Amy Stewart

It’s been three years since Flower Confidential was published, and in that time I’ve come to expect a few calls from reporters around Valentine’s Day looking for a comment on so-called "green" issues in the flower business. The narrative in the media has shifted somewhat over the last few years; it’s moved from "behind every […]

I get a lot of marketing materials sent to me by the horticultural industry. In addition to the usual tools and sprays and gadgets, there’s usually some hot new plant that they want to get garden writers excited about. It’s always pitched as the biggest, brightest, bushiest thing to ever hit the market. It’s disease-free, […]

It saddens me to have to bring up the subject of plant theft again. I thought we were past this. Blame it on the economy or the general decline of civilized society, but it seems that people are once again taking stuff from gardens. This season’s round of poaching began when a friend called to […]

My fellow Eurekans are all worked up over the new water rates that we’re going to pay now that the pulp mill isn’t kicking in its share anymore. E-mails are circulating among small business owners urging us to march on City Hall and make our displeasure known. Educational sessions are being held to explain these […]

I almost didn’t write a garden gift column this year. This is my seventh year to write for the Journal, and I continue to wonder why they haven’t fired me yet, what with my narrow horticultural interests and my general lack of expertise. If I turned in yet another round-up of holiday gift ideas that […]

Here’s the problem with a plant that blooms in the fall: You might never see it in bloom in the garden center, and as a result you might never be inspired to plant it. The best fall-blooming plants tend to be tough, shrubby, perennial-type things that just don’t look very glamorous in a plastic pot. […]

The 150-year-old Missouri Botanical Garden is known for undertaking ambitious and extraordinary projects. It’s the oldest botanical garden in the United States, but it’s also one of the country’s most forward-thinking horticultural institutions. For a few years now it’s been scanning its rare books collection and making every page available at Botanicus.com in a fully-searchable […]

The autumnal equinox happened a couple of weeks ago, marking the beginning of fall and the official end of the gardening year. Actually, I believe that September marks the end of one year and the beginning of a new year in every sense: It’s back-to-school time, which has ingrained in me the habit of going […]

There’s a great Penn & Teller segment about recycling that ran on their "Bullshit!" series on Showtime a few years ago. (If you were reading this on the magical digital paper of the future, this video clip would materialize right about now and you’d watch it without getting out of your chair. As it is, […]

This summer’s health care debate has raised a number of interesting questions, including this one: What, exactly, should health insurance insure against? Should it insure against the possibility that you’re going to need an annual checkup and a refill on your prescription? Or should it only insure against that which you cannot predict and cannot […]

Mike McGrath is something of a legend among organic gardeners. He was the highly idiosyncratic editor of Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine throughout most of the ’90s. Under his leadership the magazine became the most widely read gardening magazine in the world, and McGrath regularly made the rounds of the Today Show and Good Morning America, […]