Gardening magazines and books joyfully extol the wonders and pleasures of having a flower garden. At the top of the list of reasons to have one is the fact that a flower garden is great for pollinators. What they fail to mention—maybe it’s in the fine print—is that pollinators, likeContinue Reading

As I write this, it’s late winter, mid-March. The garden is half green, half brown. The coneflowers and daylilies are up much sooner than is good. Already I’ve had to cover them from frost three times, and more times seem likely. Even the fern buds are up. Over the pastContinue Reading

On a typical miserably hot July day, the third summer of the garden, I was pulling black-eyed Susans out of the coneflowers and pincushions. (Black-eyed Susans spread like a virus and will fill any available space, but that is a story for another day.) An older gentleman walked by andContinue Reading