Garden Rant

It’s November and the annual undressing of the trees is at an end in my part of the world. With the exception of a few late season dazzlers here and there, naked bark is now what’s ‘in’ for the season.

Though many in the Northern hemisphere will turn their heads from this sight and spend the next few months muttering under their breaths in various languages, I have co...

Yes, I’m aware that we Ranters are supposed to stick to gardening while writing for this eponymous group blog. But of everyone in the group, I think I am the one who struggles most with that directive – one that most of us have broken, it must be said.

Every working day, I read multiple political news reports and columns from a wide range of sources, sometimes ...

I bought 3 Little Bluestem grasses (‘The Blues’ cultivar) a few years back, hoping for a nice drift of them to fill this space. But they grow slowly and even after two divisions, there aren’t enough of them to do the job.

I...

I didn’t choose to fall in love with Firepot dahlia. It just happened.

That’s what they all say, right?

Went to the garden center looking for a thalictrum. Of course the law of plant-shopping serendipity dictates, be prepared to pivot to whatever’s on offer. And on this particular day, no thalictrum was to be had.

Instead, I found a vision of love...

Miss Goodwin gave our first grade class a choice of seeds to start in little milk cartons. Radishes had no appeal. Instinctively, or genetically, I went head-long toward BUSH beans. The first fragile bean shoots were prophetic. I became a seedsman.

There is little in gardening that I...