Visitors’ first sight of my front garden – before. I have a happy update to a rant about hating my arborvitae hedge, which I had removed in late 2019. (You may be wondering why I planted something so ugly in the first place – even before they started dying. Well, it’s about co-op rules, which I ranted about here.) So the plan was to instead, screen my view of a parking lot and provide a sense of enclosure and privacy by training vines on wires screwed into posts. I planted the vines in the spring of 2020 and soon thereafter, as a fun pandemic project, I transformed the facade of my house by ..read more

The thing which lifts my spirits in the cold wet spring is first, a ray of sunshine, and second colour! And yes, that does include green. Spring green: But most of all, something with real pow! And, I confess, when we are about to have visitors, I feel desperate for lots of flowers and colour in the garden for them.  So it doesn’t surprise me much seeing a lot of  Great Dixter on Instagram, being much admired and enjoyed.  A picture borrowed from thinkingardens. It is loved and you will have come across it often: Marianne, Allen and Allen’s grandaughter love Dixter enormousl ..read more

  I sometimes go catatonic while standing over an appealing plant I haven’t seen before. Looking like Mr. Pitiful, shoulders slumped, my eyes are fixed on the prize in front of me. I am silently pleading mercy. Gardeners will often rescue me if they’ve got enough time and plants to spare, especially if there is an interesting story to go along with the plant. “Would you like a piece? You’ve got to try it.” ‘”This now-iconic photograph of Elizabeth Lawrence welcoming visitors into her back garden at 348 Ridgeway Avenue in Charlotte accompanied her first column for the Charlotte Observer ..read more

Maybe the snail sex scene went too far? I have another report from campus, this time about a wildlife documentary assigned to my “Ecomedia” class. I’m happy to report no mass killing or gruesome hunt scenes (filmmakers sure do like action) but simply insect life in meadows and ponds somewhere in France, with incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. Released in 1996, Microcosmos was a multiple prize winner at the French Academy of Cinema Awards and is revered by film studies professors (like mine) to this day. Here are some highlights, some class reaction, and the actual ..read more

Salal (Gaulthera shallon) is an often scruffy Northwest native. A few years ago, I didn’t care at all for native plants. I thought they were ugly and boring, and I didn’t understand why any gardener would want to plant them, when there are so many other, prettier plants we can grow from all over the world. I live in Portland, Oregon—Zone 9a. Our winters are as mild as Pensacola, Florida’s, on average, but we have none of the humidity in summer. We can grow anything! Why would I possibly want to grow our scruffy Northwest natives? I didn’t think native plants were important for wildlife. I s ..read more

Many years ago I wrote an article entitled “Beans or Beach?” – bemoaning the difficulty that serious gardeners have in leaving their gardens like normal people and taking vacations.  “If it is a year that we have decided to visit our family in California the question is always “when”?  Seedlings are started in February, the Cold Frame Shuffle is scheduled for March, and the rest of the spring/summer months from April through September? Forget about it.  The fall is about the harvest, and I’m hardly likely to cosset and cajole three hundred pounds of vegetables only to leave th ..read more

A column I recently wrote about foraging seemed filled with garden-related corollaries. In order to write it, I contacted a couple of longtime foragers and followed them through the mud, brambles and creek beds of a local park as they pointed out various edible plants and fungi. It was an exciting expedition. This is ramp season, as I am sure many of you know, but that wasn’t the cause of my interest. I’m not crazy about ramps and don’t even use mushrooms that often. No, the excitement came from the intent focus of my guides. It was clear they were there for the experience, not for the free ..read more

Behind posts, articles, conferences and social media, there’s a backstory. Have you kept up with the digital correspondence between Ranters Scott Beuerlein and Marianne Willburn?  You can start here, or go back and find the entire correspondence at Dear Gardener. Caye Caulker, Belize 20 April 2024 Dear Scott, A handwritten letter today for you from lands more distant than Virginia. I will type it up later if all goes well and I am not eaten by bull sharks while snorkeling this week.  With these words I am officially on my seventh attempt at pen meeting paper. We’ll see how th ..read more

Packera aurea (a/k/a golden groundsel or golden ragwort) in my garden; azaleas at the National Arboretum Ever been excited about a new plant until you saw what was blooming nearby at the same time and the color combo almost made you retch? Sounds extreme, but that was my reaction to seeing the golden blooms of Packera aurea among the (can we say garish?) blooms of azaleas. So I moved the Packera to a spot with no competing blooms but in clear view from my porch, and LOVED them there.  A perennial native to the Eastern half of the U.S., Packera likes shade just fine and is even evergree ..read more

We live fairly near The Laskett. So seeing it was open, we thought we’d have an afternoon out and went to visit. And we took lots of photos – so thanks to Charles for his contributions. Introduction Sir Roy has donated the place to Perennial, the Gardeners’ Benevolent Fund, after rejection by the National Trust. Here is further background to the creation of the garden in an interview with the director of the Garden Museum. And the garden has a book  And here is the plan of the four acre garden: You can see it is both full of formality and, well, full. There are many small gardens, cli ..read more