RECENT POSTS
Fear, Loathing, Capitulation, Relapses, A Cry for Help, and Another Empty Promise to Do...
Déjà vu all over again. In what is apparently becoming an abusive relationship, I again find myself the victim of Marianne Willburn’s poison pen,...
Finally, a no-maintenance plant
But. Unsurprisingly, that is the opposite of what many gardeners want. After paying scant attention to this trend as talk of it reached me...
Mosquito Control – Is There Really Such a Thing?
Guest Rant by Helen Yoest
Fall is back, and winter is near; thank goodness! This might sound odd coming from a rabid gardener and outdoor...
Rudbeckia Revolution
Be realistic, demand the impossible.
Che Guevara
I am waging war against frustration, and impatience is an obstacle. My struggle may take two or three years...
The first step is admitting you have a problem
At this moment, two things are true. I still have 4 boxes of bulbs—maybe 250 or so total—sitting in the back room. And when...
Patrick Dougherty’s Stick House at the US Botanic Garden is OPEN for Fun
If you come to DC any time over the next two years, I recommend visiting this magical stickwork piece called "Oh Say Can You...
Groundcovers: Grand to Aggressive
Groundcovers are often suggested as solutions for sites where turfgrass won’t grow, or for places that are difficult to mow. As useful as that...
Let Natives Be Natives
Throughout all of the preceding month, I’ve been mulling over a symposium I attended at the University of Connecticut on October 3rd. Titled the...
Ed Lyon on How to Write about Native Plants
I'm back with another report about a terrific talk I heard during the garden communicator conference in Salt Lake City. This time, it's a...
The shrub that won’t go away
“What’s this beautiful shrub?!” was the question on our gardening group. And, of course, the answer was well-known to many of us: euonymus alatus,...
Update on Replacing Perennial Bed with Turf, and the Public Reaction
Last year I wrote about the weedy mess of a perennial bed in front of my town's most important historic building.
The space had originally...
Don’t worry: plant bulbs
That’s the title of a talk I gave recently for a suburban/rural gardening club, though maybe it didn’t apply. They all seemed like longtime...
Garden regionally. Get inspired globally.
Guest Rant by Marianne Willburn
Somewhere near the bottom of every writer's artistic license, a clever wordsmith will find the following recommendation:
"Comically exaggerating the...
Are We Tired of Doing Parking Lots Dumb Yet?
The car was invented 135 years ago, and all that time we have needed a place to put them when we run into the...
An optimistic fall
It’s time to breathe a sigh of relief—one tinged with melancholy, perhaps.
Aside from getting a few hundred bulbs in the ground before the end...
VOICES
PARTNERS
