What is it with seeds? Why are lettuce and carrot seeds so ridiculously teeny that the instructions on the package (“plant three to four inches apart in rows”) make no  …

I grew up on a large dairy farm, the sixth of seven children, and the fourth girl. My time with Dad usually occurred working in the fields. The first time  …

Standing next to my compost heap, I wondered if I was the only person on the planet who would find calm and healing in emptying out white plastic bags of  …

My son Jack is the tallest kid in his class—by quite a bit. He has an arm on him a few coaches say they’ve never seen. I first realized his  …

Last spring, I attended a lecture at my local library entitled, “How To Create a Pollinator Garden.” The speaker impressed upon us the importance of including milkweed, the sole  …

Just down the hill from where I work in Glasgow, Scotland, there is a ruined garden in an abandoned churchyard. Graffiti is scrawled over the locked front door, rubble and  …

Elizabeth Alexander is a poet and Professor of African-American Studies at Yale University. Her husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus, was a native of Eritrea, Africa who became a refugee, emigrated to Europe  …

I've worked in the nursery business here in Napa, California for 15 years. During that time I’ve learned that my job is to help grow gardeners just as much as  …

As I was sewing in my room the other night, I heard an insect repeatedly flying into the overhead light. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the annoying tapping—when the  …

Farming has shown me that when surrounded by the absolute worst of conditions, both people and plants will work hard to survive. When our part of California was struck by  …