The steppe-like conditions in my garden – with no rain for the past few months but what seems like an eternity – puts trees and much else in the garden at risk from what will probably be a brute of a winter, if one believes the old adage that many berries signal a lean, mean […]
What does planning ahead for work in the autumn garden mean for you? Outdoors or in a conservatory does it amount to a quick tidy up? A bit of dead-heading, leaf-raking and winterizing the irrigation system? At the Clarke household, the Head Gardener (me) wracks her brain and wrecks her back to improvise and execute […]
Golden leaves are beginning to cloak the upper slopes of the Rockies, and with the aspens turning so turns the season. As the British poet, Philip Larkin, would have it, “Autumn has caught us in our summer wear.” Just like it’s caught generations of gardeners before us. Turning to my treasured 240-year-old edition of the […]
It’s been quite a while since ladies fell onto their fainting couches or fumbled behind the fernery with their dashing callers – a hot date back in the day. But once the happy couple settled into domestic propriety, the fragile young girls became women of some substance, with children to raise and a home and […]
Optimal use of a greenhouse depends upon a careful balance of temperature, water, and light to maintain the ambient gases that keep the plants living within healthy, productive and happy. At this point in the proceedings I’ll climb up on my soapbox, so you’re excused if you don’t wish to hear about how we’re all, […]
Hartley Botanic’s classic Victorian greenhouse was the centerpiece of one of the most relatable gardens at this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show, which was themed “HABITAT: Nature’s Masterpiece,” and geared to exploring “the beauty of life through nature’s kaleidoscopic lens.” At 189 years old, this is the first time the PFS has been held in the […]
Tomorrow I am meeting a new arrival to Colorado, an Englishwoman from the Home Counties who has bought a house to be near family. She’s keen for advice and gardening connections in this strange land—her English garden sounds like a veritable Eden. She may be surprised that the best advice I can give her for […]
Clocks may have had to spring forward but winter is still with us, yet that hasn’t stopped bulbs pushing their noses up through the compost, to remind us that underneath the soil there’s a garden waiting to bloom. Among the first to make their appearance in garden are two tiny tubers of Cyclamen hederifolium. Planted […]
A thing the gardening life teaches you is that you’re never too old to learn. Each new climate zone I’ve gardened in has been an upward curve on the horticulture and landscape grid – and kept my synapses snapping. Figuring out how my first greenhouse worked in balmy Norfolk, England, prepared me for coping with […]
I don’t know about you, but recently I have been feeling befuddled, not knowing what to turn to next to keep from sinking into the well of ennui. I sure do miss knocking around with friends and the freedom for a bit of rack-slapping-at-will, because you never know what sort of bargains you’ll find unless […]
Hasn’t this been a heck of a year? In my own far-off suburban corner of Colorado it hasn’t rained properly in many months. That didn’t prevent me from planting six resilient trees, a clutch of stalwart native shrubs and some 200 bulbs that seem to adore being parched. Hope springs eternal, or so it is […]
‘Laxton’s Orange Pippin’, ‘Worcester Pearmain’, ‘Arthur Turner’, ‘Oxheart’ just a few of the named antique apple varieties that grew in my English garden. A neighbor gave the young trees to me when we arrived in the village; he’d grafted them from his own orchard trees, ones planted by his father when he returned to farming […]
