Abigail Higgins
Garden Notes: ‘The Island is our garden’
Saluting the longtime motto of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club (est. 1926), “The Island is our garden”: Whether as a declaration or as a...
Garden Notes: Pruning and planting
The Feb. 13 snowfall was glorious. Leap year February kicked in with its familiar self, but tardily, mid-month. And March — in like a...
Garden Notes: Gardeners can help wildlife with their data
Sunshine! After weeks of overcast and rain. Winter usually brought deep blue February skies, but now, when we say “winter,” what are we referring...
Garden Notes: First light
Late January. Along the path, buds and new growth are revealed. Peeping out from wet oak leaves, the hellebore seedlings trail parent plants and...
Garden Notes: Winter comforts
The Island had a taste of snow. It was just enough for a 3-year-old, visiting from the South, to get his first experience of...
Garden Notes: Returning light
In a new twist on winter garden decor, wispy, earliest-ever threads of witch hazel flowers incongruously accompany out-of-season forsythia. It is growing evidence of...
Garden Notes: The short days and long nights of winter solstice
Eying Pinetree Garden Seeds’ 2024 catalogue with the pink celery cover is the “eyes bigger than the stomach” moment. Perusing seed catalogues propels us...
Garden Notes: On into the winter
Beets and indeterminate tomato varieties are a good bet because they prolong the harvest in our warm, extended autumn weather pattern.
Conversely, the determinate tomatoes...
Garden Notes: The harvest holiday
Island gardens for the most part have finally succumbed to frost. (Thanksgiving, when we had pond skating here when I was a little kid...
Garden Notes: Find the color in deep fall
Vivid backlit foliage and low sun gleam fleetingly. Frost has visited some Island gardens. The wren chirps loudly at dusk, “gather-in, gather-in,” her inclination...
Garden Notes: Lovely autumnal colors
It seems sudden, like — overnight: Aronias dripping with ruby fruit, hollies winking red, and sumac’s scarlet foliage topped in crimson velvet cones. In...
Garden Notes: Chrysanthemums reign supreme
Now that gardens are settling into the subtler phases of autumn and the end of the season, it is a good point to evaluate...
Garden Notes: Fall in full
Farewell to summer ’23, and welcome to fall. The autumnal equinox occurred on Sept. 23. The remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia coincided, bringing 2.5-plus...
Garden Notes: Uncontrolled growth
As to what is happening with the weather, Hurricane Lee’s Atlantic path titillates in the news, adding a frisson of danger to coastal lives...
Garden Notes: New chapters in the garden
Butterfly time — monarchs, swallowtails, skippers, clouded sulphurs, painted ladies, cabbage whites — they flutter, sail, and float above the garden, reveling in the...
Garden Notes: The mid-August moment
Clethra scents Island byways, and it is time for the fair — the mid-August moment.
Effort and inspiration are on display in hall and grounds!...
Garden Notes: Moving into August
The heat and lack of rain, compared with elsewhere on the mainland, are almost minor details. We should know what to be grateful for.
In...
Garden Notes: Elderberry
Native viburnum have gone by, but another white-flowered native is in flower. Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) is one of those plants one might encounter hiking...
Garden Notes: New wildlife in my garden
Native viburnums bloom alongside the road and in gardens where native plants have a healthy presence. Once pollinated, the flowers evolve into umbels of...
Garden Notes: Summer is really here
One thing is for sure, even if it is a droughty spring: If there will be rain at all, it will happen during peony...