Our garden in mid-April I appreciate all of you who have visited and chatted with me on this site over the years. It has been so heartwarming to meet so many interesting people and dedicated gardeners working all over the US and around the world. As some of you know, the content on this site is quite extensive. To get a fresh start and to begin again with plenty of space for photos and new writing, I started Our Forest Garden a few years ago. On that homepage you will find indexes to some of my most useful content from Forest Garden, and all of my new photos and articles are now posted to that ..read more

Our upper garden at the end of September is a haven for wildlife A cold front this week blessed us with cooler temperatures and lower humidity.  The oppressive summer air was blown out to sea, and what followed feels crisp and clean.  I can see a few scarlet leaves and scarlet dogwood berries in the trees near my window, a sure sign that the season has turned, and the equinox is behind us now. Each day will be minutes shorter now.  Mornings come later, but the cool comfortable hours for gardening last deep into the afternoon.  I’m drawn out again and again to tweak this or ..read more

Japanese painted fern Athyrium ‘Metallicum’ grows with silvery Rex Begonias. When you’re planning what to plant, do your eyes sometimes glaze over while reading the growing instructions?  Does it all seem too complicated, to find some success with the plants you want to grow?  No one earns points on a tally for growing complicated plants.  Maybe that is why I love growing ferns.  Most are happy enough to find a home for their roots that they just take off, making a beautiful planting with very little effort. Ferns are such ancient plants, appearing in the fossil record mill ..read more

Peonies are blooming this week It was so hot here yesterday that pots I had just watered on Thursday, and that seemed fine yesterday morning, were parched and nearly dead when I went out this morning.  It was our first day in the 90s with bright sun.  I made my best efforts first at the botanical garden where I volunteer, and then at home.  Apparently, it wasn’t enough for some of the new plants still waiting in their nursery pots.  I found a perfectly lovely (yesterday) white Gaura dry and limp this morning.  I’ve cut back all its beautiful stems of flowers, watered i ..read more

Not so long ago a seedling, and now a towering oak tree giving shade and sheltering wildlife An oak takes a long time to grow from a sprout to a tree.  Or so we think.  This morning I’m standing below oak trees that I either planted, or spared, when they were just seedlings.  We had been here a few years.  Oaks fell in a storm, taking understory trees with them, and leaving a wide, sunny patch in the upper garden.  The character of the garden had changed entirely, and eventually I took it in hand and planted the bones of what we have today.  Two little ‘live oaks ..read more

Mountain Laurel, Kalmia latifolia I love finding mountain laurel growing in large, lovely masses in the wild.  Its creamy pink flowers glow softly in the forest.  Wild mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, sometimes covers the undeveloped banks of creeks and rivers in Eastern Virginia.  It grows as an understory shrub in our oak and pine forests.  These evergreen, wild looking shrubs, almost small trees, simply blend into the fabric of the woods through much of the year before bursting into bloom in late April and early May, suddenly elegant and beautiful.  Wild mountain ..read more

Lantana attracts butterflies and birds. Deer never touch it. When I began gardening here in a forested community in the autumn of 2009, my earliest efforts resulted in unexpected frustration as deer, rabbits, moles and voles ate much of what I planted. I still remember planting a flat of perennial Phlox plants and finding them gone the following morning, nothing left but holes where they had been planted only hours before. Even plants that I expected to be ‘deer proof,’ like a new hedge of hybrid blue holly shrubs, died within months from the stress or repeated grazing. That frustration set me ..read more

… Athyrium nipponicum ‘Pictum’ grows with English ivy. Ivy is considered a highly invasive plant. There is a long history of botanists and horticulturalists traveling around the world in search of new, beautiful and useful species of plants.  It is an essential part of our nation’s history to both send native American species to Europe, and to seek out and grow imported species here.  You’ll hear wonderful stories of early colonists risking their lives and freedom to bring back some rice, or a tea shrub, or some other potentially productive and lucrative plant encountered on their tr ..read more

This ‘Four-Season’ container garden grows at the Williamsburg Botanical Garden. It is lush with ferns and Caladiums in late September 2021. Do you have pots that stand empty for weeks out of the year?  In northern climates, gardeners often empty and clean their pots in winter.  Since unglazed ceramic pots absorb water and sometimes crack in freezing temperatures, this makes sense.  But how empty things must look once summer’s beautiful pots go into storage. Fourth Dimensional Gardening Gardeners work in four dimensions. Of course we consider how tall a plant will grow and how de ..read more

These windmill palms made it from California to Virginia in perfect shape, thanks to Tony Tomeo. Gifts are always fun.  Gardening gifts are the best, and gifts of plants always warm my heart.  A living plant is a gift from the heart, and it creates a special bond between giver and receiver as the plant grows on and develops into its potential. That said, sometimes those gifted plant can get too enthusiastic and create work down the road.  But when that happens, I try to dig up those I can’t use and share them with someone else.  I love trying new plants I’ve not grown befor ..read more