Curbed in concrete and asphalt, rooted beneath impermeable surfaces of human engineering, yet still, you tower, you arch overhead, tickling third-story windows, holding nests and sunlight in your crowns. Thank you. Thank you street trees for the visual rest of your complexity in a straight-lined urbanity. Your branches trace dark lines, earth’s … more
For my latest Pacific Horticulture article I had the pleasure of talking with seven different designers and gardeners about their public-facing, community-engaging projects. Read Garden Design for the Greater Community to hear their stories. You’ll learn how your own efforts to reclaim vacant ground, even if that’s just your own front yard … more
privacy a sheltering hood of shining green, shaped in the symbol of love two lobes atop a point, heart overlapping heart, like boudoir sheets unmade, the leaves cover, they drape, hiding and revealing what’s bare and what’s blossoming below. the name: Wild Ginger, an erotic personality, confirmed by musky spice when … more
Where in your yard are you less inclined to putter, to weed, to trim and tend? What out-of-the-way spot needs a low maintenance solution that reflects your garden ethics and style? If your property has a hellstrip, a parking strip, a grassed area between sidewalk and street, this is a great place … more
This spring, I’ve replaced some of the original plants in my home garden, things planted when I first moved here twenty years ago. I was young, in love with the classics, a good place to start a garden education. Winter daphne (Daphne odora), with it’s earliest perfumed blooms, I’d planted all around … more
The mood is gray-black lit by gold-yellow. The month is April. Daffodils reign. Under atmospheric river storms, sodden snow, and great big inhales of sunshine, we dig the ground and plant. Looking up from the squelch squerch beneath my boots, golden bright daffodils beam pure joy. Popping out in their hundreds … more
The thunk, thunk of a chef’s knife nearby, Abby and I swapped stories at Lovely in downtown Springfield. It was late January. The new year buzz was as strong as the coffee in my veins, as rich as the soil in Ami and Jeff’s garden, as fertile as the friendship between us. … more
It was on one of those dim, fogged mornings when the remaining leaves on the trees appear to yearn for the ground, heavy like newly washed hair, limbs blurred with mist, the lines of them made more distant, remote, out-of-reach, and the grasses and tall perennials on the ground slump, arch, and … more
wet spring followed by this, a parched, dry fall. crush of katsura leaves underfoot releasing toasted warmth, buttery, cozy, smell of fall. catch a whiff of gardenia-scented silverberry blossoms, of sweet perfumed eternal fragrance daphne, or salad freshness of sasanqua camellia, and rotting figs, fermenting apples, wildfire smoke on the wind. dry … more
Fraxinus latifolia Grays skies of October welcomely wet, wool sweaters and boots return, dust and wildfire smoke retreat. And under this muted lid, a pool of green gold in the lay of the land, the lowland fold. Bright against moody Doug fir and dark oak bough, singing clear near bleached … more
© 2015-2024 Whole Gardens | All rights reserved
