Until I met today’s guest, James Young, early in 2025, it hadn’t really registered in my brain that some of the familiar annuals I grow from seed, like cosmos and marigolds and even purple basil, could also double as dye... Read More ›

I’m letting myself be transported away from the winter scene outside my window, burying my nose not in the snow but instead in the spring-into-summer possibilities depicted in seed-catalog pages. I have familiar, favorite varieties I grow every year –... Read More ›

I put out my first bird feeder of the season around Thanksgiving or so each year and get the party started. But there’s more to feeding the birds than just filling the feeders, like how to keep them safe in... Read More ›

The earliest references to people cultivating trees date back to 6000 B.C., and there are records of tree-care tactics in the Bible, too, and from ancient Egypt. These person-to-tree interventions were the start of the science and art of arboriculture,... Read More ›

Not so many years ago, relative to the history of horticulture, even a now-ubiquitous phrase like “pollinator plant” wasn’t part of our everyday gardening language and mindset the way it is today. Our collective consciousness about the importance of native... Read More ›

If I say: quick, name a holiday flower, you might first answer poinsettia. But the poinsettia wasn’t always synonymous with this time of year, today’s guest tells me – like once upon a time more than a century ago the... Read More ›

I can’t imagine life without my admittedly oddball collection of houseplants, many of whom have been with me for several decades already. So I was delighted recently to meet today’s guest, Rob Moffitt, whose Los Angeles-based botanical design studio specializes... Read More ›

When I bought my place decades ago it was nestled in a tiny piece of former farmland with a little 1880s house and no garden. There were, however, five giant apple trees, at least a century old even then –... Read More ›

Once upon a time the seed catalogs came out around the start of the New Year, but these days the very first ones may arrive by Thanksgiving, and their listings may be posted online even earlier. So I guess what... Read More ›

Besides their native-heavier plant palette and looser style, ecologically designed landscapes have another difference: The way we maintain them is not the same as with more traditional, ornamentally-focused gardens. I’m asked again and again by gardeners who have planted a meadow-like... Read More ›