The folks working at Heronswood Nursery include these excellent employees headquartered at Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, PA. On this 60-acre estate, we have planted over 10 acres of rare cultivars, including much of what we offer on-line and in the Heronswood Catalog. Also, these are the folks you will meet at our upcoming 2009 Open […]

Another holiday-time pint of view movie critique of “Quantum of Solace”, the latest James Bond turkey. The clumsy and ostentatious title refers to our hero’s hard-won emotional release, fought out in a special digital effects studio.  This is James “Another time, another place” Bond?  Yes, and he’s worse than George Lazenby.  He is seriously disturbed. […]

Here’s a fun game of horticultural “Truth or Dare”. Growing sunflowers for snacking seed seems “out there” to me at least.  There would have to be an extremely delicious type that I’ve not heard of or grown yet.  The “freshness” of a nut’s taste is sometimes a result of its ripening after a few weeks […]

A woman of the south, my mother moved “up north” to Glen Ellyn, a small village on the Aurora & Elgin railway line (the “Roarin’ Elgin”) 30 miles west of Chicago, with my father in 1945.  In her mid-20s, she’d lived as a pilot’s wife for a couple of years at bases in Edmonton, Canada, […]

      Readers respond to “Garden Food For Thought”        1. Kathy Said:   I really enjoy reading your posts. Thanks.       You’re welcome. Thanks for the note.     2. Nancy Said:   I am in total agreement. Those of us who get dirty can eat well, pass it […]

Steve often uses materials from abandoned industrial sites. The seeds of the pinecone are paddles that churn molten iron at the Bethlehem steel mills. The core is the inner casing of a curved pipe. One of a few narrative works that Steve made in the 90s, the untitled “creature” stands atop a life-size tortoise and […]

When our nation faces a recession, it becomes receptive to the notion of gardening for both economic benefit and pleasure.  Imagine new vegetable gardens across the countrysides, in the suburbs and patched throughout the cities.  As we face food price hikes—despite relief in gas prices—and cancel big-ticket purchases and investments, we turn to our gardens […]

In ‘Second Summer‘ I showed a few fine blooming garden beds still in excellent shape in late October.  A freak snowstorm occurred on Tuesday, October 28th.  However, we continued to enjoy a long, beautiful, cool autumn here at Fordhook.  Summer’s “second number” is almost 10 weeks long.  The only big differences are the poignancy of […]

The sculptor Densaburo Oku, or “Dense” or “Mr. Oku”, in his workshop. He had already a distinguished career in Japan before coming to the US twenty years ago. He casts, molds and blows glass and works metal. We have ten fish by Densaburo Oku. The metal combines found and reworked parts, and the glass is […]

Photos by Mary Kliwinski View of Dahlia Research Trials Research Director Grace Romero 2001 Heronswood Garden at Fordhook, renamed Carolina Garden for my mother. Memorial for my mother, Caroline Vivian Ball. Partial view of new Heronswood Gardens Upper Pond Lower Pond – the total planted area at Fordhook Farm in 2009 will be about 12 […]