July/August 2021

Horticulture

Horticulture Magazine

Horticulture1 min read
Editor’s Note
It’s summer—who’s ready for fun? Horticulture’s audience, contributors and staff certainly make a hardworking group who take their gardens seriously, with the grubby nails and aching backs to prove it. But the botanical world can be a wild and wacky
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 readArchitecture
Time Capsules
SOMETIMES LOOKING backward points out the best path forward. That’s what Chris Wiesinger of Golden, Texas, has found with The Southern Bulb Co., the business he started 16 years ago. He’s learned that rescuing heirloom plants — bulbs specifically — c
Horticulture3 min read
Snack-sized Summer
BY MID-JULY the first cherry tomatoes have begun to ripen in my garden and it feels as though summer has officially arrived. I grow at least a dozen varieties each year, selecting both hybrids and heirlooms and evaluating them for flavor, disease res
Horticulture1 min read
Summer Checklist
Plant!›Want to maximize production in your vegetable garden? Practice succession planting! This technique is the key to a non-stop harvest. Once early crops like peas, carrots and lettuce are harvested, I amend the soil with compost and re-plant with
Horticulture3 min read
Plants We Love
HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED how much some flowers look like fireworks? Peruse a pyrotechnics store and you’ll see chrysanthemum, peony, palm tree, pistil and dahlia types, to call out a few. And on the flip side, at the garden shop we find cultivars like ‘
Horticulture3 min read
Conservation Needs Conversation
ARE YOU GOING to water your lawn today? It sounds like an innocuous question. But irrigation takes on a new context when you consider the potential of peer pressure on outdoor watering habits. When you see a neighbor turning off their irrigation, do
Horticulture4 min read
All Together Now
IN MIDDLE-EARTH, the setting for The Lord of the Rings, there live the Ents —treelike creatures of great antiquity who grow in forested groups and communicate with each other ever so slowly. Scientists here in the real world have recently discovered
Horticulture5 min read
Growing On
RATHER THAN DELVING into new material, I’d like to report on unfolding developments from prior topics. I’ve mentioned my ongoing struggle with assorted critters, not limited to chipmunks, rabbits, moles, voles, squirrels, various birds and deer. I be
Horticulture4 min readArchitecture
Places, Please
Many of us got started in gardening by growing plants in pots. Houseplant collections, summer flowerpots and planters filled with herbs and vegetables provide great training for the day a gardener acquires a plot of land. Yet even once we possess gro
Horticulture1 min readArchitecture
The Container Garden
Sometimes poor soil or other conditions make pots the only gardening option. In this situation, my advice is to set a theme with your container style — such as all terra-cotta — and grow whatever you want. Then again, it’s your garden. Have fun. You
Horticulture1 min read
If the Pot Fits
Think about scale. Make sure your containers fit the spaces in which you place them. A collection of small pots in a large open area won’t feel right. Conversely, a giant pot in a small space will overwhelm the scene. Working with scale means making
Horticulture6 min readArchitecture
Ferning The Table
Some years ago a good friend of mine introduced me to one of the Pacific Northwest’s horticultural icons, Nancy Davidson Short, who served for many years as the Northwest Editor for Sunset and created a diverse, rich landscape around her home near Se
Horticulture1 min read
Thoughts On Design
Choose a focal point to base the design around. It might be a striking specimen plant, a choice dwarf shrub, a twisted piece of wood or a shapely stone. Don’t get tied down by rules like working with odd numbers of plants or placing plants from the
Horticulture1 min read
Ferns Under A Foot (tall)
• Dwarf Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum), such as ‘Silver Falls’ or ‘Burgundy Lace’ • Bladder fern (Cystopteris protrusa) • Evergreen tongue fern (Pyrrosia lingua) • Blunt-lobed wood fern (Woodsia obtusa) • Maidenhair spleenwort (Asplenium
Horticulture1 min read
Time To Rock Out
To enhance the naturesque feeling of the tablescape, I always add a selection of stones and, often, interesting bits of wood. This is a chance for creativity to take over. If you feel a little unartistic, here are a few suggestions that will help tie
Horticulture1 min read
A Seat At The Table
Compact, hardy ferns are the main ingredient for their namesake tables, but they need companions. Here are some to choose among: • Miniature hosta, such as ‘Blue Elf’, ‘Sunlight Child’ and ‘Mini Skirt’ • Sharp-leaved hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) • C
Horticulture3 min read
Kaleido Blooms
Picture a garden where all the flowers are solid in color. I’m not sure I’ve seen one. Perhaps we don’t think about it much, but in reality many—or maybe even most—of the blooms in our gardens show some degree of variegation. Stripes, shadows and fre
Horticulture4 min readArchitecture
The Plastic-free Garden
Plastics and gardening wouldn’t seem the most obvious of bedfellows, but they are as entwined as bricks and mortar — an unbreakable reliance. Plastic touches every practice of gardening craft. The same holds true in other areas of our lives, but in t
Horticulture7 min read
Summer Reading
by Kelly D. Norris Cool Springs Press, 2021 This is a beautiful and practical book that shows how to partner with nature in creating a garden—rather than attempt to direct nature. On my bookshelf, New Naturalism has found its place near favorites Ga
Horticulture1 min read
Must-read: Under Western Skies
The text and images on these pages are excerpted from Under Western Skies (Timber Press, 2021) by writer Jennifer Jewell and photographer Caitlin Atkinson. The book visits 36 innovative gardens of the Interior West, Southwest, California and the Paci
Horticulture4 min read
SILVER & SUCCULENT
Echo Park is a densely populated neighborhood of central Los Angeles that was originally named Edendale. The neighborhood has an often-hilly nature and a somewhat bumpy history. Economic development began with the renovation and restoration of the Ec
Horticulture8 min readArchitecture
Peter Zale
WITH A PASSION for plants that began in his teen years, Dr. Peter Zale earned degrees in horticulture and plant breeding and genetics. He works as Associate Director, Conservation, Plant Breeding and Collections at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square,
Horticulture1 min read
Worth A Shot
Scott asked Peter to name three plants that people think are difficult to grow, but they aren’t: Rhododendrons: I feel like they’re trending out because of deer browse and the diffi culty of establishing container-grown plants. But to be successful
Horticulture3 min readArchitecture
Tyler Arboretum
A 30-MINUTE DRIVE west of Philadelphia, Tyler Arboretum is a place of natural beauty with a long history. In 1681, Thomas Minshall bought the property from William Penn. By 1825, two of his descendents, brothers Minshall and Jacob Painter, began plan
Horticulture2 min readArchitecture
5 Favorite Plants For Blocking Weeds
This tough native perennial resists deer and rabbits, tolerates drought and attracts butterflies when it blooms in spring. It grows to about two feet tall. The foliage might fade a bit after flowering, but it can be sheared for a flush of new growth
Horticulture2 min read
Zen And The Art Of Total Garden Terror
MOST TIME SPENT in the garden is positive and healthy. This is why many medical experts suggest we do more of it. In my own garden, I tend to have three types of experiences. Short visits are generally recon. A quick walk. Mostly, I’m assessing. But

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