Great Gardeners

Variations on a Green Theme

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

When garden designer Suzanna Porter is working on a design in her Berkeley, California, office, she doesn't have to travel far for ideas and inspiration. A simple 90-degree turn from her drawing table reveals her own garden...

Sue's List

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

“Mainly, to make my northern relatives jealous,” my friend Sue replied with a grin when asked what had prompted her to compile her list of the 60 species blooming in her garden on March 13, 2007. “They’ve got snow, and we’ve got things blooming!”...

Growing Food for the Hungry

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

At the Rhinelander Area Food Pantry and Community Garden, in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, volunteers grow food for low-income and unemployed neighbors and teach the community about gardening. This is an interview with one volunteer.

Ketzel Levine

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Some time ago, I went public with my ambivalence about roses. I admitted that this humbling genus pushed all my buttons about conformity, tradition, and settling down (and I’ll bet you thought roses were just high-maintenance plants). Since then, I’ve moved again -another short-term rental -but a rose now climbs over the garden gate celebrating a future other than mine...

Conspiracy Theory

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

A beautiful garden is a collaborative effort between its maker and its plants, neither more important than the other. The gardener envisions the garden, but the plants realize it. And in so doing they frequently create effects the gardener never anticipated...

A GARDENING LIFE: Polly Hill

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The fable of great gardeners is that they swallow a nasturtium seed during their first exploration of the backyard and are instantly and forever transformed into hortaholics. In Polly Hill's case, the seed took far longer to germinate.

Stop What You�re Doing And Watch This Movie

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

"A Man Named Pearl." I mean it. At least read about it if you're not going to watch it immediately!

A GARDENING LIFE: Neil Diboll

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

A prairie ecologist and nurseryman, Neil Diboll has worked ceaselessly to raise awareness about prairie plants and ecosystems and to further the cause of prairie restoration.

Namesake Roses

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A cook recalls how one famous chef led her from stove to garden and back

The American Rose Society

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The American Rose Society is an educational nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to the cultivation and enjoyment of the rose. Learn more about their services and activities.

Remembering Christopher Lloyd

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Among the plants and ideas he championed in Horticulture were a number that have since become staples of the gardening scene: cannas and dahlias, hot colors, see-through plants (like Verbena bonariensis), bold foliage, and of course, the mixed border, the everything-goes style that he epitomized.

The Garden Fairies Improve Lives through Volunteer Garden Projects

Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

For more than 10 years, a Florida-based group called the Garden Fairies has helped neighbors through community gardening projects. Read about them, see photos and get inspired.

The Gardener Next Door: Anne Nagro

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

An interview with Anne Nagro, a Master Gardener, school-garden volunteer and the author of Our Generous Garden (Dancing Rhinoceros Press, 2008).

Don Shadow

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Shadow is known around the world as one of the most connected of plantsmen and as the most active acquirer of unusual plants. The letters strewn across his desk come from across town and around the globe. People write with pictures of possible introductions.“Send cuttings, send seed,” he responds. They write for advice on what to do with a new plant that’s been discovered in some remote swamp or hollow. “Send cuttings, send seed,” he responds. They write looking for the rarest of the rare and the oddest of the odd. “I’ve got cuttings, I’ve got seed,” he responds...

J-P Malocsay, Working Gardener

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Lively gardens are full of stories, and J-P Malocsay has managed for years to delightfully blur the lines between gardening and storytelling. Malocsay describes his life until age 42 as that of a perennial student, “one who loved university life not wisely but too well.”...

The Home Grove

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

My credo is, "if you find a seed, plant it." This goes for common plants as well as plants not usually found in the home. You don't need an outside space to have a garden-a sunny window in your house will do...

Building A Bulb Collection

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

My husband and I are the curators of a little bulb museum, on our very typical 60-by-120-foot lot in an older neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri. We live on McGee Street, and we call our museum the Hortus Bulborum McGeeinsis, a name inspired by the Hortus Bulborum in Holland , a living museum of rare bulbs...

Renee Shepherd

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

It was soccer that got Renee Shepherd into the seed business. In the mid-1980s, while she was completing a PhD (in the history of consciousness) at University of California, Santa Cruz, she mowed a pasture alongside her house to make a soccer field...

A front row seat

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I missed my chair. For six summers I sat in that Adirondack chair beneath the front yard’s silver maple to take notes on my garden, my notebook supported by its wide, flat arm. Hummingbirds whizzed past my head on a beeline to the Malvaviscus, while swallowtails danced among the phloxes and dangled from the ballooning joe-pye weed...