Lessons About Plants & Gardens
Little Plantlets: Just Like Their Mother
Pink Heliconia is parthenogenic. That means it makes little plantlets on the dying flower. Daylilies and other plants do it too. All are exactly the same as their mother. You can take those off and put them in nursery pots. On the day we picked the pink ginger plantlets, my friend Gillaine gave them away…
Read MoreVoodoo Gardening
How to protect your garden from thieves in Haiti. Hanging on the tree is a Human Scarecrow. It keeps thieves at bay by tricking zombies into stopping and sitting at night. It calls out to them , Uncle wait for Aunt here! The zombie waits and if a thief comes around the zombie holds him…
Read MoreBare Root Pecan Trees
My Christmas presents came! Bare root pecan trees. I know some of you have read all you can from me about this topic so I’ll just post the picture and give a quick recap. You order now (or in the fall) and at some point in the winter, the nursery ships to you, in big…
Read MoreFabulous! Tritellia laxa ‘Queen Fabiola’
Time or Money
Years ago, Dr. J.C. Raulston did a presentation for me at Riverbanks Botanical Garden which he called Time or Money. It was about how in gardening some people think the later can substitute for the former. He showed that you can plant little plants and take care of them and wait or plant big plants…
Read MoreWhen Modern Landscaping Practices Kill Perfectly Good Plants
I spent the day pulling up thousands of dollars worth of tea olive and other shrubs, then filling a 33 foot long dumpster with them. 15 feet wide and 250 feet long, the shrub border that failed was planted 5 years ago, with really nice plants, by someone else. It’s a shame, it makes me…
Read MoreFlorence Museum
Take a few minutes to enjoy progress and planting at the new The Florence Museum, where I was asked to create an organic, free form garden in a huge rectangular courtyard which is surrounded by rectangular buildings. And, where the plants all have ties to the geographical origins of items in the museum collection! It’s…
Read MoreWhy We Grow Our Own; Old Way Just Works Better for Propagating Crinum Lilies
Oh Man That Hurts! Two years of cultivation and care and now we have to dump all of these crinum lily bulbs. Why? Because the person I bought them from sold them as one thing, but in actuality, they are a mix of colors and habits of growth. Since they were tiny products of a…
Read MoreField Notes Fall Garden Work (on the Lily Farm)
A friend sent this text the other day, “can I be honest u need to write more about gardening n less about strolling w old guys.” Just like that; he didn’t wait for me to answer the can i be honest part….. But here goes. What I do in the dirt is a friggin’ lot…
Read MoreEmphisis on Visiting
From the minute we knocked on her door, we laughed. I took a friend from up north to visit a friend in Georgia last week. Ostensibly, we went to see her garden. We knocked, she greeted. But since we were a few minutes early she said, “Walk around the front garden and I’ll be right…
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