At the advent of solstice as I sit in my sunroom/conservatory, staring out over a snowy landscape that’s framed by a sapphire blue sky, with the sun beating down on the Rockies and the neighborhood buried under a foot of white fluffy stuff, thoughts turn to the coming year’s gardening: Will the Woodward junipers that […]

At this time of year, whether you’re gifting or getting, here are some unusual ideas to warm gardeners’ hearts. Tickets to Flower and Garden Shows Events like Seattle’s Northwest Flower & Garden Festival (Feb. 26-March 1) or the Philadelphia Flower Show (Feb.29-March 8) feature advance single-day tickets ($20–$35). For extravagance, purchase multi-day tickets because there’s […]

I’ve been baking, as one does at this time of year, and got a whiff of vanilla: sweet, rich, flowery. Of course, it’s the scent of a flower. I had seen the yellow flowers of the vanilla orchid, Vanilla planifolia, just days before at the Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago. The vine, with its broad, […]

One of the attractions that’s fed the “influencer’s” fiendish passion for promoting houseplants is probably that, in general, it’s hard to kill one – a houseplant that is. Anywhere that you are comfortable, be it conservatory, greenhouse or light-filled room, so will be whatever pet plant(s) you nurture. Three years ago, I acquired a rubber-tree […]

Heating a greenhouse can be expensive over a long, cold winter, and not just at night. Winter sunshine doesn’t provide a huge amount of heat, and the cold air outside lowers greenhouse temperatures even more. Inside my greenhouses here in New England, summer temperatures outside can easily soar to over 100˚F, but during winter the […]

When you’re transplanting in the greenhouse this fall, your soil mix will probably be peppered with small white granules. Yes, that’s perlite. But, after years of using it at my own potting bench, I realized I didn’t actually know what it is, or where it comes from, or whether its environmentally sustainable. For answers, I […]

Having decided on the power source you want to use to heat your greenhouse (see my Greenhouse Heating, Part 1 article), you still have another major decision to make: What heating unit are you going to buy? The options are often numerous and not easy to narrow down. Here are some factors to consider as […]

It’s been an exceptional season for peaches; my battered old tree produced its juiciest crop of fat, red ‘Elberta’ peaches ever—at least the ones that survived the squirrels. Daily combat with these rogue rodents reminded me of the fruit trees I’d seen grown in conservatories in England, often as espaliers against a warm wall. Protected […]

There’s an Instagram-fueled boom in houseplants today, which means I’ve come back into fashion for a while. This tends to happen to me every few decades if I just keep doing what I’ve always done. I come from gardening people, who tend also to be houseplant people. Even in the middle of winter, we’ve always […]

Exciting new plant introductions come on the market every year. And yet, how do we, as home gardeners, know what’s real and what’s fakery, put up by fraudsters who will prey on our desire to grow the latest offering? Wouldn’t that purple-leaf tropical vine look great in the greenhouse? How about a pink-flowering weeping willow? […]

Gardens are made of memory: of people, places, plants and all that nature offers us in such bounty that we do our best to hold it close in our personal spaces. This September, as I look out on my start-up prairie, formerly known as the front lawn, I remember a person who had more impact […]

In New England, heating a greenhouse in winter makes the difference between being able to grow citrus trees or tropical herbs and flowers versus growing only plants that can tolerate cold and even an occasional freeze. For many greenhouse owners in northern climates, growing the tropical and semi-tropical options is just too tempting. This means […]