We must do better
One of my favorite national parks While it’s common—and understandable—to believe that certain subjects are somehow beyond politics, one of the reasons I’ve stuck with Garden Rant all [...]
Elizabeth Licata
Welcome to my …
Photo by Mark Nowak No, you’ll find no dreadful scenes like the above lurking about my property. There is no need for manufactured horror here. If I want [...]
Will gardening continue to trend?
This is a year when speculation about the future underlies almost everything we do. When will we be able to see children/grandchildren/siblings who live in another state or country? When [...]
Fall: the season of destruction
Some candidates for fall planting Never mind clean-up. Winter will take care of most of that. This is when I like to tear the garden apart. First comes [...]
Life is short. Plant tulips.
This might be Creme Upstar, though not double enough. Nothing lasts forever. Beauty is fleeting. You’re heard these hackneyed sayings many times. But maybe this year they’re worth [...]
It’s gardener vs. gardener season
I'll either leave this or rip it out and replace it because it is really too much. Pick a side, because the middle ground is disappearing. What’s true [...]
Social media and the gardening discourse
The jury is still out on this. For every instance of helpful fellowship and joyful sharing, I can find equal examples of myth-based misinformation and knee-jerk snap judgements (if not [...]
The lawn is not in danger
I didn't need to go as far as the suburbs to get this shot. Not by a long shot. Every now and then, one of the Ranters publishes [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]