Abigail Higgins
Garden Notes: Keeping the flowering alive
August is the high point of Island summer, and the M.V. Agricultural Society’s Agricultural Fair (August 15, 16, 17, 18) is the high point...
Garden Notes: Carry in, carry out
One finds all sorts of crazy trash in scenic Island spots. “Carry in, carry out” is a good precept for a place like the...
Garden Notes: Our terrifying friend, the white-faced hornet
Fourth of July rolls around once again, and the Season officially begins. Fireflies spotted here on June 18. Midsummer and June’s last weeks were...
Garden Notes: Your garden can aspire to rise
As we enter summer, Ron Rappaport’s death tears a large hole in the fabric of Island life. He and his partners in Edgartown maintained...
Garden Notes: Catching up to June
The rains, the weather, all seem to have converged to create wonderful gardens this spring. Now it is June, and the season hurtles along....
Garden Notes: Spring in full fragrance
Tonight’s full moon is called the Flower Moon. Memorial Day weekend is upon us, and the hardy garden fragrance plants are at their height....
Garden Notes: This spring is cool
The elegant native shadbush (amelanchier and its species) is in bloom but a short time, but is fleetingly graceful: matchless! Early morning, and the...
Garden Notes: Forsythia is a spring tonic
Forsythias across the Island seemed shy of blooming this year, turning out in full force a little later than usual. Their reluctance caused me...
Garden Notes: Welcome spring
This patch of weather has been wet and chilling, can we all agree? Nevertheless, the sun is with us for longer every day, even...
Garden Notes: Working with the spring
“You know spring has sprung when the herring run.”
In “Finding a Better Balance,” Part 2 of Ollie Becker and Circuit Art’s Great Ponds documentary,...
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...