Category Archives: Garden
Favorite August plant – crape myrtle
Our unusually hot summer may be browning out lawns and killing evergreens, but heat-loving plants like crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) are putting out exuberant displays right now. At the edge of t......
Favorite July plant – daylilies
When you and your plants are wilting in the summer heat, it’s a pleasure to have no-fuss bloomers brightening your garden with little effort. Versatile daylilies serve as a bridge between season......
Favorite June plant – Strawberries
The first bite of real, locally grown strawberries has to be one of the best sensations of spring. Now, when they’re coming in like gangbusters, the abundant harvest is a luxury. If you don’t ha......
Bloom time
If it’s spring, it must be garden tour season, a must for voyeurs and avid green thumbs alike. Where else can you view tropical poolscapes perched near school athletic fields, shady green......
Favorite May Plant – Weigela
The fickle cycles of spring weather often leave me mourning the abbreviated bloom time of some of my favorite plants. This year my lilacs bloomed and were browning in the space of three days, do......
Favorite April Plant – Eastern Redbud
The month is filled with spectacular flowering trees as magnolias and dogwoods all welcome the season in clouds of pink frothiness. A drive down President Avenue, or a visit to the Amos Herr Hou......
Transition plants
The spring-like temperatures of the past week have us positively giddy. As the melting snow recedes, the emergence of dainty snowdrops, cheery crocuses, and the sweeping yellow waves of winter a......
Philadelphia Flower Show’s world tour
It’s time for the overwhelming visual cacophony that is the Philadelphia Flower Show, with displays that suspend disbelief in a combination Cirque du Soleil-Mummers Parade riot of color an......
Favorite February plants
In a snow-covered landscape, plants that spice up that expanse of white make the winter more interesting. Evergreen boughs iced with a frosting of snow, multicolored peeling bark, deciduous bra......
Favorite January plant – orchids
After all the glitter and baubles from the holidays are put away, we embrace the simplicity of winter. Yet we still seem to hunger for a bit of color to remind us that spring will come again. Th......