Camellia japonica at the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden
This little gem is located in Pasadena, California originally designed in the mid 1930s. The garden has recently been restored, remaining true to its original pre-war design.
flower garden
The Airport Garden Group
Amelia Island (Florida) is widely known as an upscale resort and tourist destination, where oceanfront building lots can cost $1 million or more. This is hardly the place to find a Community Garden that features a strong commitment to providing fresh vegetables to homeless and needy families in Florida’s Nassau County…but just such a program […]
A True Gardener
“I was an organic gardener by then and knew the value of the good bugs in my landscape, but the epiphany wasn’t about that. It was about how I suddenly needed to start paying closer attention to all the life in my own undergrowth. Instead of watching it on TV, I began to acknowledge the […]
The Smith Garden
The garden that is located in Seattle Washington, is a very new addition to the Smith household. All the work and progress of my family’s garden started around late 2018 when we first moved into our new house. While the house was built in 1909 and prior to my family living here there was a […]
Planting a Pollinator Garden in the Greenbelt/Treebelt/Verge
When we moved to the south end of Burlington in 2008, I dug up almost all the grass lawn in our yard—keeping only a ten-foot diameter section where we had lawn chairs—and replaced it with native plants and cultivars. Because I was concerned by the decline in numbers and health of pollinators like bees, butterflies, […]
Habitat for Pollinators
Bee and butterfly populations are in decline in Connecticut. To address this problem, to lure them in, and to increase their numbers, the Millbrook Garden Club created a pollinator garden at the Sharon Audubon Center. At this site, the garden club maintained an herb garden from 1966 to 2015. Herbs were replaced with plants providing […]
Partnering With Mother Nature
I was recently faced with landscaping challenges for a weedy and barren new lawn in a strange new climate. And I was overwhelmed, to be honest. I’ve always loved nature, especially photographing wildlife, so I decided I needed something different when I moved to this new location. Something more and something better than a vast green […]
Grandma & Grandpa’s Garden
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 […]
Shirley’s Garden
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 […]
Goodbye, Garden Hero
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 & Leila Barnes Victorian Gardens
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 […]
Bridge Gardens
I’ve sometimes wondered about the importance of space in one’s life. For me, my home filled with family photos, colorful art works, plants, and books is the place that provides comfort and peace and is the space I can always count on. Bridge Gardens, in Bridgehampton, New York, is a five-acre public garden that gives […]
A Story About Hope
In the spring, gardeners hope for spring rain “to bring May flowers.” The awakening of new growth on perennials brings hope for flowers. The long-lived peonies come to mind as they grew every year on my grandparent’s farm, reliably blooming every June. During the summer we hope the annual seeds sowed will grow and bloom […]
Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden
We visited this free garden in Palo Alto, California when we read it was added to the American Camellia Society Camellia Trail. We were not disappointed. It is the former home and garden of Elizabeth Gamble, the granddaughter of the founder of Proctor & Gamble. It was given to the city of Palo Alto, which […]
Descanso Gardens: A Peaceful Place
In the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in La Cañada Flintridge, north of Los Angeles, California is the largest collection of camellias in North America. Descanso’s 150 acres are filled with native California plants, a rose garden, flowering cherry trees and camellias planted along winding pathways which makes it a peaceful place to walk […]