You’re probably tempted about now to cut down the now-bloomless daffodils, hyacinths, and other spring bulbs in your yard that have finished their show for the year. Don’t. Also don’t twist them, braid them, or otherwise mess with the foliage. These few weeks are the most important of the year for your […]
I’m running a deficit right now. Money and energy, too, but the one I’m talking about has to do with trees. When my wife, Sue, and I moved to Pittsburgh last year, we inherited a long-unkempt lot that had a variety of dead, dying, and hazard trees. A huge, struggling pin oak […]
The two garden trips that Lowee’s Group Tours and I had planned for April and May are officially casualties of the coronavirus pandemic… for now. The April 30 day trip we were going to do to two Lancaster County home gardens and to two stellar Lancaster County plant places is off but now […]
I thought it was the heavy black clay that’s on the way to becoming coal that was responsible for the awful drainage in my new Pittsburgh yard. As it turns out, it’s the future coal and a solid layer of rock lurking a foot underground that’s behind all of the sogginess and surface […]
On the one hand, it’s a plus that this coronavirus pandemic comes at a time when the weather is warming because it allows us to get out in the yard instead of being cooped up in the house for weeks on end. On the other hand, it’s a minus that this coronavirus pandemic […]
My wife and I were going to visit our daughter in Amsterdam the next two weeks, but now that that’s off – along with my entire spring schedule of talks – I suddenly have time to do a few garden designs again. After I retired from 18 years of Garden House-Calls home visits, […]
Joe Lamp’l, a.k.a. “Joe Gardener” and the host of PBS’s “Growing a Greener World,” is one America’s most trusted garden communicators because he’s such a practical guy who draws on what he’s learned from his own lifetime of hands-on gardening. Joe’s latest and maybe most prodigious effort yet is his attempt to figure […]
Cypress Gardens in central Florida used to be one of America’s best-known public gardens and top tourist attractions. Then it struggled through three decades of ownership changes, declining attendance, hurricanes, and the Disneyfication of the region, finally closing in 2009. A lot of people assume it’s been gone ever since with the […]
This week’s 2020 Philadelphia Flower Show is showcasing plants and gardening of the Mediterranean – especially the gardens of southern France, Monaco, northwestern Italy, and a touch of Spain. This is a colorful, fragrant, and highly textural form of gardening that I think a lot of Pennsylvanians would like… if we didn’t have […]
Last week, I introduced you to a photo gallery of 50 of my favorite American garden settings of all-time. This week, it’s time to take a look at 50 of my favorite international gardens that I’ve seen in the 30 or so years I’ve been a garden writer. As with the American […]