September/October 2021

Horticulture

Horticulture Magazine

Horticulture2 min read
Editor’s Note
In the garden, fall is the season to look back on what went wrong and right. This year my major mistake was planning a new bed and ordering plants for it before I hired an arborist to trim a nearby red maple. I had in mind a quasi-meadow, with a grou
Horticulture1 min read
Horticulture
Editor Meghan Shinn Contributing Editor Jennifer Howell Scott Beuerlein | Thomas Christopher | Greg Coppa Jeff Cox | Niki Jabbour Associate Art Director Carrie Topp Executive Editor Kristin Beane Sullivan Executive Art Director Eric Flynn Digita
Horticulture3 min read
CABBAGE & CO.
BY THE TIME summer shifts to autumn, the warm-season crops have started to wind down. The homegrown harvest is far from over, however, as this is when the salad greens, root vegetables and cabbage cousins begin to mature for months of autumn meals.
Horticulture2 min read
Autumn Checklist
Harvest! There are many crops to be harvested in September, but I pay particular attention to tomatoes. Fully ripe tomatoes are a garden treat but they can split or crack after rain or watering. They also don’t keep long once harvested. I therefore h
Horticulture3 min read
A Ray Of Hope
THE PLANT KINGDOM today is dominated by flowering plants—and the pollinator world, by bees. There are some 20,000 species of bees globally, 4,000 in the United States. In the tiny state of Vermont, there are more than 300 species of wild bees—miners
Horticulture3 min readArchitecture
Native Turf
“ELIMINATE LAWNS” has long been the cry of environmentally minded gardeners. With good reason: when maintained in the traditional style, lawns function as biological deserts, providing no benefit to pollinators or other wildlife while serving as a di
Horticulture4 min read
Plants We Love
MT. CUBA CENTER is a Delaware botanic garden devoted to native plants. Since the late 1980s, it has introduced roughly 20 cultivars to the nursery trade. Recently, five of these were designated as the Mt. Cuba Collection, an all-star team from the si
Horticulture5 min read
Papaya Love
MY SWEET FIRST-GRADE granddaughter, Isla, sometimes quietly looks over my shoulder and reads whatever I am reading, be it in a book or on a screen. She sounds out an unfamiliar spelling in a way that would make her teachers proud, but still many word
Horticulture7 min readArchitecture
Steve Foltz
AS THE DIRECTOR of Horticulture for the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden (CZBG), Steve Foltz leads the planting of animal exhibits and beds that enhance visitors’ experience. He also oversees CZBG plant trials and projects that benefit the surroundi
Horticulture4 min readRegional & Ethnic
FOOD in FOCUS
For me, the most wonderful time of the year is tomato season. It means all the fresh salsa I can possibly eat—now that I’ve learned to build my garden with that goal in mind. My Southern California home garden is about 200 square feet. In years past
Horticulture5 min read
Size Up
I’ve covered new plant introductions for Horticulture for more than 15 years, and in so doing there’s one word that I think I’ve typed a million times: compact. There’s no doubt that breeders have worked to shrink plants into smaller cultivars that
Horticulture4 min read
Growing Minds
It is safe to say that any parent who loves plants hopes to instill in their children a similar passion. Perhaps that’s because weeding is tedious, and outsourcing the work to a child is much less expensive than a maintenance crew! Ulterior motives a
Horticulture1 min read
Toddler And Preschooler
• Plant the Tiny Seed by Christie Matheson • Tap the Magic Tree by Christie Matheson • Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert • The Very Hungry Caterpillar (and others) by Eric Carle • The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan • The Secret Garden by F
Horticulture2 min read
The Charms and Challenges of Mountain Ash
One of the first trees I grew (and pruned—incorrectly, I’m sad to say, by removing a limb while its fruits were ripening) was a Sorbus, or mountain ash. It grew in a garden in Minneapolis. At that time I was a landscape student, and while my designer
Horticulture2 min read
Sorbus Sampler
Korean mountain ash is the most borer-resistant species, which makes it a popular landscape tree. Fast-growing once established, it boasts a densely branched form that adds to its charm. Golden-orange fall color is one of its most striking attributes
Horticulture4 min readArchitecture
Small & Sweet
Daffodils (Narcissus) have so many selling points: They’re easy to grow and untroubled by rodents, beautiful to behold at winter’s end and oftentimes fragrant, too. A drawback in certain situations? The size a clump of daffs can achieve, both in heig
Horticulture2 min read
Sorbus Sampler
Kashmir rowan is an unusual species native to the Himalayas. The blooms start in April or May and come in white or pink clusters, followed by pure white berries that persist into winter. Though it tolerates most soils, a little rotted leaf mold added
Horticulture1 min read
Recommended Reading
Carbon farmers Ricky Baruc and Deb Habib suggest the following books as further reading: The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution by Andrew Meff erd The No-Till Organic Vegetable Farm by Daniel Mays Organic No-Till Farming by Jeff Moyer Liquid Gold
Horticulture5 min readArchitecture
Down To Earth
It’s the end of May. I’m wearing a down jacket, fleece-lined leggings, waterproof pants and a rain poncho for a mostly outdoor workshop on no-till methods for “low-maintenance, climate resilient, bountiful gardens and farms,” at Seeds of Solidarity F
Horticulture4 min read
It’s Elemental
EVERY ELEMENT of every living creature on earth—animal or vegetable—was forged in the stars, literally within the furnaces of the stars. We and our plant friends have that in common. We shared the nursery when we were just a collection of newborn ato
Horticulture1 min readArchitecture
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
NESTLED ALONG the northeast corner of Prospect Park in New York City, Brooklyn Botanic Garden traces its history to 1897, when the state government set aside 39 city acres for a botanical garden. The space opened to the public in 1911. Many of the ar
Horticulture3 min read
Expert Advice: Make An Insect Haven
With pollinators and the other insects that help sustain our ecosystems in decline, now is the time to welcome what biologist E.O. Wilson called “the little things that run the world” into our gardens. Many gardeners plant flowers to attract bees and
Horticulture1 min readArchitecture
4 Ground-level Plants For Autumn Color
Native to wooded areas in western Korea, this under-story shrub is planted for its loose, natural form and lush, fragrant foliage that turns shades of orange and deep coral-red in fall. By early winter, the leaves fade to an even beige that pops amid
Horticulture2 min read
The Twists And Turns Of A Tour
IT’S HARD TO PUT into words the huge, heaping volumes of psychodrama that slowly but surely overcome you after you casually agree to be on a stop on a garden tour. Think of all the crooked roads your mind takes when you suspect that a mechanic is try

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