I woke up this morning wishing for a big vase full of cut Viburnum bodnantense. Lucky for me, it is ever so happily growing in my garden and I can harvest some cuttings from the winter plant to bring forced branches inside.  I go outside in pajamas, slippers and with coffee and visit my shrub. […]

As we clean up the garden this weekend, I found myself repeatedly coming back to visit the Gatsby Pink Oak leaf Hydrangea that I planted earlier this year.  They’re still small and too new and immature to have bloomed this year, but that hasn’t stopped them for putting on quite a leaf show in the autumn – despite […]

I first fell in love with witch hazel in design school. Constantly walking the paths of Kew Gardens trying to take images of useful garden plants, it was inevitable that Witch Hazel was prominently featured in nearly all my classmate’s plant portfolios. It was one of the few plants reliably in bloom when nothing else […]

I’ve been flirting with Amsonia for years. I can’t remember where we were the first time it caught my eye. It might have been a moment in a book or a magazine, but those ethereal mounds of yellow needle-like leaves with a texture like no other were definitely giving me the ‘come hither’ look.  I […]

What is the meaning of Flava? I joke… And also, I am probably giving away my age.  Botanical Latin for Yellow But seriously, now that we have done red (remember red = Coccinea) and blue (blue = Caerulea), we are rounding out the primary colors with yellow. F is for Flava  — Flava is Botanical […]