Pergolas, arbors, bowers – whatever you want to call them, they’re popping up all over my garden. I’ve got four, and plans to build another something or two this spring. I guess I’m a nut for structure, any kind of structure. As a certifiable plant nerd, my garden is a collector’s mishmash, and comes perilously [...]
The other day, I was reading an article in an old issue of Gardens Illustrated about garden design elements, and it made me realize that I’ve been misusing the terms arbor and pergola. I’d always thought of an arbor as a relatively simple structure that arched over a path or a bench and a pergola [...]
When I filled out the application to certify my property as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation a few years ago, part of the form asked what sort of wildlife I’d already seen here. Red fox, groundhogs, birds, butterflies, deer: check. So why didn’t I think to add rabbits to the list? [...]
Nancy’s post about fun annuals got me thinking about a few of my own must-haves. I experiment with loads of annuals, tender perennials and tropicals every season, and am in deep zonal denial. I’m always on the lookout for bold or colorful (or, better still, bold and colorful) foliage, bright floral colors, and plants that [...]
That’s what they called our neck of Farmington, Connecticut back in the day, when stagecoaches rumbled through a notch near our ridgetop home on their way down to the Farmington Valley. The old coaches must have made a lot of noise, but today the main sound we hear is the 3 pm call of a [...]