Not every garden needs a Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica, below), much less two, but then, a garden need not have Japanese maples or hydrangeas, or whatever marvelous plants if the gardener prefers otherwise. A garden of clipped hedges without a single bloom might delight one gardener, no matter that I am unlikely to give it…

Until recent years, Iris bucharica (below) was a favored spring filler between paperbush (Edgeworthia chysantha) and a Fernspray cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Filicoides aurea’). But, and there are arguably too many buts around this place, the paperbush grew much wider than expected to shade the irises. For once, I plead innocence. I am the victim of…

This afternoon, it occurred to me that with warm weather on the way, the time to transplant an Oakleaf hydrangea that has grown too large in the front of the house is today, or forget about it until October. The worst time to move the hydrangea is next week, with emerging leaves that would certainly…

Too often, I’ve been stingy, and perhaps overly optimistic in planting ten of a bulb when twenty-five are more appropriate, or twenty-five when a hundred or two would be best. Each spring I note that a larger planting of crocus, or of Winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis, below) is in order, but when late summer ordering…

There’s never a shortage of tribulations and trivialities for the gardener to whine about, and he does. He curses the snow and ice, but also rain that saturates and shatters perfect flowers of peonies. Particular venom is reserved for heat and drought, but it is cold, and especially cold too long into spring that is…