
Kintsugi
Jan 21 2021
Kintsugi is a 400 year old Japanese art involving putting broken pieces of pottery back together using gold (with lacquer) to create something even more beautiful than the original. Philosophically...
Read MoreThis is the story of our connection to plants, a personal journey into the joy, passion and fascination gardening has brought to my life and hopefully yours.
Welcome to the wonderful world of gardening!
I could tell you how to grow a coneflower or an apple tree, but there are a thousand sources for that information specific to your area. My fondest hope is that my joy and passion for plants that surround us has an echo, that fellow gardeners will hear something that speaks to why they garden; why we spend our time, energy, and money so lavishly on cultivating plants.
I am a lifetime gardener with over 40 years experience, a master gardener in three states, and a lifelong full time farm girl. I have gardened extensively in the west, South Dakota, Wyoming, and lastly, Montana, all zone 3 and 4 conditions and the possible plant palate never ceases to amaze me. I have been blessed to have lived my life outdoors though the consequences of the sun and wind and the long winters are carved upon my face-those lines tell my story.
Our lives are, of course, completely entwined with the lives of plants. They make our world habitable and beautiful. They feed, clothe, shelter, and cure us. We cannot live without them. I have healed my heart in the gardens, I have healed my soul. May the flowers and the trees work their magic on you. May you find wonder. Bien venidos!
Jan 21 2021
Kintsugi is a 400 year old Japanese art involving putting broken pieces of pottery back together using gold (with lacquer) to create something even more beautiful than the original. Philosophically...
Read MoreJan 13 2021
Frost is coming, and winter is not far behind. It’s always hard to let go of the rampant greenery and color of the gardens-not that we have any choice in the matter. I keep hearing that we should b...
Read MoreJan 07 2021
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein...
Read MoreDec 31 2020
Plants have stories to tell and the best stories are the ones that speak of love. The plants that your grandmother had, those that grew from little starts your friend gave you, or that favorite flo...
Read MoreDec 23 2020
According to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom, there are 391,000 species of vascular plants known to science of which about 369,000 species are flowering. However, as many as 2...
Read MoreDec 09 2020
A garden is not just a garden to me. It is not just some tomatoes and corn to eat or some trees and flowers to fill my yard. It is a constant reminder that the world is an incredibly beautiful plac...
Read MoreDec 02 2020
Not long ago I was working at a local greenhouse/nursery and a customer told me that her husband would only let her buy useful plants. As soon as I quit sputtering over the ‘let’ word, I politely a...
Read MoreNov 25 2020
As I lay awake one night, thinking garden thoughts (I don’t imagine I’m the only one who does this) I realized I had inadvertently put a lot of white flowering plants around the corner of our house...
Read MoreNov 19 2020
I read an article that said the best time to retire is never. I agree, with any luck, I’ll lie down in my porch swing in my 90’s, gazing mindlessly at my garden’s last fall colors, go to sleep and...
Read MoreNov 12 2020
The world gave me flowers. Before I even knew that was what I wanted. I grew up on a farm-a practical world where everything you grew was for money or food. Even the windbreak lilacs had the practi...
Read MoreNov 05 2020
Legend has it that someone on a journey will not get lost near a Wayfarer’s Tree, also known as a Rowan, or to us, a Mountain Ash. In fact, legends abound about this Northern European tree. It was...
Read MoreOct 29 2020
Meraki is a Greek word meaning to put your heart and soul into what you do and to do it with love and pleasure. I almost never see what I do in the gardens as work-it's just pleasure. Even weeding!...
Read MoreOct 22 2020
If one wakes up at 1am worrying about some personal issue really better left alone, it is a very good idea to get out a plant book and read up on bryophytes and lichens. Safer territory, and may in...
Read MoreOct 16 2020
I’ve always hated winter-long dark days where I struggle to keep my spirits up and nothing is growing. Taking a walk in a snowy woods is magical, I know, but in my mind it can’t match the glory of...
Read MoreOct 11 2020
Cotoneaster (no, don’t say cotton Easter) is a humble low maintenance shrub from northern China that has long been sold as a windbreak shrub because it is so tough and reliable. While I have read t...
Read MoreSep 27 2020
I recently had a discussion with a couple of avid gardener friends about our complete inability to control ourselves when it comes to buying plants. It’s an obsession-go to any greenhouse and you a...
Read MoreSep 23 2020
As early as the 1600’s escaped slaves in the Americas formed maroon communities (from the Spanish word cimarron or runaway). In Brazil these communities came to be called quilombos from a word for...
