How Does Your Garden Grow

The most expensive purchase of a plant to go into my garden was a Japanese maple over ten years ago.

A reader recently emailed me, saying “I live with five wooded acres between me and the Chapel Hill Public Library where multiple deer live.

Every month I find it’s useful to list my favorite plants of the moment.

Recently there has been a spate of articles describing the joys of growing garlic.

Tesla almost defeated me.

This is the time of year I begin muttering that the crapemyrtle is the most abused tree in the Triangle—

I’m not a vegetable gardener—let me make that clear.

Every gardener worth their salt has come across a plant they simply cannot grow.

While talking to an acquaintance the other day, a good friend commented on the attractiveness of a particular plant in her neighborhood.

I love the change of seasons—it’s really that simple.

It’s become fashionable to downplay grass in the garden–and I am the first one to admit that grass has a ridiculous side to it.

A long time ago I became aware that I was a garden hypocrite, something that’s not easy to admit.

Every month I make a list of the plants I’m enjoying in the garden.

Whenever anyone asks me how to proceed with designing a garden, I hasten to inform them that I’m not a garden designer, just someone with rather strong opinions.

When I first moved to Chapel Hill in 1992, JC Raulston ruled the local horticultural world.

Quick: Can you name the one plant we have in our garden that may have come from our coldest state, Alaska? If you guessed the peony, you are correct.

Food and fashion pornographies are barely tolerable but I put my foot down when it comes to viewing the garden pornography displayed in magazines.

It began as an impulse buy.

I have two dogs, one named Patience and the other Prudence.

Once I had set my mind to planting sustainable roses throughout the garden, I had no idea where to begin.

Of course, it was all the fault of the Empress Joséphine, the ex-wife of Napoleon.

Throughout my gardening career, I have always periodically asked myself one important question: Why do I garden?

There has long been a TV advertisement that makes me want to scream.

My Daphnes, alas, did what all Daphnes want to do: They died.

In 1992 when I moved to the Triangle, knowing little about gardening, I quickly picked up on the fact that the color magenta in the garden was verboten.

It all began when my writing partner for The Absentee Gardeners, Lise Jenkins, gave me a package of rice.

Thirty years ago, I began my long love affair with camellias.

Spring might be just around the corner but we still have some cold weather ahead of us. What is a gardener to do?

About 10 years ago, a sudden yearning for some palm trees appeared out of the blue, hitting me hard.

Hydrangeas are confusing creatures.