Behind-the-scenes tour at Longwood Gardens plant-production facility
October 09, 2023 The Philadelphia Area Fling in September officially started with a behind-the-scenes tour at Longwood Gardens. I didn’t know what to expect and was astonished to learn about an army of plant-production staff working at Longwood to grow horticultural displays that wow all year, but especially during big ...
Allen Centennial Garden on UW–Madison campus
July 16, 2022 Allen Centennial Garden, a free public garden at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, offers a pleasant garden stroll around a Queen Anne mansion. The garden was our final stop on the recent Madison Garden Bloggers Fling tour. I also made a quick visit with friends before the Fling ...
Spring in plant collector John Ignacio’s garden
May 13, 2022 Last October I had the pleasure of visiting John Ignacio’s northwest Austin garden, a treasure box of rare plants that John has collected (including on a plant-hunting expedition with the late John Fairey) and hybridized. I returned this April to see it at the beginning of the ...
LongHouse Reserve ramble, Part 2: Woodland garden, Yoko Ono sculpture, and Red Garden
January 06, 2022 When textile-artist Jack Lenor Larsen created his garden at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York, one of his goals, according to online interviews, was to encourage people to be nonconformist. He wanted to show that more can be done with a suburban backyard than the typical ...
LongHouse Reserve weaves gardens and sculpture: Dune path, pavilion, and tropical rill
January 06, 2022 My visit to LongHouse Reserve on October 10, a cool, drizzly afternoon, was almost an afterthought. I’d detoured through the Hamptons on my Northeastern road trip largely to visit Madoo, garden of the late artist Robert Dash. With two days to fill in the Hamptons I did ...
Mad about Madoo: The secret garden, potager, and ginkgo grove
December 22, 2021 I’d driven out to the Hamptons — a Long Island, NY, detour on my October road trip from Maine to Virginia — mainly to see one garden: Madoo. The name itself is an endearment, taken from a Scottish dialect in which ma doo means my dove or ...
Creative display gardens at The Natural Gardener
April 07, 2019 The Natural Gardener beckoned as a fun first stop on my wildflower drive last Wednesday. Mom was with me, and after we stashed a bunch of new plants in the car, we stepped back out to explore the nursery’s colorful display gardens. The herb garden designed by ...
Second star to the right and straight on to the pumpkin patch at Dallas Arboretum
October 02, 2018 Join Wendy, the Lost Boys, and Tinkerbell in Neverland this fall at Dallas Arboretum’s magical Pumpkin Village. This year’s theme is “The Adventures in Neverland,” and it marks the 13th year of the garden’s creative display of thousands of colorful pumpkins, gourds, and squash. I sprinkled myself ...
Topiary meadow and sunken pond garden at Great Dixter, part 2
August 14, 2018 In part 1 of my recap of my tour of Great Dixter in England earlier this summer, I confessed that I didn’t like the overplanted, claustrophobic feeling of the Peacock Garden and surrounding hedged gardens. But I found breathing room and the longer views I’d craved along ...
Close encounters of the plant kind at Great Dixter garden, part 1
August 13, 2018 After spending the morning at Sissinghurst, during our travels in mid-June, we drove a half-hour to Great Dixter, another famous English home and garden at the top of my must-see list. The family home of gardener and garden writer Christopher Lloyd, who died in 2006, Great Dixter ...
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, part 2: White Garden, meadow, and tower views
August 04, 2018 Has any garden been more admired, copied, and written about than Vita Sackville-West’s White Garden at Sissinghurst? We visited in mid-June, and I was excited to finally step into this glowing space and see it for myself. Twilight would be better for appreciating the pale effect of ...
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, part 1: Walls and roses in the English countryside
August 03, 2018 Sissinghurst. Mecca to gardeners worldwide. Like every traveling gardener, I’d put Sissinghurst Castle Garden at the top of my bucket list, and when we started planning a trip to England I insisted on seeing the famous garden of Vita Sackville-West. So one sunny mid-June morning, we drove ...
Tea in Rosemary Verey’s garden at Barnsley House
July 30, 2018 Elton John worked with her on his garden. Prince Charles too. I’m sure everyone who knows anything about garden design or English gardens knows of the late Rosemary Verey. But I confess I knew nothing of her when I visited the famous designer and author’s former home ...
Hedge fun: The Italian Renaissance garden of Château d’Ambleville
July 05, 2018 So many châteaux (manor houses, mostly, but also palaces and castles) litter the French countryside that today some can be purchased for a relative song. We were not looking to buy, however, but merely to visit a couple of châteaux in mid-June, after our tour of Monet’s ...