Podcast

May 31, 2019 Why Do You Garden, Charles McIlvaine, Virginia Woolf, Martha Maxwell, Walt Whitman, This Compost, Photo Friday, Hosta Inventory, Calvin Lamborn and the invention of Sugar Snap Peas

Why do you garden? This was a question that was posted in a Facebook group I belong to, and it received over 1400 responses. The most popular were: it’s calming to bring beauty into my life to connect with nature healthy food There’s another benefit that many people often overlook: staying physically active. If you take a look at your Fitbit after spending time in your garden, you’ll realize it’s a workout. Brevities #OTD It’s the birthday…

May 30, 2019 Extra Garden Tools, Voltaire, Gustav Leopold Miller, the Brush Weeder, Bill Burt, National Mint Julep Day, Cicily Mary Barker, The Lilac Fairyx, Green Thoughts, Eleanor Perenyi, Perennial Vines, and Concealing Unsightly Clothesline Posts

Today I’m heading over at 1 o’clock to Walmart to pick up my mobile order. It has a ton of things I need to get for my student gardeners. When the kids help me out in the garden, I put them in teams of two, and I generally have 6 to 8 kids helping me out in the garden on any given day. That means I need to have multiples of some of my favorite garden tools. So, today, I’m…

May 29, 2019 Sun Traps, John Barrymore, Joyce Winifred Vickery, Alfonsina Storni, Mirabel Osler, Succession Seed Annual Flowers, and the Wedding of Townshend and Kate Brandegee

The perfect spot for an afternoon of lounging while reading your favorite book? The definition of the sun trap is a small partially-enclosed outdoor space that receives a disproportionate amount of sunlight due to favorable conditions. Think of south-facing areas of your garden, areas without light-blocking trees, areas that are sheltered from the wind, and positioned to receive ample sunshine. (Barrymore’s granddaughter is actress Drew Barrymore.) When Barrymore was 35 years old and on the verge…

May 28, 2019 Unkind Garden Advice, William Herbert, Hippeastrum, Carl Richard Nyberg, Amaryllis and Alteo, Amaryllis Poem, Minta Collins, Medieval Herbs, Exposed Tree Roots and the Wentworth Lilacs of New Hampshire

Gardeners. Horticultural experts. Professors, even. On the garden path, you can, from time to time, run into people that decimate you faster than a Japanese Beetle on green beans. Let’s just set one thing straight. Gardening is good for you, but people who give garden advice can be bad for you. What they fail to realize is that gardening is an activity of the head AND the heart. I’m here to tell you, gardening is the absolute most wonderful pastime.…

May 24, 2019 Gardeners and Weeds, Ynes Mexia, Queen Victoria, Frank Cabot, Les Quatre Vents, Linda Leinen, The Naming of Plants, Anna Pavord, The Naming of Names, Photo Friday in the Garden, and Ynes Mexia’s Exploits in Mexico and South America

Emerson once wrote, “To science there is no poison; To botany no weed; To chemistry no dirt.” As much as I like this quote, I know most gardeners will beg to differ. To gardeners, there are weeds. As I mentioned in an earlier episode this month, we often forget one key variable in gardening; the gardener. Each of us, as gardeners, has our own point of view when it comes to weeds. On May 12, 1957, Vita Sackville West reached…