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 […]
The ultimate stimulus plan is here. Here is a process that is simple, comprehensive, wide-ranging. It illuminates what has been obscure, catalyses dormant energies, reveals new and splendid possibilities. Welcome to spring. Let us escape the dank, dark recesses of the recent past, propel ourselves into the light and bask in its revivifying dazzle. Let’s […]
“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” -Psalm 34/35 When I visited rural Pakistan in 2003, I noticed that there were very few overweight people. On the contrary, most were skinny, including the elderly. At first I thought I was seeing the effects of poverty. Then I learned from NGO officials that the average […]
Folks have asked, “How can I mix annuals, perennials, vegetables and herbs together in one space?” The answer depends on your zone, the time of year you wish to enjoy your garden and the particular plants you prefer. The secret is spacing things out so you can reach in and harvest the vegetables and herbs […]
My predecessor David Burpee opined toward the end of his life that he regretted only that he would not live to breed the plants of other planets with earth’s. Odd, but then he was a genius born in 1893 who was interviewing a newspaper reporter in the late 60s, still a hot time in the […]
I just spent a long weekend attending a wedding in San Francisco at the Embarcadero Hyatt down near the water, the old Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge. The city rises up from there so I walked a lot—up to Chinatown, North Beach and over to the old Tenderloin, as well as along the Embarcadero, […]
By Lois Burpee “How did you, the wife of David Burpee, become interested in vegetables?” is a question frequently asked me—as though I had become a traitor to my husband and his passion for flowers. I am expected to be a flower expert, especially of marigolds, not vegetables. “I just did” is hardly a satisfactory […]
Green has always been my preferred color. (Orange runs a close second, but that’s another story.) I’ve often wondered why green clothing is hardly ever worn. Military association? I think this would be positive, not negative, but perhaps it is a taboo of sorts. Beau Brummel probably ruined green at some point, drawing associations with […]
May Theilgaard Watts Reading The Landscape Of America — Botanical observation and nature writing combined in a stylish book with charming illustrations, perhaps the best of its kind. A legend in Chicago and long associated with the Morton Arboretum, May Watts was a Julia Child of botany. Sometime in the sixties when my mother took […]
