So I had the good fortune to meet a fellow avid gardener recently. His name is Mike Miller and he lives in the adjacent town of Wilmette. He was nice enough to invite Judy and me to visit his garden. As soon as we pulled up to the curb, I could see that it was …
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Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
July is the month of Monardas here. We have one straight species (Wild Bergamot, Monarda fistulosa) and three hybrid cultivars: ‘Raspberry Wine’, ‘Purple Rooster’, and what I suspect is a home-grown hybrid that looks like a cross between Wild Bergamot and ‘Purple Rooster’. Gardeners interested in Monarda should check out two trials of various species …
Happy 4th of July. July is when things start to pop in the garden after the June lull, so I thought this might be a good time to provide a tour or overview of where things are right now.
The garden is full of Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) seed pods these days. And remember how I said that Wild Geranium spreads via exploding seed pods that hurl the seeds several feet (with a good wind) from the mother plant? So when my friend Jo ana came to help in the garden last week she …
The garden is mostly quiet shades of green these days. There are some blooms, which tend to be white or blue. Here’s a selection, though I’m holding a few things back for future posts.
I realize that I recently wrote about our Peony ‘Snow Swan’, but now that it is coming into full bloom I felt compelled to do a little brag post with more pictures. Also I have a few more bits of information to share about this Peony cultivar.
How can you not love Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)? They are coming into their own in our garden right now. The clusters of soft blue tubular flowers are fantastic, especially combined with the pink and purple buds.
It is now officially spring, snow has melted, buds are budding, and it seems like a good time for an overview of recent developments. So most of the garden still looks like this, but there are green bits emerging and even a few flowers.
The most recent issue of Fine Gardening magazine had an interesting article by Toronto gardener Mary Gore entitled “Continuous Color in the Shade.” There’s a lot to commend in this article, not least the marvelous photos, but among other things it got me thinking about color schemes for shade. In most shady gardens, color in …
The Japanese Anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ is one of my favorite autumn flowers. The white petals with golden centers are just so luminous and elegant. I looked in the thesaurus but couldn’t find any better words than those. I have ‘Honorine Jobert’ growing in a border where it emerges up out of an area dominated by …
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