Natives – A Moving Target?
Will the wild orchids in my woods survive the changes of the next half century? There was a certain irony in the timing, given America’s withdrawal from the [...]
Thomas Christopher, Ranter Emeritus
Great Garden Traditions at the New York Botanical Garden
I had, when I studied horticulture back in the 1970’s, the good fortune to be exposed to the last generation of a great gardening tradition. At the New York Botanical [...]
Marching for Science, Including the Science of Gardening
Despite the cold rain, Saturday April 22nd was a great time to be walking the streets of Washington D.C. The occasion for my outing was the March for Science, and [...]
Rationales for Starting from Seed
Real gardeners, compulsive gardeners, are up to their elbows in seedlings this time of year. We (I qualify at least as compulsive) have a number of rationales for starting from [...]
How to Have a Flowering Lawn
Last week I spotted the first snow crocuses (Crocus chrysanthus) and snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) opening their flowers in my lawn -- they are just one of the benefits of the [...]
Sustainable Cow Pots for Better Garden Plants
The best kind of sustainability is to take a waste product and turn it into a valuable resource; to turn garbage, as it were, into gold. There’s a farm family [...]
In remembrance of Allen Lacy
Sometimes a death can spark a renaissance and I am hoping that will be the case with Allen Lacy who died on December 27th at age 80. I never knew [...]
A Great New Aid to Plant Identification
Plant identification has always been my nemesis. I recognize old friends, but confront me with a new-comer, an unknown, and I am at a loss. There are tools for identifying [...]
Perennials that won’t tolerate leaf mulches
In a recent post, Evelyn Hadden shared some very useful tips on how fall’s leaves can be used in the garden. As a perennial enthusiast, I’d like to add a [...]
Fall and Rebirth – a Personal Story
Autumn is a sad yet beautiful season in my garden. It brackets the anniversaries of my son’s life: his birth in late fall and his death at age 18 at [...]
Scouting for cider apples
If your neighborhood is anything like mine, there are plenty of neglected apple trees, trees planted by optimistic home landscapers and then more or less abandoned when the owners learned [...]
Historic Apple Cider Flavors of Fall
Once upon a time, cider-making, not football was the fall preoccupation throughout much of this country. Wherever apples grew – and thanks to pioneering nurserymen like John Chapman that included [...]