We take for granted all of those Christmas trees that magically show up in retail lots and in garden centers this time of year. It’s not easy to grow a fir or a pine or a spruce – as if I have to tell any of you that who have seen your conifers […]
The old-favorite red poinsettia is no longer the only way to color your holidays. Although this red-bracted Mexican import is still America’s top-selling potted plant, lots of other plant choices have elbowed their way into the Christmas market. Watch in these coming weeks as garden-center plant benches color up with the likes […]
Gardeners have a distinct advantage when it comes to holiday decorating. Yards filled with plants other than grass and yew bushes are virtual treasure troves for “harvesting decorations.” Wreath clippings from the firs, red-berried twigs from the hollies, and fallen cones from pines are just some of the bounty that’s free for […]
Back when winter-long snow-covers were the norm, plants and their leafless skeletons were little more than different forms of white sticking out above the snowy sea. But now that winter typically gives us at least periodic spells of bare ground, the winter landscape is no longer a three-month write-off. Cold weather no longer […]
The bad news is that house we were going to buy in Monroeville turned out to have a serious mold issue, so we canceled the offer. The good news is that we found another home in Churchill (about 9 miles east of Pittsburgh) that’s in a lot better shape. Things are going smoothly […]
One antidote to the months of cold weather coming our way soon is blooming flowers. You could just go out and buy some blooms whenever you’re fed up with snow and dark. Or you could get some ready yourself via the botanical trickery known as “bulb forcing.” Forcing involves planting and chilling […]
Most of our yards are seriously under-bulbed – probably for several reasons. One is that bulbs have the unfortunate trait of lacking badly on the instant-gratification scale. You plant the things in fall, then end up with a bare bed for at least 4 months before anything happens. Another is the cost […]
Now that my wife, Sue, and I are in the process of relocating to the Pittsburgh area, we’ll be selling our Hampden Twp. house. We’re not sure what that means for the gardens we’ve built and tended for the past 32 years. It’d be great to find a plant-loving buyer (call me at […]
It’s official. I’m old. So is my wife, Sue. We were both informed of that by our 5-year-old granddaughter, Leona. Leona was telling us one day about “regular grownups.” “What’s a regular grownup?” I asked. “It’s a grownup like Mommy and Daddy,” she said. “So what are […]
When researchers ran a focus group with middle schoolers on why so few youths are interested in plant-related careers these days, they were surprised to find that not a single middle-schooler even knew what horticulture was. The kids told them that “horticulture” was a “weird word.” They suggested that “plantology” rang better to […]