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Browse published articles attributed to Francis Rosenfeld, with full-archive search.
Some annuals are such reliable self-seeders they can pretty much hold their own with their perennial counterparts. They are usually wild meadow flowers, a little rugged but relentless in the propagation of their species.
Somebody who is fated to live a linear life can’t easily grasp the cycles of nature; I’m envious, almost, of the way the garden gets to reshuffle the deck at the end of each year and start fresh in spring, one level up from where it was before. Sometimes this cycle skips like a record with a scratched groove and the plants go back a month or two, to the gardener’s delight. I don’t know what enticed yarrow into its second flush of bloom, but I’m going to enjoy it, even though it looks a little strange in the company of stonecrops and ripe pampas grasses.
With temperatures stubbornly stuck in the eighties and nineties I would have missed the beginning of fall this year but for the garden following its own internal clock: warmth or no warmth, once we passed the fall equinox, everything in the flower and vegetable border went into liquidation mode. The autumn faithfuls, the stonecrops, are putting up a good show with their gradual color change from chartreuse to dark brown but everything else got the message that it’s time to retire for the season and shut down production.
The plants got the message that winter is over. Every year this message comes in secret, in subtle ways that only plants seem to understand, but they all get it simultaneously and come back to life with a speed and enthusiasm that always humbles me, even after so many years of gardening. This moment sometimes coincides with the spring equinox, but oftentimes it doesn't, and you are left scratching your head in disbelief and going back and forth between the calendar date and the trees that refuse to acknowledge it.r
I couldn’t imagine my garden without the toad lilies, whose blossoms are as close to approximating a tropical orchids as any cold weather plant is ever going to get. Don’t get deceived by their fragile look, they are hardy to zones four through nine and just like their cousins, the spring bulbs, require minimal care. Their flowers show up very late, often after the garden is already covered in a thick layer of fallen leaves.
I know this is a task for October and not February, but since the weather turned sour and put the excitement for gardening activities on hold again, I thought I’d put together a list of interesting daffodil varieties to consider next fall. Flower Drift is a double daffodil with pure white petals and a bright coral center, intensely fragrant. My Story is a light pink variety with an ruffled salmon pink middle. Fragrant. Apricot Whirl has a split corona which makes it look more like a day lily than a daffodil, including the pure pink color.
What makes a beautiful perennial garden? There is no recipe or guarantee, but I can list a few things I noticed over the years that all thriving gardens have in common. Work with the land you have
Summer is knocking on the door a month early and it brought with it sweltering temperatures more suitable for the middle of July; it arrived so suddenly it gets difficult for us poor humans to adjust. Everything tripled in size in a matter of days, desperately springing into bloom as if not to miss the narrow window of spring that’s closing way ahead of time. The late spring bloomers have to share the stage with the first summer flowers and they eagerly compete for territory while displaying a noisy mix of colors and textures that seems to be put together haphazardly.
Every year when I enjoy the abundant bloom and fragrance of my Miss Kim lilac I count myself lucky for my tendency to procrastinate. I put off pulling what looked like a dead shrub for an entire summer and fall, only to be surprised with blooming branches the following spring. Lilacs are great plants for cold climates and alkaline soils, but they don’t like shade or having their feet wet. A lilac bush flowers on old wood, so if you must prune it, keep in mind that you may lose bloom for up to three years.
Established gardens have a secret gardeners don't learn until they've spent many seasons watching them and caring for them: the group planting graciously indulges one or two species to rule the garden for a season, and those rights change every year, allowing all the plants the opportunity to shine. Perennial borders are collective entities, in which the plants thrive together, as opposed to individually, and they look different from one year to the next because you are looking at different blooming species.
The last week of March usually brings warm, almost summer like weather, perfect for the long-awaited spring cleaning. It felt strange this year to find a reliable pattern in the middle of emptiness and uncertainty. I put the favorable weather to good use and finished the garden cleaning hours before the weather turned on me again. The plants had grown significantly unde eath the blanket of winter debris but I'm afraid that I will have to stick with the seasoned perennials this year, at least that's how things look right now.
The fountain at the center of the garden was a staple of medieval landscape design. Its simple yet powerful symbolism was derived from necessity, but speaks to that part of the soul that envisions water as healing and life giving. Nowhere is a tiny fountain more at home than at the center of a medicinal herb wheel.
Some plants don’t benefit from being started indoors. There are a few reasons for this: their tender foliage has a hard time adjusting to the change of environment, their roots dislike being disturbed or their growth schedule is so accelerated that they outgrow their starting containers too soon. Here are the classics. Cucumbers, melons and squashes. Not only they have to be planted directly outside, but the nets have to be in place and ready for their fast growing foliage and heavy fruit. They like being planted in nests, four or five seeds at the time, not alone.
I always plant tulips. I’ve had beautiful ruffled pink ones, and fringed parrot ones, standard, double, lily flowering, you name it, I’ve tried them. I rarely see any in my garden. They don’t like the soil or the light levels, or something, or maybe they get eaten over the winter, who knows? Fact is I don’t normally see tulips in spring. There are two exceptions to this rule: a beautiful West Point variety, bright yellow, with splendid lily flowering tulips on long, slender stems, and now this.
When you grow up around gardening activities you're sure to internalize a few old wives tales. Some of them are backed up by science, but most are just taken on faith and passed along from one generation to the next without any reason or explanation. Here are a few. If you want a plant cutting to root successfully and thrive, especially if it is a rose, you have to steal it. If a fruit tree has been barren for a few years in a row, bring an ax early in spring and threaten to cut it down. It will see the error of its ways and bear abundantly come harvest time.
It doesn't really look like spring in the garden until the spring cleaning is done. I rushed through it for a few hours between rains, so I didn't have a chance to pay close attention to the perennials that were already out. The sprucing up attracted a few visitors from the wilde ess - a robin who kept me company for the duration of the cleaning and a couple of bunny rabbits who frolicked through the grass, encouraged by the warm temperatures.r
I don’t think the goal of traveling is to see places and learn things, often you get better images and information from photography catalogs and travel guides. The goal of traveling is to get immersed in the spirit of a place. The longer you stay in Greece, the more it becomes clear to you why this mountainous peninsula swept by winds witnessed the birth of modern civilization. There is a sense which permeates everything that the people of this culture are afraid of nothing, curious about everything and always eager to try something new.
Here’s to this year’s crop! I decided to try Independence Day tomatoes, and learned that it has a much lower germination rate than other varieties. Let’s hope they make up for it with taste. The seedlings look sturdy and enthusiastic, and have grown large enough that I don’t have to worry about them anymore. I haven’t fully planned this summer’s vegetable garden yet, but it will be pretty much the same as it is every year: tomatoes, peppers, sweet and hot, eggplants, squashes, beans, and cucumbers, together with an assortment of kitchen herbs.
Long before the dawn of chemistry herbs held the honor of providing people with a readily available pharmacological treasure, foraged and cataloged by natural healers. Herbs may not be able to cure severe illness, not in their natural form, anyway, but they have the answer to the smaller things that ail you, the occasional headache or stomach upset, the minor scrape, the sleepless night, the anxious mood. When you start researching medicinal plants, you find out most of them are analgesic and antiseptic.r