I’m very fond of purple coneflowers and other members of the genus Echinacea. However, there is something disconcerting about the multitude of occasionally bizarre Echinacea cultivars being put out by plant breeders. I mean, what was the thinking behind Echinacea ‘Double Decker’? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a straight species purist. I plant cultivars. …
I am not at all systematic about color. I mean, I do think about which plant combinations look good. But I have never had a color scheme for any of my flower beds as a whole. Not that I felt the lack of a color scheme very acutely up until now. I was too busy …
Extreme weather dominates my thoughts about gardening for this past year. It started with extreme winter mildness. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it was unnerving for those of us accustomed to harsh Chicago winters. January was about 8 degrees warmer than normal on average. Snow melted, the snowdrops (Galanthus) came up …
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 …
Gail over at Clay and Limestone hosts Wildflower Wednesday on the fourth Wednesday of the month. I’ve been travelling and forgot about this, but I’m not too embarrassed to bring up the rear with a tardy post. I don’t know about you, but it does me good as I hunker down for winter to think …
The Ostrich Bed is what I call the area that is immediately in front of our living room windows. The windows face North towards the street. When we moved to this house ten years ago, this part of the yard was simply a foundation planting of tormented Japanese Yews (Taxus cuspidata). The yews were suffering …
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 …
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