There was a big commotion next door the other evening. That struck me as odd. Just minutes before, I’d had a pleasant enough conversation with my new neighbor in the  …

A pot of chives—that’s how it all started. I was well into the fourth year of homeschooling our five children here in New Hampshire, often doing our lessons outside sitting  …

My mother is a gardener, my grandmother was a gardener, my great-grandmother was a gardener. Not me. As a small child, I helped my grandmother weed and water the plants.  …

Here where we live, on the Vermont side of northern Lake Champlain, we get a lot of wind. In the Summer, it whips the lake into whitecaps, rips the laundry  …

A quarter of a century ago, a wise-looking, older fellow leaned over my back fence as I considered what to plant in my newly made raised beds. Without introducing himself,  …

When I was young, my family lived on a farm at the edge of a very tiny country town. I didn’t have a lot of other kids nearby to play  …

There are two queens that reign supreme in my garden here in Houston. Fortunately, they bloom at different times so there are no jealous squabbles. The first great lady is  …

It was insidious really, the seeds of flower love planted in my heart and soul when I was young and oblivious. My mother did it, and I think she did  …

My father’s garden was beautifully kept, immaculately mowed and weeded—except for one corner that was totally fenced off so neither people or creatures (he had hens running free and several  …

Being the only fairly knowledgeable nurseryman in our small Oregon town does have its minuses. Take a social gathering I was invited to a while back. I ran into my  …