A noun. A verb. A blog.
Call this salt and pepper: peppery-tasting nasturtiums in one of our grandmother’s saltware jugs It’s feeling kinda frosty outside, but some plants are still chugging along – even those fleshy ones you’d think would be susceptible to chilling. Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum) for one. They’re the biggest-bang-for-buck annuals in my garden, and I always have room for […]
Dippy the Diplodocus outside Pittsburg’s Carnegie Institute near Schenley Plaza. You might be forgiven for thinking (as I did) this was a Brontosaurus aka Apatosaurus. Nope, it’s notasaurus. But we’re right in thinking it’s a grand addition to the gardens. These large-scaley critters make common-garden lions and angels seem positively, well, prehistoric. Wouldn’t you love […]
Convertible, moving-wall greenhouse, with back wall open for summer. In Buffalo this summer, while Helen and I toured the city’s must-see Garden Walk, I became deliriously envious (I mean, inspired) of a design solution for convertible greenhouse. Buffalo gardeners Arlan and Dom had transformed their greenhouse into four-season use. A greenhouse that doesn’t turn into the fiery […]
These are the insignificant-looking flowers that cause so much misery in late-summer hay-fever season You’re probably blaming the wrong guy. The culprits behind all that sneezing aren’t those pretty yellow flowers in late-summer bloom. They’re ones you might not even pay attention to – despite the fact that one of them grows really, really tall […]
The rain brought out the rainbow in this mosaic rug by Clare Dohna – in the garden fittingly called Floramagoria Who knows at what stage this glorious mosaic came in this Portland garden’s planning and design? (A rhetorical question, as garden designer Laura Crockett and owners Craig Quirk and Larry Neill likely know quite well.) […]
Large firepit sitting area from designer-retailer JJ deSousa’s garden in Portland, OR Are you stuck with a garden that isn’t “on the level” – so sloped, it creates awkward changes in elevation? Want to turn that negative into a positive? Well, our promise to bring back ideas from the Garden Bloggers’ Fling in Portland OR […]
Endearingly polka-dotted and charmingly shaped, the plate-sized leaves of Podophyllum ‘Spotty Dotty’ Another reason to thank Marie the Gardenbug: she introduced me to this cool plant, known only to me by name before. It’s an exotic hybrid cousin of our native may-apple called Podophyllum ‘Spotty Dotty’. For info on this dramatic family of plants, see […]
A bee’s-eye view of scarlet bee balm, Monarda didyma I need cheering up, after nearly ten days of being seriously under the weather. What could be cheerier than the bold blast of colour that comes from our native North American bee balm (Monarda spp.) and its hybrid cousins – many of which are blooming right […]
A tantalizing establishing shot of the clematis collection chez Marie Before she left it all to move to Northern BC, oh!, was I lucky to visit Marie the Gardenbug to wander awestruck through her early-July garden – including her collection of over 200 clematis! Yes, that thought deserves two exclamation marks. If not more. We […]
The Locke-Irey garden alone (seen here with a hint of Buffalo’s many charming streetscapes), will have as many as 4000 visitors over the Garden Walk weekend. If you’d told us five years ago that we would eagerly visit Buffalo, Buffalo!, as a garden destination, we might have looked at you sideways. That was before, through […]
The tour program describes this Williamson Road garden as a “plantswoman’s paradise.” No wonder I loved it. Sunday’s Beach Garden Society garden tour had many highlights – and we’ll write about others, later. But, by accident, Sarah and I saved the best till last, the subject of today’s post. It showed how even a plant […]
Coneflowers, photographed outside East of Eliza and filtered through the Waterlogue photo app. It’s almost shameful what technology can do – like turning a photo into a “watercolour,” as I’ve written before. To try this yourself, compose your shot well first. Enjoy my field of coneflowers!