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I took an unofficial poll last week about everyone’s favorite month. Guess what came in last? You guessed it, January. Remember Janus, the Greek god who had two faces, one facing the future and the other the past?

It is over!

Dear Santa,

When I was a wee slip of a lad, it seemed like the hiatus between Thanksgiving and Christmas was something like 10 years. Now it’s more like 10 minutes. I was no good at waiting then and I am no good at it now.

We’ve talked vines the past couple of weeks here, some good and some not so good, and some terrible, primarily because of their invasive tendencies, i.e., climbing all over where you don’t want them, the Chinese wisteria for good example.

As promised after last week’s tirade here on the horrors of Chinese wisteria, let us look today at some ornamental vines that do their job without romping from Paris to Como in a week or so.

The tag end of October usually brings us a vast firework of foliage color on trees and even some herbaceous perennials and shrubs. This is later than most people reckon, with a lot of references calling for mid-October as our highlight. Not so most years.

“Monkey see, monkey do, monkey grass could be for you.”

Falling in love with October,

W

All you snob gardeners out there can now look down your noses, sniff with the same organ and go on to the comic pages. I am going to talk today about a first class small tree or shrub that has been around since Hector was a pup and graced the grounds of your grandmother, and mine, and, no, i…

The first month that is partially autumn is staring us in the face. Thursday it will be September, the month that cheeringly provides us with the autumnal equinox. Hang on, it will be here on Sept. 21. The long range forecast calls for the introduction of more moderate weather, no matter wha…

Dog Days leave us tomorrow for another year. Durn good riddance.

Re: Our series on woody plants — shrubs and small trees — that offer substance in mixed settings where herbaceous perennials and annuals need help in showing their wares. 

Our series on shrubs and small trees that are appropriate ingredients in a mixed bed or border and, in fact, are a powerful strengthening factor there, would be incomplete without mentioning those woody plants that contribute flowers or other attractions at just the same time the other mater…

We’ve beaten the dead horse of hydrangea over the past couple of weeks into a state of ad nauseum, notwithstanding the fact there were some bits of information that might have done you, and your garden, some degree of good with them.

Last week’s rather terse perspective on a few hollies was by no means even a skim of the surface of the subject. It was all I could think of at the time, and since then I have been thinking again. It takes a lot more effort than it used to. 

June of the Year of Our Lord 2022 will, after Thursday, be part of the annals of history and we will be facing the two most miserable months of the year, according to the Paris Pessimist Club.

The second day of astronomical summer seems an appropriate time to review and preview what the gardening season has held for us and what it is yet to hold. Even such a garden eminence as the famed Gertrude Jekyll of the south of England in the early 20th century lamented on the comparative d…

You may remember the several years I used this space to condemn an unruly giant sycamore tree west of our house. A wilding it was, having been dug from the woods and moved as a sprout to our property. Among the plethora of mistakes I have made in the past 40 years, it ranks as the costliest,…

Say someone — or you — becomes, after years of gardening, enamored of such and such a plant, or such and such a color. Before you know it, you have swamped your garden with those plants or that favorite color.

It is fortuitous for ornamental gardeners in these parts that the much-lauded azalea season that is beginning to fade is followed closely by the onset of hydrangea season.

“April is the kindest month. April gets you out of your head and out working in your garden.” — Marty Rubin “April — the month of dust and lies.” — Nagwib Mahfour S ay wha? Who’s right, if anybody? There’s a little of both and a lot of other stuff in the month of April. I said last week Apri…

In 2017, residents of one of the oldest neighborhoods in Paris looked at a piece of property with a worn-down house and saw a garden in its place.

Trivia question: which is harder to explain in plain English, an aroma or a color? I am left with that quandary often in attempting to describe either one. Since both appeal to the senses, it becomes a very much nebulous task simply because one person’s tastes — another sense — are different…

Much has been debated, written and discussed of late of the value, or lack of it, of peat moss as a garden soil amendment. The debates have mostly emanated from European countries and the British Isles where, as we speak, peat harvest has been severely curtailed or outlawed altogether. The a…

Victories have their ecstasies as sure as defeats have their agonies. My friend Rick Conger contributed to my agony of defeat right at Christmas time, 2021. He posted on Facebook back in December a picture of open daffodils in his considerable garden on Greenacres Drive, right next door to m…

It is always frustrating when I can’t remember where a favorite plant of many years came from. Or, especially, who it came from. My garden is fairly rife with hand-me-down plants, and some of them were gifted by other generous gardeners. To wit: I had a great-aunt, my mother’s aunt, who live…

Hail and farewell. In a few days a new year will emerge on the scene, one that has never been seen before. A day before that, it will be farewell for 2021, a year that will never be seen again. Tempus fugit. Time flies when you’re having fun.

A fool’s paradise, it is — now, that is. Here it is, just 10 days until Christmas and fools like me are staring into space and doing virtually nothing about it. Hey, there gifts to be bought and decorations to be taken care of, and the boob tube and football games yet call, even on week nigh…

Our very own Pilgrims are given credit for inventing the first Thanksgiving here in the states, when they were simply colonies, but their Mother Country had practiced a somewhat similar holiday back there in England before that.