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 […]
Photo by Dean Fosdick This is the study where our founder, W. Atlee Burpee, wrote the Burpee annual seed and plant catalogues from 1889, when he bought Fordhook Farm and moved his family up from Philadelphia, until his passing away in 1915. From 1875 to 1888, he wrote them in his small office in the […]
I served as President of The American Horticultural Society for four years, 1990 to 1993. For the first half of its existence the AHS headquartered in a series of offices in DC, including a second floor walk up over a Chinese restaurant. When I joined in 1989, it occupied River Farm, a spectacular 27-acre estate […]
Many years ago, as a result of library research on the great German poet Else Lasker-Schuler, I came across many essays about her and her colleagues. What struck me most was their unshakeable love of Germany. Even after the Holocaust, despite their Jewish identity and living in exile with the memories of dead friends and […]
Last summer I noticed that my cats prefer the flower garden to the vegetable patch. The former’s superior canopy and fortress-like qualities, as well as the feline sense of style, spur the attraction. However, the “keeks” seem also to share a deep sympathy with flowers—“uber” as well as “unten”. I think it’s in their eyes. […]
