This growing season at Fordhook has been frightening. Normally, I expect a couple of monsoon like periods, a few days in late May, and another few days in late July and a couple in late August, max. However, for 2009 the reverse has been true. The only normal days have been, all combined, about one […]

It is always an unusual event when you copy someone else and end up discovering that you made the original. As I mentioned last winter in “Camp Obama“, the President and First Lady might have considered breaking ground on their starter garden in private rather than in public. Maybe it’s just my innate sense of […]

Heronswood research horticulturist, William “Bill” Rein, answers a question in the Happiness Garden. A stream of visitors passes by the Heronswood sales area. Signing up for the Heronswood catalogue at the welcome desk. The great teacher, writer and noted hydrangea authority, Dr. Michael Dirr, autographs his book after a packed lecture at Burpee Hall. Our […]

Here in the Northeast, we’re experiencing the coldest, wettest and darkest summer in recent memory.  The tomato crops of many farm and home gardens have been decimated by a disease that thrives on just this sort of weather.  The disease is late blight, caused by a water mold named Phytophthora infestans.  The severity and incidence […]

Simon Crawford collects extremely rare plants, both wild and tame, around the world. From the high mountains of Nepal to the obscure markets of Europe to the botanical gardens of faraway South America, he tracks down new and interesting meadow plants as well as historic old cultivars from discarded breeding programs of companies that have […]

Spectacular Japanese Fountain Grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’), indeed, but it would be so much less without the Bent Grass (Agrostis stolonifera), an Asian native beloved in the Pacific Northwest and considered a weed in the Atlantic Northeast.  Photograph taken at Heronswood’s original test and display gardens in Kingston.   Get rid of your lawn?  Plant […]

There’s a brief moment in early spring—usually in the first week—when a perfect freshness unfolds.  The balance of light tilts to favor the “out of doors”.  Clean air streams inside.  Fordhook’s 60 acres of forest, meadow and gardens flash in the sun. I enjoy the “species” quality of spring.  By July the jumbled, generic woods […]

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 […]

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 […]

Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski Photo by Mary Kliwinski