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  I first heard the term hellstrip when I was editing a garden design book a number of years ago. It embodies the despair that so many of us have felt as yet another hope-filled planting in our parking strip withers and dies. It can feel like a constant battle with tree roots, irrigation challenges, […]

  If you haven’t noticed, there are some especially bright faces popping up in gardens right about now. And I don’t mean the usual annuals that give us so much delight. I mean the poppies! – those cheery visitors that seem to show up out of nowhere from last year’s beds and sway in the […]

What started out as an innocent post about a certain pepper tree that I’ve grown to love, has turned into a horror story of epic proportions. I’ve discovered that my beloved Brazilian pepper is nothing more than an invasive, non-native weed, reviled throughout the horticulture/environmental communities. A menace to the native plants that our wildlife […]

  It’s happening now – the great monarch butterfly migration north from their warm winter homes as far south as Mexico City. The skies over North America are filled with spectacular orange and black clouds of monarchs, winging their way to their far-flung breeding grounds. The National Wildlife Federation calls it “one of the greatest […]

  “If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.” ~ George Washington Carver, agricultural scientist, early environmentalist   In my mother’s gardens, the plants talked with her. Early each morning, she visited all of her green friends and they told her how they were feeling that day, what was bothering them (aphids on […]