It’ll Be Fine By Fall

Gardening, painting, sculpting. Those things have something in common– they all start with imagination of something you’ll bring to fruition. A vision. Sometimes these really hot days make me have visions.  Stifling hot. Swooningly hot. I chop some crinum down to the ground; it’ll be fine by fall, I think to myself. I weed, pulling…

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Making Soil Better with Mushrooms

When you dig up a plant, you get plant, roots and dirt.  If you take that plant away, you leave a hole. In field nurseries or turf farms, we do that over and over and over and leave a big hole.  Filling that hole can be a big problem.  Buying top soil is expensive.  It…

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They’re Like Southerners but with Funny Accents

We’ve been on some pretty exciting trips this summer.  A flight to do a reading at the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia included staying in a house that was recently featured in the New York Times. The road trip to lecture at the U.S. Botanical Garden ended with a tour of some extraordinary private gardens…

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South Carolina Safari — Walterboro, SC

Here’s a great little road trip y’all can join in on– it includes romance, food, car culture, farming, blackwater swamps and book stores.   Thursday evening, I’m doing a book reading (ok, sometimes it comes off as save-the-earth-preaching) at the Walterboro Farmer’s Market/Colleton County Museum.  (click for time/directions). For Columbia, Beaufort, Charleston, Savannah friends, make an…

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Fall Garden Visiting Slide Show

November has been a busy time with garden visiting and talking and trading plants and such.  Here’s a little slide show of a few of the gardens we’ve visited.   We’re still dividing plants, no it’s not too cold.  But next week is sharing time again;   on Monday, Bob Polomski & Jenks talk about Deep Rooted…

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Field 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…

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People Who Show Us The World

In 1938 Buzzy’s second grade teacher made his class listen to Wagner and walk through gardens of neighborhood ladies and gentlemen.   Some of the boys sneered.  Buzzy, always sensitive , pretty much shocked me when he said, “Once or twice, on the playground, I found the boys who laughed and interrupted and  I, (he whispers…

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Deep Rooted in a Tiny New Orleans Garden

It’s probably true for something you do in your life, some hobby or task:  little things, intricate things take more time to plan and are harder to get right than big things. In planning little gardens, every piece has to fit perfectly.   Nature’s complexity is less forgiving and more visible in miniature.  A plant that…

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