Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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Abigail Higgins

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Garden Notes: ‘The Island is our garden’

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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One thing is for sure, even if it is a droughty spring: If there will be rain at all, it will happen during peony...