Learning to See the Beauty of Nature in Our Gardens
Spring has arrived after a delay so serious in the northeast that many of us were questioning if the warm weather would ever come again. I’ve gotten a lot of calls for shade garden designs in the past couple weeks, or woodland gardens with our lovely woodland native plants. This type of gardens are especially […]
Perhaps spring is here. Though the forecast for this coming Tuesday (the day this will be published) is for more snow. My Redbuds, Cercis canadensis, here in the mountains of central Virginia are just now showing the slightest signs, of thoughts of blooms. This picture, above, was taken 5 days ago, while our newest, 8 inches of […]
Native to the New World, Dalea is a genus with over 150 species. The plants are distributed from Canada to Argentina, but almost half of the species are found in the arid Southwest US and into Mexico. Dalea flowers are visited by many butterflies, especially the blues and hairstreaks. They are also wonderful larval […]
A Huge Boulder I’ve gotten to know my mountain here where I live, quite well since I’ve been hiking everyday that weather allows. One of many favorite spots is up where wild columbine grows in profusion, in scarlet dress, and cinnabar chanterelles pop up like […]
New Things As I hike each day, there are so many things that are new to me. So many animals, so many insects and spiders and the plants! So many new plants! I can hardly keep up. What with taking the photographs, bringing them home and identifying what in the world I have captured in pixels. […]
Corporate Habitat Garden Project In Clifton Park, NY (southern Saratoga county) on Route 9, a savvy financial advisor has been watching trends in landscaping. Deborah Christopher, whose Edward Jones office is located in a strip mall on State Route 9, heard about prominent entomologist Douglas Tallamy’s research and ecological trend-setting for redefining curb appeal to […]
Every spring the Red Buckeye Aesculus pavia brings me back into the gardening mode and has me excited about the coming growing season. One of the first plants to bud in my southern landscape, red buckeye takes her time leafing out. With large, bronze green buds and new foliage, it is a spectacular sight. The […]
Sometimes gardeners order things we don’t really know what are. We may see a plant in a catalog and think it sounds good, do a little research and decide that yes, we should try this one. Sometimes these ‘try’ plants work out, sometimes they don’t. Alabama snow-wreath Neviusia alabamensis is one which worked out extremely […]
My first garden was terrible, and I loved it. It was basically a single raised bed and an overgrown wooded backyard. Deer rampaged through it. There were weeds and escaped lemon balm throughout the main bed, lirope (which I loathe) edging the walkway, and an entire raised bed I couldn’t do anything with, because the […]
