One of my favorite design tricks is to sneak a bunch of bulbs into a bed (I like to do it with a full season’s selection of alliums, but you can do it with other bulbs, too). It’s surprisingly easy, even in established plantings. When you’re dividing perennials, pop bulbs into the freshly dug spots. […]

After years of yanking the pervasive (and invasive) red roots of bittersweet from my garden beds, I am highly paranoid about re-introducing this noxious weed. But I can’t deny that it is simply beautiful this time of year.  I’m constantly seeing it grace all sorts of stylish tables, and long strands are regularly used to […]

Have you started planting your spring bulbs? We started planting last week at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and hope to be finished by early next week. This year, we are going all out and planting close to 35,000 spring flowering bulbs, most of which are tulips. We began designing our tulip displays in June and […]

Something is alive in the mailbox. A few months back the door of the mailbox rusted to the point that it just fell off. But the rest of the box was fine and I see plenty of boxes around that don’t have doors at all – so I opted to not add this to my […]

I’m on a word diet.  It’s just like Atkins, but instead of eating steaks slathered in butter, I have to string together two thousand five hundred original words a day, for 30 days.  I’m purging all inhibitions, negative thoughts, procrastination tactics, and lame excuses. At the age of 43 I’ve finally come to the conclusion […]