Sustainability in urban horticulture is loaded with contradictions. Some of the projects taking place, and often the money that goes into them, makes it seem as if many of the precepts of sustainable urban landscapes are anything but. You’ve got solar panels covering farms (and gardens) and farms and gardens going on roofs. Plants hanging on walls like drapes, dependant on pumps moving water and carefully calculated chemical brews flowing through them like a bloodstream. Repurposed warehouses packed with state of the art lighting systems subsidized by foundations producing crops of boutique b ..read more

Never mind how many years I’ve been digging in this garden I still don’t think of myself as an “expert.” Experienced, long-suffering, and a relentless optimist, yes. Expert? Not even close. Yet, compared to my digital life, I’m a freaking genius in my analog garden. The closest I get to technology in the garden is a drip system — and timer (!!!) — that I set up a few years ago when my husband had Covid and I was forced out of the house. I’m not going to say how long it took me to lessen hours and hours at the end of a hose to finally make my life just a tiny bit easier. Hint: think time in do ..read more

Amsonia hubrichtii, center right, in the fall, not long before they started falling over. When I recently wrote about which leaves it’s best NOT to leave on top of which plants, I also confessed to confusion over the question of leaving stems intact for stem-nesting bees.  The consensus seems to be that whenever you cut them, it’s best for bees to cut them back to varying heights from about 8 to 24 inches, and leave them in place indefinitely – because it’s not until the stems’ SECOND YEAR that young bees emerge from hibernation there. But if for some reason it doesn’t work for you or ..read more

I know people move their homes because they have to. For their work, for their partner, to downsize, to be closer to friends or relatives, maybe for a change. And many people don’t mind this much or positively embrace it. They may think of themselves like Socrates did, as “not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” The idea of moving is intolerable to me. Though strangely I don’t feel a hundred percent at home in my home. I am English, born and raised in England, and yet here I am, four miles over the border in Wales. And I don’t know anyone who would find this troubling apart fr ..read more

Radio Garden is planting seeds this spring while you are imagining your best garden ever. Take your pick of more than 8,000 diverse radio stations around the world. Radio Garden began growth in 2016. “Our dedicated team is hard at work tending the garden daily. Planting seeds for the future and keeping the weeds at bay from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.” “Jonathan Puckey, our head gardener, leads with a focus on design and development, ensuring Radio Garden blossoms and thrives in every aspect. By bringing distant voices close, radio connects people and places. From its ver ..read more

Lone Tree, Thomas Pereira 2020 Do those of us who have rejected traditional lawn-focused front gardens in favor of edible or perennial alternatives need to check our privilege? It’s not entirely that crazy a question.  While I understand and sympathize with Susan’s consternation over an academic assignment that seemed to turn all the good we’re trying to do with gardening upside down, what I am less comfortable with is the kneejerk trashing of diversity, equity and inclusion policies that it provoked among some of her commenters. For many people, DEI comprises the three most hated lett ..read more

In scrolling through the course offerings at the University of Maryland, where I’ve been taking classes for several years, I came upon this one: “Lawns in the Landscape: Environmental Hero or Villain?” listed in both the Environmental Sciences and the Plant Sciences Departments.  So naturally I signed up! I’ll have more to say about the rant-rich course when it’s over but for now, one particular assigned reading was such a shock to my system, I can’t resist telling you about it.  The rant writes itself! It’s a paper by two people at Macalester College’s Department of Geography, tit ..read more

Few readers have an appetite for winter when spring is currently doing all the things that spring does in all of the ways spring does them.  But for those who have already grown weary of scrolling 4.6 million posts on the #springgarden, I have a few thoughts about the #wintergarden, or at least the thoughts that occurred to me as I challenged myself to 85 days of documenting it on Instagram from January through March. Next winter will come around faster than we expect, and choices we make (or don’t make) now during the planting season, have a huge effect on whether a four-season garden ..read more

Eclipse image by Luc Viatour (wikipedia commons) Nature is the clear winner in my informal tally of where people want to watch the April 8 solar eclipse. Yes, Western New York is squarely in the path of totality and the excitement is building. Niagara Falls is the big target for – could it be? – 1 million people who will be converging on our region, but there are lots of other beautiful places to watch.  You might wonder what the big deal is for just 3 minutes or so of solid eclipse action, but I think the whole two-hour-plus process will be interesting and plan to keep a protected eye ..read more

The bubbling fountain came last, the watery finish to a wonderfully sunny day spent playing in the dirt. Sure, spring had officially arrived a few days earlier, but to me the first full day of useful sunshine is what really counts as spring, not some moveable number on the calendar.  To lean slightly into the scientific, there are all sorts of listed reasons for why gentle sunshine pushes the mind toward mellow. One is sunshine that produces a hormone called serotonin, which pumps the brain to cheer you up. Then there is evidence the light can help release endorphins in the skin cells ..read more