There was an unforeseen delay in my getting this letter written – the peaches on my elderly tree were ripe and the weather was due to change overnight from 90° and bluebird skies to 55° and sodden grey. Welcome to the Front Range. With the right kind of greenhouse this wouldn’t be a problem: the […]

In the busy life of a home gardener, tools are essential. However, if your time is like mine, in the garden and the greenhouse, I’m more focused on caring for plants than I am on caring for tools. And yet, as my friend and artist Phyllis Helland observed, “A shovel easily knifing into the soil—there’s […]

There’s a new Greenhouse in my town. It’s a Hartley, and its owner is Mary Maroney, who invited me to visit. So one lovely summer evening I did just that, enjoying a glass of wine in Mary’s equally lovely Greenhouse. When Mary was a young girl in grade school, she was asked to draw what […]

As fall approaches, it’s time for a thorough cleaning, repainting, and upgrading of my greenhouse. One of the projects on my list this year is automating various systems. Given the large number and variety of plants in my greenhouse, maintaining the optimal environment there can be challenging. Automation can facilitate this process for watering, heating, […]

In a corner of England, long, long ago, a young woman with visions of the epic garden she was planting, sowed seeds of milk thistle, Silybum marianum. HUGE mistake! Little did I know (yes, moi) that the enchanting, fresh young foliage, shimmering with silvered veins in the Norfolk sunshine, would age to old boot leathers […]

After the heat and stress of the day, evening is a perfect time to enjoy our gardens. So, creating vignettes of what works best in the falling light is important. White flowers are touted for evening and moon gardens because other colors fade back, but the same is true for light-colored foliage, especially the silvers. […]

Forest bathing, or taking an aware walk in the woods, has become popular for its health benefits—it’s known to lower blood pressure and boost immunity. The name is a literal translation of the Japanese term shinrin-yaku, or taking in the forest atmosphere. Last weekend I had a chance to go on a guided forest-bathing walk […]

Heat extremes, aka the Heat Dome, such as we’ve been experiencing this past month is not something any gardener would wish to entertain again. Weather conditions are always the no.1 topic of conversations having to do with horticulture, and, clearly, I’m no exception to this rule. Not only have the plants not tended within the […]

Many vegetables in the garden are now ready to be picked, most notably garlic and onions. Some of the potato plants are also ready for harvest. If you grow as I do, in four-foot (1.2m) wide beds rather than in rows, removing plants from the garden leaves large open spaces. For example, I planted garlic […]

It’s the time to look at other people’s gardens. While public gardens are great at showing you what’s possible in your area, signing up for a tour of private gardens can give you a strong sense of what you could achieve in your own back yard. Plus, you may be able to talk to the […]

Light levels inside greenhouses in winter and spring can often be quite low. Mostly because the glass has become dirty. With a ton of plants in my greenhouse it is difficult to reach the 12 ft (3.7M) rooftop glass.to clean it. The sides can easily be cleaned from outside, but inside it is often difficult […]

In what should have been the busiest time for a gardener in the steppes of the Front Range, this one has, for the past six weeks, been sitting on the sidelines thanks to a knee replacement. Yes, the right leg that has powered the spade for the past few decades has finally given up the […]