My 96-Year-old Dad has a Green Thumb in West Virginia My father and I are enjoying the season and have put in a raised bed garden in his yard. This is the first year, but he is enjoying all phases . . . soil prep, planting, cultivation, and harvesting. When I was a kid we […]
In 1939 my grandparents, Earl and Cordelia (Delie) Warnock, married and purchased a small post-war cape cod in the D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. The home was typical of the era – a modest 2-bedroom brick home with little panache, but much promise for the future. The house sat on a on a flat grassy […]
In the 1950s and ‘60s, I was one of four children in a small, three bedroom ranch on the edge of town. My mother was the gardener with her daylilies, tulips, mint, Touch-me-not, roses, portulaca, and marigolds. I’m sure there were others. In the mid to late 60’s my father started vegetable gardening with corn, […]
As long as I can remember, my mother, Shirley, has planted the same vegetable garden plot and separate flower beds in the backyard of the house she and my father, Bill, have lived in since 1969 in Mason City, Iowa. Planting, growing, and harvesting vegetables and flowers comes naturally to Shirley as she grew up on a farm […]
Collecting Milkweed Pods During World War II We lived in a small, prosperous town in the middle of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, a very fertile valley, good for growing fruits and vegetables, still an area of small farms and truck gardens, with a range of mountains to the north and south. We were a family of […]
Last year I said goodbye to my gardening hero. Back in the day, sometime in the early 70s, my Dad became a foot soldier in the Crockett’s Victory Garden brigade, eager to try this whole new “organic gardening” thing, upend the typical grass-dominated suburban quarter acre and create a new Eden. He did it in […]
The Bradley and Leila Barnes Grounds & Victorian Gardens are part of the historic Barnes Museum Homestead. Located in the heart of downtown Southington, Connecticut, the property was purchased in 1836 by Bradley Barnes’ grandparents, Amon and Sylvia Bradley. Three generations of the Bradley/Barnes family lived on the land for 137 years. During the early years, the […]
Shamans say plants have spirit medicine. They have for me, helping me find solace, solidity, and silence when it felt like everybody else was screaming. Perhaps during my teen years, before my father threatened to put me in Military School, I discovered a large Juniper that held me gently in presence. Grace, my maternal grandmother, […]
Few public gardens have had such an enduring influence on American camellia history as the world-famous Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama. Ever since its 1930’s opening during the rise of America’s fascination with camellias, it has topped many lists of attractions in the nation and has hosted the American Camellia Society for tours and meetings […]
Nuccio’s Nurseries roots are firmly established in their Italian American family. The nursery began when Joe and Julius Nuccio began to grow camellias and azaleas in their parent’s backyard in Alhambra, California in the 1930s. The two brothers began to propagate camellias and azaleas which led them to grow seedlings, hoping to produce new cultivars. […]
Gardening, and living out-of-doors, come naturally to me thanks to my family. I myself moved so often as an adult that only now, after twenty years in Tennessee, have I been rooted long enough to see a flourishing garden emerge. It is named after a famous Comanche warrior, Quanah Parker, and we called our Parker, […]
The Garden Path ~ Green, Growing, and Blooming Project emerged as a tangible remembered connection and, consequently, a pathway to engagement following my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, thereby, enlarging her narrowing view of her world. She had been an inveterate gardener and had lived in tune with the seasons. The everyday visual signs of nature—sunshine, birds, […]
I am Dolores Isom Olds. I was born in 1929 and grew up in Hurricane, Utah. My parents were Eugenia Walker McAllister and Thomas Irving Isom. My Dad was a farmer and mainly grew fruit trees. He and his three brothers each had an orchard. Uncle Leslie and Uncle Bernard grew apples and pears. Uncle […]
My mother was born in rural West Virginia in 1917 and was a young girl when the Great Depression hit. In order to feed their family of eight children, her family grew an abundance of fruits and vegetables. My mother married at the beginning of World War II learning to live with rationing. So gardening […]
I come from many gardens. My parents used to have a long strip of red clay in the Hickory Flats, and I remember picking peas from it in the summer, covered in sweat and bees. In fall, we would shuck an acre of corn and the cows would wait on the fence line, ready to […]