The next issue of the magazine I edit features heritage businesses in Western New York—the ones that have lasted more than 100 years. Amazingly, two we’re covering are garden centers (and there are more gardening-related companies we couldn’t fit in). I say amazingly because there are built-in problems with maintaining independent gardening businesses in cold … Read more
The Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show is happening in Baltimore this week, and garden communicators (formerly “writers”) were there in droves! Here we all are at the breakfast event for media. Well, here they all are – I’d already started canvassing the vendor booths for familiar faces and interesting stuff to post about. GardenRanter Scott Beuerlein … Read more
Last week I got on a skinny little regional jet with four hefty Co-Horts from work, and with a screaming winter storm tailwind we arrived at BWI lickety split. Like the damned thing was the Concorde. Good thing. Even an hour on that plane next to my boss made an imprint of his credit card … Read more
Yesterday my long-time favorite garden center announced it’ll close soon. Here’s my tribute to the company and its people on a local blog. I’m reposting it here for the Rant’s broader audience because the closing is part of a very sad national trend. Also, it shows what great independent garden centers are doing for customers … Read more
Brent and Becky Heath I thought I knew how to grow daffodils – because who doesn’t? They’re critter-proof, perennial, drought-tolerant, and so on. Or so I thought until Brent Heath, co-owner of the beloved bulb company Brent and Becky’s, disabused me of my assumptions in his recent talk at Brookside Gardens outside DC. Having been … Read more
Back in 2015 I wrote about my two perfect watering cans and one that I deemed “flawed,” according to the caption (above). I declared cans to be perfect thanks to two features I always look for – balance, so that you can carry them without spilling (which the flawed one couldn’t do), and a large … Read more
I love my new monstera but not enough to take a selfie with it. The question was staring at me from my Facebook feed, in the form of a hunky guy sitting with a medium-sized parlor palm (I think) between his naked legs. For the past two years or so, the House Plant Hobbyist Facebook … Read more
The office is lightly scented with pencil shavings and old coffee mugs this morning. Not an unpleasant smell, but an unfamiliar one. I have ignored this room for two weeks over the Christmas holiday, and come back to it apologetically now – watering the parched papyrus tub and mindlessly straightening piles of to-do on three … Read more
Hope I’ll soon be able to make a haul like this again, but safely. That was the question yesterday, as local green industry owners and employees were discussing whether or not garden centers were one of the (many) essential businesses allowed to operate while New York State is “on pause.” The long list includes things … Read more
Curb-side pick-up. Oh, the ethical turmoil I’ve been in! Should I stay home and shop for food only, or support other local businesses, too? Plus, it’s spring and we gardeners need to buy plants and supplies. I’ll confess that my greatest personal fear (after dying, of course) was that the garden centers would be closed … Read more