horti-culture

Everybody in garden design is talking agaves. Retro modern folks are digging golden barrel cactus. We’re even seeing fire stick euphorbia in pots of mixed perennials. While these new ventures into old succulents are revitalizing the aesthetic of our gardens, there are some key concerns for safety among these often prickly plants. Succulents have the market [...]

Celebrate a natural holiday season with decorations from your garden and the wild places near home. Cook up a fresh batch of rose hip jam as the fruit ripens this fall.          Gather twigs to create rustic wreaths to decorate.                Cut long runners of run-away vines to tie into garlands.            Harvest your herbs before frost to hang [...]

The art of entertaining education should apply to the horticultural world as it does elsewhere.  The problem is that plant people aren’t often good communicators, and they struggle to share their life long knowledge with others. This lack of good presentation is matched by TV garden show “talking head”? hosts who can read a teleprompter but have little [...]

They can be found in the fossil record of virtually every continent on earth, changing little in the past 200 million years.  They came to prominence in the Mesozoic, a period known as the age of cycads and dinosaurs.  Plants known as “the cycads”? are true living fossils that make fabulous garden plants.  Though they may appear [...]

In the 15th century Florentine Codex of Aztec physicians, the healer is “well versed in herbs, who knows, through experience the roots, the trees, the stones.  She keeps her secrets and traditions.”?  The healer is clearly female.  But where the Codex covers Aztec physician, the text indicates this role applies to the male gender.    Today [...]