FLEUR DE LYS The big, bearded German iris (Iris germanica) in my backyard are going to need dividing this year. As it is, each plant has a full compliment of muscular sword-shaped leaves, out of which sprout sturdy stalks with bulging buds that are almost ready to open. The show will be tremendous this year, though I have had almost […]

BROTHER CADFAEL I love to read, and I do it as often as the necessary business of life allows. Sometimes when real life is too overwhelming, and I can’t face a literary novel or a meaty biography, I turn to mysteries. As a mystery lover and a gardener, I find particular solace in the Brother Cadfael series, by the late […]

SWORD LILIES Sometimes a garden just needs a bit of intensity. For several years my front borders have been full of soothing pastels, with peaches and pale yellows predominating, accented with lots of white. The result is pleasing, but nothing reinvigorates like a little change, so last year I decided to add some gold nasturtiums to the mix. They proved […]

ANDROMEDA Legend has it that Cassiopeia, an ancient queen of Ethiopia, bragged to Poseidon, god of the sea, that her daughter, Andromeda, was more beautiful than Poseidon’s sea nymphs. Poseidon was touchy about such things, and punished Cassiopeia by sending a sea monster to terrorize the Ethiopians. Eventually the Ethiopian rulers consulted oracles who told them that Andromeda had to […]

POTS AND PLANS             Gardening fads and fashions are as perennial as gardening itself.  This spring giant plants such Colocasia (elephant ears) and Alocasia are all over the covers of gardening magazines and catalogs.  Next year miniatures will probably return, only to be supplanted after awhile by something else.  Editorial ink always flows like water over Niagara Falls, submerging the […]

MYSTERY CACTUS             Last week I dropped in to see one of my daughter’s former teachers.  The teacher has a warm sunny classroom with an array of flourishing potted plants on the windowsills.  It was a midwinter treat to see such luxuriant geraniums and aloes.  I just missed the blooming period of a large jasmine, but from the size of […]

ANTIQUE PAGES A couple of years ago I met a fascinating woman in her sixties who had made a career as an estate gardener. Working for an assortment of wealthy clients, she spent years weeding, dividing and deadheading her way through all kinds of beds and borders. The work also provided her with opportunities to pursue her interest in garden […]

Recently a friend who is a great gardener told me about the Garden State Heirloom Seed Society, and its website, www.historyyoucaneat.org. According to its founders, the website is devoted, to “New Jersey heirloom fruits and vegetables, and their culinary, medicinal, and historical value, to food and history-lovers around the globe. The site is fascinating. An essay written by Joseph Cavanaugh, […]

PERILLA             ‘Every year it seems as if some arbiter of taste and fashion anoints a member of the vast mint family as “mint of the moment.”  Several years ago it was thyme–not just ordinary thyme but lemon thyme, golden thyme, and wooly thyme, not to mention mother-of-thyme.  Big name gardeners like Martha Stewart cultivated as many varieties as they […]