Daina Savage

Want landscaping that looks good enough to eat? Trade your flowerbeds for fruits, herbs and vegetables and you’ll have the ingredients to whip up gourmet meals right at your doorstep. Gone are the days when a produce garden meant bland, mechanical rows relegated to a hidden corner of your yard. Now beauty and function can co-exist with kitchen garden design that encourages, even celebrates the myriad of colors of textures of edible plants. Read the rest of this entry »

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 havens tucked amid otherwise nondescript housing developments, or the latest exotic plant offerings in otherwise traditional settings. It’s the juxtapositions and the possibilities that make these tours so fascinating, and the bonus take-away is a solid list of what not to do, and what to add to your own landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

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, done too quickly to enjoy for Mother’s Day bouquets. Thankfully, the late blooming weigela compensates, stretching the spring display into June. Weigela florida, a deciduous shrub often dismissed as old fashioned, is returning to favor as new cultivars like the dwarf “Variegata Nana”, variegated “My Monet”, and dark burgundy foilaged “Wine and Roses” find fans. Easy to grow with a graceful arching habit, weigla does best in full sun but will tolerate some shade. The fragrent tubular flowers in shades of pink, red and white, are great hummingbird attractants. Although the plant is appealing for three seasons, it’s best to mix in with some evergreens to help with the barrenness of its winter appearance.

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 House, offers delightful examples. Less showy, but just as loved, are the ornate purplish-pink flowers of the Eastern Redbud, cercis Canadensis, decorating our woodlands. Whether encountered on a hike or driving through a neighborhood, this harbinger of spring is a reliable understory tree that thrives in challenging conditions. Maturing at only 20 to 25 feet with bark that grows more attractive as it ages, it’s perfect for small lots and under powerlines. Its hardiness and compact size earned it the 2010 Urban Tree of the Year award from the Society of Municpal Arborists.

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 aconite turn a “snowmageddon” winter to memory. We’re already seeing last year’s Johnny jump-ups in bloom and garden centers are filled with all varieties of pansies to complement your emerging daffodils. But we’ve weathered enough March surprises to know that another snowstorm or cold snap is a very real possibility. Which is why we like to satisfy our spring fever with some greenhouse-grown primroses that give us indoor color while we wait for the last frost date to pass. The common English Primrose has a sweet nostalgic quality and a broad color palate. Many varieties have a contrasting eye to add interest. Indoors, keep the soil moist and the plants out of direct sunlight. Once it’s safe to plant outdoors, find a shaded location where it can thrive and provide you with blooms next spring.

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 and structure.
This grandmommy of all flower shows, now in its 182nd year, offers a globe-trotting theme “Passport to the World.” The show opens Feb. 28 and runs through Mar. 7. Read the rest of this entry »

Now, as the snow melts and the maple trees turn tumescent, it’s sugar-harvesting time.
Miles of plastic tubing may have replaced the traditional buckets, but the end result remains just as sweet.
Mary Lee Zechman, known as “The Maple Lady” in Lancaster County, recalls the intense labor needed to collect when the sap was running in the maple trees on her family’s Tioga farm.
“We were always cold and wet,” she recalls. “My dad would build a fire in the woods for us to warm up with, and in the sugar shack, he would hard boil eggs in the sap for us to eat. Our greatest treat was to get to spend the night with him in the sugar shack, sleeping on cardboard atop the wood piles while he read Zane Grey novels to stay awake.”
Her brother Richard Patterson became a maple syrup entrepreneur as a teen, creating his own candy cakes in muffin tins to sell at school. He later took over the Sabinsville farm, growing the operation from the 600 buckets collected by horse drawn sleigh of his childhood to the 80,000 taps carrying sap through hundreds of miles of tubing through the woods to the modern evaporator.
He expects to harvest 1.6 million gallons of sap this year, yielding 30,000 gallons of syrup during the intense six-week season, which still necessitates 24-hour vigils.
“If the sap’s running, we’re boiling,” says Zechman.
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The best way to beat the midwinter blues? Take a road trip to the charm city for a sensory stimulation to carry you through until spring. A quick day trip yielded towering dinosaurs, a glam version of Icarus soaring through the heavens, and a fanciful confectionary creation that left us hungry for more. First stop, the Maryland Science Center with its dinosaur hall, hands-on kinetic Newton’s Alley room, and gross-out body exhibits including the guess-that-sound display. Of course we had to try out the bed of nail as well as get our goggles and lab coats on for the WetLab experiments. Truly interactive, with a “please touch” ethos, the Science Center inspires wonder in the small set and engages otherwise jaded teens. The grown-ups got their giggle on as well, engaging the laws of physics through play. Read the rest of this entry »

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 branches cupping icy decorations, lingering berries on shrubs and trees, and the seed heads of fall blooming perennials all break up the monotony of the bleakest of seasons. Now’s the time to check out the bones of your garden and see what structure is missing. Check out your neighborhood for the plants that make the winter more colorful to add to your spring shopping list.

A love of artisanal foods naturally leads to a desire to try your hand at making your own. Unfortunately, my first attempts at the ancient culinary craft of cheesemaking were, frankly, embarrassing.
Inspired after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” I had dreams of making my own mozzarella to top grilled pizzas and tuck between slices of heirloom tomatoes and basil.
I procured the milk, rennet tablets and citric acid to make the “30 Minute Mozzarella Magic” created by “Cheese Queen” Ricki Carroll, whose “Home Cheese Making” manual has inspired legions of novices to turn into cheesemakers. The founder of the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company in 1978 in an attempt to preserve the milk on her own farm, she has taught more than 7,000 people how to make cheese in workshops, not to mention the more than 100,000 who bought her book and presumably attempted it on their own. Read the rest of this entry »