At Hartley Botanic we have a good relationship with many knowledgeable garden writers both in the UK and USA ā here you can enjoy reading their articles and gardening tips.
Considering all of humanityās endeavors for which clever workarounds have been inventedā¦like āsmartā phones, thermostats, search engines, algorithms, whatever we can open with the touch of fingertips on keyboards, I feel justified in thinking of gardening as the last hands-on enterprise left to us. Okay, I exaggerate, but just a tiny bit. Think about it: […]
Itās hot. Really hot! Forecasters say that temperatures here in Rhode Island could reach 100oF (38oC) with humidity to match even though summer is just beginning. Fortunately, I live on the coast, so high temperatures inland create a sea breeze that cools our local area outdoors. But inside my greenhouse is a different story. If […]
May! At LAST! And all craziness in the garden has broken loose. The mantra in the Rockies is not to plant anything before May 14, or Motherās Day, whichever is latest. This is, however, a newer rule. Consulting my trusty volume, How to have Good Gardens in the Sunshine States, published in 1957, the author, […]
I have tried to grow a lot of plants in my greenhouses. They have ranged from orchids to vines, from seasonal vegetables to perennial fruit and I have found that there are certain plants that or either difficult, invasive or just plain ornery when grown in the greenhouse. They range from plants that cannot stand […]
One of the secrets to success with plants is simpleālook at the conditions where the plant has evolved in the world and then duplicate those as close as you can. This is true of both species and the cultivars and hybrids that are derived from them. By knowing whether they grew in damp or dry […]
Spring burst upon the scene this month, and was I ever glad to see it, as was just about everyone else I know in my part of the southwest, i.e. from the Rockies south thru the Sangre de Cristo mountains to Albuquerque. We had the errant snowfallā¦like it lost its way then dropped a desultory […]
There are so many ways to enjoy strawberries, a bright-colored topping on your breakfast cereal being just one. So why not try your hand at growing them. Strawberries can be grown in pots, both inside and outside a greenhouse. Or you can grow them in the ground, either outdoors or in a greenhouse bed. If […]
There is never a perfect time to have knee replacement surgeryā¦or any surgery for that matter. However, for this gardener, May 1, 2024, was exactly the wrong time since it erased for all practical purposes an entire gardening year. Even now, as I write this, my right knee is complaining after just a brief totter […]
Space in a greenhouse is often at a premium. Traditionally, seed starting requires room on tables for multiple containers, heat mats, etc. So, when I found out that my colleague, Seattle garden journalist and speaker, Erica Browne Grivas was working with a new space-saving method, I was interested. Basically, it involves creating long rolls of […]
Last year the US Department of Agriculture released a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which is based on average minimum winter temperatures over the prior 10 years. Most locations were given a somewhat higher categorization on this new map to account for global warming. So, because of ongoing climate change, gardeners may be seeing earlier […]
For more than twenty-five years, with few time-outs, I have attended Seattleās Northwest Flower & Garden Festival. This year, in the gardens created on the show floor, I was struck by the tawny shades of winterātan, brown, gray, and almost blackāapparent in many of the displays. Not that the gardens didnāt show off massive amounts […]
āBy the Light, of the Silvery Moonā was top of the charts in the early 1900s; a vaudeville standard that young lovers crooned to each otherā¦given the chance, which was often taken beneath a full moon to the gentle strum of a ukelele echoing across a gardenās shrubbery depth, accompanied by a girlish giggle and […]
