Native Trees Handout
This is a plant list for a presentation for Columbia Green Foundations. We’ll leave it posted here for just 24 hours! TIPS Start Small Show Your Root Flare Plant for Diversity Take Care; Water, Lime, and Root Zone BIG TREES Bald Cyprus Taxodium distichum ‘Lindsey Skyward’, ‘Shawnee Brave’,…
Read MoreBuild Your Soil & Soul with Late Summer Cover Crops
Once I considered writing a book called Farm, Yard, Garden. The premise would be that farming and horticulture are based on the same science but used for different goals. What a mistake that would have been. Big agriculture and my farm, yard, or garden have almost nothing in common. Being a part of, a…
Read MoreMy Purple Rain Trauma & Gardens Inspired by Classic Album Cover Art
Gardens and music connect us Riverbanks’ horticulture team planted flowers to match iconic album cover art. When Tom and I walked the gardens today, we laughed, talked about our favorite old music, and lingered longer because of this exhibit. He even taught me something; Andy Warhol took the famous zipper-bulging crotch photo for the Rolling…
Read MoreConnections Between Plants and People
A Story by Summer Intern Iris Moore Every person has their own story and plants are no different. As living things, I find plants to be very personal. If I get a plant from someone, I think of it as an extension of them and their relationship with me. Hearing stories from people has helped…
Read MoreFarm Days; Garden Lunch & Learn
We’re happy to offer group tours in the summer of 2022. Click here to email inquiry. Group size limited to 15- 30 people with covid safe protocols. Arrive around 9 a.m. for a tour of our specialty nursery, and an introduction to the other aspects of the design business. We’ll walk the fields, hang out…
Read MoreEryngium pandanifolium Needs a Better Name & It Oughta Mention Tree Frogs
Like the best of “exclamation point” plants, giant eryngium adds evergreen structure to a garden. But like, drought-tolerant plants, the leaves look stiff and foreboding to some people. One garden client used to constantly tell me to leave my ‘pokey and prickly’ plants out of her designs! Some of those things can be hell to…
Read MoreSyllabub! Home Grown Ginger in a Bubble Cocktail
Syllabub with a twist! Syllabub is an old school Southern desert. When I was little, the center of neighbors Christmas party was a huge bucket and real, antique syllabub pump. What’s more fun than making bubbles inside? Syllabub making makes a party. Elaborate contraptions for blowing bubbles into sweetened cream and whiskey become the center…
Read MoreThe Chimney Fire Christmas
Conjure up a roaring fire. Feel your muscles relaxing as they soak up heat from soul-penetrating warmth of a wood stove. That’s not what I felt, perched on top of a three-story house one freezing, under a midnight blue sky, Christmas 1975. Just a boy, barely a teen, I was actually tied to the…
Read MoreIs a pot of peculiar bulbs the adult version of sea monkeys?
Did you dream of a tiny kingdom of Sea Monkeys? I did. Or were you the Living Magic Rock kid? Both? Me too. Are you now ready for the grown-up version? We put together a box of peculiar bulbs with quirky, enticing traits. They all fit in a pot. Planting them, watching them grow will…
Read MoreLessons from Grass Puppets & Youngsters
The stories we’ll tell….and a brief history of Indonesian shadow puppet theater called Wayang Kulit. . Geoff and I lead a troop of young adventurers down the sand road. We are family friends, unrelated adults, “fun uncles” hoping to inspire wonder in the three young siblings who trail behind. Not so long ago, we all sat…
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