I’M LETTING myself be transported away from the winter scene outside my window, burying my nose not in the snow but instead in the spring-into-summer possibilities depicted in seed-catalog pages. I have familiar, favorite varieties I grow every year—but I’m also looking for some new-to-me possibilities, and Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network at Oregon State Universi...

THE EARLIEST REFERENCES to humans cultivating trees date back to maybe 6000 BC, and there are records of tree-care tactics in the Bible, too, and from ancient Egypt. These person-to-tree interventions were the start of the science and art of arboriculture, and our best practices of pruning and other how-to have evolved in each successive era to the methods we know today. I to...

NOT SO MANY years ago, relative to the history of horticulture, even a now-ubiquitous phrase like “pollinator plant” wasn’t part of our everyday gardening language and mindset the way it is today. Our collective consciousness about the importance of native plants has grown fast, and with it have come more new words for our vocabulary. One phrase that I’ve heard a lot lately i...

IF I SAY: quick, name a holiday flower, you might first answer poinsettia. But the poinsettia wasn’t always synonymous with this time of year, today’s guest tells me – like once upon a time more than a century ago the chrysanthemum took center floral stage from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, surprising as that might sound. Whether historic or cutting-edge modern, horticulturist ...

I CAN’T IMAGINE LIFE life without my admittedly oddball collection of houseplants, many of which have been with me for several decades already. So I was delighted recently to meet Rob Moffitt, whose Los Angeles-based botanical design studio (above) specializes in matching their clients with houseplants that are just the way I like them: Not just pretty, but possessing loads o...