Dahlias for the Masses
Certain plants , whether they like it or not, become part of a wave of popularity. One day nobody grows them, and the next you can't find them in the nursery. That's the case with the dahlia, my favorite flower.…
Certain plants , whether they like it or not, become part of a wave of popularity. One day nobody grows them, and the next you can't find them in the nursery. That's the case with the dahlia, my favorite flower.…
Since the seventeenth century, American plants have formed part of the English garden. American gardeners however preferred exotic plants, rather than native varieties, well into the end of the nineteenth century. Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan in his magazine Gardener's Monthly of…
To fit into any society, a person needs to reflect what is important to the culture at that time. In the case of the Elizabethan gentleman [below] there were certain expectations that society at that time demanded. Robert Dudley, the…
How I remember the day we received the Christmas cactus as a gift. It was 1986 and a sunny June Sunday afternoon. Rita Mae and I were having a party in the back yard to celebrate our wedding . We…
Landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852) set as his standard, the English garden landscape. He wrote regularly to John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843), England's voice for what to include in the landscape in the first part of the nineteenth century. Downing's…