Category: Uncategorized

Confusion about hydrangeas in the garden

  Why aren’t they blooming? Why are they pink when I want blue? When do I prune? Well, the link below from Proven Winners tells all including when to have patience. Now of course, plants don’t always read gardening books so if you have hydrangeas that are not behaving     give them more light, water, …

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Prune Time: Get in the Garden Now

Pruning & Snow – You betcha! The great thing about having snow on the ground means I could reach high up into apple trees when I was out in the garden pruning this week. The experience also ramped up my fantasies; after a long winter, there is nothing like a landscape filled with pink, white, …

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I Love Gardening in a Berkshire Winter

I LOVE WINTER! I know that’s a sin in some circles, but in winter, all my gardens are perfect – no weeds, no bugs, just a white wonder. I can also walk my woods without fear of Lyme disease, which I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had it. Seed and nursery catalogs …

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Love at First Bite

Below is article in the Spring Edition 2013 of Edible Berkshires On our first date Chris Blair offered to cook dinner for me. As an architectural designer he felt the need to redo his kitchen, but consequently, given his addiction to cooking, he was suffering withdrawal. To ease his pain, he searched for places to …

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Stick with Karen in the Garden- Azalea

Azalea ‘Karen’ is one of my favorites…the name is a coincidence……This wonderful shrub lasts a long time, thrives in our Berkshire winters, and is maintenance free. The magenta flowers jump out, particularly against white plants such as Dicentra Alba (white bleeding heart). I also love it, because the way it feels like an impressionist painting. …

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A New Garden for a Great Client

Low maintenance, natural looking, and color. For low maintenance we filled the area with perennials, groundcovers, shrubs, and trees. We also took down a a very sickly spruce that was block the view of the garden from a terrace.

A Sad Day for Boston, a Sad Day for All

Edible Berkshires – The Best of the Garden

We don’t have to separate veggies or fruits from flowers. Blueberries like soil that is really acid or low pH, and that’s just what hydrangeas with blue flowers love…so I love putting them together. Read my article in the spring issue of edible Berkshires and learn so many wonderful tips and so much more. Enjoy!

Long Division (landscape design-wise)

In a matter of weeks you can begin adding plants to your landscape design for free…yes free! Often when I visit a new client’s home, I will point to hostas, astilbes, echinacea (coneflowers), irises, and more plants and explain that by dividing perennials, they can have at least 10, sometimes 20 free plants. While hostas …

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Moira Banks-Dobson & Sanjiban Sellew

Garden is about growing and beauty, but so much of life is also filled with sadness. In the Berkshires where I live, two people who made the world a better and more beautiful place recently died. Sanjiban Sellew, a filmmaker and so much more, died because cancer still has the last word. His short films Road Kill …

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