garden

Last Friday, I got a plane and flew to Buffalo, N.Y., to meet a group of women I met on the Internet. We’ve all been blogging together (at www.GardenRant.com) for over a year, but this was our first time to meet in person. I’m the only West Coast gardener in the group. One of us […]

Judging from the tone of your e-mails, you people are busy this summer. I’ve had a flurry of questions from people who are undertaking some large, impressive garden project or another. If you’ve got questions about your garden, send them to me, and at some point in the not too distant future you might open […]

A few years ago, I wrote a tirade on the subject of flower theft. My front yard is full of flowers, and I understand what a temptation this can pose to people walking down the sidewalk. But some of the thieves in my neighborhood were particularly conniving, walking right up to my front door and […]

The annual HBGF Tour makes a stop in Ferndale The Humboldt Botanical Garden Foundation’s annual garden tour is set for Sunday, June 24 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Ten gardens in Ferndale, Fortuna and Eureka will be open for the day, and you’ll also be able to visit the botanical garden site itself at […]

This spring, a group of garden bloggers got the idea to post a photograph on the 15th of every month showing what’s blooming in their garden. (If you’d like to check it out, just Google "garden bloggers bloom day" and you’ll see what I mean.) It’s a great idea to use a garden blog to […]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend was complaining to me about the number of chemicals that an ordinary person can get exposed to in a typical day. "And then the weed and feed guys come by," she said, "and who knows what gets tracked into the house from the lawn?" It sounded as if […]

At this year’s San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, the Sunset staff had put up a sign showing every edition of their famous "green book" going back to 1954. The caption asked, "Do you remember your first?" I remember my first. It was the sixth edition, about 13 years ago. I was shamed into buying […]

At the plant sale in Trinidad a couple weeks ago, everyone was talking about what they’d lost during the freeze. Many of us were still having a hard time believing that it had happened at all. "It was just one freeze after another," someone would say, shaking her head. "Night after night. It never let […]

I’ve been away from the garden too long. After a couple of months on the road, the place is a mess. Those hard freezes back in January turned some of my favorite shrubs into popsicles, but somehow spared the weeds, which have taken over. I’ve got some serious garden restoration work to do – and […]

Dow’s Prairie artist Susan Fox [with her collie, Niki] has spent just one year in her current garden, but she’s spent most of her life in Humboldt County. (To see her art, check out her show at Miller Farms in April.) Here’s what she has to say about her life as a gardener: What’s the […]

In this ongoing series of Humboldt County gardeners telling it like it is, Eureka gardener and landscape designer Donna Wildearth (right) has stepped up to bat. She owns Garden Visions Landscape Design and she teaches at College of the Redwoods. "Between my business and my teaching," she says, "I feel happily immersed in the world […]