Read MoreSep 14 2020
Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic that embraces imperfection and transience; it holds that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. It teaches an appreciation for the patina of a...
Read MoreSep 06 2020
Fringed Grass of Parnassus is a tiny wildflower that I’ve seen growing near Memorial Falls by Neihart, Montana in the Little Belt Mountains. It is not a grass and is obviously not growing on Mount...
Read MoreAug 31 2020
A wonderful thing happened not so long ago. I put up a hammock in my garden and for the first time ever, I laid in a hammock. I know! What other small thrills have I been missing? This momentous ev...
Read MoreAug 23 2020
The Swedish word ‘smultronstalle’ literally means a small remote place where wild strawberries grow, but it’s greater meaning is “rare moments of peaceful tranquility.” And rare those moments are....
Read MoreAug 17 2020
Drive down any suburban street anywhere and what do you see? Yard after yard with a lawn, a couple of trees, and the ubiquitous foundation junipers. I realize that many homeowners have little time...
Read MoreAug 10 2020
It seems there are a lot of gardeners who are also bird watchers, including me. It had never occurred to me to design a garden around bird watching until I saw one at a Texas State Park. Technicall...
Read MoreAug 02 2020
One cannot dislike a plant called ‘Whirling Butterflies’, I shouldn’t think. It’s a fitting name, it’s four petaled butterfly like flowers dance at the top of wiry, wand like stems. It blooms for m...
Read MoreJul 27 2020
1. I grew up on the prairie where I used to ride my horse for hours and hours across many miles of grasslands largely undisturbed by civilization. As long as I closed gates behind me it was underst...
Read MoreJul 23 2020
At the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle, I attended a class given by C.L. Fornari, author of ‘The Cocktail Hour Garden’ and I was smitten. I immediately pictured myself in my porch swing...
Read MoreJul 05 2020
Poppies are the stuff of dreams. Even Dorothy fell asleep in a field of poppies. Considering that opium comes from poppies, it’s not an altogether surprising reference and may explain why one of th...
Read MoreJun 28 2020
Quite possibly, the most enchanting garden I ever visited was a small herb garden and nursery in Oregon. There was a small, maybe 30-40 foot wide, round sunken area filled with trees and a circular...
Read MoreJun 22 2020
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the song without the words
And never stops-at all....
Jun 14 2020
I revere trees. I was probably a Druid in a past life. One of the most spiritual moments of my life was walking through a cathedral of redwoods in complete awe of the power of nature. To plant a tr...
Read MoreJun 06 2020
There’s a patch of brome grass to the right of our driveway where I want a garden. This is extremely problematic as I have to dig it out. Brome grass is good for pasture, it’s tough, tenacious and...
Read MoreMay 31 2020
I love, you love, she (he) loves. There, and you thought Latin was hard. To me it’s poetry. The Latin names of plants tell you more about that plant and they’re really fun to say. Like arctoshaphyl...
Read MoreMay 25 2020
In the third century BC, a philosopher named Epicurus taught that the highest purpose of life was the pursuit of pleasure and the goal of life is happiness. We’re not talking rampant gratification...
Read MoreMay 18 2020
I’m a dreamer. I see things as I wish they could be, my husband just wants to know how much that will cost. He has, however, made the very wise decision not to question my plant purchases. My garde...
Read MoreMay 17 2020
A grape vine, sweet peas, snapdragons, beets, peppers, tomato plants, some up and coming baby’s breath, goji berries, an apricot, a service berry, self-seeding spinach, sunflowers, a small hazelnut...
Read MoreMay 10 2020
Someone once said to me that I have all these sitting places in my gardens and I never sit in them. It’s somewhat true. I sit down, see a weed and jump up to pull it. I remember that I forgot to mo...
Read MoreMay 03 2020
I like weeding. Maybe it’s because I don’t get all perfectionist and obsess about it. Don’t get me wrong, I obsess about plenty of things, but for some reason I don’t seem to mind if my gardens are...
Read MoreApr 26 2020
I had a friend, a fellow gardener, when I lived in South Dakota. Eleanor, at age 90, could rattle off the Latin names of plants and called her shovel Gus. Her cheerfulness, enthusiasm, and sense of...
Read MoreApr 19 2020
Joe Pye Weed in it’s second year in my garden has reached over six feet tall, each of the 24 or more red stalks topped with a pinkish purple dome of flower heads more than a foot across. Each dome,...
Read MoreApr 12 2020
This is not a story of how to make a garden, no big plant lists, no instructions and above all, no shoulds and shouldn’ts. The only rules I abide by are mother nature’s and she’s a pretty liberal m...
Read More