I spent most evenings over the past week digging through the stacks of seed catalogs that have been arriving at my house since Thanksgiving. While I probably get more catalogs than most gardeners, it struck me how daunting it is to decide what to grow, if you are a beginning vegetable gardener. So — as a gardener who has watched…
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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…
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I enjoy visiting gardens while on vacation, but you can visit many gardens from the comfort of home through books, web sites, and DVDs. This Christmas, the man in my life gave me a trip to the gardens of Jane Austen through a just-released book by Wisconsin writer Kim Wilson. I’m a minor Jane-ite (as Austen fans are called) and…
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With the basics of container design in mind (see previous post), I set up shop in the mudroom and gathered the equipment and materials for making a holiday container. These included: the pot filled to within 2 inches of the top with compost, four kinds of greens, three decorative things that are pretty and not green (in my case, red-twig…
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I’ve always been in awe of people who are just naturally visual, who can pick the perfect color for an outfit or a room or place a knock-out plant in just the right spot in the garden. I need more guidance than that, so when I was interviewing floral designers about holiday containers for a recent issue of Northern Gardener,…
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