Lately, I’ve given much thought to an age-old question, why do we garden? First posited by Methuselah – I jest, but my favorite essayist, Sir Francis Bacon reasoned–and rightly so–in 1625, that the garden first created by the Almighty, remains “the purest of human pleasures. [and] the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man…”. Bacon […]
Writing this on the first day of autumn, whistling a sigh of relief that we got all the tomatoes and peaches in before frost turned them to mush or the squirrels got them. I the garden is taking on the shades of fall, burnished gold, steely blue, burgundy purple, while the rugosa roses are setting […]
Once I had a kitchen garden. It was a large space, surrounded by a trellis fence so that it didn’t appear part of the “proper” garden, because it was a hard-working space, with a small glasshouse in one corner, compost heaps in another, and two long parallel rows of four-foot-wide raised beds. These were not […]
Glasshouses serve many purposes: in my experience there are three themes that stand out. Production, Relaxation and Experimentation: A productive Greenhouse is where one grows vegetables, fruit, and herbs for the ultimate “locavore” experience – your own backyard. A Glasshouse can be a personal spa-zone or a short journey to a restful staycation. You know […]
The past few weeks have been quite exhilarating for gardeners: chores to tackle like cleaning out the potting shed, waking up the garden then attacking with vigor all the prepping, planting, and sorting before summer heat sets in. Along the Front Range the weather has been mixed, to say the least, with 90 degrees F […]
To paraphrase the 18th-century essayist, Alexander Pope, “hope springs eternal in the gardener’s breast.” Certainly true of this one and others like me across the Front Range, as we keep a watchful eye on the weather, and a hopeful one on our tomato seedlings. Is there anything more redolent of hopeful visions of summer bounty […]
The moment has come to sow seeds under glass, on a sunny windowsill or in a glasshouse, to be set out in May when the frosts are finally over — as we diehards in the Front Range sincerely hope! This year I’m determined to grow a flower that I previously was only half-hearted about growing: […]
What to do? As the west draws ever more settlers to its wide-open spaces, the region becomes more densely packed. Development along the stretch of Interstate 25 pretty much from well north of Denver, and south nearly to Pueblo is fast becoming one giant megalopolis. Yet people want to garden, keen to turn their postage […]
There’s been a couple of snow flurries, but the days are early-spring-balmy and the soil dusty, plants equally so. It’s a glasshouse moment for sure–watering and fussing over the greenery that lives outdoors in summer, and indoors during winter. So I’ll keep this brief out of necessity, as I’m hard pressed to turn my mind […]
We’re living in interesting times – honestly, I wish the days were rather more dull. In Colorado along the Front Range where I garden (fitfully it must be admitted), records from 1 July to 17 December report just 1.07 inches of rainfall in Denver. In Colorado Springs, we’ve had a few drops and some snowflakes […]
The steppe-like conditions in my garden – with no rain for the past few months but what seems like an eternity – puts trees and much else in the garden at risk from what will probably be a brute of a winter, if one believes the old adage that many berries signal a lean, mean […]
What does planning ahead for work in the autumn garden mean for you? Outdoors or in a conservatory does it amount to a quick tidy up? A bit of dead-heading, leaf-raking and winterizing the irrigation system? At the Clarke household, the Head Gardener (me) wracks her brain and wrecks her back to improvise and execute […]
