Category Archives: books
Fearless Gardening by Loree Bohl; a review/giveaway
I’ve been following Pacific Northwest gardens and nurseries for decades and often fantasize about having a garden in a modified-mediterranean, 40 inches-of-rain-a-year zone 8. There’s lots of plants I’d be able to grow for the first time, but there’d have … Continue reading
Posted in artists, books, climate, design, inspire me, pots and containers
Tagged Fearless Gardening
9 Comments
clippings, holiday edition 12/11/19
The brick-red thunbergia vine that I was training up to the roof eaves was blown off its fishing line support during a Santa Ana wind event and collapsed on itself, losing about 4 feet of height in the bargain. With … Continue reading
Posted in books, clippings, commerce, garden ornament
5 Comments
some good reads
Next time you’re visiting Joshua Tree National Park, take a moment from reveling in the restorative, otherworldly sights of the desert to give thanks to Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, “hailed as the first desert conservationist and called the Woman of the … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, books, succulents
4 Comments
Gardenlust at the Huntington
One of the items on my wish list this holiday is the recently published book Gardenlust by Christopher Woods. And what better way to vet a book than to hear the author himself describe it, which I was able to … Continue reading
Posted in books, design, garden travel
5 Comments
spooked!
True! –nervous –very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses –not destroyed –not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I … Continue reading
coloring outside the lines; Hot Color, Dry Garden
In her new book “Hot Color, Dry Garden,” botanist/biologist/educator Nan Sterman aims to reassure readers that in these uncertain, climactically challenging times for gardens in the drought-afflicted western U.S., there’s no need to scrimp on what compels us to make … Continue reading
Charles Jones, gardener & photographer
“Jones, the son of a master butcher, was born in 1866 and trained as a gardener from an early age. At the age of 27, he began working at Ote Hall in West Sussex tending the estate’s fruit trees and … Continue reading
Posted in books, photography
Tagged 19th century, botanical photography, Charles Jones, estate gardens, Ote Hall, The New York Review of Books
8 Comments
keep on planting
image of Iris reticulata from Wikipedia Commons Collections of Virginia Woolf’s copious letters and diaries have sustained me through some dreary, uninspiring times. By turns bitchy and transcendent, but always dependably filled with trenchant and unflinching observations of her life … Continue reading
Posted in artists, books, Bulbs, clippings
Tagged Iris reticulata, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Vox
10 Comments
summer read: The Bold Dry Garden
Yes, this book on the making of The Ruth Bancroft Garden came out and was purchased by me last fall, but I’ve only recently sat down to read it cover to cover. The Bold Dry Garden; Lessons from The Ruth … Continue reading
reprising a 2010 visit to the Ruth Bancroft Garden
(Ms. Bancroft is celebrating her 108th birthday this month — yes, that’s not a typo — and we’re all awaiting the upcoming launch later this fall of the book chronicling the making of her garden The Bold Dry Garden.) If … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, books, garden visit, succulents
Tagged The Bold Dry Garden, The Ruth Bancroft Garden
7 Comments