The Dirty Secrets of Composting
It's fantastic to see that the word "compost" is no longer a dirty one in modern American culture. There are a few hold-outs here and there, but I have noticed [...]
Marianne Willburn
Gardening By Meme – A Screwtape Fantasy
My Dear Gardener, There were nearly 1.2 million posts on TikTok this year tagged #LeaveTheLeaves. The pushback hashtag #ItDependsOnYourYard can only claim 4k. Not surprisingly, #FFSStopGardeningByMeme didn’t even get a [...]
Ego or Evolution: What motivations drive us to teach in the garden?
Anne Wareham is making me think. Again. And it’s not comfortable, but then deep thinking rarely is. It’s one of the reasons life has become so shouty. It’s much easier [...]
Are We Still Using Social Media, Or Feeling Used?
A recent article by Sean Kernan, Creator, snuck onto my laptop and grabbed my attention last week, not least because of the transcendent job title that the Yahoo platform now [...]
Waterproof Pants or Trousers Make Gardening Better
I would guess that most intrepid gardeners don’t mind getting wet during the heat of the summer. Whether I am actively being rained upon, or down in the beds weeding [...]
Red Team/Blue Team? What If You’re Purple? Or Simply Green?
This has been a tough week for a county that increasingly thinks in terms of Red or Blue. It's been a tough week for rising above political divisions and reaching [...]
Opportunity or Erasure? Navigating 20 Years of Hyper-Novelty as a Writer.
"Blogs are so over." A friend threw out this casual, but carefully sharpened, zinger a few weeks ago. Whether it was true or just partially true, it amused me to [...]
Design & Differences: Two Ranters Discuss. Part III
Wrapping up their three-part email discussion -- annotated here with links and photographs -- Anne & Marianne move away from garden design and differences in technique to the rapidly changing [...]
Chaos and Order for a Harmonious Design
Summer is coming and wild is still on the menu with a side of wind-swept and a dollop of scruffy. This is fine and well and good and most importantly, [...]
A New Book on Invasive Species Seeks to Change The Us vs. Them Narrative
A new book mysteriously showed up in my mailbox a few weeks ago from Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Love Them to Death: Turning Invasive Plants into Local Economic Opportunities is [...]
In Defense of The Daffodil
Many years ago, my young daughter and two friends made three little shelters at the edge of the woods with fallen branches, and in front of each entryway they planted [...]
Gardening Isn’t Straightforward. Neither is GardenRant.
As a rule, the writer-gardeners here at GardenRant bypass “How-To Garden” posts for horticultural topics that are less apt to find themselves neatly summed up with bullet points and/or numbered [...]