Abigail Higgins
Garden Notes: Enter the cold season
Nights now draw in early and we come indoors, appreciating warmth and light. Winds and rains have torn away much of the colorful autumn...
Garden Notes: Death into life
As the 2022 gardening year seemingly winds down, it can be understood as actually the beginning of the next one. Gardening is a cyclical...
Garden Notes: Moving through the fall
October has been glorious. A wistful feeling pervades as we bid it adieu and look ahead to Eastern Standard Time, and late fall’s darker...
Garden Notes: The signs of the season
Scenery and gardens are taking on ruddy autumnal hues as foliage colors deepen, and many hydrangeas make the surprising transformation to russet and ruby...
Garden Notes: Seeing your garden as part of nature
The autumnal equinox’s rainstorm last Thursday measured over an inch in the rain gauge here, and produced a stunning sunset and rainbow, as the...
Garden Notes: Watch for deer on the roads
Fall is lawn repair time. Based on trends, it is likely that dry summers and drought figure in our future. Letting the grass attend...
Garden Notes: Fall arrives, and it’s time to look ahead
Ah, September! College students and summer help are melting away; goldenrod glorifies; Labor Day nears; the Derby bell rings. These punctuate the 10 weeks...
Garden Notes: Tips on our dry gardens
We had a couple of rainfall apéritifs. Thankfully, it was enough to lay the dust, although drought conditions persist.
Checking in with various gardens, it...
Garden Notes: Hostas can help
Meadowsong’s seasonal chorus has already begun. It is an elegy that could rightly be called “September Song.” The trilling and singing of millions of...
Garden Notes: The appeal of quiet in summer
The latest, largest rhododendron, R. maximum, is flowering. Daylilies create banks of color everywhere. Towering oakleaf hydrangeas are like small trees, white flower trusses...
Garden Notes: It was a great June for roses
Not sophisticated enough for the designed garden, the old-time combo of rambler roses, tawny daylilies, blue hydrangeas, and Japanese honeysuckle is a signature of...
Garden Notes: Boxwood is a lifetime plant
The height of the garden year has already come and gone: summer solstice. Not to worry; there is plenty of action still to come,...
Garden Notes: Pollinators needed
The spring solstice approaches, the summit of the earthly year. The roots from the seed, the chick from the egg, the graduate from the...
Garden Notes: Eat most locally of all
Despite the fluctuations of the weather, Memorial Day is almost here. We can be thankful we do not live in leafed-out Denver, where within...
Garden Notes: Viburnums and lilacs
Mornings are light by 5:30. Birdsong is increasing, as staking out territories intensifies. Suddenly, vernal greenery surrounds us. This happens every year, but is...
Garden Notes: Consider camellias
April’s chilly, drying winds still blow, but flowery May is around the corner. Polly Hill Arboretum’s camellias are a flash of red while driving...
Garden Notes: The garden and Earth Day
Gardeners are doing lots of planting from here on out. Time to think about soil (bit.ly/SoilTipsNewGardeners). A soil thermometer says soil temperatures are still...
Garden Notes: The work is picking up
“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” –William Cowper
The rainstorm last week delivered two inches to the rain gauge. Tokens of early spring...
Garden Notes: Oaks are the answer
Erin go Brách! It may be St. Patrick’s Day, but much green is onion grass, not shamrocks. Island fields appear to be wearing camelhair...
Garden Notes: Forcing spring
As Islanders know, to their annoyance, spring does not willingly arrive on Martha’s Vineyard. It just doesn’t (maritime climate and all), even though the...