It is fashionable to think of November as a dark and unpleasant month, somber, sad and gloomy. Personally, I like the month very much. Its short days, rains and low skies, that sometimes need the taller trees to prop them up like poles do the canvas of a tent, come as a welcome relief. I […]

Last Winter while visiting a school, I was much interested in several kinds of plants that were growing in water. Most of them were common, but the method of growing was the outstanding feature. Indoor gardeners grow their plants in certain soil mixtures, but these were growing in water alone with no soil visible. The […]

The plant breeder is truly a creator, for he works, not with such dead chemicals as pigments, but with those infinitesimally small, yet living chemicals galled “genes.” Genes are the bearers of heredity in all life, from mankind to the grass itself. It is hard for us to realize that a tiny bit of matter, […]

Does cultivating flowers for fragrance, not for beauty, sound strange to you? Undoubtedly it does. Yet that is precisely what folks in southern France have been doing for centuries. No one there is at all concerned with capturing prizes at flower shows or growing flowers for arrangements! Fragrance alone is queen. For nature, in one […]

When winter comes, we who live in the temperate zone button up our overcoats, don stadium boots and perhaps even wear earmuffs to keep out the cold. That’s our way of coping with the climate in which we live. But how do plants living in the temperate zone cope with the cold season? Plant species […]

Close to the southern border of Massachusetts, in the foothills of the Berkshires, there is a house whose dining-room window overlooks a broad field which ends in an irregular palisade of white birch trunks against the darkness of a pine forest. Midway is a clump of mountain laurel flanked by tall, red-stemmed blueberries. Other native […]

When we first attempt to create a wild garden how impatient we are with the weeds, only to realize later that many of them have their place. In fact it is not always easy to decide what is a, weed and what is a wild flower. I remember how the jewel-weed used to infuriate me. […]

It is regrettable that the pleasure of avocational gardening should ever be marred by altercations among neighbors over property lines, invading tree roots, wayward vines and overhanging fruits. Yet we must admit that the history of the goddess Pomona is not entirely free of wrangling over her bounties and the behavior of her subjects. Back […]

Both the curing and the preserving of gourds are dependent upon the quality of the fruits and their maturity. If they are damaged by skin bruises, there is no method by which they can be preserved. Skin bruises form an excellent point for the inroad of bacteria which will cause ultimate decay. To avoid such […]

All over America the goldenrod is in bloom. Sneeze-weed you may call it, if you blame it for hayfever; pestilent weed, if it invades your pasture-land; or just plain weed, if it is too common to have any significance for you. But the children of Alabama love it well enough to have chosen it for […]