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The beauty of organized chaos

What makes a beautiful yard or garden anyway? Well, check out my article on “organized chaos” in Pacific Horticulture. “The Beauty of Organized Chaos”

Many years ago, with a basket hooked in one elbow and my young son’s small hand in the other, I walked through the welcome sun of a February day. Neighborhood drifts of green-hearted leaves, dotted with purple flower faces, our destination. The small patch of sweet violets in our home garden … more

Heroes, Birds, and Happiness in the Winter Garden

Heroes If a hero is someone that saves you, then my latest hero is the writer Lia Purpura. The essays in her collection All The Fierce Tethers have been grounding, rooting, a reminder of wonder throughout this weird pandemic year. Instead of getting sucked into an anxiety-paralysis binging on news, I pick … more

You Were Taught That to Care Means Neatness

1 You were taught that to care means neatness that care looks tidy. It’s modeled this way everywhere you look. Autumn’s debris removed from sight, earth bare (barren), swept, raked, scraped clean, empty, sterile. And so, at home, the place you care for most, with your time, with your attention, with your … more

These Nine Will Change Your Mind – Garden Grasses for the Skeptic

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to the garden and told you the history of the old place with its ice-storm-ruined silver maple transformed into the meadow garden that you see today. We looked at the volunteer echinacea still in bloom and the baptisia that you’d never met but had heard … more

Ditch Your Leaf Blower and Your Garden Will Rise From the Dead this Halloween

Halloween 2020 won’t be be the same as pre-Covid and it won’t be the same as when my son was five and dressed as a silver-suited Jeremy Mouse from his beloved Tiptoes Lightly stories. Nor will it be the same Halloween as when I was young and impressionable and my … more

3 Principles of Garden Design I Learned as a Kid

The doll collection was special, but it was the pink jungle wallpaper that continues to influence my work to this day. Read my guest blog post for Virens Studio here to learn how.

5 Reasons to Plant More Bulbs This Fall

The dumbest question about flower bulbs, ever: “Do they have any purpose apart from being pretty?” Yes, sure they do, but what’s to shame about beauty? When you see the earliest snowdrops blooming in cloud-heavy winter, aren’t your spirits lifted? And when the crocus, then the daffodils follow, doesn’t their floral display … more

Bee-ing with Halictus, the Sweat Bee – #3 in the series

A knee injury for me (again!) is the perfect excuse for more bee-ing, less working in the garden. Couple that with National Pollinator Week, and I’m feet up, ice-wrapped, coffee in hand and all a-buzz to share with you what I’ve seen. After dinner at the picnic table last night (yay summer!), … more

Stop and See the Bees – #2 in the not dumbed-down pollinator gardening series

The hidden benefit of gardening for pollinators is the sense of well-being that comes from watching the myriad flying visitors, like real living fairies, dart and dash and sup and rest amidst the blooms. In the first of this series on pollinator gardening, I gave you a specific tip to attract more … more