Despite heat and humidity Saturday and intermittent storms Sunday, attendance at the Northfield Garden Tour was high this past weekend. I managed to visit four of the six gardens on the tour and came away with three great garden design ideas to apply at home. Mixing vegetables and flowers. Vegetables can be attractive, so why stick the vegetable garden in the back of the yard? Most of the gardens I visited had vegetable beds that were part of the main garden or the gardeners used flowers to ... Read More about Three Great Garden Design Ideas
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Where Heirloom Seeds Got Started
It's hard to imagine more than 40 years back when saving seeds was something only misers and old folks did, and heirlooms were special serving platters and diamond jewelry, not tomatoes and peppers. But it was in 1975 that Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy founded Seed Savers Exchange with two types of heirloom seeds passed on to Diane by her grandfather. Today Seed Savers Exchange maintains a 890-acre heritage farm and warehouses more than 25,000 varieties of potentially endangered vegetable ... Read More about Where Heirloom Seeds Got Started
U.S. Botanic Garden: The People’s Garden
Give the Founding Fathers a lot of credit: Not only did they design a pretty good system of government, they thought of an amazing number of details that would make life better down the road for U.S. citizens. One of those details was the creation of the U.S. Botanic Garden, a brainchild of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- all of whom had a strong interest in horticulture. While established in the early 1800s, the garden has been open to the public since 1850 -- and ... Read More about U.S. Botanic Garden: The People’s Garden
It's a Major Award
Yesterday I received word that one of my blog posts had earned a Silver Award in the Garden Writers Association's annual media awards. The post is self-described as "A rambling discourse written over several days about dried beans, home gardens, and the creative impulse." The post was entered in a relatively new category for electronic writing. The great thing about the GWA awards is that the association announces all the silvers in spring (the number of silvers in each category varies) and ... Read More about It's a Major Award
Terrace Horticultural Books: A Gardener’s Haven
Tuesday I had the chance to visit a St. Paul gardening landmark -- Terrace Horticultural Books, and for a reading gardener (or a gardening reader), this place is fabulous. Run by Kent Petterson, a retired electrical contractor and master gardener, the store houses about 15,000 volumes related to gardening. It's located on the first floor of a charming Victorian house in a residential neighborhood and in the summer it is surrounded by gardens. Kent is something of a celebrity among gardening ... Read More about Terrace Horticultural Books: A Gardener’s Haven