As house prices and new construction fall, the homebuyer has not only more choices, but tougher economic decisions to make due to tighter credit. Lenders are narrowing their focus on high-worth clients. Middle class buyers face declining wages, workforce reductions and a pre-recession economy of $4.00/gallon gas and climbing food prices. If they’re vacating a […]
What can you say about a garden that you visited once and loved? That it was beautiful? That the extent of the exotic and the unusual was beyond that of any other private garden you’ve seen? That it was so magically and artistically arranged in its setting that anyone easily could be swept up in its spell? That once you entered it, you didn’t want to leave?
I am in the…
Abraham Lincoln had a modest library, befitting his focused outlook and humble origins. He possessed some law books, since he passed the bar exam by reading and memorizing all he could get his hands on. He famously never set foot in college, much less law school. (Today most states prohibit this; in fact, I don’t […]
Claude Hope was my professional mentor. He was pressed into this service while in his 50s by my father with whom he had worked for many years. Claude was one of the founders of the PanAmerican Seed Company, after working in Costa Rica for already nearly two decades. B. Y. Morrison had sent him down […]
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 […]
Rex Murfitt Creating And Planting Alpine Gardens — Fantastic, workable introduction to alpines, with adjustments for the unique challenges facing US growing conditions. Murfitt also co-wrote the excellent Creating And Planting Garden Troughs. Roger Swain The Practical Gardener — Best overall gardening primer. Groundwork: A Gardener’s Ecology — Beautifully written. Earthly Pleasures — Collection, mostly, […]
