The Absentee Gardeners

“Your garden’s so pretty! How do you do that?” my neighbor gushed. She: stylishly dressed, walking her dog; me: wet and muddy squatting down with my hands in the soil. I was about to explain that I enjoy tending my garden and that, with a little effort…

Let me introduce my latest fascination — Echinacea x hybrida ‘Red Ombre.’ I know what you’re thinking: What could possibly be special about an Echinacea? Readers of this column may recall that I like to meet new plants by first learning their botanical name, so let’s start with the genus Echinacea…

When I first began to garden, I was only interested in those plants that made a big statement, plants…

We gardeners sometimes think way too much in terms of flowers when, perhaps, we should instead concentrate more on the color green. After all, it’s the color green that permanently resides in our gardens. I have written before about the…

Recently, I have been marveling over the complexities of the common daisy. Daisies belong to the family Asteraceae, a family that contains…

A packet of seeds, meant to catch my eye, arrived in the mail. A seed company in a faraway state, trying to get my business, wants me to look at their catalog. Its strategy backfired. I’m not happy with the little gift; in fact, I’m rather huffy about it. The colorful packet featured a watercolor image of several different unidentifiable….

As any gardener will tell you, there are lots of good plants out there but few truly great plants. This got me thinking: What makes a plant great? Bob Solberg, hybridizer extraordinaire of hostas and owner of Green Hill Hostas in Franklinton, wrote an article on great hostas…

Have I mastered the art of planting containers or just gotten bored? I stalk the garden centers looking for inspiration, but my mind goes blank, so my containers end up looking pretty much the same as last season.

During the height of the pandemic, because there was little else to ponder, I began wondering what distinguishes rambling roses from climbing roses…

In April I attended a Zoom presentation on plant diversity led by Tony Avent of Plant Delights fame. This old dog learned some new tricks — and I suddenly understood what I had done right in my garden and what I had done wrong.

The horticulturalists at Sarah P. Duke Gardens are busy redesigning the rose garden, one they had completely overhauled just five years ago. Ten years ago, the garden…

I do my botanizing while walking our dog. Puppy isn’t very patient, so I have to be quick about it, but I regularly manage to find interesting plants…

In the delirium of winter, I tend to go on an ordering spree of plants that will arrive the following April. It’s a good time to order because the nurseries haven’t yet run out of the hot new plants; the winter garden looks relatively bare; and there’s nothing much to do in January…

Last week I extolled the virtues of the Southern tradition of pass-along plants. Sometimes the only way to acquire a plant that is no longer at the…

Gardeners are among the most generous people in the world, eager to share their success with other plant lovers.

Sex is rampant in my garden, and I’m getting sick of it. This is the time of year that the hellebores wave around their promiscuity as the plants flaunt their swollen seedpods. Soon you begin to realize that there are probably more seeds on one hellebore than there are people in the Triangle. After a couple of years of hellebores taking up residence in the garden, you begin to fear that they will overtake the world.

It’s a dangerous world out there. In the past few weeks, Kit and I have both been injured — nothing life threatening, but ego bruising. I share this because we both know better.

I wish I could grow echinacea as I’m a great admirer of this native prairie plant. It’s a great accent plant in the perennial border, and there’s a spartan quality about it that appeals to me.

Right now, it’s all about the plants. We’ve sat inside long enough reading catalogs and cleaning our tools. Our fabulous friends are arriving at nearby garden centers, and we can’t wait to bring them home. But wait.