Blood, Devastation, Death, War, and Horror

Blood Devastation Death War and Horror

“Hello, good evening and welcome to another edition of ‘Blood, Devastation, Death, War and Horror’, and later on we’ll be talking to a man who does gardening.” [Monty Python’s Flying Circus, episode 30]

Sadly, there are very few gardening references in Monty Python episodes and movies, but I treasure each one. The bits about shrubbery and recognizing different types of trees from quite a long way away come to mind fairly frequently, but I don’t often have the opportunity to use this one – until this week.

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Published in: on April 12, 2011 at 7:15 pm  Comments (12)  
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Turning Your Garden Blog into an E-book

Offbeat Edibles coverClearly, I don’t have enough to do, if I have time to be playing around with e-publishing options. But it’s cold and snowing out (April Fool’s Day, indeed), and though I do have real work to do, investigating the world of e-books is way more absorbing at the moment. I’ve been surprised at how easy it is to create one, and I thought the rest of you might be interested in reading about some of the options I’ve found and experimented with.

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Published in: on April 1, 2011 at 3:13 pm  Comments (7)  
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Cut-Back Shrubs

Sambucus nigra 'Aurea' [October 12, 2009]

Inspired by some recent posts by Thomas over at Grounded Design, I’ve been thinking a good bit about the gardening trends I’ve seen come and go over the past 25-plus years. I’ve enjoyed exploring many of them myself, and even those that now seem rather boring or impractical have left traces on the garden I have today.

Back in the early to mid-90s, for instance, when I was developing my previous garden, mixed borders were a hot topic at lectures and conferences, and I totally bought into the idea. Trying to incorporate shrubs into my plantings was a real challenge, though, because that garden was very small. Then, I started hearing about the great “new” idea of cut-back shrubs, and wow – that made all the difference. Who knew that there were shrubs that would tolerate being cut back almost to the ground each year? They’d give height and mass and winter structure, and it took only one simple pruning step to keep them from taking up too much valuable border space.

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Published in: on March 27, 2011 at 8:33 pm  Comments (33)  
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One Plant, Three Seasons: Amsonia hubrichtii

Amsonia hubrichtii with Muhlenbergia capillaris [October 22, 2006]
October 22, 2006

I recently read somewhere that Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrichtii) is now “out.” Shows how much I know, because I thought that it was finally “in,” having been named the 2011 Perennial Plant of the Year by the Perennial Plant Association. Hmmm…maybe that’s part of the problem: I guess it’s not cool to like plants that are (or are becoming) readily available and widely grown.

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Published in: on March 11, 2011 at 8:40 am  Comments (22)  
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A Study in Pink

Canna 'Pink Sunrise'

I’m as glad as other garden bloggers to see this winter’s snow disappear, but despite my best efforts, I can’t work up much enthusiasm for my mud-splashed snowdrops and wind-tattered hellebores. The idea of doing a new color-based post was much more appealing, and though pink isn’t one of my favorites,  my latest obsession – the BBC series Sherlock – provided the perfect title, and I couldn’t resist. (Delightfully, Dr. John Watson now chronicles Sherlock’s adventures in a blog, which includes his own A Study in Pink post.) So now, for your viewing enjoyment, a random selection of some pretty-in-pink flowers and foliage in portraits, pairings, and garden settings.

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Published in: on February 27, 2011 at 8:17 pm  Comments (14)  
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