Lessons About Plants & Gardens
Favorite Plants of the Moment
From the ridiculous to the sublime, this is a list of plants I’m working with at the moment; we’ll have these and other almost=impossible-to-find plants at our next farm field day! Of course the findings will include the very rare and new to us, Crinum ‘Pink Perfume’ from Texas and Crinum ‘Canoelands’ from Australia. Jack…
Read MoreWinter Garden & The VERY First Plant Books
In five inches of snow, with hand warming chemical packs in my pocket, I saw 90 different varieties of witch hazel sparkle. The Missouri Botanical Garden staff horticulturist Sara Murphy cares for this huge planting. They were in full flower, in the snow, in February in St. Louis. Sara knows how to make them look…
Read MoreKill the Confederate Myths: 5 Better Vines for Southern Shade
When we started building Riverbanks Botanical Garden, 20+ years ago, we had to deal with a Pennsylvanian’s idea of southern architecture. The building, walls and walkways of some grandiose vision of antebellum structures that only ever existed in bad movies. It reminded me that, as a teen, I loved Aunti Mame as much as any…
Read MorePersimmon Trees in Gardens
Speaking with an elderly friend today, I asked about how to get around some issues of growing persimmon trees. He launched into a long story about an abandoned grove he recalled in south Georgia with a long aside about his old friend who’d discovered the grove in full fruit. At one point he said, “It…
Read MoreLate Fall Flowers
My favorite thing in the garden today wasn’t a flower or a fruit, but a stem. Papaya stems. Back in April, I bought a papaya at the store, ate it, sowed all the seeds together in a 3 gallon pot outside, and waited for heat. (And yep, since papaya are genetically modified, I was breaking…
Read MoreSure-fire Bulbs for a Spring Show in the South
So many choices! And so many enticing bulbs in box stores right now. For so many reasons, I buy bulbs only from specialty bulb farms — the best value and the best chance for success and joy. Here’s a list of the sure to flower bulbs being planted at Historic Columbia today. Click on the…
Read MoreCool Plants of the Week
Just a quick post about some of the great plants that we’re working with this week while designing for the dense shade of the renovation of the Hampton Preston house gardens. ALSO: Tuberrose No other fragrance enchants like this tough bulb with long lasting leaves that NEEDS to grow in hot, dry, terrible soil. You…
Read More5 Favorite Flowers to Seed-In Now for Spring Flowers
As with fall leaf veggies, seeding in spring annuals now, gives you green ground cover and texture over winter; then flowers come in the spring time. There’s just no better value; in Deep Rooted Wisdom, I tell the story of a mentor who bought a pack of red poppy seeds in 1959 and still has…
Read MoreFall Planting Series
Over the next few weeks, as we are doing fall seed in and bulb planting in several different places, I’ll post a series of blogs on my favorite fall veggies, fall flowers to seed and fall bulbs to plant. We do this stuff in all sorts of situations: Historic Columbia gardens, little private city gardens…
Read More5 Favorite Salad Greens to Seed-In for Fall
Easy-to-germinate cool season leaf crops yield beauty as well as nutrients. There may be lots of choices in seed catalogs, but over decades of gardening, I’ve weeded out the the ones that take too much work. With these easy fall and winter greens, scatter the seeds then make sure the little seedlings stay moist. Then…
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