My compost pile is piled to overflowing after a weekend of mid-summer trimming in the abnormally glorious weather. Mid-70s, low humidity and a pleasant breeze in a central-Pa. August? What gives here? The conditions were perfect for a host of neatnik jobs that are fairly important for keeping the landscape looking good […]
I’m not easily stunned. Especially not at my rapidly advancing age. But the senior citizens in northern England’s Lake District impressed me with the most determined, unlikely and immaculate gardening effort I’ve ever seen. Let me back up. I’m just back from leading 20 local garden-lovers through a dozen of […]
Gardeners are a different breed. I’m around a lot of them. I see them in action. I hear their questions and thoughts. And for what it’s worth, I’ve come to these 10 conclusions: 1.) Anyone who says he/she has never killed a plant either has never planted anything or is lying. […]
I watched an interesting video the other day by Dan Buettner, a writer whose focus is on living longer (“The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest”). One of the common denominators Buettner found in long-lived cultures is that the people tend to do a lot of natural […]
June beetles don’t have the notoriety of Japanese beetles when it comes to grub damage in the lawn, but they’re trying…
Columbus, Ohio, probably doesn’t pop into your mind when you think of great gardens. But this next-state-capital-west has one of the best clusters of public gardens I’ve seen – underrated and surprisingly unknown to central Pennsylvanians despite being only a 6-hour drive from Harrisburg. I’m just back from taking a busload of […]
Plants do some interesting and unexpected things when they get together in the garden. Intermingling is one of them, and that’s the answer behind the “mystery plant” I wrote about here earlier this week (see below). The plant I noticed in my front yard had a round blue bloom growing out of […]
I was out inspecting the botanical troops the other day (my favorite summer pasttime) when one particular bloom caught my eye. The flower was a soft but true blue in color and rounded in shape – about the size of a baseball. It was sitting dead center in the middle of a […]
Trees are generally a good thing. A weeping willow 2 feet off the property line is not. I mention this because of the email I got from a dispirited local woman who sees trouble heading for her back yard, yet she’s helpless to do much about it. It seems her neighbor […]
I try to milk every last little bit of production space out of my vegetable garden. From the design itself to what and how I plant, my goal is to get the most out of the least space with the least work. You’ve heard of Square Foot Gardening? I do Square Inch […]