garden

spring unleashed

Written on March 19, 2010 at 2:07 pm , by Jane McKeon

Spring unleashes the inner puppy in gardeners. With boundless joy, we can’t wait to get down on all fours and dig in the dirt as soon as the ground thaws. Thanks to a new German Shepherd pup in my house, our first signs of Spring this year were muddy paw prints on the living room carpet.

With house-training little Apollo as my main motivator, I spent a lot of time outdoors this past month examining every square foot of our property, several times each day. Nose to the ground, Apollo follows scent trails of rabbits and deer while I inspect the tree and shrub damage those hungry critters have caused.

Yesterday, I discovered a pair of cheerful yellow winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) blooming in my woodland garden. Nearby, a clump of jonquil (Narcissus hybrids) sprouts were muscling their way through the leaf litter. Fortunately, the rabbits and deer find these tender morsels distasteful.

Before too long, I’ll be digging in the garden. I hope Apollo doesn’t get any ideas.

Garden Collectibles

Written on December 22, 2009 at 2:42 pm , by James A. Baggett

My passion for all things gardening extends well beyond the confines of my garden beds. It fills every nook and cranny of my Arts and Crafts bungalow. It crowds my mantel and lines my porch steps. It fills my bookshelves and decorates my walls. I am, after all, an inveterate collector. And I collect all kinds of cool garden-related stuff, like old hand tools and watering cans, out-of-print garden books, terra cotta pots, vintage garden prints and postcards, black-and-white snapshots of strangers posing with plants, wrought iron garden figurines, even old seed packets and, of course, garden magazines.

Which is why I’m excited about some of Country Garden’s upcoming garden collectibles stories for 2010. In our Early Spring issue (on sale January 12th) we explore floral frogs, in the Spring issue (on sale March 9th), we tackle Bybee Pottery from Kentucky, and in the Summer issue (on sale May 18th) we showcase one of my personal favorite collectibles, Roseville Pottery. We even paired each of the featured floral patterns with the corresponding cut flower. For the Fall issue (on sale in August), we’re trying to decide between antique seed boxes or purple bottles. Which would you rather see featured?

Here are a handful of glazed garden-related tiles that I’ve recently started collecting. I’m thinking of working them into the backsplash of my upcoming kitchen remodeling. The ones above came from a trip I took to Spain years ago. I found them in a little shop in the Prado Gardens in Madrid. And, if I remember correctly at least two of the tiles below came from Left Bank Antiques in Anacortes, Washington. What garden collectibles catch your eye?

Gardening Under the Influence

Written on October 27, 2009 at 1:20 pm , by James A. Baggett

Finding time to putter in the garden is tougher than I thought with a new puppy. My new Jack Russell, Finch, is a stout and sturdy soul, and at 14 weeks already weighs in at a hefty eleven pounds. He’s sort of long and low, and his fat belly grazes the ground as he scours the front yard garden for crickets and earthworms. We started puppy classes three weeks ago and have not yet mastered the life-saving essentials of stay and come. So fall chores in the garden have taken on an added level of difficulty: Just try raking oak leaves into something resembling a pile with a full-throttle terrier pup on the loose. Sure, my good dog Scout, almost nine years old and steadfast, keeps him in check. But when it came time last weekend to start digging out the Joe Pye weed in my front yard and planting the hundreds of bulbs that were piling up on my front porch, I knew I had to stash the puppy in the house. After all, there’s a fine line between general weekend multitasking and gardening while under the influence of a minor canine.

Shooting for Spring in the Fall

Written on October 7, 2009 at 10:58 am , by Eric Liskey

Frost is fast approaching, and with it, the end of the garden photography season. We have a pansy/viola story planned for BHG next spring, and there were a few new shots we needed to complete our story plan. Heavy clouds, 50F and 20 mph winds made it a chilly challenge, but we got it done. When you’re working with such happy little flower faces, it is certainly easier! We used old and new varieties from companies like Ball, Benary, and Goldsmith.