Here’s another post about a summer visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden. This time I want to write about Dixon Prairie, one of the less visited parts of CBG. Dixon Prairie is a 15 acre restored prairie with six different ecological communities, from wet to dry, black earth to sand and gravel. In addition to …
It was late October just about ten years ago, when my younger son looked at me with considerable exasperation and asked, “Dad, why do we have the only house with giant brown stalky things in the front yard?” This is as good as any introduction to the issue of autumn garden clean-up. More specifically, is …
Let’s start in the backyard. Rosa ‘Sally Holmes’ still has a few blooms, and even some buds straining to open before the frost. Most of the asters have gone to seed … But the dwarf New England Aster, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae ‘Purple Dome’, is a very late bloomer – it’s just hitting its stride. Rosa ‘Darlow’s …
As winter closes in, I find myself turning more and more to that emotional survival trick of gardeners everywhere: obsessing over what I’m going to plant next spring. As I peruse my books and catalogs, I keep running into an ominous phrase: “self-sows freely”. Experienced gardeners know what this means. It means that you are …
Fall in the garden means seedheads, pods, and fruit join flowers and foliage as features of the garden. So here are some non-floral highlights for mid-September: I forget what this variety is called, but I think I’ve decided I like these plain green and white Caladiums (Caladium bicolor) best. I built this raised bed on …
gardeninacity 