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Monday Miscellany: Monsanto Trial, Happy Honeybees, NWF Triumph and Some Awesome Contests
Monsanto Trial The normally non-political Margaret Roach of Martha Stewart Living fame and A Way to Garden has spoken up about the Monsanto trial that starts tomorrow. Why is this important? Because Monsanto’s been genetically engineering seeds for common crops like corn, wheat and alfalfa so that farmers can spray their rows with the herbicide…
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Drumroll Please: 2011’s Garden Trend Award Goes To. . .
Succulents! Forget the “Year of the Protestor“, 2011 was the Year of the Succulent. From green roofs to succulent spheres, these low-maintenance, year-round plants have been everywhere. With Debra Lee Baldwin’s classy instruction in her books, we’ve been using succulents in rose gardens, container plantings, and some creative people have even used them as Christmas…
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The Proven Winners Garden Gurus
Today, I’m totally excited to get to announce that I’m one of the eight new Proven Winners Garden Gurus! I’ll get to have a sneak peek at some of the latest Proven Winners plants (and share photos of them in action), as well as write an article each month for their website. Edited to add:…
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Great Gift Idea: Canvas Print of the Garden
I’m always on the lookout for really special gift ideas for gardeners, because we sure get stuck with a lot of decorative-but-mostly-useless trowels (I mean, does anyone even use trowels anymore? I’m a hori-hori girl myself!). So when Easy Canvas Prints offered me (and you!) a free canvas print to try out, I immediately saw…
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Evergreen Huckleberry in Oklahoma? Reader Q and A
Jack out in Oklahoma read about my native evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, and wondered whether it might grow in his area: “Will this actually grow in Oklahoma City area? Or is it a borderline plant for our state? Thank you, Jack” Jack, a little poking around online at the USDA website shows that the evergreen…
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Fine Gardening Magazine: Four Quick Design Fixes (on Newsstands Now)
I’m absolutely elated to have my first feature article in this month’s Fine Gardening magazine. It’s about four quick design fixes that homeowners can make in order to have a more beautiful garden with minimal effort. There are five sets of “before and after” photos of gardens that I’ve worked on and designed, so each…
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Monday Miscellany: Leaf Magazine Launches, Gardening Up, and a Great Color Wheel
Great week in the landscape design world! Bloggers (and fellow members of the Garden Designers Roundtable) Susan Cohan and Rochelle Greayer are launching Leaf Magazine today. It’s like an outdoor Apartment Therapy in magazine form – delicious photos, fresh ideas, and some of the leading voices in landscape design and outdoor living. From the press…
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Pastels on the Plaza 2011 – an Arcata Event
Had the honor recently of participating in a local event, Pastels on the Plaza, which pairs artists and local businesses for a morning of fun, debauchery, and pastel chalk up one’s snoot. All in the name of charity, of course. Each business purchases a sidewalk square on Arcata’s plaza, and our artists come up with…
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Monday Miscellany: DIY Garden Ideas and a Great Magazine
Well, the first rains have arrived here in Humboldt, which generally means – Christmas is coming! Yeah, I hear all the groans. But seriously folks, if you aren’t going to take the slacker route and get everybody gift cards, now’s the time to start making some crafts for people, so you have time to screw…
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Slow Love: The Editor of Home and Garden Magazine Learns to Relax (and Even Garden a Bit)
As a business owner and writer, slowing the heck down is one of those things that sounds good in practice but never actually happens. Even when I schedule a do-nothing day, it seems to get booked up with all kinds of activities until the day off is no longer exactly that. So it was a…
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Two Bookish Giveaways
Since my giveaways have finished up for the week, I thought I’d take a moment to let you know about two others that I have most certainly entered. First, Margaret Roach of the elegant gardening website A Way to Garden is doing a Labor Day giveaway of her memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace…