Your Own French Potager

There are Kitchen gardens, and then there is the French potager. Like saying, there is cuisine, and then there is French cuisine. You may interpret the distinction in your own mind, but I think there is a subcategory that the French potager holds as all its own in the concept of kitchen gardens. Just as we have come to appreciate the special inflection of the Cottage garden in feeling and style, the French...

Starter Vegetable Garden

A different design- A small vegetable patch is one of the first gardens I made when I was a twenty-something. I hadn’t really gardened on my own, but I knew what a delicious treat a fresh homegrown tomato was… I had enjoyed them from my mother’s garden. And my mother’s vegetable gardens never changed very much from what is essentially an easy starter vegetable garden. So this little guide...

Your Garden Connection and Viewsheds

In a very real way your garden is the connection between you and your surroundings. That has a number of different perspectives, including the house and the greater surroundings, the plantings and the house, and the garden with “borrowed views”, or viewsheds. Some of us are blessed with dramatic natural viewsheds, whether of mountain or ocean, or forest. Some have viewsheds including churches, or other...

Blue Flax, Linum narbonense

Linum narbonenseBlue Flax is a piece of summer sky fallen into the garden, shimmering blue flowers reflecting clear unclouded heavens. Opening during the sunny days and dropping its petals by afternoon, only seems to add to its charm; Genus Linum narbonense. I’ve grown both Linum narbonense and Linum perenne, and although they are almost identical in the garden, the L.narbonense seemed the better. To me, it...

Asclepias tuberosa ‘Butterfly Weed’

Butterflies love them Butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, isn’t as popular as it could be. Maybe the combination of the “weed” appellation and the bright orange color, but this is really a fine garden plant that brings a pleasing “pop” to the garden, no less for its drawing power for butterflies than for its joyful color. It took me tow starts to finally get Butterfly weed going in my...