the outdoors. As the menu of possible activities narrows exponentially—for New York this means no [...]
Preaching among the choir about native plants
Lurie Gardens, Chicago If one more person asks me if I have heard of or read books by Doug Tallamy, I’ll …. Well, I guess I won't really [...]
Mad for Madison
Madison private garden We’re not exactly known as “fly-over” states, but some of us in the Great Lakes area have to try harder to convince out-of-towners we’re cool. It shouldn’t be necessary. Thanks to, [...]
Marketing to gardening ignorance
I always have books around and these are good ones. I'll be giving these to the beginning gardeners I know, except for Tom's, which I'll keep. Beginning gardeners [...]
Monty, Monty, Monty
Cue the swelling music, and then … Huge! Magnificent! Spectacular! Astonishing! Extraaaooordinary! Count on hearing those superlatives and more over the course of Monty Don’s three-part American Gardens, which aired [...]