A Way to Garden

I LOOK AROUND the garden and I see it happening everywhere, on so many different plants: seed is forming. Seed is the start of most everything we grow, yet most of the seed we gardeners and even more important the nation’s farmers plant originates elsewhere—often very far away from our home soil—and many of us who garden know relatively little about seed except how to order m...

WHAT MAKES a tree or shrub exceptional – something worthy of introduction into the nursery trade, and eventually maybe making its way into your garden? There are many pathways a plant can travel to get there, including one unique one from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. As part of its 150th anniversary celebration in 2022, the arboretum announced its Arnold Select...

WHEN I HEARD that today’s guest, who’s been a guiding force in educating organic farmers, was finally publishing a book specifically for gardeners, I was thrilled. I’d been following Jean-Martin Fortier since his first handbook on biointensive organic market farming came out more than a decade ago, and even gone to hear him speak at farming conferences—then done my best to tr...

IS A GREENHOUSE in your future? I’ve never had one, and I have always been not-so-secretly jealous of friends who do—whether to propagate their seedlings in late winter into spring, or grow more tropicals and other “houseplants” than fit in their house, or who knows what. A new book by horticulturist Leslie Halleck called “Home Greenhouse Revival: Growing Year-Round Foliage, ...

THE OPENING PAGES of Timothy Pakron’s about-to-be-released cookbook aren’t pictures of plates of food, but rather gorgeous flower photos – some dreamy cosmos, followed by a double-page spread of silvery mountain mint, or Pycnanthemum, gleaming against a moody dark background. That all makes sense, because the cookbook is titled “Garden Variety: Plant-Focused Recipes Inspired ...